Charlie’s Not Sorry
Charlie’s Not Sorry
CHARLIE GRACKLE had been a beat-down punkass kid—but he’d never run from a fight.
Eric Christiansen had one foot out the door.
I should leave him sleeping and steal a car—
From whom? Your friends? The only people on the planet you’ve been able to call your friends since Jayanne?
I could go to the crossroads and hitch a ride—
And leave the kittens?
I could take him to Ernie’s, get the kittens, and leave him in Ernie’s guest room. Then I could get in the RV and drive off to—
Where? Eric, where on the planet would you fit in, with your past and your set of specific skills. You have found the one group of people in hell or on earth who are both decent and efficient at killing. You’re going to run away from them now?
But he trusts me!
Oh.
He blinked in the dark, the thought unifying his thoughts in one solid punch.
Trust. That was what had him on the run.
Eric gazed down at him in the darkness, seeing the solid dependability, the humor.
The valor.
The damned motherfucking valor that had him ready to face down the armed unknown by himself, when backup was just a dream of a perfect world.
You’re afraid of letting him down.
Well, he’d let down Jayanne, hadn’t he?
That thought almost had Eric vaulting out of bed, but he drew up short, forgetting for a moment that the kittens were at Ernie’s. While he fished around with his toe, Brady grunted a little in his sleep, like a puppy, and turned toward Eric’s body, seeking heat.
“Shh…,” Eric murmured. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m here.”
Brady settled down, and Eric pulled his foot back under the covers and curled up, holding Brady close.
God, he was sweet. When would Eric have a chance to be holding somebody this sweet in his bed after this?
Every choice he’d made since defending Jayanne had taken him away from sweetness, and every choice he’d made after refusing to take the contract on the kitten-saving law firm in Sacramento had led him here.
He’d vowed to be new, to start again, to look for haven and make it stick.
Haven didn’t come with words, he realized, his eyes burning.
It came with change, and change was hard.
Holding Brady, living up to that trust, and then letting him go—as he had to eventually; Eric wasn’t stupid—these were his dues for living in a community, a family, that didn’t expect anything from him except not to kill when he wasn’t defending his own life.
“What’s wrong?” Brady mumbled, and Eric smoothed his hair back from his eyes again.
“Nothing,” he said hoarsely. “Get some sleep.”
“What are we doing tomorrow?” Brady asked, and Eric could hear the despair in his voice, wondered for the first time how this earnest boy from Idaho had ended up out in the middle of the fucking desert.
“Tomorrow we’re making love some more,” Eric told him.
“And later—”
Eric stopped him with a kiss. “And later,” he whispered, “we’re figuring out a way for you to live.”
And that was it—the thing that calmed Brady down and allowed him to sleep.
We have a plan now, are we satisfied?
Sure, Charlie. That’s all we need. A plan.
Have a little faith, Eric. It’s gotten us this far.
Sure.
It must have been worth something, because the clamoring in his brain died down and he slept.
THERE WAS a soft tapping at the door first, and the buzz of a text on Eric’s phone, which he’d set in its charger on his nightly trip to the bathroom.
“Mmmf…,” Brady mumbled, and Eric kissed his forehead.
“It’s Ernie,” he said softly. “Let me talk.”
He swung his legs over the bed—still careful by habit—and then slid his sweats and a T-shirt on, mindful of the proprieties and the morning chill.
He swung the door open, planning on a grumpy, “’Sup?” to waylay any conversation, but Ernie was already swinging himself up into the RV, a plate of food in his hand.
“I take it he didn’t sleep on any couches,” he said dryly.
“No,” Eric replied, resigning himself to this side of having people. “There was no sleeping on couches last night.”
Ernie chuckled and shoved the plate into his hand. “Sausage muffins,” he said, pointing to the foil-wrapped packages, “and hash browns. Lunch at mine and Burton’s place at one. Just us, no big scary meeting.”
“There will be a big scary meeting, right?” Eric asked, to be sure.
“Oh, absolutely. But it’s everybody’s day off—and Brady needs one too.
So we have a day off. Let the cops run around with their asses on fire.
High comedy. Sunday morning, big breakfast before the shop opens.
There will be a plan. And some of the plan will probably go to shit, but the gist of the plan… well, we’re mostly good at that.”
“I’d noticed,” Eric said dryly. “You getting any pings on how that’s going to work?”
Ernie shook his head in irritation. “It depends on if Ace is going to be involved. If he’s not, I foresee lots of the going to shit with a little glimmer of hope.
