Chapter 1
To visit him in jail, or not to visit?
Time was ticking. If I was gonna make it, I needed to leave now.
I should visit. Except . . .
Echoes of long-healed bruises ghosted my undereye and snuck down my arm.
It’d only been nine months since that night. Nine months stewing in past bad decisions. Nine months barely making it to lectures and scraping through exams. Nine months restricting myself to online life.
I shouldn’t visit him. Shouldn’t dredge all that up.
My foot jiggled a leave-now, leave-now rhythm, while my heart beat a scared or-not, or-not.
I stuffed Cheetos into my mouth, gripped my console, and moved my knight, Fawkes, through creepy, thick woods.
A familiar mage popped out from behind a tree—tall, muscular, beautiful . . . .
My knight fell on its heavily armored ass.
The chat box lit up and I jumped into the distraction.
DaMage: I figured out who you are, Fawkes.
Me: I’m your best bet at survival.
DaMage: You’re Marc Jillson. I can’t believe I’ve been playing all summer with YOU!
I stiffened on my chair.
Me: Do we know each other in real life?
DaMage: *Know* takes it too far. You used to write for the Scribe.
Me: How’d you figure it out?
DaMage: I have my genius ways.
Me: Hack my profile?
DaMage: Confession . . . I’m really good at it.
My stomach sickened. He knew the real me?
Definitely shouldn’t have baited the mage. He claimed to be 100% Geek Force, and I’d demanded proof. Apparently I’d underestimated his tech savviness.
I ground my knuckles over a long-winded “Fuuuuuuck.”
My foot jiggled harder.
Me: What else you got on me?
DaMage: You study history and economics. Prof. Carol’s 302. Prof. Velazquez’s 311. Prof Shammas’ 324. Me too.
My fingers hovered over the keys. Have we met in person?
Me: Enough chit-chat. We have demons to slay.
DaMage: That’s your problem, Marc. You always claim the need to slay demons, yet you never do.
Me: Ohhhh, game fucking on.
I raced my knight through the woods to the cave of nightmares and charged in—gutsy, sword leading the way. DaMage glided gracefully to my side, a ball of light sparkling in his grip.
Real-life knocking broke my concentration. I swung toward the reverberations shaking the cherry-wood basement door. “Marc. You in there?”
Hinges squealed. I abandoned the console and leaped up. “Uncle Ben. Yeah, I’m here.”
My uncle stalled two steps into my bedroom, plate in hand. A muffin with a blazing birthday candle. He stroked his salt-and-pepper beard, dark gaze absorbing the room. Dog-eared books littered the couch. The comforter lay strewn atop unfolded laundry on my desk chair.
He focused on me in my sweatpants and the smudged T-shirt clinging to abs that had almost lost their definition.
“When you said you had plans for your birthday, I didn’t think you meant . . . this.”
I glanced at the screen; a demon was munching on my soul. Dammit. “I didn’t want to put you out. This is great.”
“This is sad, Marc.” He gestured to the computer screen, where a smartass reply popped into the chat box. “Who’s your online friend?”
“Just a dude,” I said evasively. “Someone from around here.”
“You’ve met him in real life?”
“Not exactly.”
“Video called him? Verified his age?”
“No. What’s with the frown?”
“Just don’t want you catfished.”
“We’re both into role-playing. He’s a kickass mage and I’m his knight in shining armor.” Uncle Ben’s expression visibly contorted from information overload.
I blanched. “Role-playing games. Fantasy. I mean . . . fuck. Nothing is going on. Nothing.”
“I wish there was.”
I flushed, hard. “What?”
Uncle Ben waved away my assumption. “Not between you and your role-playing friend. I wish something was happening in your real life.”
“Uncle—”
“No, listen. This moping in self-pity has to stop. You’re an adult. I let you have your space last semester to figure life out on your own. But it’s the start of a new term. I won’t let you squander your potential.” He moved toward me, flame slanting on the muffin. “Here’s the plan.”
“Uncle Ben—”
“You’ll attend every lecture and tutorial, and you’ll return to the Scribe.”
My throat tightened in dread and yearning.
Mostly dread.
“You’ll write an article every week,” he continued, “and by God you’ll burn those sweatpants. Got it?”
“Uncle Ben—”
“Don’t think of me as family. I am your leader, and it’s time to follow my orders, kid.”
I laughed incredulously. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll make you pay rent.”
That shut me up. That, and I was secretly thankful for the kick in the ass. “Won’t miss a single class. I’ll even take up another side project. But please don’t make me work at the Scribe.”
“Why not?”
Because Jack used to be there. Because Liam still was.
Hunter now, too.
Uncle Ben sighed. “Look, I know you think you messed up, Marc.”
“I did mess up.”
He nodded. “Accept it. Apologize. Don’t let it define you.”
My voice cracked. “Please, Uncle Ben—”
“I expect you at Wednesday’s meeting. Until otherwise, I’m not Uncle Ben, I’m Chief Benedict. Your boss at the Scribe.” He passed me the muffin and the melting candle. “Happy birthday, kid.”
He left, and my shoulders slumped as I looked at the screen through the blur of the flickering flame. DaMage had sent me a picture of a cake with a twenty-two candle.
DaMage: Don’t forget to make a wish.
