Chapter Two
Now
Clouded by falling snow, the Federal building loomed a hundred feet high out of the concrete sky. Cai glared at its brass door handles and stuffed his mitten-clad hands into the pockets of his pea coat.
Just open it!
One of the doors flung open, liberating a cluster of people who then diverged into a swarm of SUVs in the parking lot.
Cai’s gaze returned to the handles, then followed the windows up to the third floor.
Quit stalling.
Go inside. Get in the elevator. Press 3—
A giant snowflake drifted onto his lashes and oozed into the crease of his eye. As he blinked away the blur, a black woman with hot pink earmuffs elbowed the door open and held it there with her hip. She rummaged through a weathered purse with one pink glove clutched in her fist.
A man exited a second later and tapped his watch under her nose as he passed. “Thirty minutes, Marks.”
“Yeah,” she answered and beckoned Cai inside. Without looking up, she said, “Let’s go, kid.” When he didn’t enter, she abandoned her search and gave him the onceover. “In or out?”
Cai shook his head and backpedaled off the curb. He wasn’t ready. Hands too clammy, knees too weak. “Um...out?” he croaked. Her brows pinched together and his bounced up in panic. “Waiting...I’ll wait? For an agent.” Try again. Be clearer. “I’m...was...I was waiting for Agent Cordova.”
“Why aren’t you waiting inside?” She let go of the door and came closer.
Cai retreated further into the road, his heart firing rapid beats. “I-I... he...and me... we’re...and I’m Cai. A friend,” he added quickly, in case he’d given the wrong impression. “Sort of.”
“I know who you are, Mr. Strakosha. More than likely security knows who you are. Go inside before they get nervous about the son of a witness bouncing around outside FBI headquarters.” With a frown, she patted her coat pockets, then paused briefly to ask, “Are you in trouble?”
“No, ma’am. Not...yes...I wasn’t, um.” Bouncing? He hadn’t been bouncing. Sinking down onto his heels, he willed his feet to grow roots. “It’s nothing to do with my mother. It’s...um... personal?”
“Go be personal inside.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Cai peered at her through his lashes. “I... need a minute?” To breathe. To think. To smother the fear.
She studied him, long enough that he began gnawing on his lip. “Don’t stand out here gawking for too long,” she finally said. “You’re already making Hal twitchy. You don’t want to make security twitchy. And you’re turning into a lamppost-shaped snowman.” While continuing to pat her coat, she followed her colleague into the lot. When she got to a green Prius, she shook a pink glove free of her pocket, gave a smile of triumph, then retrieved a mobile from the same pocket. She shouldered the phone to her ear before climbing into the car.
Cai knew who she was calling. He released his breath in a whoosh and hunched to block out the wind.
Decision time. Leave or go up?
How would he explain everything? Where to start?
It’s about a hitman, you see?
That’ll go over well.
Cai imagined his heels plowing channels in the snow as the big slab of a guard dragged him off. ‘Twitchy Hal’, he supposed, was the same man who continued to stare daggers at him from the front desk.
Keep standing here and you won’t have to say anything before being hauled into an interrogation room.
That wasn’t even the worst-case scenario.
What if Riley just refuses to see me?
He’d just be left standing in the lobby with wet frozen cheeks, wearing this ugly chullo while another rejection twisted his stomach into knots. Only this time, he wouldn’t have the warmth of a kiss lingering on his lips. He wouldn’t have tingles from where their bodies pressed together. There wouldn’t be anything to mitigate the pain.
Cai turned from the building and walked toward his car. The more he imagined a rejection, the faster his feet carried him; until he ran full-out, arms tucked at his sides, blood hammering in his ears, and breath gusting out in bursts of clouds.
Never should have come here.
At the car, he tore off his mittens to dig the keys out of his jeans. The bitter cold rushed in, biting his fingers. His hands shook, the key sliding off the lock and scratching the green paint. Great. He’d keyed his own freaking car.
“Nikolaj?”
Cai froze.
One year, one month, twenty-eight days since he’d heard that voice outside of fantasies and memories.
The name stuck in his throat, trapped by breath and pulse.
Riley.
No! I’m not ready.
Cai sucked in a helping of air and ducked out of sight. He turned left and right, searching for an escape route. The keys jingled his location. He cringed at himself. “Um...no?”
