Whatever the Cost (12 page)

“You know what I mean. I want a cool wife too, that lets me fuck guys sometimes and isn’t a psychopath. But no. I’m in love with someone that might not even be real.”

Shoving him away to arm’s length, staring up at him, she smacks his chest.

“Ow,” he pouts, rubbing the spot.

“You’re in
love
?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yes you did! Who the fuck are you in love with?”

“Can I just talk to Yasha? There’s less hitting when I tell him stuff. Though he’s not as good a hugger as you. And you’ve got better tits.”

She turns and leaves him there, calling over her shoulder as she slips into another room, “Go on. Check the bedroom. I’ll be there in a sec. No way I’m missing this.”

“Great,” Jacen sighs, shuffling to the stairs leading to the second floor.

Yasha is there, getting dressed. Standing naked by the closet, he glances up when Jacen moves into view. “Oh. Hey,” Yasha says conversationally. “So that was you molesting my wife?”

“Yeah.” Jacen comes into the room and sits on the bed. Unscrewing his Thermos, he takes a sip and hopes it helps clear away the cobwebs in his brain. He’s temporarily, happily distracted by the slight wood Valery gave him. A few minutes later, his belly is warmer for the coffee, Yasha has gotten pants on and Valery is leaning against the wall near the door. Yasha sits down next to Jacen. Holding out a hand palm up, resting it atop the duvet, Yasha waits until Jacen lays his hand over it and squeezes it lightly.

“All right, go. What happened?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s just an obsession,” Jacen prefaces. “In a few days, we’ll have to fuck anyway and then the allure will be gone and I can go back to normal. Right?”

Valery shoots Yasha a questioning look, so he sighs, muttering quietly to her, “Liam.”

Her shock is apparent, so Jacen tries to ignore it.

“What happened?” Yasha presses.

“Exactly what I thought would happen,” Jacen says exhaustedly. “He was
beautiful
, and I just wanted to kiss him everywhere. Just kiss him. No more than that. But I couldn’t. It doesn’t work that way, so he was, like, upset that it was me that was touching him and I had to do it anyway. It was horrible. He was on the verge of tears and right after he came he shut off. Just—shut off, and disappeared into the bathroom when the client was distracted.” Yasha stares expectantly at him, so Jacen clarifies, “Blowjob.”

“And then what?”

Jacen bows his head, eyes fixed on his lap and the container of coffee nestled there between his legs. “I don’t know.”

“Jacen, you know that we can’t help you if you don’t talk to us,” Yasha warns. “Clearly something happened. You wouldn’t be this disturbed by a blowjob.”

“He’s in love,” Valery says softly.

“No, I’m not,” Jacen argues a little too forcefully. “I didn’t mean it, okay? I just said it. I’m allowed to say things without them always meaning something. It was a figure of speech. It—”

“And you said he wasn’t real,” she continues.

Jacen stops, his expression blank, if subtly pained. “He’s always different. He’s always being something else. He’s a liar. He’s a professional liar, so how do I know? Hmm? How do I know it’s not all bullshit? And why should I bother putting myself through that?”

Knowing from experience to be concerned about the hopeless tone in Jacen’s voice, Yasha raises their joined hands to his lips, kissing the back of Jacen’s. “I’m glad you recognize that much. It’s good. It means you’re learning. Tell us what happened,” he urges.

His expression twisting as he tries to mask his terror with the ever-so-slightly more appealing options of anger and shame, Jacen bites viciously at his lower lip and closes his eyes. After a long moment, he shakes his head.

“He’s out there. Right now. He was in
my bed
last night and even after what we did, he snuck out of it without even waking me, like he does every time he’s
finished
his
job
, and now he’s....” Jacen flaps a hand at the window.

“Working?” Yasha supplies.

Jacen’s eyes squeeze shut. He winces, imagining it—a stranger touching Liam like only someone that loves him should, a stranger hurting him, a stranger stealing away another piece of Liam’s soul.

“You can’t be judgmental about this,” Yasha says.

The words are truer than Jacen wants them to be. Yasha is right; Jacen can’t be a hypocrite.

“What do you want here?” Yasha prods, “Think about it. What do you really want? What’s the goal? Do you want to fuck him outside of work and have Liam be okay with that? Do you want him to tell you if he has any romantic feelings for you? Do you want to find a way to still be friends with him despite fucking him for money and leave it at that? You have to decide. Because if you get all sentimental and needy, it’s only going to make Liam pull farther away from you.”

Haltingly, Jacen argues, “But it
was
sentimental. It felt—”

“Was it?” Yasha asks doubtfully, “Was it really? Or did it only seem that way?”

Only more lost, Jacen turns to Valery. “What do you think I should do?”

“Give him time. Let him be the one to come to you. Have him be the one to decide what comes next. If it was what you think it was, Liam will show you that. If it wasn’t? Well....”

“Yeah,” Jacen sighs morosely. “God, I hate this.”

