CHAPTER FOURTEEN
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HE DIDN’T STAY.
In the end, it took them three days to dry out the cellar. Strangest of all, not only was there no sign of a leak, all three plumbers Raj had called said the pipes were solid. If it wasn’t for all the damp wood, he’d swear he imagined the whole thing.
Burt Soup had been right there, signing autographs and telling tales of his times on B-movie sets. But he didn’t stay.
So impressed by how the movie night went, the mayor had suggested they make the ballroom the permanent home. Raj had only gritted his teeth and smiled. If all went well, they’d be hosting weddings and parties there. He rather doubted the town would dip into its war chest to book the place.
Why didn’t he stay?
He’d thought there’d be time. Raj had to deal with the leak, with the plumbing, with telling all the guests that they wouldn’t have water overnight. But once all that mess was done, he had expected to find Adam at Burt’s side. Probably wowing him with his knowledge of movies Burt barely remembered.
Instead, he’d left, and a black hole opened in Raj’s stomach. For the past two days, he had tried to fill it with the hotel, his haunt, entertaining Burt before he flew back home. During the day, it’d worked. Raj had been so busy, he’d fall onto his cot exhausted to the bone.
In the edge between consciousness and sleep, light and dark, he’d lingered. Wondered. Questioned not just Adam but himself. Why did the man have to be so infuriatingly perfect and also absolute poison at the same time?
I don’t have time to deal with whatever the hell his problem is. And I certainly don’t have time to deal with my own problems.
Of course, telling himself that had the opposite effect. He’d tossed and turned every night, fighting to find sleep instead of this dry ache in his chest. Worst still were the times when he had slept, his dreams trying to finish what he had started in the cellar.
So, bleary-eyed and exhausted to the bone, Raj agreed to the mayor’s invitation without thinking about it for two seconds.
Logan kept blowing up his phone about how he had to get back to the hotel—so and so was out of towels.
Raj put it on silent and blinked against the sun rounding past its zenith.
The air smelled of dirt and hay. Where the… ?
He turned around and spotted a sign pointing toward a field of corn.
Oh, no. No, he didn’t…
“Mr. Chowdery!” the mayor cried out, both arms open to embrace him.
“Mr. Gunderson, sir. Thank you for inviting me, but—”
“It’s my pleasure, young man. You made it just in time. Every year, the council likes to do a little trust exercise through the corn maze.”
Council? Raj’s exhausted veil tumbled away. Fresh eyes stared around the mowed-down lot. It didn’t take him long to spot the man in a vest and slacks standing next to the others in sweaters and yoga pants.
“…see who can get through it first. A little competition never hurt anyone.”
He couldn’t breathe. Did his heart stop? No, it was beating fast. Too fast! Was that a heart attack?
Too late, Raj realized the mayor had stopped talking. “Oh yes, of course,” he said without hearing a word.
“Great. So you stick with me, and we’ll make it out in no time.”
Stick with…?
He placed a hand above his eyes, his gaze taking in the maze. Then, in slow motion, he turned. Adam’s hand plummeted when he spotted Raj.
Raj’s first thought was to wave like he was trying to get his crush to sit next to him during homeroom. The awkwardness seized through him, causing his neck to contract and shoulders to shoot up to his ears. “Mr. Mayor man…” His brain fractured as he hunted for an exit.
He couldn’t do this. Not here, surrounded by people who could pull his permits. Not now, with his heart and balls aching. He needed to flee. “I should really get back—”
“Everyone!” The mayor caught him like a fly between a spider’s pinchers and gestured to the others lingering on the gravel. “We’re about to begin.”
Every escape plan fizzled as the others lined up in a vague circle near the entrance. The mayor raised his stopwatch high in anticipation, though the tension of the challenge was dimmed by two young girls in pigtails skipping into the maze.
“Ready?” the mayor shouted.
“Oh, just push the button!” one of the women shouted back.
The man gawped at the cut. “Okay, start,” he mumbled.
Two people ahead broke into a run, others more calmly strolled behind, puffs of vape smoke trailing into the corn. This was Raj’s chance to slip out without anyone noticing. He eased a step back, prepared to bolt for the parking lot.
The wind shifted, pulling back his scarf until the end tassels slapped…
Adam tossed the scarf away with his hand. He didn’t look at Raj, all his focus on the maze. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said.
“I…was in the area?” Raj scrunched his nose at that terrible lie.
Even Adam swung away from looking over his shoulder to stare at him. “Really?”