Riley stepped around the bumper and then crouched in front of him. “No?”
He’d forgotten how rough and sexy Riley’s voice sounded, even slightly out of breath. Forgotten how it stirred him. How it made him ache and warmed him at the same time.
Being this close launched a flurry in his stomach. Made his palms sweat and goosebumps rise along his forearms. Overwhelmed by the assault of feelings, Cai fixated on the charcoal hem of Riley’s coat brushing the pavement. The keys slipped from his grasp. He dove after them but accidentally toed them out of reach. “Dangit.”
“You’re going to leave without saying hello?”
Cai felt blindly, frantically, under the car. His fingers grazed Riley’s. He jerked his hand away and then picked at his thumbnail. “Hi?”
“Hi, kiddo!”
Kiddo? Cai snatched the keys out of Riley’s outstretched palm and snapped to standing. “Home. Going. I’m, um, going. I’m going home.” When Riley stood, Cai made the mistake of meeting those dark green eyes.
Why’d he have to be so beautiful?
“You’ve grown,” Riley said, reaching up.
Cai’s eyelids fell closed, releasing another snow-tear. He felt the soft brush of Riley’s fingers, sweeping his bangs aside and tucking them into his hat. “Sorry,” he whispered.
“You stopped writing.”
“You never answered,” Cai said, fists clenched. His breath faltered on the millions of pleas choking in his throat. He watched a bird disappear into the horizon and wished he could do the same.
Riley flexed on his gloves, brown skin blending into brown leather. “That’s Austin’s jag, isn’t it?”
“He gave it to me. When I got home. From Europe. When I got home from Europe. Of course the car’s not from Europe. He bought it here. I think he bought it here. He could have bought it in Europe, I gue—” Cai pressed his lips together and growled his frustration. So much for maturity and confidence. Five seconds around Riley and he reverted into a bumbling teenager. He shoved the key into the lock and twisted, trying to focus on leaving. The keys danced and chimed as he wrenched them out.
Riley laid a hand over his. “It’s not a good idea for you to come here.”
“I know.” Cai yanked the door open.
“Rubbing your freedom in the FBI’s face is what I meant.”
“I wasn’t.” He gripped the top of the door tightly. “I just— You said once, if I was older…” Where had that come from? That wasn’t why he was here.
“That’s not a good idea either.”
Although gently said, the words wounded. Pain he’d capture later on canvas with black smears and red streaks. The flurry in his stomach churned up nausea. “I’m nineteen.”
“And I’m thirty. That’s a lifetime of experience compared to nineteen.”
Almost thirty. “I’ve slept with guys,” Cai said, pleading with his eyes. He quickly averted his gaze. “I don’t know why I said that. I promised myself I wouldn’t say anything stupid.”
Riley’s cheap cologne slipped into the tiny space between them. “Look at me.” He forced Cai’s gaze up with that simple order. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted.” Hope struggled through the pain. “But it’s never been about how many men you’ve slept with or that you’re legal. It’s about the sum of experiences. The kinds that happen from eighteen to thirty. Moving out. College. Getting a job. Relationships. Breakups.”
Those are the kind of things that other people did, Cai wanted to scream. It would have been futile. Riley couldn’t see beyond his own ingrained morality. Cai blew the remaining strand of black hair out of his eyes. “Give me a chance.”
“No,” Riley said.
“I moved out two months ago.” Begging. He was begging. And sounding more desperate and pathetic with each utterance. He tried to salvage a little dignity. “I’m, um, I’m working at the art store downtown. And at the motel sometimes. Not for money. I’d never take money from your mother. She, um...well tamales, I take her tamales.” Oh, dear sweet heaven, shut up.
Riley glanced toward the green Prius as it pulled out of the lot. “You should head home. It’s cold out here.” Neither of them moved. “Go home, Nikolaj.”
“Are you making me go because you don’t want me or because you do?”
Riley tugged the edge of Cai’s chullo down over his eyes. With a rueful grin, he said, “You make doing the right thing very, very difficult.”
“Not done.” Cai pushed the hat up and bounced on his toes. He grinned and lurched forward, kissing Riley’s cheek near his ear. “Look out,” he whispered, then grew louder as he backed up, “I’m not done with you, Saint Riley.” His smile stayed in place as he got in the car.
