Chapter 8 #2
“No.” I shook her off, focused entirely on Alex’s evasive answers and defensive posture.
The revelation that there’d been someone else playing fast and loose with fire safety in his bar.
Someone who wasn’t covered under his liability insurance.
If Tavo wasn’t an employee, then who was he? “You’re hiding something.”
His nostrils flared. “Is there a rule about who’s allowed to change a lightbulb in a restaurant, for fuck’s sake? And what does it have to do with fire safety?”
“The stack of boxes alone is a fire hazard, and you know it! I want a full staff roster on my desk by tomorrow morning,” I continued.
“And documentation for any maintenance or repair work done in the past six months. If I find out you’ve been cutting corners or hiding employees to avoid proper safety training—”
“For fuck’s sake, Judd!” Alex exploded.
His use of my first name stopped me in my tracks. There was an intimacy in it that immediately brought to mind that charged moment in my office. I blinked and tried to clear it from my head.
Tavo whispered something in Spanish and started edging away, but Alex caught his arm.
“It’s okay.” Alex spoke to him softly, then looked back at me with a mixture of defiance and desperation. “Look, Chief, can we just… can we talk about this privately?”
I felt Kaidee’s questioning gaze on the side of my face and realized how this looked—me browbeating a local business owner over what appeared to be a minor safety issue.
But every instinct I had screamed that Alex Marian was hiding something big, something that could put people like this kid at risk.
“So you can give me more of your lies?”
Alex’s face flushed, but before he could respond, a short, angry woman in a chef’s coat appeared from the kitchen.
“Everything okay out here?” she asked, taking in the scattered boxes, Tavo’s pale face, and the tension crackling between Alex and me. “I heard shouting.”
“Everything’s fine, Juni,” Alex said quickly. “Chief Kincaid was just… inspecting our light fixtures.”
The chef’s eyebrows lowered as her eyes narrowed. “He wants to check something, he can check how impossible it is to cook with a fire extinguisher up my—”
“Bupbup!” Alex chirped. “Thank you, Juni. Why don’t you show Tavo out through the kitchen? Appreciate the help, Tavo, but I have it under control.”
“Clearly,” I muttered under my breath. I turned to Tavo, who was sneaking off toward the kitchen. “Hey, kid, one last question. What’s your last name?”
The young man’s eyes went wide with panic, and Alex stepped forward again.
“You don't need to answer that,” Alex said, his voice low and dangerous. For some reason, it went straight to my groin, which was incredibly inappropriate and distracting.
“Actually, he does. He was the one causing the safety concern today,” I snapped. “And you’re hiding his identity, which makes both of you look guilty.”
Kaidee shifted uncomfortably beside me. “Judd, maybe—”
“I live here,” Tavo said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. “Upstairs. With Alex.”
The admission dropped like a stone into still water. I felt my assumptions reshuffling, my anger shifting into something more complex and confused.
“You live here?” I repeated.
Alex’s shoulders stiffened, and his chin came out. “That’s right. In fact, we… we’re… together. So you see, not an employee.”
Tavo blinked, and Juni’s eyebrows shot up in surprise before a neutral mask fell over her features.
“The two of you,” I said, wanting, for once, for him to lie to me.
He hesitated just a moment too long before saying, “Tavo and I live together.”
I studied Alex’s face, looking for deception but finding only exhaustion and worry. Whatever was going on here was more complicated than I’d assumed.
Alex glanced at Tavo, who nodded. “It’s true.”
They were both lying. And for some reason, I was so relieved I wanted to laugh.
There was definitely something here I wasn’t seeing, some context I was missing, but it wasn’t about Alex Marian dating jailbait. Before I could press further, Kaidee spoke up.
“Our sandwiches are ready,” she said gently, clearly trying to defuse the situation. “Maybe we should hit the trail before the day is half-over.”
“Yeah.” I ran a hand through my hair, suddenly aware of how public this confrontation had become. “Okay.”
But as we walked back toward the front of the restaurant, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d just seen something important about Alex Marian.
Something that didn’t fit with my image of him as an entitled member of Legacy’s beloved Marian family. And that bothered me more than I wanted to admit.
“Your order,” the hostess said brightly, handing Kaidee a paper bag. “Have a great hike!”
