The Christmas Throwaway (11 page)

The Christmas Throwaway

RJ Scott

don't know half of what is on there. I haven't heard this kind of music for so long, not enough to know it, and the half I do know, the older stuff, it just reminds me of missing home."

"Home?" Ben inhaled a deep breath, sudden confusion in him. "Do you want to go home, Zach?"

He blinked at Ben's question, his eyes widening in shock, and then he dipped his gaze, as much as he could with Ben holding him still.

"No, I don't want to, but I miss Rebecca, and I…

worry."

"That isn't stupid," Ben started, wanting to reassure him, but Zach interrupted.

"I phoned a friend today." He spoke quickly, as if he wanted to get that admission out there.

"Who?" Ben prompted as Zach stopped talking and then refused to look him in the eye.

"I left three dollars by the phone," Zach said hurriedly. "I wanted to call my best friend to ask him to check in on her."

"Okay, did he say he would do that?"

"Just from a distance, so Dad can't tell. Maybe he could get a message to her. I'm eighteen, I could be her guardian, get her away." Zach looked pathetically hopeful, 119

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and Ben knew it wasn't the right time to tell him of what he had done today — that he had cops checking his father out as well. It could wait. He encouraged Zach to look at him, focusing on too-bright eyes and long lashes spiked with tears. His gaze dropped to full lips, and he couldn't fight the urge to place a kiss on the younger man's mouth, pulling back just as quickly. Now wasn't the time to kiss Zach; now was the time to reassure him with words.

"We'll find her, make sure she is safe. Trust me."

He started to say more, but Zach's tongue darted out to taste the kiss Ben had left, and he lost track of the words.

"Dinner's waiting, Stretch," he said instead. They had almost reached the door when Zach stopped.

"Is there a reason you don't touch me? I want you to touch me," he said quietly. The words hovered there, damning Ben as much as questioning him.

"Zach, it's difficult." How the hell was he going to explain this one?

"Is it me? Did I do something wrong?"

"No." Ben was quick to reassure him, but how could he say
it's not you, it's me
without sounding like he was reading from the cliché book of young gay love?

"Is it because of my back?" Zach's words were dull and dripping with self-recrimination as he crossed his arms 120

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across his chest.

"Jesus Christ," Ben swore bluntly. "Is that really what you think?" Carefully and calmly, he pushed the door shut until there was a safe amount of wood between him and his mom's bat-like hearing. Then he turned to Zach. He was looking too much like a whipped puppy to really pull off the
I don't care what you think
pose he was trying for.

"I don't know," he said, his eyes glassy again and his thin frame dwarfed in the fugly green sweater.

Ben leaned back against the closed door, tugging on the sweater until Zach was unbalanced and leaning into him.

"God help me, but I want you so bad," he breathed as he claimed a kiss. The touch of his lips to Zach's was soft, but he pressed the advantage when Zach pulled back slightly and opened his mouth to say something. Ben simply tilted his head to deepen the kiss, sliding one hand up to twist into Zach's hair, anchoring him for more. Zach was quick to push his hands up and under Ben's shirt, rough and quick and needy, taking part in the kiss with an eagerness that shocked Ben to the core. Breathing heavily, he pushed Zach back, avoiding his lips as Zach chased for the kiss.

"Don't stop—"

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"I have to stop myself. Otherwise I'm going to push you down on that bed and just take what I want."

Zach finally eased away, utter confusion on his

face. "Do it then. I'm saying yes."

"I know you are, but hell, Zach, I want to do this right, okay? I want to make it good for us, I want you to feel well, and I want us to be alone, not with my momma sitting downstairs. Does this make sense?"

"I do feel well," Zach protested quickly, clearly trying not to wince as Ben touched his bandaged back.

"Uh huh," was all he said about that, and Zach gazed at him with the start of a smile on his face. "I think this thing we have here could be very important to both of us." It was vitally important that Zach understand how much Ben had considered the next move, how many times he had caught himself as he reached for the younger man.

"I think so, too," God, Zach sounded so damned shy. It was impossible to stop himself, and he pulled him in for a close hug. Zach, for all his height, leaned into Ben, burying his face in the space between shoulder and ear. Ben felt a rush of need to make Zach understand. Ben intended on being there for him in all he had to do to get better.

"That panic attack was a sign that maybe there is shit in your head that needs sorting. Your back is still 122

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healing, you still look so tired, and you are only eighteen."

"Okay," Zach answered sadly, his shoulders slumping, and Ben realized instantly the mistake he had made. Maybe he shouldn't have listed everything pertaining to Zach first.

"And as for me, I'm a cop. Not just that, but I'm a newbie cop, fresh out of training. You were a juvenile in my care, and I am not going to be seen to be taking advantage of the situation. I need to give you professional help first, find out what is happening in your home, and check on Rebecca." Zach blinked at him as he spoke, fear and worry in his eyes as he mentioned Rebecca. "Come to dinner now."

* * * *

The phone remained ominously silent for a good

three days, and Zach wondered if Matt had actually done as he had asked. They had been as close as brothers, had shared everything, but now it had been so long and Zach had never been able to contact the other boy. He counted on Ben coming through, or Mitchell, and getting information that way.

So when the shit hit the fan, it came from two

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directions. First, it was the phone. Matt demanded to talk to Zach, his voice thick with some unnamed emotion as he blurted out what he had seen.

"He hit her, right in front of me, because she remembered me and smiled at me! Fuck, Zach, what do I do?"

"I don't… I…" Shaking, Zach handed the phone directly to Ben, taking the stairs three at a time and grabbing the duffle that Donna had given him for his clothes. Ben's voice echoed up the stairs, talking calmly, then silence, then just two words. Just two. "She's dead?"