After settling into the seat, he took a steadying breath and started up the Jag. As he drove out, the sight of Riley walking away tugged the smile off his face.
* * *
“Let me get this straight,” Julian said, leaning one elbow on the table. “You went there to talk to him about our problem, yeah?” Fingers popped up as he listed Cai’s transgressions. “You cocked that up after speaking to, not one, but two FBI people, and then, fuck knows why, you decided to go on the pull and didn’t even ask him out?”
“I…” Cai had no defense to that. He let the industrial overhead lights buzz out an answer for him.
“Look, did anything useful come out of this meeting? Anything at all?” Julian scraped a dot of spackle off his jeans and flicked it onto the carpet.
Cai picked up another tiny tile, swirled adhesive on the back and affixed it to the table. “I flirted?” If one loosely defined ‘flirted’. He touched his forehead where Riley’s fingertips had caressed his skin.
“Flirted? Oh, you flirted. Well, why didn’t you say? All our problems are solved.”
“He makes me nervous.” Cai hiccuped. “Sorry.”
The beat-up jukebox near the entrance of the restaurant switched to another record from the 1950’s. A second before the lyrics started, a drill screeched in the kitchen, drowning out Julian and the song.
Once the drilling ceased, Julian propped his feet up on a nearby table, right over the mosaic Cai had just finished. The adhesive hadn’t even dried.
“Nothing for it, now.” Julian shook drywall dust from his afro before clasping his hands behind his head. “How was seeing him, then?”
Cai played back the moment he’d kissed Riley’s cheek. The smell of cedar and cologne came rushing back along with the rough feel of scruff against his skin. Heat blossomed in his chest. How was seeing him? “Like my stomach was making a break for freedom via my mouth.”
“Sounds like that part went well.”
“Aside from the begging, the throwing myself at him, the rejection, and completely forgetting the whole reason I went there, which is the difference between your life and death?”
“Yeah, apart from all that.” Julian chuckled.
“You get your feet off my table, Julian Thompson.” Isabela Cordova marched out of the kitchen, throwing a dish towel over her shoulder. The tight brown bun on her head barely moved as she strode straight for them. “I am sure your mother taught you better manners than that,” she scolded.
“Mum’s dead, Mrs. Cordova.”
Isabela gasped and made the sign of the cross.
“His mother lectures at Cambridge, ma’am,” Cai said, hoping this confession didn’t instigate another trip in which he’d be forced to drive her to church and, thus, attend.
“She’s dead to me, I meant.”
Cai rolled his eyes. “You texted her an hour ago.”
“To tell her she’s dead to me.” Julian dipped his head back to grin at Isabela.
“Why would you say such a thing?” Isabela huffed and shoved his feet off the table. She snatched the towel off her shoulder and then rubbed where his sneakers had left marks. The lemony aroma of wood polish snuck between the molecules of glue floating in the air.
“She’s a Tory, Mrs. Cordova,” Julian said.
Isabela squinted at Cai, looking for an explanation.
“It’s the conservative party in the UK, Ma’am,” he explained.
“?Si fueras a la iglesia aprenderías a respetar a tu madre, escuincle!” She walked to the windows facing the wing of the motel being remodeled.
Julian changed seats and drew Cai into his lap to whisper in his ear. “What did she say?”
“I don’t speak Spanish very well. Something about you going to church.”
“I thought you were some sort of genius?”
“It doesn’t actually work by osmosis, you know. I have to learn things, just like everyone else.”
“Yeah, well, what I’m sayin’ is if you’re going to be bonking her son, you might want to learn her language.”
Heat crept up Cai’s neck. “I don’t...it’s not about...that.” He quickly stretched to stick down the piece of the mosaic before the adhesive dried.
“Oh, sorry, if her son is going to be bonking you, then.”
Cai dropped the tile. He grappled for it but missed. “Shh! She’ll hear,” he whispered before sliding under the table to get the piece.
“Julian, go and finish the drywall.” Isabela’s practical pump tapped the red stone floor an inch from Cai’s fingers. She stared at him, the towel clenched tight in her fist.
She’d heard.