But if he is….” Ernie shook his head again.
“Ace is literally a wild card in the forces of nature. If he’s involved, I feel like there’s more hope, but there’s a lot more—” Ernie made crazy circular motions with his hands, and Eric was grateful he’d already taken the warming plate.
“—insanity,” Ernie said shortly. “Ace helps shit happen, but he’s not great with the ‘sight.’ He’s like a good tornado.
Yay! It’s a force of good! Oh fuck! It’s a tornado! You know what I mean?”
Eric found himself chuckling, remembering the bank job from the day before. “Have you ever seen him throw his knife?” he asked, still impressed.
Ernie sucked in a breath. “Violent poetry,” he said. “Absolutely unbelievably beautiful and bloody at the same time.”
“Yeah, that.” Eric shook his head. “So I do get it. I think after seeing that, we’ll take our chances with the good tornado.”
Ernie grinned. “Excellent. I think he was revved after yesterday. He’ll probably be down for a little bit of tornadoing.
” He drew a breath and then did something absolutely unfathomable.
He gave Eric a one-armed hug, like he would do for a buddy, or a friend, or a brother.
“Okay, then—you’re fed, and Burton and I have some…
.” He smirked. “Some things to do before lunch. We won’t bother your van a rockin’ if you have the good sense to not come knockin’—you hear me? ”
“One o’clock and not before,” Eric said, thinking the last thing he wanted to do was disturb Ernie’s terrifying boyfriend when they were in the middle of sex.
“Good man!” Ernie was about to swing out of the RV again, but he paused. “You’ll get a good Katie and Oliver visit today, but maybe plan to leave them at my place until this is all settled. This thing has a lot of tornado potential, if you know what I mean.”
Eric nodded, suddenly alert. “I do.”
“Good. Later.”
He trotted off across the street, and Eric turned the oven on warm and put the metal plate inside. Another hour, he thought with a yawn. In another hour he and Brady might be ready to wake up and eat.
In another hour they could face the new day.
LATER, HE’D ask himself about how he and Brady had spent that day together.
Yes, some of it had been in bed, and the time had been highly pleasurable, dreamy, almost too perfect.
They’d spent an hour lingering over breakfast and coffee, and another taking a brisk walk around the housing project, both the finished and unfinished units, talking.
Not about the bank job, or what had happened to the crew, or what Brady was going to do now—and Eric appreciated the effort he must have made to not ask that question thirty times a minute, but he hadn’t.
Instead, they’d talked about books—Eric liked fiction, Brady liked biographies—and music—Eric liked alt rock, Brady was a fan of country—and movies.
They both loved action/adventure/shoot-em-up-and-kill-em-all, and somewhere in there was a promise to treat each other to a John Wick marathon after “all this was over.”
Eric refrained from telling Brady that John Wick really was a biography from Eric’s point of view; he figured he’d spare the poor man that.
It was courtship talk, getting-to-know-you talk, and the only thing that bothered Eric about it was that it seemed to be promising things that Eric wasn’t sure he could deliver.
It promised a lazy day to watch movies and pet the kittens.
It promised more walks while they shot the shit.
It promised a chance for Brady to take Eric to a car show so he could see what all the shouting was about.
It promised a future when Brady didn’t feel compelled to track Eric down and imprison him after he discovered who Eric really was.
It promised that the two of them would live long enough for that truth to actually come out.
So many promises in such a few hours—if Eric hadn’t already won the argument to do whatever he could to keep the biggest promise of all, he might still have bolted.
Of course lunch with Ernie and Burton would have put a stop to that right quick, but Eric had already committed.
It was fun to watch Brady’s face as he took in the house with the clear brick half-walls and the cats lying on every available surface.
He endeared himself to Ernie forever by finding a corner of the “cat room” so he could reacquaint himself with the kittens, and while he was doing that, Burton pulled Eric aside.
“How’s he doing?”
“Enjoying his cruise down the Nile,” Eric said frankly. It had been far too easy to put Brady’s questions off.
Burton nodded. “Fair enough. How long do you think you can keep screwing him into submission?”
“Lee!” Ernie hissed, elbowing his lover in the side. “That’s not nice!”
“It’s important,” Burton muttered, rubbing his ribs.
“Right now, it is all hands on deck with the sheriff’s office.
The lead bank robber died last night, and you would have thought he was the love child of Mother Teresa and Ghandi, the way those assholes are going on about the rogue cop who used undue force on a patient. ”