Chapter Sixteen
Troy
Hell of a time to realize this, but our Wes doesn’t seem exactly nimble in a crisis.
Then again, Adam and I have had more practice with this stuff. And my high wore down before we even got in front of the cameras. Probably because I’ve taken this shit before.
When I look up from where I’ve beaten the cameraman with his own tripod, Wes is standing in the middle of the mattress where we both fucked him. Sticky and naked. Eyes the size of dinner plates.
He’s sort of grabbing at the air, for some reason.
Adam’s entered the danger zone. His skin is pale, and he looks shaky, but maybe that’s adrenaline.
He’s whaling on the dude who force-fed us those pills, so I’m not sure.
In spite of how he was raised, my oldest friend doesn’t like to get violent.
When he does, it’s a thing of beauty. Total and efficient.
Little fuckface’s features are a swollen, pulpy mass.
“Troy. Adam.” They’re the only words Wes has spoken since I shot cum all over his dick.
Footsteps force me to look away from Wes. That big guy in charge storms back into the room. Phone in one hand, gun in the other. With the camera tripod still in my grip, I don’t give him a chance to aim. I just swing.
His head jerks back, his body crumpling to the floor at Wes’s feet. Wes, who’s still standing there naked. Staring.
So I grab his pants from the floor and shove them into his hand. “Wes. Hey. You in there?”
“Yeah.” Blinking, he shakes himself all over like a dog covered in water. Finally, there’s someone home behind his eyes again.
He takes in the scene around us. “What the fuck do we do now?”
His lips are wet and puffy. I’ve got adrenaline coursing through me like the world’s best hit of coke. Grabbing Wes behind the neck, I crush his lips to mine, pushing my tongue inside.
He kisses me back, and it’s deliberate. Right now, in the middle of chaos, it feels like he’s choosing us.
It’s painful to pull away from him, but we have bigger worries.
“Can’t fucking believe you let us spit roast you like that.”
“Spit roast?”
Hell. “I’ll explain later. Get your pants on. Let those other people out.” I glance over at Adam. Pretty sure the dude he’s still hitting is dead, but Adam’s sort of in the zone. Physically, he doesn’t look great.
We’ve been here for hours at this point, I think. All night maybe. Too long.
“Wes.” I shove the pants at him again. “Now.”
Finally, he pulls them on one leg at a time. He’s moving less like we need to flee the scene at any moment and more like he’s getting dressed for a leisurely Sunday brunch.
Shit, I don’t even know what day it is. We’re going to have some wild stories the next time we sit down for a meal with our fellow escorts.
Adam gives up hitting the dead guy and collapses on the floor. He is sort of curled in on himself, looking like he might be ill. He probably is. I’m not an expert on these things, but over the years I’ve learned a few things. They took my phone, but I’ll bet his blood sugar is dangerously low.
The last night we ever slept on a sidewalk was the one before Adam was first hospitalized. After that, I swore I’d do literally anything to keep a roof over our head before I’d let anything bad happen to him again. And I did.
I can’t even count the number of times I was afraid I was going to accidentally kill my best friend over the years. On the inside, I’m probably as old as Wes.
“Hey, buddy. Hang tight, okay? We’re going to get out of here.”
“Guards,” Adam mumbles. “Might be guards coming.”
“I didn’t see any.”
He pushes himself up to a sitting position. “If I were a criminal doing criminal things, I’d have someone keeping an eye out. If my dad had had more guards, I wouldn’t have been able to kill him.”
My gaze swings to Wes, who must have heard every word, going by how his mouth’s hanging open.
A screeching noise sets my teeth on edge. Wes fumbles to button his shirt with one hand as he wrenches open the heavy door where the other people are.
He’s murmuring something quietly, maybe comforting the woman he knew when we came in. An employee, I think. He’s tripping over his own feet a little, but at least he looks like he’s got his wits about him now.
Adam blinks at me. “I’m feeling a little better. We need to get out of here before the wrong people find us.”
I’m helping him up when I hear Wes yell again. Someone grabs me from behind. I’m spun around with a fist driving into my face before I can figure out what’s up.
Fucking big man, again. Guess I didn’t knock him out hard enough.
