Not So Innocent (Shattered Glass #2)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Riley opened the front door and stood numb on the stoop. He stared into his living room, at all the tasks he’d left unfinished. The stack of cedar planks for the new flooring gathered dust in the corner. Fuzz hadn’t been walked since the church incident, which meant the backyard needed to be cleaned, as did the kitchen, the living room, the cage, the bedroom, and his car. A plastic bag in the foyer overflowed with suits that should have been left at the cleaners earlier this week. He hadn’t been to the office in days. The Wyler case lay as neglected on his desk as the things in this room. Everything in his normal, ordered life had been abandoned for one fucking crisis after another.

Cai walked past him, tracking mud onto the hardwood. Then he shrugged out of his coat, flinging drops of water all over while searching his pockets.

Riley watched Cai take out the bag with the hat—the bag that would end his career—and then lay it, and his damp coat, over the back of the recliner. Apparently, Cai had kept the evidence bag close, like one of his fucking mementos.

He’d screwed himself over with that hat. That was on him and he’d own it. But a world of other shit had dropped onto his shoulders and he hadn’t asked for it.

He watched Cai turn in a circle. Watched his brows furrow as he realized he’d entered the house alone. Watched his mouth form a question out of his name. Riley stared through green eyes into grey ones. An observer of his own life.

“It’s a little cold,” Cai said, the worry in his eyes belying the calm in his voice.

Numbness gave way to a sharp ache that came and went, like the flash of pain from a burn. Relief came next, then a spiral of fear squeezed that from him. His heartbeat accelerated. Chest tightened. He dug his keys into his palms, trying to change his focus to something tangible and safe. He couldn’t breathe, yet all he was doing was breathing. Was this a panic attack? Because he couldn’t have a panic attack. He was the defender. The fixer. The hero. Heroes didn’t have panic attacks. Heroes had to just suck it up. Be the man who’d withstand the cycles, and the chaos, and the total upheaval of his goddamned life.

Bland, steady, dependable while one hundred and fifty pounds of landmines moves into my house.

Bipolar cycles, moral deficiency, murders, rape, sexual compatibility, the age difference, his family, Cai’s family, the FBI, the transfer to HRT which meant a move to Virginia.

Hah, who was he kidding. There was no HRT. No job.

Welcome home, Riley. Now, try and navigate tonight without stepping on one of those landmines.

What do you expect from me, God? I’m not Atlas. This weight is crushing me.

Better to walk away and leave it all. The house, the car, the dog, the job...Cai.

“Riley? You’re scaring me.”

Oh, you’re scared? You’re scared? We are about to be alone in this house with very real, very messy, and probably insurmountable problems. Tonight will be like a first date at the tail end of an earthquake while tsunami sirens are going off! You should be scared.

Sweat dripped in Riley’s eye. He blinked and wiped his forehead. Thirty degrees outside yet he was sweating. He stared at his glistening hand. Distantly, he registered that Fuzz wasn’t barking to get out of the kennel. That should have set off warning bells, but the part of his brain that reacted to that sort of thing had short-circuited from overload.

Shame, fear, anger, frustration, and panic. What a healthy combination of feelings to start a relationship.

Cai attempted a smile that resembled a hostage calming their captor. “I-It’s getting late,” he stammered.

Riley glanced at the floorboards again.

“What are you going to do when it’s too late?”

I’ll listen to Jeremy’s sermons on Sundays instead of shushing whispered questions. I’ll read your letter every day, until the paper nearly falls apart in my hand. I’ll eat too much sugar and have to add another run to my schedule. My walls will have five coats of paint to keep the scent of you in the house. I’ll try to drown the silence with music until my neighbors complain.

I will be alone, asking myself if I did the right thing or the safe thing.

“What’s wrong?” Cai asked through chattering teeth.

All I’ve wanted since you left was to taste you again, to inhale and drown in your scent. To hear you babble endlessly about what colors to mix for summer grass. To feel you purposefully brush your hand against mine again when we walk the dog.

