Chapter Twenty-Six
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE SMELL HIT first. Before he’d made it all the way down the stairs to the studio from his apartment, his nose had burned as the putrid stench assaulted him. He’d assumed a plumbing emergency, but when he reached the bottom of the stairs, that notion faded fast.
The lobby and front studio were nearly pitch black, odd for a sunny day at ten thirty in the morning.
“What the hell?” he whispered as he stared at the inside of the filthy windows and tucked his nose into his T-shirt. As soon as he stepped outside, the smell smacked him in the face. As bad as it’d been inside, up close and personal, it was ten times worse.
Someone had covered his entire storefront with shit. It looked disgusting, smelled worse, and would be a nightmare to clean. The sheer volume of mess led him to believe someone had borrowed the materials from a nearby farm.
He glanced at his watch with a heavy sigh. In a little over an hour, he’d have ten toddlers and their mothers for a mommy-and-me Intro to Movement class.
Fantastic .
What was wrong with people? He didn’t have to wonder why someone did it. Their reason was as clear as the reason for the odor.
Bullshit.
He supposed he should consider himself lucky this was the first time someone had openly expressed their hatred. When he’d moved to this town, he fully expected a hostile environment from day one. But when that didn’t happen and folks seemed excited about the dance studio, he’d hoped Swan wasn’t as backward a town as he’d feared. And that hope led to complacency. Before long, he was living and acting as he’d done in New York, out and proud without an ounce of caution.
Figured that’s when the universe decided to knock him down.
After raiding his supply closet for a host of industrial strength cleaning products, sponges, squeegees, and gloves, he’d set about cleaning the windows. Ten minutes into that delightful chore, he realized he needed help and called Tate.
Thank God for that man and his ability to make Liam smile.
He got back to work, scrubbing the windows as he waited for Tate to arrive with all his delicious muscles and work ethic. Hopefully, together, they could knock this out before his class began in an hour. As he scraped the shit off the window into a large trash can, something fell to the ground with a thunk.
He frowned, muttering, “What is that?” If he looked past the mess, it seemed to be something yellow. “A duck?” He grabbed it with gloves and set it on the sidewalk. Why on earth would there be a duck in the—
Oh shit.
A rubber ducky .
With that, he knew who had vandalized his shop. Either Ducky was a complete narcissist who couldn’t imagine himself going down for this, or he thought Liam would be too scared to report the incident to the police. Well fuck that. The first break he got today, he’d be making a trip to the police station. He bet Ducky’s parole officer would love to hear about this.
The rumble of a truck's engine had Liam peeking over his shoulder. Sure enough, Tate pulled into the lot at the wheel of his work pickup. His eyes immediately went to the soiled windows, and his expression darkened with such intense fury that Liam took a step back on instinct.
Instead of choosing a parking spot, Tate screeched to a halt, his car taking up three spaces. He flung the door open and barreled out of the car like a raging hurricane.
“What the fuck?” he roared, his voice echoing off the building.
Liam winced.
“This is so much worse than you described.”
Liam shrugged. “How do you even explain something like this?”
Tate paced, his anger radiating off him in waves. “What kind of sick bastard…” He grabbed the back of his neck and shouted to the sky. “I hate this fucking town!”
When his rage subsided for a moment, Liam pointed to the dirty rubber duck on the sidewalk. “Pretty sure I know which sick bastard did this.”
Tate’s eyes followed his finger. As soon as he registered the meaning behind the toy duck, an icy chill filled the air.
Oh shit.
If he thought Tate had been furious when he arrived, Liam didn’t know his man as well as he thought he did. Tate went eerily calm, his every muscle coiled with lethal intent. His eyes darkened with pure hatred, and his fists clenched. He spun around, heading back to the car with stiff, jerky strides.
“Tate!” Liam called as he flung his bulky cleaning gloves off. “Where are you going?” He grabbed his man’s shoulder as he reached the truck, spinning him around. “What are you doing?”
Tate took a menacing step forward, but Liam stood firm. No matter how enraged he became, Tate wouldn’t hurt him. Liam knew that with every fiber of his being.
“I’m going to kill him, Luxe.”
“Tate…” He placed a hand on each of Tate’s shoulders. “Take a breath and—”
“I’m going to fucking kill him!” he roared in Liam’s face.
Holy shit.
“Tate, shut the hell up!” he shouted right back, glancing around. Thank God, no one happened to be walking by. The last thing they needed was a witness hearing Tate threaten Ducky.
“Luxe, let me go. You don’t understand.” Tate’s eyes were unfocused, and his cheeks flushed with fiery anger. “You don’t know everything.” He was practically in a trance, consumed by his hatred for Ducky.
Liam shook him. “Tate, snap out of it. Listen to me. We’ll get him. He won’t get away with this, but we have to play it smart.”
Tate didn’t refute him, so Liam took that as a green light to continue.