I duck a little too late. My world turns white when the fist connects with my eye. My head snaps back.
I’m bracing for another one when the dude makes a gurgling noise. A silent gasp. Then he slumps over.
Behind him is a petite young thing holding a knife in her hands. A bloody knife. Her mouth is open on a silent scream, with tears running down her face. Shit.
I mean, she might have saved my life. But she also looks like she’s about thirty seconds from melting down.
It’s Wes who comes to the rescue. He takes the knife out of her hand. Wipes the knife and her with a discarded rag he finds in the corner. Whatever he whispers in her ear, I can’t make out. Something soothing. She nods, looking relieved.
Even with Wes’s comfort, she’s shaking all over. Nothing surprising, considering.
Whatever it is, we’ve got a bigger issue right now. “Adam needs a hospital,” I tell him.
Wes swallows, turning to the woman…Nadine? No, Nadia. “Where’s the other guy?”
“I think…he ran.” She’s almost whispering. “Down that way.” She points in the direction the big guy went before. A quick check tells me it leads to a hallway of some sort, but I’m not sure it’s wise right now to go exploring.
“Fucking pussy.” Using the rag Wes had, I clean the blood from Adam’s hands. Then I haul him off the floor. He’s helping me, but his movements are sluggish. “Keep your eyeballs peeled. Adam thinks there might be guards.”
“There are definitely guards,” Adam mumbles.
“I really feel like now’s not the time to argue with me, Cupcake.”
Wes snorts.
“Something funny, Kitten?”
He lazily gestures with his middle finger at me before heading to the nearest door. Which is still padlocked.
“Keys are probably on one of those guys,” I say. “If someone can hang onto Adam I’ll go look.”
“I’ve got it,” Wes says. Then he proceeds to take a deep breath and hold it while he rummages through the pockets of every dead guy on the floor.
Right here is what makes Wes a puzzle to me. The version of him we see when he’s working at the Premiere is different from the one he shows in his classroom, is different from the version we see when he’s hanging out with his brother.
This is another side of him still. One that freezes when the fists start flying but then comforts the chick who stabbed a guy to death and searches the pockets of dead bodies.
Somewhere along the way, Wes got dropped on a hard surface and splintered into a hundred different shards. Which piece are we seeing now?
Sure, when Adam and I started messing around with him, we figured he was a shallow, judgmental, homophobic prick. At the very least, one of those guys who just can’t help getting into other people’s business.
But that’s not who he is at all, is it?
Wes’s brother thinks he’s straight. The guy told us so. He married the girl he got pregnant and, from what I can tell, stayed with her forever. Yet he’s willingly let us push him into corners and put our hands and mouths on him over and over.
When someone with a gun tried to shove drugs at one of his employees and threatened to do horrific things to her on camera, he insisted on going in her place.
It’d be easy to think anybody would make that kind of decision. Except personal experience tells me most people aren’t so noble when shit gets real.
“Found the keys.” Wes stands from the boss man’s body as a pool of blood creeps toward his feet.
Pounding at the door makes us all jump back. I use my free hand to grab the tripod again. It’s unwieldy, though, trying to lift it while I’m holding on to Adam.
Wes grips the knife and stares at the door. “Get behind me,” he says to Nadia.
Not sure our guy can fight his way out of a paper bag, but he’s going to try to save that girl anyway, isn’t he?
“I’m going to come in there and tear you motherfuckers apart for doing business in my territory, I swear to fucking God.”
I relax back onto my heels. “You can put the knife away, Wes. It’s our pimp.”
He blinks. Some sort of shiver seems to go through him, but he wipes the knife off again and tosses it into a corner. It’s a big one. Too big for a pocket.
“Hang the fuck on, we’ve got a key.” I turn to Wes. “Get the door for them, Kitten.”
He scowls. But he does what I ask.
On the other side are Brennan and Liam, our friend Ravi’s boyfriend. Behind them both is a guy I’ve only met briefly. Daniel Corvus. He owns a kink club in the area, and he’s insisting to Brennan that this is actually his territory. Which really seems like an argument for another time.
There are a handful of other armed men. Some I recognize, like Jalen, Brennan’s right hand. Some I don’t. One of them has his arm clamped around a dude in camo, whose face is bleeding.