“Thanks,” Kaidee replied, but her smile was strained.
As we walked back to the truck, she was unusually quiet. It wasn’t until we were driving toward the trailhead that she finally spoke.
“That was intense,” she said carefully.
“It’s my job.”
“Is it, though? I mean, the safety stuff, sure. But that felt… personal.”
I kept my eyes on the road. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Judd.” Her voice was gentle but firm. “I may not know you well, but that was more emotion than I’ve seen out of you in a week of living with you. What’s really going on with you and the restaurant guy?”
I was quiet for a long moment, trying to sort through my own motivations. Why had I pushed so hard? Why did Alex Marian’s evasions and half-truths bother me so much?
“He’s reckless,” I said finally. “And he thinks he can charm his way out of consequences.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’s just trying to protect someone who can’t protect themselves.”
I glanced at her, surprised by the insight, that she’d been able to put into words what we’d seen.
“That kid—Tavo—he looked terrified. Not of the boxes or the broken light, but of you. Of being noticed.” She shifted in her seat to face me. “Sometimes there are good reasons why people don’t want to be noticed by authority figures.”
Her words settled uneasily in my chest. I thought about Tavo’s panicked expression when I’d asked for his last name, the way Alex had immediately moved to shield him.
“Maybe,” I admitted grudgingly.
We drove the rest of the way in silence, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the way Alex had positioned himself between me and Tavo or the fierce protectiveness in his voice. It reminded me of something, though I couldn’t quite place what.
It wasn’t until we were halfway up the trail, Kaidee chattering about the wildflowers and the view, that it hit me.
It reminded me of DrunkenPoet. Of the way he’d written about protecting people, about doing what was right, even when it wasn’t entirely legal.
He’d told me a story of someone in his extended family undergoing harsh conversion therapy years ago when a guardian angel swooped in and saved him, taking him away from his abusive father and bringing him to a shelter for LGBTQ kids.
Years later, the victim and his rescuer met again and fell in love.
But the act of “saving” one man from his abuse had been illegal.
It was obvious kidnapping, even though none of the legal alternatives would have worked.
Sometimes the right thing isn’t the same as the legal thing, he’d typed. Sometimes you have to choose between following rules and protecting people.
I’d disagreed with him then, argued that rules existed for good reasons. But he’d patiently pushed back against my black-and-white thinking, gently urging me to see the gray areas.
Not everyone has the luxury of trusting the system, Index. Sometimes the system fails the people who need it most.
DrunkenPoet didn’t know I was one of those kids who’d been in the system. One of the people he was advocating for.
I made a noise in my throat. The same pain that always accompanied memories of DrunkenPoet tightened in my chest.
“You okay?” Kaidee asked before slipping her hand into mine.
I squeezed and let go before realizing that might have been her move. “Yeah. Just… thinking.”
She let out a little huff of laughter and stopped walking, so I stopped and turned back to her.
“Okay, I’m just going to say what I think and damn the consequences,” she said.
The look on my face must have shown my confusion because she let out a sigh. “I’ve been trying to send you signals all week that I’d be up for more than just being your houseguest, but you haven’t seemed to notice. I know you’re into women because Max told me you’ve dated women before—”
“I’m bi,” I said without thinking, because it was true, and I’d been asked enough times in the past that I was used to it.
“Yeah, well, maybe that explains what happened at that restaurant,” she said with a glint of amusement in her eyes. “Maybe that’s the real reason you haven’t been picking up on my signals. That guy gets under your skin. Ever consider there could be a non-fire-safety reason why?”
I made a scoffing noise because her suggestion was ridiculous.
Of course I’d considered it.
I’d considered the hell out of it every night for the past week and every morning in the shower with my hand wrapped around my cock.
“Can you imagine me going out with someone so careless?” I muttered. “I’d be the laughingstock of my profession.”
Kaidee reached out and put her hand on my chest, patting it with reassurance and also conviction. “You don’t seem like the kind of guy who gives a shit what other people think, Judd. And maybe he’s not as careless as you think.”
I scoffed. “You didn’t see him practically light himself on fire with a sparkler.”
“He’s cute,” she said. “And if he was protecting that kid the way it seemed, he’s thoughtful and kind also.”