“I think you need to decide what you’re going to do, Riley.”

The past year would have been empty if it hadn’t been so full of you.

“Do you want me to go?” Cai asked.

“Nope.” It was all the coherency Riley could summon. After hanging up his coat and keys, he sought the nearest escape route from Cai, from his thoughts, and from feelings of any kind. “I’m going to make us some food.” As if to emphasize how adrift he felt from normal, instead of reaching over to ruffle Cai’s hair, the way he used to do, he gave a curt nod and said sternly, “Make yourself at home.” The only way it could have been more uncomfortable was if he’d offered a handshake. He fled to the kitchen where his escape was blocked by a giant clusterfuck.

He’d forgotten to kennel the animals.

* * *

Cold air chased goosebumps up the hem of Cai’s jeans and t-shirt. He wanted to rub warmth into his arms, or put his coat back on, but the naked panic on Riley’s face kept him paralyzed.

Panic. There was a word he’d never put in the same universe as Riley. Except possibly when spiders were around. But even then, not panic. He’d just walk out until the dog ate it or Cai put it outside.

Steady. Predictable. Calm. Those words defined Riley.

Controlled. That was a big one.

But Riley was very clearly out of control.

Two minutes since they’d parked the car in the garage and walked to the front of the house. Two minutes since Riley spoke. He’d acknowledged the agents in the cars, but that was as close to communication as he’d come. Two minutes shivering in the cold, waiting.

Scratching, crinkling and crackling sounds came from the kitchen. A blast of air blew Riley’s tie over his shoulder and sent his hair in several directions. Sweat trickled down his temples. Riley’s only reaction to any of that was to grind his keys into a tightly clenched fist.

“He’s ‘bout to nope the eff out, ” Julian would say. Which was both apt and absurd. Riley panic? Impossible. Yet, no other word fit. What am I supposed to do, Riley? I don’t have a plan for the impossible. His teeth chattered, only partly from the cold. I can’t stand here forever, hoping I don’t turn into a Caicicle while waiting for things to fix themselves.

Say something innocuous? “It’s a little cold.”

Nothing.

Silence stretched the nature of time. Commanded all the attention in the room. It amplified every swallow, every whistle of the wind, every quavering exhale.

You can stand here all day whining to yourself, or you can do something.

Cai squared his shoulders and fortified his lungs with fresh air. “Riley?” His stomach churned up bile, like he’d inhaled sour milk instead of evergreen and cedar. “You’re scaring me.”

Riley took a step back, his heels hovering off the step. A drop of sweat zig-zagged down over his eyebrow and dropped into his eye. He wiped his forehead and stared at his hand, brows knitted.

That wasn’t the reaction Cai’d wanted. His stomach flipped again, threatening to revolt. He sensed a critical shift happening in their relationship, but he had no experience with what it meant or how to deal with it. “I-It’s getting late?” he stammered. Don’t run. Please don’t leave.

Riley’s brow relaxed. He looked directly at Cai with a different kind of unreadable expression. But he didn’t make a move to come inside.

“What’s wrong?” Frustration rose up in Cai and he bit his lip to keep from lashing out. Talk to me! He opened his mouth to scream, but at the curb, the window of the SUV rolled down. Agent Johanson’s face came into view an inch at a time. He cast an accusing glance at Cai.

Why are you looking at me as if I have the answer to why he’s standing there? Or like I’m the reason he’s...like I’m the...

A revelation surfaced from the rivers of confusion.

Oh! I’m the problem.

“I think you need to decide what you’re going to do, Riley.” Cai twitched his way into a smile at Agent Johanson and hoped the tightness of it wasn’t visible from this distance. Then, keeping his tone neutral, he asked, “Do you want me to go?”

“Nope.” Riley nodded stiffly, walked inside the foyer, and then hung up his keys and coat. He reached out, as if to shake Cai’s hand, then took it back like he’d touched something hot. “Make yourself at home.” Then he shut the door and stiffly strode off down the hall, as if the last three minutes hadn’t happened and needed no explanation.