“No,” Raj confessed. For a brief moment, a smile flickered on Adam’s lips. “I, well, I was hoping maybe—”
“Come on, Chowdery.” The mayor hustled past him, his tracksuit whooshing with each step. “Let’s go before they beat us.”
The mayor caught him by the arm. “I…” Raj tried to dig his heels in, his head twisting toward Adam, but he was pulled into the corn. Adam dusted off his hands and followed after, but—while the mayor pulled Raj to the right—Adam went left.
For a time, Raj wandered behind the mayor as he led them into dead end after dead end. He didn’t care about the challenge or even the maze. His mind kept rolling over the same two thoughts endlessly.
Why did I kiss him?
And why do I want to again?
More than kiss, he’d been willing to scuba dive to suck that beanpole’s cock and, despite all evidence to the contrary, he didn’t regret it. Okay, the look on everyone’s faces when they saw his body waterlogged to his shoulders had been a hard pill to swallow.
Swallow…
Raj chuckled macabrely to himself. “I bet it tastes like candy corn.”
“What does?”
Raj jerked at the voice coming through the corn. He’d lost the mayor at another crossroads and, instead of finding him, had lingered at a dead end. This one must have butted up to another turn in the maze. “Adam? Is that you?”
“No,” he called out with a laugh in his voice, “it’s the corn. An endless, eternal field of corn.”
Raj tried to peer through the mess of stalks. He caught a hint of a shadow, but the corn was too thick to make out anything else.
“Are you lost?” Raj asked, trying to go for a laugh.
Adam’s jocularity sundered. The corn stalks shook as if someone leaned against them. “I don’t know anymore.”
“They say the trick to these is to follow the outside path, and eventually you’ll get out.” Raj offered advice even though he knew Adam didn’t mean the maze.
“So, if you were a mad genius designing a maze, you’d put the worst traps on the outside?” Adam said. “Thin the herd, at least.”
“I’m glad you didn’t catch your death in that cold water,” Raj called out to him.
The corn shifted, and the shadow on the other side lightened. “I wasn’t the one who got on my knees.”
Giggles jerked Raj’s attention to the path.
A couple of kids stared at him, frowned at the dead end, then took off running the other way.
Mortified that they might have overheard, Raj started to walk.
“I’m…I’m sorry.” He intended to get away from Adam, leave it on nothing more than a foolish regret born from them running on adrenaline.
But Adam followed from the other side of the corn. “For which part?”
“You could have died in my basement.”
“I was the one who closed the door.”
A door with no lock. If Raj hadn’t tried beating it open himself, he wouldn’t believe it.
“And I’m sorry about the masks. Are they really made by your sister?”
He chuckled. “Yes.”
Raj thought back on the strange woman who’d seemed more part owl than part Stein. “Has she always been so, um…private?”
“After our father died—”
“She became terrifying?” Raj asked before he gulped, remembering they were blood.
To his relief, Adam laughed hard. “No. She was always that way. At five years old, grown men would cross the street to avoid her. I was going to say she moved to her farm and more or less abandoned human contact after our father died.”
“I shouldn’t have sold them,” Raj said.
“No, you should. She let you. Did you really spend hours talking with her?”Adam’s voice started to fade. Raj froze in his tracks and began to trail back toward the corn to find him.
He tried to think back to that day, his heart pounding with the fear that at any second she might turn him into a lamp. “I don’t know if hours. Maybe an hour.”
Adam whistled from deeper into the field. “That’s impressive. Most people last five minutes at best. Even I can only do a half hour before I need to breathe the air of the living.”
A bunch of the council members walked past Raj, asking if he knew the way out. Uncertain, but wanting to be helpful, he pointed to the left, and they took off. Smiling at them, Raj glanced around, then he looked through the corn. Adam was nowhere to be seen.
Had he moved on? Maybe he’d already finished the maze and was on to his next kingly duty. Taking a deep breath, Raj started to walk to the eastern field when the wind carried a voice toward him.
“I’m sorry.”
It was little more than a tickle in his ear. Raj heard the tone more than the words, and it pulled him to the left.
“My behavior at the festival was abhorrent.”
Raj dashed down the path, then hooked to the right, taking him closer to Adam’s voice.
“I don’t even know why I acted that way. Arrogance. Shame. Fear. You were right, by the way.”
He has to be just up…
Damn it!
Raj came face to face with a wall of corn. “I was? About what?” he shouted through the shaking stalks.
“They were your apples. My mother told me later that she moved mine because I was ‘being uncivil.’ Which I was. And maybe still am. I can’t tell anymore.”