He jerked up, rattling the table as he conked against it. “I’m not— We’re not. I haven’t.” He stood holding the top of his head with one palm and the tile with the other. For a brief second, he considered cracking the tile over Julian’s skull. But, since it was only one square inch, it wouldn’t be much of a punishment. He settled for a deadly glare. “Why am I friends with you?”
“My big black dick is good wank fantasy.” Julian sauntered off to the back end of the restaurant, whistling.
Cai gaped at him. His face was so hot at this point that he probably outshone the moon.
“You went to see my son?”
He chewed his thumbnail. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Riley sent you away?”
“Yes. Oh, well, no, he...Yeah, kind of.”
“Good. He is too old for you. And you are too nice and too young to be boinking around.”
He was going to self-combust. “Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Cordova traced over the finished portion of the mosaic. Cai ripped off the rest of his nail and followed her progress over the intricate swirls of thin brown and black lines. She stopped before reaching the grouted edge. “This is beautiful, Nikolaj.” His pride swelled and then quickly deflated when she took his chin in her hand, wet her thumb, and then wiped something off his cheek. “Such talent. You need to find a nice girl your age to look after you.” She pursed her lips and gave a dismissive wave. “Or a nice boy.”
He looked at the cross dangling chastely at the base of her neck. “I belong to Riley,” he whispered.
She sighed and released him to smooth back his hair. It dropped back into his eyes. “How long until you are finished?”
“Two more tables and then the grout needs to dry for twenty-four hours. They’ll all be ready for Monday’s opening.”
She puffed through closed lips. It sounded like the raspberries he gave his brother Stuart. “Monday? I could only hope. They have not completed the upper floor rooms. I will have a restaurant with no motel and no guests.” She checked the window again, swore and threw open the front door, yelling in Spanish at the workmen chatting on the motel’s second floor balcony. Shaking a fist at them, she marched outside.
After Isabela disappeared up the stairs, Cai wrinkled his nose and scratched at the spot where her spit lingered on his skin.
How would he get Riley to see him as an adult when everyone treated him like a toddler?
* * *
The Wyler case beckoned Riley with the perfect distraction of wiretaps and witness statements. An hour after returning from lunch, he still hadn’t opened it.
His first case as lead investigator sat in front of him, yet the memory of candy-flavored lips and the scent of oil paint consumed his every thought. Cai was a destructive sidetrack on his career path.
He grabbed the Wyler file, flipped it open to the brief, and read the first paragraph five times before he determinedly pushed Cai out of his mind.
“Was that the Strakosha boy I saw you with at lunch?” McCleary asked from the doorway.
“Yes, sir.”
“There movement on the case?”
“The Strakosha case? No, sir.”
“Kid in trouble?”
Wasn’t Cai always in trouble? Isn’t that part of the appeal? Riley rejected the question and the part of his conscience that whispered it.
“Probably,” Riley answered with a grin. “That wasn’t why he was here.”
“Huh.”
When nothing further was offered, Riley raised a brow.
McCleary shut the door and took a seat in a folding chair, making the office shrink behind his broad shoulders. He matched Riley’s raised brow and threw in a direct, blue-steeled stare. “Think that’s wise?”
Three years later and they were finally going to talk about his friendship with Cai? “No, sir, I don’t. Which is why I ended my personal involvement with him a year ago.”
“You’ve been too subtle, then,” McCleary said.
“I have been unequivocal with Nikolaj.”
“Yet he keeps coming back.” McCleary’s voice had the faint echo of sandpaper when he spoke, more so when he was irritated. Today it sounded like forty grit coated his throat.
Riley’s grin widened as he leaned forward, clasping his hands on the desk. “I can’t shoot him, Dan. He’s a kid with a crush.”
“There’s your problem, Riles. You keep thinking of him as a kid with a crush and then words like ‘unequivocal’ don’t ring true to me.” McCleary crossed an ankle over his knee. “Involving yourself, and your family, your mother, especially, with that psychopath—”
“Psychopath?” Riley drew back. That wasn’t a conclusion Dan would come to without evidence. “You can’t be referring to the Alvarado murder.”
“No. If he had committed that murder, the rape would have been an extenuating circumstance.”
“So was the fact that someone else confessed,” Riley said, dryly.
“The Dyachenko murder is more disturbing,” McCleary continued with only a small shrug to acknowledge he’d heard Riley’s response. “That 911 call was enough to convince me he’s not playing with a full moral deck, not to mention the other circumstances in that case.”