“Good news: we took care of the guards,” a guy I don’t recognize says.
Adam mumbles, “I told you there would be guards.” Then he doubles over and pukes on the floor.
“Hey. Stay with us. Don’t do this now.” I shake him gently, trying to keep him conscious.
Brennan looks around. “Everything cool in here?”
I point to the bodies on the floor. “Gonna need some cleanup. Also…” I gesture to Adam.
“Yeah. Fuck.” He turns to Jalen. “We need to get these idiots to the hospital in Beacon Hill.”
“Is that where we are?” Beacon Hill is technically a couple of towns over from Belle Argo, if you count all the unincorporated miles of mostly farmland in between.
Jalen pulls out his phone. “On it.”
“On the far end, yeah. Didn’t know this place was here. Did you?” Brennan’s asking Liam and Corvus.
They both shake their heads.
Liam looks around, appraising the room as if he were evaluating a house he wants to buy, rather than an old, dilapidated building full of blood and bodies. “Could come in handy. We’ll have to figure out who owns it.” He raises his eyebrows, looking at Corvus. “If that’s okay with you?”
Whatever Corvus says, I don’t hear. I don’t care.
“There was somebody in charge.” Wes stumbles forward. “Someone who wasn’t here. The guy kept taking phone calls.”
Liam nods. “We’ll look into it.”
“You got our text?” I ask Brennan.
“Tracked the last known location of Adam’s phone. Lucky for me and for you, the best hackers in town happen to also be criminally affiliated.”
Wes barges into the conversation, shoving the still-crying girl forward. “Nadia needs to get home. She’s got a baby she’s been away from for days.”
Brennan’s jaw firms. For a second I’m not sure what he’ll do. Brennan’s an interesting guy. He can be good, or he can be bad, but he’s never really on anyone’s side except his own. His affiliations change faster than the Florida weather.
“Ambulance is on the way,” Jalen says as he approaches.
Brennan motions him forward. “Good. Get this young lady wherever she needs to go.”
She shakes her head violently. “I don’t know you.”
Brennan sighs. “Miss, we are here to save you, not kidnap you again.”
Turning, she grabs Wes’s hand. “Come with us? Please?”
Wes’s eyes search mine. Honestly, I thought he’d come with us to the hospital. After what happened between us all, I feel like there’s a conversation we need to have. Many conversations.
But I’m not a big enough dick to tell him he can’t escort a terrified coworker home.
“Go,” I tell him. “I’m sure we’ll talk later.” Who knows when.
Two guys I don’t recognize drag in a body. The guy who ran off in the midst of all the fighting. “What happened to him?”
“Guards probably shot him.” One guy shrugs. Probably nothing to him. He doesn’t know them.
“Karma.” I should probably feel worse than I do. Mostly, I’m relieved it wasn’t us.
Inside, though, my core goes cold and dark. Years ago, Adam and I were the ones who ran, while Adam’s dad lay dead and mine was passed out at the bottom of a bourbon bottle. That could have been us. Easily.
“Wes,” I call to him as he starts to follow Jalen out the door. Nadia’s still clutching his hand as if it’s a lifeline.
He stops and turns. Once he does, I’m not sure what to say. Anything I can think of isn’t something I want to air out in front of all these people.
After the silence has stretched between us for a while, he turns to Brennan. “I’m the one who stabbed the guy.” He points to the man who almost knocked my head off. “He attacked Troy, so I killed him.”
Fuck, I want to kiss him again so badly right now.
He sounds so sure I almost believe him, and I’m one of the only people who saw Blondie with the knife in her hand.
Brennan shrugs again. “Doubt it’ll be an issue. We’ve got a good working relationship with the local PD.”
By “good working relationship,” he means bribes. Lots of bribes.
Wes nods and walks out the door, glancing for a second over his shoulder.
My tongue won’t cooperate, and Wes is already getting into one of the cars that are haphazardly stopped out front.
A few minutes later, the ambulance pulls in.
I slap Adam’s cheek again. “Cavalry’s here, babe. Don’t die on me now.”
He lifts his head. “Where’s Wes?”
“We’ll find him later.”
I hope.