Chapter 20
Charlie and Lorenzo had started the evening on perfectly respectable ends of the couch.
But Charlie hadn’t made plans for the night yet, and the longer he spent on his phone trying to find something for them to do, the closer Lorenzo crept.
Eventually he got Charlie sprawled over him, his back to Lorenzo’s chest, while Lorenzo nuzzled at Charlie’s neck and Charlie for some reason insisted on pretending that they were still going out.
He seemed to take offense at the idea of staying in for the night, as if that meant he wasn’t creative enough to make plans for them.
Lorenzo stroked the soft skin of Charlie’s neck with his fingers, his mouth watering, and tried to change his mind.
“You’re sure the Masons aren’t a satanic group,” Charlie asked, as Lorenzo massaged his shoulders and the nape of his neck.
“As far as I am aware, no,” he replied. “They are humans.”
“QVC salespeople?”
Lorenzo grinned, and pressed a kiss to the nape of Charlie’s neck. “Also humans.”
“Area 51?”
Lorenzo pulled back so that Charlie could see how crestfallen he was. “How would I know if the U.S. government is hiding aliens?”
“I dunno,” he giggled. “Ooh, what about the Mall of America? The Mall of America has to be haunted.”
“We can’t make it to the Mall of America tonight,” Lorenzo muttered, ducking down to suck on Charlie’s neck lightly. “It’s hours away.”
Charlie was finally rolling back against him. He obviously couldn’t see his phone anymore. “How far?”
“Give up,” Lorenzo told him, but before he could kiss Charlie properly, there was a hammering at the door.
They both jumped, staring at each other in confusion as the noise continued without stopping—someone on the other end was pounding at the door relentlessly, as if there were an emergency.
Lorenzo jumped up and yanked the door open, not sure what to expect—and revealed a staggering, disheveled . . . “Gray?”
“Oh good,” he said in a distracted sort of tone, pitching forward over the threshold. “Do you have wolfsbane?”
Charlie was staring at him, his mouth open. Lorenzo shut his when he was hit with the overwhelming scents of dirty wolf and alcohol. “I—” he started.
Before he could continue, Gray pushed past both of them into the kitchen, where he started tearing through every drawer and cabinet.
“Hang on,” Lorenzo said, following him. Gray was dressed horribly by his own standards, in a wrinkled collared shirt and frumpy jeans.
“What’s—hey!” he pulled a bottle of mirin out of Gray’s hand. “What’s going on?”
Gray squinted at them blearily, as if he’d forgotten they were there, and then drew himself up. “I have been . . . um . . . separated. Terminated.” He paused, and then added, “Shitcanned.”
“What . . .”
“The pack?” Charlie asked. And then, in an insufficiently quiet aside, he muttered, “You can get fired from a werewolf pack?”
Lorenzo glared at him.
“Oh yes,” Gray said breezily, as he started rummaging through Lorenzo’s kitchen again, leaving cabinets open and rattling dishes. “Especially when the wedding you spent months of your life arranging becomes a bloodbath.”
Lorenzo winced. “They blamed you for that?”
“Mm-hmm,” he said. “It was part of the peace talks with the other pack—they couldn’t hold anyone important accountable for the mess, so they decided it was my fault.
” He gasped in happiness as he found a fifth of something in the back of a cabinet, but upon his squinted examination in the light, he sighed and tossed it into the sink.
“Now I’m blacklisted everywhere. Okay, do you—where is it? ”
“I don’t have any,” Lorenzo told him.
Gray grumbled at him and resumed his search. The commotion had drawn Rachel and Isolde out of their rooms, and they hovered at the edge of the kitchen, watching Gray warily. “Any what?” Charlie asked.
“Wolfsbane,” Lorenzo explained. “It’s—wolves heal too quickly to become intoxicated, so they make special alcohol infused with wolfsbane so they can . . .” He trailed off as Gray seemed to exhaust his search, sliding against the wall to sit on the floor in an ungainly heap. “Not heal,” he finished.
“What kind of self-respecting werewolf doesn’t have any wolfsbane?” Gray asked plaintively.
“I’m a vampire.”
“Right. Right. Oh!” Gray said, perking up—he’d spotted the cabinet in the dining room, which held at least a few bottles of wine visible through the glass doors. He jumped up and pushed past Rachel and Isolde to reach it, shoving Isolde into Rachel’s arms in the process.
Rachel jerked and shoved her away just as quickly, making Isolde frown. “What’s your problem?”
Rachel stood there awkwardly for a moment, just as Lorenzo caught a strong, unfurling scent of decay.
Then he noticed the bruises all over Rachel’s skin, growing and spreading until she was a putrid, deep soft red all over.
The color darkened to purple, then black, and then she liquified into a puddle of blood, just as there was a thump and rattle inside Rachel’s room, presumably from her rematerializing.
In the corner of his eye, Lorenzo saw that Charlie was white and shaking, his eyes wide.
He clapped him on the shoulder and gave him what he hoped was a reassuring hand gesture.
Isolde, though, just looked annoyed, seething down at the blood smear Rachel had left before stomping off, muttering, “That is so immature.”
“I,” Charlie whimpered. “I don’t . . .”
“It’s okay,” Lorenzo said, pulling him into a hug and rubbing his shoulders until he stopped shaking.
Gray, who had finished going through the cabinet, cried, “Gin? Ugh,” in a miserable tone, and collapsed onto the floor again. Charlie and Lorenzo both went to sit next to him.
“Gray,” Lorenzo said. “When did they . . .”
He closed his eyes. “Few days after the wedding.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I was at home, drinking all my wolfsbane,” he explained, with a hollow sort of cheeriness. “Then I ran out, and I can’t go to a single wolf bar because I’m . . .” He thunked his head back against the wall behind him. His voice was starting to sound thick. “I’m a lone wolf now.”