Bewildered, Cai tried to make sense of things. Going back to when they parked in the garage, he thought he’d narrowed down the moment the mood had changed. Riley had said to go to the front of the house so that the agents outside could watch them, but then he’d fixated on the evidence bag Cai slipped into his coat pocket.

Okay, he’s worried about withholding evidence.

It’s sealed and in the bag. He could claim he forgot it.

Would he do that?

No. Too much stupid integrity.

Before Cai could work out a solution, Riley’s shoulders dropped, and his mouth fell open. He stared into the kitchen and groaned out, “Ah, shit,” followed by a half-hearted growl of, “Bad dog! Perro malo!” as he wagged his finger and sidestepped out of view.

Cai went over to check what happened, dodging Fuzz as he ran out with a bag of bread clamped in his jaws. Peeking in the kitchen, it was Cai’s turn to gape. “Whoa!”

Riley skirted a puddle of milk, orange juice, and egg slime. “This is going to be the longest diet of your life, dog,” he muttered. An eggshell cracked under his foot. The noise stirred Begone from her nap on the counter. She rolled over and offered her belly while watching an upside-down Riley with interest, like he was her personal entertainment. An empty bag of pretzels crinkled under her, spilling crumbs onto the floor.

“They got the fridge open?” Cai started laughing, but then caught Riley’s expression and bit back the rest of his giggles. A few snorts escaped while he snuck in to rescue the cat off the counter.

The empty pretzel bag drifted to Riley’s foot. He sighed at it and then closed the fridge door. “Can you please get the bread bag back from Fuzz before he eats the plastic?” he asked.

“Yeah. Sure.” Cai hurried out after the dog, cat tucked under his arm.

“And lock him in the garage,” Riley called out.

“Yeah...” Cai stopped and turned to look toward the kitchen and then back to the bedroom. “Sure,” he murmured. He was half-focused on watching Fuzz use the comforter as a towel. The other half of his brain walked back to the kitchen. He felt an epiphany tapping its foot, waiting for him to solve this really obvious thing.

Begone struggled out of his grasp and jumped up to join Fuzz, grabbing and licking the dog’s fur when possible. At any other time, that would have amused Cai, but he had that Important Thing tap tap tapping at him. Grabbing Fuzz’s collar, he pulled him off the bed and dragged him toward the bathroom. “Quieto!” He used the hand signal for stay and then ran to grab the leash from the hallway. A sound coming from the kitchen stopped him in his tracks.

Riley was whistling.

A sudden stream of words came together in Cai’s head. Unpredictable. Disordered. Uncontrolled. Panicked. Oh! He looked at the leather strap in his hand and then back at the kitchen doorway. Ohh!

He ran back to the bedroom having figured out exactly what Riley needed.

Control.

Order.

* * *

Cai returned fifteen minutes later, hair dripping on a paint-speckled t-shirt, and jeans sticking to his body. His smile made Riley think the word ‘scheme’ was swirling around under the spikes of bangs. Since the gun was safely out of reach, at least whichever plot he’d hatched wouldn’t involve a dead body.

“Sorry,” Cai said. “Fuzz is clean, so I didn’t lock him up. I had to shower after giving him a bath. I tried to hurry.”

“Are you leaking skittles?”

“You’re hilarious. These are the only clothes I have for cleaning.” Cai gingerly walked through the kitchen to toss the remains of the bread bag in the trash. After wetting a sponge, he started wiping crumbs off the counter into his hand and then shaking them off in the sink. He spent a while casting sidelong glances at Riley before he finally asked, “Can I confess some terrible thoughts?”

“Not if they’re criminal,” Riley said.

“Ha. Ha.” Cai rolled his eyes and grinned. “Seriously, though, I’m feeling guilty.” Before Riley could make another crack about criminality, Cai clarified with narrowed eyes, “About you and Fuzz.”

“The kennel?” Riley guessed.

“Yeah. I thought you were kinda mean to lock him in it.”

