Chapter 13 Lee #2
I glanced at him sharply. Fuck. The last thing I wanted to do was discuss Mason with my baby brother.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I lied through my teeth.
“I call bullshit,” he fixed his gaze on mine. “You know exactly what I mean. The whole fam saw the way you guys looked at each other last night. It was hot enough in that room to start a fire,” he laughed, fanning himself with the menu.
I sighed.
“Nothing is going on between me and Mason,” I repeated. “The twins screwed up his hotel room, so he’s staying with me while he’s in town. That’s all.”
Kaine’s ears perked up at that.
“Oh, I see,” he said facetiously. “You just happen to meet this smart, funny, talented guy, not to mention rich, who also has an ass you could bounce quarters off and he, coincidentally, doesn’t have anyplace to stay and has to sleep in your secluded cabin in the woods? Yep, sounds legit to me.”
“Fuck you,” I said, and threw a wadded-up napkin at him. He didn’t even have the decency to duck and it flew right past his ear to land on the booth seat. Something about the way he had talked about Mason had my blood boiling. He really didn’t need to be looking at him like that.
“Again, with the no thank you,” he said, “…but if you keep bringing it up, I might just have to find you a blind date.”
“I don’t need a blind date,” I said. “And you can tell the moms that I’m fine. Nothing a little sleep won’t solve.”
I knew he was debating continuing the argument when our server walked up. I noticed, almost indifferently, that our harried server was a cute young guy with messy reddish-brown hair and a smattering of freckles across his cheeks. His eyes were bright blue and he looked strangely familiar to me.
“I’m so sorry for the wait, guys, what can I get you?” he asked in a rushed, slightly out of breath voice.
“Just coffee for me, please,” I said.
Kaine was busy looking down at his menu. “I think I’d like the…” as he looked up his eyes caught on our server’s face, and Kaine’s normally tan face went white. “…Nicki?” He gasped, the name sighing out of his mouth as he locked eyes on the man’s face.
My heart sank as I saw the man freeze. Sure enough, his name tag said “Dominic”, for all the world to see. What the hell?
“Kaine,” the man whispered, his cheeks turning pink. I looked at my brother, who seemed frozen in shock. The last I'd heard Nicki had moved with his family to Florida or something. I must have made some kind of movement, because Nicki’s eyes flitted to me.
“…Lee?” He asked, lifting an eyebrow in question. I stood, reaching my hand out to shake his, while I tried to cover for Kaine’s shock.
“Good to see you, man! How’ve you been?” I asked.
“Um, good, I guess?” He mumbled. Though he was talking to me, his eyes kept flitting nervously to Kaine who still sat in the booth dumbstruck.
“When did you get back in town?” I asked, as I sat back down, real worry beginning to seize me as I looked at Kaine. He was still pale and frozen as he looked at his former friend in shock.
“Um, a while now,” he said, nervously shifting from foot to foot.
“What… What can I get you guys?” he asked, looking around the restaurant nervously, but avoiding looking at Kaine.
“Just coffee for me. Kaine, what did you want?”
Kaine finally stirred when I said his name, his eyes dropping to his hands as they gripped the menu. His knuckles were white, and I saw the conscious effort he made to relax them and lay the menu down. We sat there for a few seconds.
“Kaine?” I asked again softly.
“I… I’m sorry. I can’t…” he paused, taking a deep breath. “I can’t do this.”
He slid out of the booth suddenly and bolted for the door. I stood quickly and threw some cash on the table for the drinks and ran out after my brother.
When I got outside, Kaine was standing on a stone wall that was halfway across the parking lot and separated it from the traffic on the Circle, his hands buried in his hair.
“Kaine!” I yelled, and he finally stayed there, pacing back and forth so I could catch up with him. I reached my hand out to grip his shoulder gently.
“I take it you didn’t know?”
He just stood there and shook his head.
“Nope,” he finally answered, his voice bitter. “Last I heard from him his family was living in Tampa. About a month after he moved, he—” his voice broke a moment, and I could hear the unshed tears in it. “He asked me to stop calling him. He said it would be… better… if we made a clean break.”
“Fuck,” I said. I wrapped my arms around him and tugged him close. For a few minutes he just stood there, then I felt his chest heave and a sob tore loose from him.
“He left me, Lee,” he said, his voice muffled against my shirt. “He left me. Like everyone leaves me.”
I held onto him as he cried, trying to soothe him with nonsense words and phrases like I had when we were kids and he woke from a nightmare.
He would always wake up crying, and then he’d have to go around to everyone’s room to make sure everyone was still there.
It had taken years for the nightmares to stop.
After a while, he calmed, and I watched as he started to rebuild the shell he showed the rest of the world.
“Um,” he knuckled the last of tears from his eyes and took a deep breath. “Suddenly, I’m not that hungry. Mind if we head home?” he asked.