“He was eight,” Riley said. “Being held a hostage by—”
“By a man he called ‘uncle’. Yet no remorse after killing him? His IQ—”
“High IQ does not indicate psychopathy,” Riley snapped.
“No, it indicates he’s smart enough to manipulate you.” McCleary jabbed his thick finger on the desk. “The age of his first kill. No remorse. Both of his so-called brothers were prostitutes. His father headed an organized crime family. He’s deceptive, sly, and calculating . Combining all of those factors, the profile fits. Riles, I know you want to save this kid, but for your family’s sake, for the sake of your career, stay away from him.”
Riley sat back and contemplated his old partner. Not just partner—a mentor and friend. Someone whose advice he not only trusted but relied upon. A man whose opinion mattered.
“Three years ago, you had a different take,” Riley said.
“Three years ago, he’d been raped by a scumbag, framed by two scumbag detectives, and thrown in jail. I felt sorry for him. Then I watched his personality change depending on whoever interacted with him. There is something off about him. Listen to that 911 tape and then tell me he’s only a kid with a crush.”
“I’ve heard it.”
“Listen to it again. Then ask yourself how he knew.”
“Knew what?”
Instead of answering, McCleary regarded him under bushy grey eyebrows. “You submitted a request for transfer to HRT?” The implication was clear. Being associated with Nikolaj Strakosha would affect his application to Hostage and Rescue.
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“Don’t make me regret recommending you.”
“I won’t, sir.”
McCleary scooted up to the desk and took the folder off it. “Wyler sent a wire transfer this morning. Did you read the briefing?”
Glad to be out of defensive mode, Riley answered quickly, “I was getting to it when you came in.”
* * *
After the rest of the department left for the day, Riley opened the Nikolai Dyachenko and Kaja Strakosha case files on his computer. He scrolled through hundreds of folders that he knew held evidence of crimes from murder to trafficking. When Riley had been assigned to Nikolaj’s detail, he’d read every scrap of paper, listened to every interview, and watched hours of surveillance video. He remembered the tug at his heart when he’d first heard the 911 call. Would his perspective change, now, three years later, after his conversation with Dan?
“Listen to it again. Then ask yourself how he knew.”
Riley opened the sound files and the transcripts. He thought that reading the written words would keep him detached. That possibility vanished the moment Cai’s soft voice filled the small room.
TRANSCRIPT: Miami Dade 911 Emergency Response Call BEGIN CALL
DISPATCHER: Miami-Dade 911. What’s your emergency?
NIKOLAJ STRAKOSHA: Hello? I. I killed Uncle Nikki.
DISPATCHER: [unintelligible] Honey, did you say you killed someone?
NIKOLAJ STRAKOSHA: Um. Uncle Nikki. I think. I think his brains are on my shirt.
DISPATCHER: Okay. Help is on the way. What’s your name?
NIKOLAJ STRAKOSHA: Rabbit’s gonna be so mad.
DISPATCHER: What’s your name, sweetie?
NIKOLAJ STRAKOSHA: Nikolaj. But I don’t like that. That’s his name. I like Cai.
DISPATCHER: Do you have a weapon, Cai?
NIKOLAJ STRAKOSHA: [unintelligible] I shot him. Um. Um. Uncle Nikki is twitching.
DISPATCHER: Cai, are you safe? Can you move to another room?
NIKOLAJ STRAKOSHA: Yeah. He’s dead. Dead people twitch sometimes.
DISPATCHER: All right, Cai, police are on their way. I need you to put your weapon down. Can you do that for me?
PYOTR DYACHENKO: And they had—[unintelligible] Daddy?
DANIEL COROZZO: Motherfuck. What did he do? Oh, shit. He’s dead. Shit. Shit. What’d you do, Cai?
NIKOLAJ STRAKOSHA: Police will be here soon I think, Rabbit.
END CALL.
“Ask yourself how he knew.”
Riley rewound the recording.
“Yeah. He’s dead. Dead people twitch sometimes.”
How did an eight-year-old come by that knowledge? That was what Dan had been asking. The horrific answer to that question was a secret Riley had kept since the day Peter had told him. Cai’s father had started taking him on jobs at the age of five.