“Ducky did this to intimidate me,” he said, loosening his hold on Tate’s shoulders. He stroked his thumbs over the thick muscles in soothing circles. “He thinks I’m weak. That I’ll be scared and cower because he vandalized my studio, but that idiot has no idea who he’s dealing with. This is nothing compared to the hatred I’ve experienced. As soon as I have a break between classes today, I’ll file a police report and make damn sure Ducky’s parole officer finds out. He’ll go back to jail for violating parole. There’s the right way to go about this, and it doesn’t involve you going off half-cocked and getting yourself arrested for attacking Ducky.”
Shock rocketed through him as he saw Tate’s eyes well with tears. His man blinked rapidly and swallowed before speaking.
“It was him,” Tate whispered.
“What? I know. That’s why I’ll report him.”
Tate shook his head and pulled Liam into a bone-crushing hug. “It was him,” he repeated. The agony in the words had a shiver running down Liam’s spine.
“What? What was him?” Liam’s stomach churned with dread. Had something else happened he wasn’t aware of?
“Ten years ago…”
“What?” He gasped into Tate’s chest.
No.
“The fair.”
“What?” He ripped out of Tate’s arms and staggered two steps back, gagging. Bile burned the back of his throat. “Ducky was one of my attackers?”
Tate nodded with a miserable mix of sadness and anger in his expression.
“Fuck.” He slapped a hand over his mouth as he doubled over, dry heaving. He hadn’t even had coffee yet, so nothing came up, but his stomach cramped with pain.
Each passing second seemed to push Tate closer to an edge Liam might be unable to pull him back from. He had to keep it together.
He inhaled a long, unsteady breath. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, the words tasting vile. He straightened and rolled his shoulders back.
Tate’s jaw dropped. “What the fuck? It sure as hell does matter. What’s wrong with you, Luxe?”
“No.” He shook his head and grabbed Tate’s arm as he tried to get in the truck again. “It doesn’t. The statute of limitations ran out years ago. There’s nothing I can do about what happened back then. Reporting this to his parole officer is still our best chance of getting him put behind bars. We have to focus on the present and our future.”
“I know the cops won’t do shit about it.” Tate shook off Liam’s hold. “And that’s why I need to do this shit myself.”
“Tate,” Liam pleaded. Would he really go after Ducky? The man was huge and mean as a junkyard dog. He wouldn’t hesitate to maim or even kill Tate, leaving Liam to spend the rest of his life drowning in guilt and grief. “Don’t go. Please don’t go.”
Pain twisted Tate’s face. “I can’t let him hurt you. I won’t let him hurt you.”
“Tate, don’t do this. Stay here.” He grabbed for his man again, but Tate dodged him. “We’ll talk it out. Please. What will happen to us if you go after Ducky?”
“What will happen to us if I don’t?”
“We’ll be together. We’ll clean this mess up, report it to the police, and go about our day. Later, we’ll get some dinner, and then I’ll show you how flexible I really am.”
Tate threw his arms in the air. “And when Ducky comes after you next instead of your building? Did you not hear me say he was one of the guys who hurt you? Did all that therapy you went to make you forget what that fucker did to you?”
Liam reared back as though he’d been struck. “No, Tate, I remember everything about that night. And I remember the nightmares and the fear of being in crowds. I remember the panic attacks and the painful recovery.” He snorted. “I wish therapy could have made me forget it, but it did give me the tools to learn how to deal with it. But thanks for throwing it back in my face because it wasn’t going to be hard enough to deal with learning who my attacker was.”
“Luxe…” The anguish in Tate’s voice was almost enough to have Liam backing down.
Instead of giving in, he turned his back on Tate. It hurt more than he would have ever imagined. “I have to get this cleaned up. I could really use your help. Please stay.”
“I can’t.”
Those two words felt like a death sentence. “Well, I can’t watch you walk away from me.”
“That’s not what I’m doing. I’m doing this for you, for us, Luxe.”
The nickname had him biting back a sob as he picked up the gloves he’d tossed.
“Why can’t you see that?”
He looked over his shoulder, eyes damp. “All I see is you choosing something that could tear us apart.”
“I love you, Luxe.”
“I love you too.”
He swallowed a sob as he bit his lower lip hard. If something happened to Tate, if Ducky did to him what he’d done to Liam or worse, it would destroy him. He was bigger than him, older, and angrier. Hell, he’d done time, and who knew what he’d learned in those months?
“I’ll be back tonight, okay?”
Liam sniffed and squeezed his eyes together to keep the tears from falling. “Please be careful.” All he wanted was to run to Tate, fall to his knees, and use every dirty trick in the book to make him stay. But it wouldn’t work. The conviction in Tate’s voice told him all he needed to know, so he stayed put, picked up the sponge, and went back to work cleaning the mess.
Tate’s frustrated sigh felt like a battering ram to the heart.
The slam of the truck door, a swift kick to the gut.
And the sound of the engine driving farther away, a door slamming on his happiness.