Zach reacted in shock, jumping back down the

stairs, skidding to a halt in the hall. Ben was nodding at something on the other end of the phone and looked over at Zach with a stubborn look of determination on his face.

Carefully he replaced the handset.

"Ben?" he asked quickly.

"I'm sorry," Ben said softly, and there was something in his eyes, a finality, a grief, and the cold glint of temper. Zach suddenly lost all the strength in his legs as he fell to his knees in the hall. What had happened? His sister was dead? He felt Ben try to lift him. Heard words, but they were just noise around him. He felt sick.

"Zach. Zach. Look at me." He felt Ben shake him.

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"'Rebecca?" He felt like his entire world was disintegrating around him.

"No. Zach. Look at me. Zach. She's fine. Zach.

Zach."

"Fine?" He lifted his eyes to Ben's, seeing the concern there, and saw the truth he was speaking.

"The cops Mitchell sent to check responded to your friend Matt's call. She's okay. She's at the station with them. I'm sorry, Zach. It's your momma. I'm so very sorry."

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Zach stood in a suit, crisp-new, bought with money he had borrowed from Ben, just enough for the suit and some new shoes. It was his momma's funeral, and he felt he needed to be there. She had never really been that much of an influence in his life, fading to lavender and silence as the years had passed. She had never stopped his father. Not once did she argue for her son, defend him, or even say she loved him. She was frail and tiny, small boned and easily breakable.

She died so very easily, falling and smashing her head on the kitchen table, her neck twisting and snapping, as easily as a twig snapped underfoot. She fell because Zach's dad had taken a belt to his daughter and that had clearly been the one thing his mother couldn't tolerate. She had put herself between her husband and her child, taken the beating, and fallen to her death.

His sister was hugging him tight and weeping

against his new suit and, for her sake, he was pleased his mom had finally found her backbone, but it wasn't enough to make him cry as they lowered the coffin into the gaping hole of her grave. Snow had fallen here as well, and that fascinated him. He had imagined the snow to just be in Hill 126

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Valley, in that picturesque town where the impossible niceness resided. He didn't for one minute consider the beautiful blanket of white that covered the place he felt safest would ever deign to fall where his dad lived.

He pulled Rebecca closer. What she had seen the

past few weeks was impossible for him to reconcile, so he had pushed it way back in his head.

Ben had wanted to talk, wanted to go to the funeral, but Zach had stopped him.

"It has to just be me and Rebecca," he had said with finality. To his credit, Ben hadn't argued, leaving Zach to organize and work his way through what needed to be done.

"I need your permission to submit the photos of your injuries to the police here." Ben asked just before the funeral as he straightened Zach's tie and pulled him in for a final hug.

"Will it help?"

"It's peanuts compared to first degree murder for your mom, but yeah, I think they should know it all."

"If that's what they need." It was neither here nor there that people see what had happened to him. All that mattered was that his dad was out of his life and out of his sister's life. He was going to be the best big brother it was 127

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possible to be. At eighteen, he could be Rebecca's legal guardian; that much he was certain of.

The service finished, a stiff breeze whisked the

snow into soft clouds around the grave and Rebecca put a single rose into the hole. Zach couldn't bring himself to go near it. Silently, the two walked away from the grave and the minister and the empty words of the one or two people who had attended the service.

What was he going to do next? The house was a

rental in his father's name, and his momma's blood stained the floor. They were not going back there.

"What are we gonna do now?" Rebecca gazed up at him, her eyes trusting, looking to her big brother for guidance to deal with this.

"I'll sort it out," Zach said, confident. Because come hell or high water he would.

It seemed that being told he wasn't needed at the funeral didn't stop Ben from waiting at the edge of the cemetery, leaning back against his car, watching as they left the grave and walked towards the exit.

"All right?" he asked, likely more for something to say than actually asking the question, and standing away from the car. He brushed at the seat of his, no doubt, damp pants.

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"Uh huh," was all Zach could summon up.

"Wanna go home now?" The words were so simple, and Zach looked directly into Ben's blue eyes, wanting to communicate what he was feeling.
I don't want to go back
to dad's house. It isn't our home. I don't have a home, and
Rebecca doesn't have a home.
He didn't get to say any of it because Ben continued talking.

"Mom said she's got pot roast cooking, and she's put the spare bed up in Ellie's room. As long as Rebecca doesn't mind sharing?"

Suddenly the weight in Zach's heart lifted and

Rebecca pressed closed to his side. His sister didn't know Ben other than as a kind stranger, even though he hadn't really left Zach's side in three days. Still, she could grow to know him, and she would love him, and his mom, and his brother and sister, and the assorted extras that came along with the package. Ben and his mom wanted the Weston siblings to come to them.

He looked down at Rebecca's face. She still showed the same vacant confusion he had recognized in his own face after one of his father's attacks. How long had his dad been hitting her? How long had he not seen it? Was it just since he had been forced out of the house? They needed a sanctuary, a home. It was being offered to them on a plate.

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A home and a family, and as he looked back at a clearly hopeful Ben, maybe also someone he could count on.

"Let's go home."

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July fourth was just the best day ever; a picnic on the playing fields and a fireworks display watched from the blanket with his new family. Ben was on duty, but he did manage to make it to see the fireworks with them. It was the night of their first real kiss, in that half time of dusk, as they waited for drinks at the booth and chatted about Rebecca, football, and everything else that came so easy between them.

It was a gentle kiss, and Zach simply leaned into it and then pulled away with a heated expectation rising in him. He touched his own lips with a single finger, touching where Ben had kissed and looked directly at him.

Zach wasn't stupid. He knew why Ben pulled back