How much had he witnessed as the son of a mob enforcer? How many beatdowns? How many murders? Cai would have understood everything happening around him. What did that do to compassion and empathy in a child with that IQ? Peter spent years trying to drill empathy into Cai. Winnie the Pooh cartoons on repeat seemed to have confused Cai more than anything, but they must have had some effect. Certainly, the boy who took care of an injured cat and sometimes pretended to be clueless to save his brother’s feelings wasn’t the same child who drugged his surrogate uncle’s drink and then shot him in the head. And a person who expressed his love as deeply and unwavering as Cai, even in the face of rejection, could not be devoid of empathy.
From the pocket of his briefcase, Riley slid out his e-reader and opened the cover. A worn envelope peeked out from behind the tablet. The letter inside was more frayed than the envelope.
He unfolded it, gingerly.
Elegant handwriting faded into the creases of the paper, and oil from Riley’s fingers had smudged the blue ink.
Only Cai would write an actual letter.
Riley loosened his tie and rubbed his thumb over the last sentence as he read.
Dear Riley,
I’m coming home in two months for Christmas. I mean I’ll be home for Christmas and forever after that. I think forever. There’s nothing here for me. So much incredible art, yet I feel nothing.
On my way to Europe, I stopped in New York to see The Starry Night. I tried to feel something, anything, but there’s nothing there, either. Not anymore.
Do you remember? About The Starry Night? That beautifully weird Starry Night I started painting the night we met. It used to make me feel hope and love and...
Maybe there is a feeling. Grief? Emptiness?
If I tell Peter, he’ll think my meds need adjusting. It’s not that.
It’s resignation. It’s acceptance. It’s hopelessness.
This is my last letter to you. I met someone. A friend, I mean. I met a friend. And I feel something. Not like that. Not like you. But something. And I laughed. Yesterday, I laughed.
I won’t find The Starry Night. Those swirls of Persian blue and sparks of Indian yellow are lost to me. But I can move on. I can try to move on.
I can laugh now. That’s something isn’t it? It’s something.
I’ll stay away. When I come back. I’ll stay away from you.
I will love you though. You can’t stop that. I can’t stop that. I guess that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?
All my love, Cai
With a heavy sigh, Riley rubbed his hand over his face and then stared at the computer screen until the words blurred out of focus. His mind wandered to the precise moment he’d touched Cai in the parking lot. Every vivid detail came flooding in. Cold skin. Shiny lips. Black lashes quivering against reddened cheeks. And that ridiculous knitted chullo with ear flaps as big as his head. The monitor flickered to screensaver mode, interrupting his thoughts. With a wry laugh, Riley nudged the mouse and closed out the Dyachenko files.
The Wyler case, he reminded himself. He carefully concealed the letter behind the tablet and reached for the file.
After incorrectly inputting four-hundred rows of money transfers—twice—Riley pushed out of his chair and announced, “I give up,” to his empty office. He needed a better diversion than money laundering. Tonight was a good night to lay tile in the kitchen. But first, he needed to call his mother.
* * *
“I can hear you whinging from over here,” Julian said.
Cai looked over his shoulder. “Um. I haven’t said a word in ten minutes.”
“You’re thinking loudly.”
“Sorry?”
Julian tossed drywall equipment into a container and then took his gloves off. He wove through the tables, then draped over the chair he’d abandoned earlier. “That’s uncanny, that is.”
“What?”
“With one word you can apologize whilst simultaneously apologizing for the apology.”
“Sorry.” Cai laughed, then pressed his lips together. “I mean, um, not sorry?” He pulled a small handful of tiles out from the front pocket of his overalls.
“Figured it out yet?” Julian asked.
“Figured what out?”
“You hand paint twenty-four table mosaics exactly the same, but you can’t remember a conversation we had fifteen minutes ago?”
“You have a journalism degree from one of the most prestigious universities in the world, but your basic vocabulary is littered with the words ‘wank’, ‘porn’, and ‘innit’?”
Julian scowled and propped his arms on the back of the chair. Every muscle in his chest strained against the confines of his white t-shirt. “How is it you don’t blush and stammer through these conversations?”
Cai pulled another table over, determined not to look. He started to organize the mosaic pieces into piles. “Because.” He cleared the rasp from his throat. “Because we’re not talking about certain...things.”