I took her hand again so I could get us both moving forward down the trail. “Can I say what I think and damn the consequences, too?”
Her laugh was warm and light in the afternoon breeze. “Please do.”
“I’m definitely attracted to Alex. There’s just something about him that has its hooks in me. I can’t decide if it’s because he’s reckless or because he’s hot.”
“Or because he’s not interested,” she teased.
I thought back to the day in my office when his eyes had bugged out of his head as I’d stepped out of the shower. I’d felt his gaze like a caress.
The sexual attraction went both ways. That much had been clear. I just wasn’t sure if Alex had any interest in doing something about it.
And I wasn’t sure if I did either.
“Maybe so. But…” I hesitated, wondering if I was ready to confess the rest of what was in my head to a near stranger.
Kaidee let go of my hand and wrapped her arm through mine to get closer. “I’m a good friend, Judd. Talk to me. It’s okay that this isn’t going to be more than that, but I like you. And I’d love to be your friend.”
I put my hand over the one on my arm. “I had an online relationship a few years ago. It was intense and happened when I was overseas for work.”
“Go on. What happened?”
The trail wound through a grove of lodgepole pines, their straight trunks filtering the afternoon sunlight into shifting patches of gold on the forest floor.
To our left, the mountainside dropped away toward the valley where Legacy sat tucked between rolling hills, the town’s rooftops barely visible through the trees.
A mountain creek trickled somewhere nearby, its sound growing fainter as we climbed higher into the foothills of Slingshot Mountain.
The air was thin and clean, with that particular Montana clarity that made every detail—from the lichen on the bark to the distant snowcapped peak—stand out in sharp relief.
“I fell in love with him. A complete anonymous stranger. We chatted over a period of a year before I was in a very bad accident.”
She glanced up at me. “Max told me you were injured in a fire. I assumed it was on a job.”
I shook my head. “The accident overseas wasn’t a fire,” I said.
I knew Kaidee had seen the burn scars on my arm, but I didn’t offer an explanation.
Recounting one tragic accident was enough for a single afternoon.
“There was a mortar strike at the air base where I was doing contract work. The building I was in partially collapsed. I was knocked unconscious, among other injuries, and evacuated to Ramstein in Germany for treatment. They ended up keeping me under sedation for a while. When I finally started coming out of it, I had memory and brain fog issues from the blast and head injury, I was in pain and all kinds of therapy, and I didn’t have access to a cell phone or the internet. ”
“So he had no idea,” she whispered, understanding and empathy in her voice. “Poor guy. And, shit, poor you.”
I nodded. “It took me four months just to get back on the message board, let alone fully recover. By then, his account was gone. Completely closed. I had no way of contacting him.”
“Damn. You didn’t know where he lived? Where he worked?”
I gave a single headshake. When I’d told Max about DrunkenPoet, he’d asked those questions and more. But how do you know he’s even real, Judd? How do you know he’s who he said he was?
He hadn’t understood that our anonymity had been part of the draw at first.
I wasn’t supposed to give out personal information while I was working overseas in the first place.
But hiding behind our usernames, DrunkenPoet and I had told each other things that were hard to talk about with others.
His love of poetry. My desire to have a family.
Our favorite places—Montana for him, in my own place for me.
Our daydreams and worries and triumphs. I’d felt known and understood in a way I never had before.
Later, I think holding back that information felt kind of like a game. One that made us look forward to the day we’d meet in person like we were kids looking forward to Christmas, with the promise of a happy surprise to keep us going through the last few months of my contract.
And in retrospect, it had been criminally fucking stupid.
When I’d gotten out of the hospital in Germany to find DrunkenPoet’s account deleted, I’d have given anything to go back in time and get his phone number, his address. Hell, even just his name.
But it had been too late.
“The only real identifying details I’d picked up from our year of chatting came down to these few clues: his family owns a farm in California that he works for, he graduated college a couple years before we met, which means he’s probably in his late twenties, and he’s close with his family but doesn’t want to be a farmer like they are. ”
Kaidee thought about it for a few minutes as we separated our arms and continued making our way up the trail. “So you still have feelings for him. And that’s why you’re not sure if you can move on with anyone, Alex or not, right?”
I nodded.
“Judd… how long has it been since the accident?”
“Four years, one month, and twelve days.”