I wish I could change the past.
But that was impossible. The most I could do was confront it.
I studied the bus-stop timetable taped to my bookshelf. If I left now, I could still make it.
To visit him in jail, or not to visit?
DaMage: You gonna slay demons?
I grabbed my jacket.
I was gonna slay demons.
I stared at my demon.
He stared right back across a gray slate table, the white sleeves under his red inmate uniform bunched around thick forearms.
“You used to be the Jill to my Jack. Jack and Jill, we climbed every hill.” Jack, ex-best friend, laughed drolly, while I cringed at my butchered surname and former nickname. “What happened to you, man?”
That should have been my line. Not his.
My grin ached. I gripped the plastic chair with sweaty palms. “I took up roleplaying and Cheetos.”
“In Chief Benedict’s basement?”
I scanned the dozen inmates greeting their visitors, the guards on duty, and lingered on Jack. “One of many ways to spell pathetic.”
Another way? Having crushed on this abusive twenty-two-year-old now jailed for beating up gay guys—for threatening to kill last year’s campus vigilante, the Raven.
Shame tightened its grip around my gut.
Jack stroked his new half-inch beard and cocked his head, gaze narrowed. “Why’d you come here, Jill?”
“Marc,” I croaked, and hurriedly cleared my throat. “I go by Marc now.”
“I only know Jill. Sassy smartass sidekick. One long-gone dad, a dead mother, and overall disappointment.”
My feet jerked against the floor and the chair squealed. Guards turned in our direction. I smiled over gritted teeth, heat prickling my eyes. “Prison’s changed you.”
“No, it’s freed me. No more tempering my thoughts. No more faking who I am.” Jack leaned forward, bracing the table. “I’d tell you to try it, but I worry you’ll try to jump my bones.”
I winced. What did I ever see in him other than a Roman-like chiseled body, lazy confidence, and vast vocabulary?
Jack’s bicep flexed and I flinched. Jack noted my flinch with the wry twist of his lips. “You were once a dad’s worst nightmare. Trouble his daughter loved to indulge in. You wrote your number on their bras in permanent marker. Why’d you have to turn gay?”
I averted my eyes, gritting out a smile. I had always been gay. “I never did those things.”
“You told me—”
“I told you a lot of things.”
Jack’s voice bowled toward me, punchy with disgust. “Why’d you want to visit?”
“You approved me.”
“Sweatpants and an orange-stained T-shirt. Didn’t exactly dress up for the occasion.” His shrewd eyes narrowed. “You thought of skipping.”
“I changed my mind at the last minute.”
“Why?”
I arched a You’re-fucking-with-me brow. “Why did I think of skipping a visit to the guy who beat me up for whispering how much I loved him in his ear?”
My stomach took a dive toward my feet.
“Why did you change your mind?”
Because it was my birthday wish.
My wish. To stand up for my sadly neglected principles. To say the words that drummed an insistent beat in my veins. To prove I still had some moral fiber.
I crossed my trembling arms. Sweat pearled under my bangs. My dry mouth tasted tinny.
Jack waited, eyes dark and lifeless.
Just like they’d been the moment after I’d whispered in his ear, before the first punch. Just like they’d been when I begged him to stop kicking me.
Fear froze my tongue.
I needed to slip on a mask of indifference. A grin would do it. It always did. “I came here because . . . because . . .”
“Because, because, because . . . Come on, get the hell on with it.”
My grin hardened. “You attacked gay men. What you did was wrong.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Come on. We both did shit.”
“I never hurt anyone.”
“Maybe not physically. But you hurt people, Marc. You bullied Liam, you rubbed it into his face he has no friends; you snickered at his Aspergery ways; you hurt his feelings every day, and he wasn’t the only disabled dude you gave shit to. You even flipped off the freak in the wheelchair.”
Shame washed through me, pooled in my ears, hot and painful. “Hunter.”
“Whatever, man.” Jack caught my eye, held it hard. “You. Are. Just. Like. Me.”
“No.” It came out a wheeze smelling of dread.
Jack’s nostril’s flared. “You’re right. You aren’t just like me. You are less. I did everything because I love my brother. You did everything to impress me, a crush.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks and I unlocked my jaw.
“Don’t bother denying it, man. Anything else before your time’s up? Want to confess your feelings again?”
My stomach revolted, flooding me with energy to drown the fear that his words conjured.
“Nah, dude. I am long over you.” I pushed my chair back and scrounged up a wink. “I’ll send you some birthday cake.”
“You’re full of bullshit.”
My voice cracked. “No other way to survive life.”
At home, throat and eyes stinging, I threw myself at my desk. My screen was unlocked, my game still open. Cowering from life behind knighted armor and losing myself in fantasy worlds was the best thing I had going for me.
DaMage: One more thing.
DaMage: It doesn’t seem right to know who you are while you don’t know who I am.
DaMage: I gotta confess, I’m not sure you’ll love the revelation.
My stomach twisted into fiery knots and I rubbed the screen like it might erase the truth.
DaMage: Hey, Marc Jillson. It’s me. Travis Hunter.
"Marc Jillson & The Gazebo" is a sweet, sexy M/M romance with humor and a definite HEA. This New Adult, college, redemption story is book two in the "Love Inscribed" series.