“Which things?” Julian’s favorite game: Make Cai Sunburn From the Inside Out. His slow-growing smirk positively glinted with wicked glee. “Precisely?”
At this point, the conversation would lead down one embarrassing path or another. Cai chose the least flustering route. “No, I-I haven’t figured out what to do about Riley. Move on seems to be the right answer.” Riley certainly had.
“Yes, clearly, that’s working.”
“Well, I don’t know what else to do. He-He—”
“Perhaps diction lessons are in order?”
Cai glared. “Why am I friends with you?”
“Man-up. Stop blushing and running away with your cock tucked between your legs every time you see him.”
“Where else is it supposed to be tucked?”
“Down his throat would be better suited, I should think.”
Luckily for Cai, Rachel texted before he disintegrated into ash.
“Rach needs me to pick her up from school.” He dropped the phone into his front pocket and pulled his sweater on.
As he poked his head through, he noticed Julian scowling at him. “What?”
“Do you own anything without paint?”
Considering Cai owned approximately twelve items of clothing, besides underwear, he doubted any of them were paint-free. “Oh.” He picked up Riley’s pea coat off the chair and held it up. “This!”
“Surprised that isn’t under glass and framed on your wall.”
Julian grabbed the car keys. “I’ll drive. I need the car.”
“To go spying?”
“It’s not ‘spying’. When reporters do it, it’s investigatin’, innit.”
“I don’t want my car associated with your stalking when you get arrested.”
“Dominant little bugger today, aren’t you.”
“Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.” Julian pulled their bodies together, digging the keys into Cai’s hips. “I like it when you’re bossy.” He nuzzled the edge of Cai’s jaw. “We have a few minutes.”
Cai tilted his head back, easily losing himself in the sensation of Julian’s soft tongue and the scent of his cologne—clean and fresh and maybe a little obvious. No subtle aromas of oil or pine or diesel. No cheap aftershaves bought by a niece at the local drugstore. “I don’t think we should...”
Julian’s grip loosened but his lips whispered over Cai’s ear. “He doesn’t love you. He doesn’t even care. He sent you away.”
“It doesn’t matter what he feels. I’m not with him.” Cai gently pulled away. “It only matters what I feel. And what you feel. Or maybe that doesn’t matter either, because I’m with you, now, but you don’t love me any more than he does.”
“I want to be with you. That’s more than him,” Julian said. “You love me. That matters.”
“We’re going to be late.” Sometimes when he was with Julian, it didn’t hurt as deeply to think of Riley. But he’d always know that Julian could never love him back.
“Cai?”
“Yes, I love you, Julian. But, I need him.” Cai examined the floor while shrugging into Riley’s old coat. He tugged at the cuffs, failing to cover his wrists. Not that the sleeves had ever fit. Fiddling with them was mainly to find a way to phrase his response. “I belong to him.”
“Like what? Like a pet?”
“Not exactly.” How did things get so serious from moments ago? “I want to be with you, but...” As Julian stepped forward and cupped his neck, Cai curled his fist against his own chest. “You and me, Julian, this thing we’re doing, it’s toxic. And it’s the whole basis of you being with me. That’s what we share, this poisonous thing. I won’t feel anything after this. We’ll get our justice, and I’ll sleep at night, but as much as I love you, I won’t be able to...to fix you, to understand your guilt. Which would be fine if you loved me too. Because there’s comfort in just loving someone. But you don’t.”
“I could. I could love you. When this is over...”
“Not enough to save me. Not enough that I could save you.”
“I don’t understand you at all.”
“You’re this palette of colors, Julian. Red and yellow and blue and black and white. Everything you need to fit in the world.”
Julian chuckled sadly. “That didn’t help.”
Cai had what he wanted to convey on the tip of his tongue but trying to get that across meant backtracking to explain. It was a frustrating part of his life. “You’re equal. Balanced. You don’t need anything or anyone. But I’m...missing things. I can’t paint without white. I can’t make anything real when all I have is black.”
“It’s a metaphor, yeah? Riley’s your white?”
“Yes.”
They split apart and Cai wrapped a brightly striped scarf around his neck. As he opened the door, Julian grabbed his wrist. “You’re not as bad as you think, Cai.”
“No, Julian,” Cai said, as matter-of-factly as he could. “I’m not as good as you think.”