Jacen doesn’t cross paths with Liam at all that day, so Jacen sends him a text letting him know that in the morning Jacen has an appointment with Patrick, and that Della is sending him over with security, just in case. Instantly, Liam tries to call Jacen back, but he doesn’t pick up. In Jacen’s mind, there is no point in arguing about this with Liam over the phone. It’d only cause more heartache. Jacen spends the early evening at their local health clinic, getting a thorough check up, partially because it’s part of his routine (and contract) to do so regularly, but also because Della thought it might be a good idea to document the fact that Jacen was perfectly healthy before going to see Patrick, should anything happen during the visit. The pessimism in that line of thinking makes Jacen slightly ill but he can’t escape it. For the rest of the night he is left wondering what his fate will be and what state he’ll be in once Patrick is done with him.

Liam is out late that night, and gets home well after Jacen has already gone to bed. In the morning, Jacen wakes alone once more, as he had expected, but the other side of his bed seems curiously slept in. When he reaches over to touch the sheets there, they feel warm.

He tries to imagine Liam lying next to him, watching him sleep, and can’t. He can’t manage it, even with the tangible evidence right there. Jacen thinks that maybe it’s his head trying to forbid further hope, or maybe it’s just because it’s not true, but either way, he doesn’t dwell on it. All that matters is that he’s alone now, and that he has to get ready for his client.

Robotically, he goes through the motions, cleaning himself up, getting dressed in something expensive but casual. He stares at himself in the mirror in the bathroom for a long time, trying to put aside everything that happened with Liam, along with everything that happened with Patrick at their last meeting. Some of it recedes, but not all. His eyes remain haunted, wary. For a moment he considers calling Della and saying he can’t do it, even with the knowledge that Patrick came in personally to see her to reassure her that things would be different, and even with the awareness that Patrick isn’t expecting Jacen to be completely trusting after what Patrick had done.

Jacen is glad when Liam is nowhere to be seen as he climbs into the car sent from the main office, with his security in the form of a massive wall of a man named Duke wedged behind the wheel. Relaxing against the cushions and headrest, Jacen does some breathing exercises and tries to remain calm. He closes his eyes as they coast through the streets. All too soon, they’re at Patrick’s place.

The house is set close to the road but on a lot spaced far apart from its neighbors. Leading the way up the short path to the door, Jacen is hyper-aware of Duke’s presence behind him, looming and threatening. When he knocks, Jacen can hear multiple voices, laughing and chatting within. The prospect of performing his services with Patrick in front of an audience stirs little reaction in Jacen, not much more than a dull queasiness and impatience to get it over with.

The door opens. Patrick is there in a black short-sleeved shirt, aviators and dark-wash Gucci jeans, a cigar perched between his fingers.

“Hey, baby,” he smiles, “You brought a friend.”

“Yeah,” Jacen says with the smallest backward glance at Duke. “Not my idea.”

“Oh, I understand. It’s fine,” Patrick assures him.

“I’ll wait here,” Duke tells them.

“We might be a while,” Patrick warns.

“No problem.”

Jacen pushes his hair back from his face as Patrick slips a firm hand around Jacen’s narrow hips, ushering him around the side of the house instead of through it.

“Come on. Let’s go out back.”

Jacen murmurs an assent and lets Patrick lead him away.

Liam sits slouched down in the driver’s seat of his truck until Jacen and Patrick walk around the side of the house just to make doubly sure Jacen doesn’t see him. Quietly, Liam gets out of the truck and stands beside it, watching from where he’s parked, up on the crest of the hill of the road, behind a large bush. Duke sees him and promptly recognizes him, giving Liam a nod. Liam nods back. There have been a handful of times when Duke’s presence has been requested on one of Liam’s jobs.

Pushing his sunglasses farther up the bridge of his nose, Liam tracks the pair of men making their way back to Patrick’s pool.

Already Liam has noted the presence of a number of cars in the driveway, the faint sound of voices from inside the house on that quiet, peaceful morning. He has a good view as Patrick leads Jacen to a lavish spread of food set out decadently on an outdoor dining table. None of Patrick’s other visitors join them as Patrick begins to eat breakfast and Jacen pretends to pick at some of the dishes, mostly eating from the platter of fresh fruit.

Liam doesn’t have anywhere he needs to be that morning, and he fully intends to stay for the duration of Jacen’s visit. If anything goes bad, Liam wants to personally get his hands on the creep mistreating his best friend. Earlier, Liam had come into Jacen’s bedroom to lay beside him for a while, debating what to say to convince Jacen not to go to Patrick. Of course there was no rational argument to be made. This is Jacen’s job. Things with Patrick have been arranged by The Company and Jacen needs to do as he’s told, as they all do. The only thing Jacen could do is quit, and take off before they could track him down and make him fulfil the years left on his contract whether he likes it or not.

And then what?

Liam doesn’t know. The sheer desperation in him to get Jacen away from those who would hurt him or take advantage of him moved Liam right up to the brink of waking Jacen up and suggesting they just go, just get in the car with some of their things and drive, maybe up the coast. It wouldn’t matter, as long as it was away. They could use their savings to start a new life, one much more mundane than their current one but infinitely more
safe
. He lay there for hours, unable to speak, unable to do it, to go through with it. It would be too real, too hard. It’s so much easier for Liam to stay quiet, to go along and not make a fuss. For all of his good intentions, a small thing like suggesting something he wants very much, deep down in his heart, is peculiarly impossible. So it stayed a fantasy and Liam crept back out of Jacen’s room, hating himself for it.