Riley chuckled then stooped to pick eggshells from under the fridge. “Cecelia said the same thing when she dog-sat. I warned her to lock him up before bed. She chose not to listen. Fuzz woke her up when he pulled a tray of lasagna and several bottles of beer out of the fridge.”

“Not a mistake you make twice,” Cai said with a laugh.

“You’d think.” Riley tossed his haul in the trash and then grabbed the mop, to soak up the puddle. He drew comfort from the tasks, but also from the familiar rhythm of their conversations, and from Cai. An interesting thing was happening. A balance within their relationship. Riley suspected the intent of this mundane conversation was to give him some of the normality he desperately needed.

I’m going to marry you, Cai.

“You went through this more than once?”

“At least four times. I found out the hard way that there isn’t a child’s gate he can’t jump over or get stuck under. I got tired of cleaning up messes like this. It was a kennel or bricking up the doorway to the kitchen.”

“Yeah, this is pretty bad. I thought you’d be angry.”

“For a second, sure. But you don’t stay mad at a dog for being a dog.” Riley scooped what was left of the pile into a dustpan and then stepped on the lever to the trash can. “You know I’d never hurt Fuzz, right?”

“Oh, I meant mad in general. Frustrated. Something you’d need to vent about. Of course you’d never hurt him.” Cai left the sponge on the counter and then backed up to the entryway. He leaned a shoulder against the doorframe, lifted his shirt up and traced the scarring just as Riley had the night before. “But I was sorta hoping you’d hurt me.”

The dustpan fell into the trash. Riley stared at it, death grip on the mop, heart rate jumping to lightspeed. His fingers tightened around the handle. The sudden shift left him reeling and unsteady. Words deserted him for images of Cai naked and begging.

“I have miles of untouched skin”—Cai unbuttoned his jeans—“for new scars.” The zipper teeth echoed in the hush. With his fingernail, Cai carved a scratch from his belly button to the thick band of his briefs. The olive skin went white, then puckered to an angry pink.

For some stupid, insane reason, Riley couldn’t move, even with his pants growing increasingly tight. He looked helplessly between Cai, the filthy floor, and the mop. A different kind of panic shot through him.

But it’s almost clean .

Cai seemed to follow the same train of thought but, apparently, his train detoured down the wrong track and into a very weird tunnel. “Please don’t ask me to lick that up.” His nose wrinkled and he retreated further into the hallway. “That’s… I don’t think I’m ready fo—Oh”

The mop clattered to the floor as Riley threw Cai over his shoulder and then strode toward the bedroom. It was an awkward walk as he had to swing his hips to parry Cai’s bony fingers. “Can you stop jabbing me before I drop you?”

“Then flip me the other way,” Cai ordered. “I can’t get to your buckle.”

“Quiet and be still.” Riley swatted his ass.

“Yessir.”

They made it four more steps before Cai gasped and grabbed two handfuls of Riley’s ass. “Oh no! Don’t go in there!”

Riley’s momentum slowed at the entrance to his bedroom. “Dear God.”

Fuzz had loosed Armageddon in the form of congealed blobs of fur that he’d shaken onto the walls, the furniture, and the comforter. If Cai’s warm hips weren’t pressing against him, reminding him of better things, he’d give up the idea of sex altogether.

Just fix the bed. We only need the bed.

He ripped off the dirty comforter, kicked it out of the way and then tossed Cai on the bed. Begone warbled a protest and crawled out from under the sheets. She immediately started cleaning her butt.

With a shudder, Riley snatched her up, threw her out, and then slammed the door shut.

Erection waning but still hard. I can salvage this.

He turned around to find Cai sprinkling dirt off the soles of his sneakers as he pulled them off. The shoes thumped atop the comforter just as Fuzz howled and Begone scratched at the door.

Riley’s momentum wasn’t slowed. It was dead.

Chaos. Every second of my life will be chaos from now on.

Cai crawled to the end of the bed and got up on his knees. They were nearly eye-to-eye but his black bangs hid his expression. He eagerly pulled Riley’s shirt apart, lip white under the pressure from his teeth. The more skin he exposed, the harder he bit down on his lip. Buttons pinged in every direction across the room.