“Sure thing, bro,” I answered. “Stay here, I’ll get the car.”
He nodded and I headed back to the Jeep. As I walked up to where I’d parked, I saw Nicki hovering at the door to the restaurant. As he saw me approach, he looked around, almost guiltily, then came outside.
“Is he okay?” He demanded as soon as we were in talking distance.
“Not really,” I said angrily. Kaine was one of the sweetest souls in the world, and this guy had thrown him away like trash.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” he whispered, his eyes fixed on Kaine in the distance where he’d sat down on a retaining wall, facing away from the restaurant so he wouldn’t have to see us.
I could see the pain in the kid’s eyes, a certain wistfulness as he looked at my brother.
Somehow, I got the feeling he wasn’t talking to me.
“You should be,” I said angrily. One thing our moms had taught us growing up, you hurt one Devereaux, you hurt us all.
Nicki nodded, then held his hand out, a folded-up square of paper in it.
“I know… I know I don’t deserve his forgiveness,” he began, the paper trembling in his hand. His uniform shirt rode up his outstretched arm, and I glimpsed a small plus sign tattoo on the inside of his left wrist next to a bio-hazard sign. I knew what that tattoo meant.
My eyes flew to his and I saw the pain and anguish in his eyes. He saw my gaze on his wrist and anxiously pulled the sleeve down.
“Please don’t tell him,” he whispered. “I-I need to t-tell him myself,” he said. I eyed him and the still-outstretched arm.
“Do I need to make sure he’s tested?” I asked, feeling the steel in my voice, but not willing to soften in the face of a threat to my brother.
Nicki jumped, seemingly startled at the thought.
“What? God no! We never…” He stammered a moment before continuing. “We were just… kids.” He continued. “I wanted to… but he wanted to wait…” He blushed and stopped, realizing he had probably shared too much.
“Please, just… just give him this,” he asked, again thrusting the paper toward me.
I took the paper he’d held and watched as he went back inside the restaurant.
It was one of those green-and white-restaurant checks that servers wrote your order on.
I could see there was writing on the inside part.
I stared at the paper a moment, debating whether I should read the note or not, but ultimately decided that should be Kaine’s decision, not mine.
I picked Kaine up at the end of the parking lot and drove him home in silence. When I pulled the car up next to the house, he reached to open the door.
“Wait,” I said, stopping him before he could jump out.
“Lee, I don’t really think I can handle a lecture,” Kaine said, his face dejected.
“I’m not lecturing you,” I said. I dug around in my pocket and pulled out the note. “Nicki gave me this for you.” I held out the paper. “I figured it should be your choice, if you read it or not.”
Kaine took the folded piece of paper out of my hand and stared at it for a minute then shoved it in his pocket.
“Thanks,” he whispered. Before I could say anything else, he was out the door and heading inside. I sighed. Well, shit.
I picked up my phone and stared at it a moment before texting a message.
ME: Bish, are you going to be home tonight?
BISHOP: Hey bro! Yeah, why?
ME: Can you check on Kaine? He’s pretty upset.
BISHOP: …What did you do?!?
ME: Fuck you. It wasn’t me. We ran into Nicki at a restaurant.
BISHOP: NICKI Nicki?
ME: Yep.
BISHOP: OMW
I sighed in relief. When I’d been deployed, Bishop and Kaine had become almost inseparable. I’d been a little surprised to hear from Kaine without Bishop today. Being adopted had let them share a bond that none of the rest of us could really touch.
It was almost five, so I figured I'd better head home. I’d left Mason a note earlier today and told him I’d be home by six. Shit. Mason. What was I going to do about Mason?
I sighed. I still didn’t know how to deal with this.
Yes, I was attracted to him. I had been since I’d seen that picture of him years ago – something about his eyes had captured me back then.
It had been strange even then, but I felt like we had some kind of connection.
Something that made me feel like… he would understand a part of me that other people didn’t.
Connection or not, I also felt horribly guilty for what had happened, both last night and that night years ago.
Even though I knew in my head that things would have happened anyway, that he might even have died if I hadn’t been there, another part of me wondered if he would have even been in that hotel room if there weren’t people like I had been, willing to pay money for sex.
The question was, was I ready to be honest about my past with him?
I turned on Sirius and listed to Imagine Dragons as I drove home, my skin soaking in the beat.
Before I knew it, I was pulling into my own driveway.
After I turned the car off, I sat there for a moment before walking to the front door.
I knew I was stalling but I had a hard time getting my feet to move.
“Coward,” I murmured at myself angrily.
Key in the lock, I turned the handle and walked in.
The first thing I noticed was an amazing garlic smell wafting its way through the house.
I dropped my stuff on the floor of the entryway and walked into the kitchen.
I spied Mason standing in front of the stove, one finger twisting in his hair, the other holding a spoon.