God, he’s cute.

Except for the fact that he’s tearing apart a one hundred-fifty-dollar shirt! Riley started at his collar, undoing buttons while intermittently slapping Cai’s hands away. “Quit destroying my shirt.”

Cai ignored the swatting and continued snapping off buttons. “Quit being slow.”

Punishing enthusiasm would not save his shirt. Riley gave up trying to control anything and went to unbuckle his belt. He didn’t realize he was grinning until the next sentence wiped it off his face.

“Are you going to beat me with the belt this time?” Cai asked.

What?

“I think I might be into that,” Cai added, looking at the ceiling as if the answer to that hypothetical might be there.

Riley’s mouth went dry. The belt buckle fell out of his hand and he lost all sense of dignity as he grappled for it. His cock flagged at half mast, unsure of which direction to go. What is happening? But Cai wasn’t done making him a basket case.

“Not over your knee,” Cai continued. “Let’s establish that rule. Never treat me like a child. No ‘baby’ or ‘daddy.’”

Stop talking!

Riley didn’t know whether to laugh or throw his hands up and go back to the kitchen. He quietly focused on removing his belt without tearing off loops in the process. “I am not into daddy play, and we are not playing rough, in any case. Not today, at least.”

“Why not?”

“Because I want to fuck. Do you want to have a long discussion on safe words and S&M boundaries right now?”

“No.”

Thinking the matter settled, Riley pulled the belt out of the last loop.

Cai eyed it while undoing Riley’s cuff. “Well,” he said, “Maybe one safe word? Then we could play a little.”

The last of the buttons flew off and rolled to a stop under the bed. Riley took that as some kind of metaphor for his life right now.

“How long could it take to come up with one simple, tiny word?” Cai continued. “Two seconds. Right?”

Riley was about to lecture about the demise of his only expensive shirt when he caught Cai’s expression. “Your face is about as unreadable as a neon sign in a darkroom. You’re positively giddy with whatever word you’ve come up with.” He could almost see two devil’s horns sprouting out of Cai’s head. “Spit it out.”

“Tarantula.”

Riley glared.

“What? It’s supposed to make you stop.” Cai faked a serious expression and nodded. “I feel good about my choice.”

“With the reminder that we’re about to have sex, is it also supposed to make my skin crawl?”

“Didn’t anyone read Be Nice to Spiders to you? No? Charlotte’s Web? The Itsy Bitsy Spider?” He had the nerve to act the last one out. “Spiders are our friends, Riley.” With half a smirk, he added, “Sir.”

“Brat,” Riley laughed and flung the belt over his shoulder. It hit the wardrobe, landing somewhere in the chaos behind him. He lifted Cai’s chin up. Stubble grazed the edge of his finger, a reminder that Cai wasn’t a boy and to stop treating him like one. Riley gently moved his hand from his chin to his cheek. “Tarantula, huh?”

“Yeah, it went a bit far, but you needed to laugh.”

Another wave of affection overwhelmed Riley. He traced his thumb across Cai’s soft bottom lip. “You are worth every bit of chaos.”

Cai’s pupils expanded into the grey like black paint over marble. He gripped the open edges of Riley’s shirt and pulled him close. “Dang right I am,” he said. His fists tightened in the fabric and he tugged harder. The warmth of his breath was like velvet against Riley’s lips.

“And bossy.” Riley grinned as he closed the distance in the softest tease of a kiss. Cai’s lips were cold and tasted of toothpaste. His skin smelled of caramel warmed by the sun, and his hair was scented from almond shampoo. Riley inhaled deeper to find the faintest trace of acrylic and turpentine that lingered on his clothes. Cai pulled harder at the shirt, dragging them both down toward the bed, opening his mouth for a deeper kiss, demanding and submissive all at once. A dizzying feeling of freefall swirled in the pit of Riley’s stomach. Weightless, at the peak of an infinite rollercoaster, he closed his eyes and leaned into the fall.