Lorenzo stood up. “Gray,” he said, “I am truly sorry to hear of your misfortune.”
Gray sighed. “Thank you, friend.”
“I have no wolfsbane, for which I apologize,” he said graciously, offering Gray a hand to help him up. “Let’s go to a bar.”
Gray sniffed. “They’re all owned by one of the big packs. Any bar that has wolfsbane, anyway.”
“There has to be an unaffiliated supe bar somewhere that has it,” Charlie said with completely unearned confidence. Lorenzo glared at him doubtfully as Charlie got out his phone once again.
This time Charlie’s research proved fruitful, as he discovered a casino forty minutes out of town that he claimed had what Gray was looking for.
The neon and fluorescent lighting, and the sense that one could get lost in the slots and never emerge, were chilling.
And while the resort didn’t appear to be supernaturally owned or affiliated, one of the small bars on the basement level did, in fact, have wolfsbane.
They kept pace with Gray for a while, but split off on their own once he got sufficiently hammered and started ranting at the bartender about men’s tailoring.
They played a few electronic betting games, lost some money, and then found themselves wandering the shopping area, which had many suspiciously overpriced luxury stores that Charlie thought must be a front for something.
The only store Charlie was interested in was a cavernous, touristy place that exclusively sold tacky and completely useless knickknacks.
Charlie delighted in examining each one, shoving several into a basket that Lorenzo was carrying, and informing him which pieces would look good in his apartment and where.
Despite the fact that he was evidently having a fantastic time, Lorenzo still felt compelled to apologize. “Sorry this derailed our evening in.”
“It wasn’t an evening in,” Charlie said, looking at a refrigerator magnet of the pope. “I was going to pick something. But this is fun.”
“Mm,” Lorenzo said, pulling the magnet out of Charlie’s hands so he could kiss him.
“Gray’s lucky. You’re a good friend,” Charlie said when they broke apart, smiling and winding his arms around Lorenzo’s shoulders.
“You’re a good—” boyfriend, he almost said, and nearly physically flinched as he grasped to redirect the sentence. “Friend of a friend,” he managed. “For coming with us.”
For a brief moment there was a blip of something that looked like panic in Charlie’s eyes, as if he’d noticed Lorenzo’s near miss, but it was gone in a second, and then he smiled.
Lorenzo kissed him again, trying to push past the knot of embarrassment and anxiety in his gut, trying not to think about the way they were still dancing around each other, keeping their distance, not risking anything.
Charlie made a small, hurt noise in the back of his throat when Lorenzo deepened the kiss, and he shivered from head to toe. Fuck not risking anything.
Charlie pulled back, licking his lips, his cheeks bright pink, and Lorenzo shoved a tchotchke back into his hands before they got themselves thrown out of the casino. Charlie took it gratefully, and Lorenzo hovered over his shoulder as he went back to browsing.
“So,” he said, once he felt more in control of himself. “How is your thesis going?”
Charlie froze, turned, and blinked at him. “Uh. Well. Really well. I’ve been turning in chapters to my—my advisor, and, um. She really seems to like them.”
Lorenzo couldn’t figure out why Charlie seemed nervous. Maybe he was worried about the educational aspect to their relationship, but Lorenzo wasn’t feeling sensitive about that today, so he tried to reassure him with a smile. “So I’ve been helpful?”
Charlie’s anxiety, whatever the source, melted into a warm smile. “Very helpful.”
Lorenzo walked down the aisle, looking at some discount candles. “And . . . what’s the timeline?” he asked. “When do you finish it, or turn it in, or whatever?”
“Uh . . .” Charlie said, poking around on the opposite shelf. “A few more months, I think. Then it’ll be done.”
“And then what?”
“Then what . . . what?” Charlie asked.
“You get a teaching job?” Lorenzo asked. “That’s what people do with advanced degrees, right?”
“Yeah,” Charlie said vaguely. “I mean—maybe.”
“You should probably think about that,” Lorenzo said, smiling at him. “If you’re going to be done in a few months.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said, rubbing his neck. “I’ve never been great at planning.”
Lorenzo sighed. He didn’t know what Charlie wasn’t telling him, but that wasn’t really the point. He clearly didn’t want to include Lorenzo in whatever it was. So he stopped asking questions, and a stilted silence fell.
Then Charlie said, abruptly, “But, uh—I know they’re never really hiring here, at the university.”
“Oh,” Lorenzo said, frowning. “So—”
“So I’ll have to move,” Charlie said, darting a glance at him. “Eventually.”
“Okay,” he said slowly. He remembered something about Charlie’s father being a professor at the university, but he was guessing he wouldn’t want to talk about that. Charlie always clammed up anytime they were talking and the subject started to drift toward his family.
Charlie was moving?
“Yeah,” he was saying. “I mean, everyone wants to live here—I mean, in Brookville,” he said with a grin. “Not this . . . incredible casino.”
“Yes,” Lorenzo said softly. Jobs were hard to come by in Brookville; it was a popular town, and graduates of the university were always looking to return. Lots of people wanted to live there. But Charlie wasn’t one of them.
He was moving after he graduated. Lorenzo felt like an idiot.
He’d seen this coming with Olivia. Why not now?
Because he’s already taken root in you, a cruel voice whispered. There’ll be nothing left when he’s gone.
Charlie glanced back up at him. His soft brown eyes seemed so full of emotion, but Lorenzo couldn’t be sure. Sometimes he felt like he could see Charlie—really see him—and other times it felt like trying to know him was like trying to hold the sky in his hands.
“It’s really competitive,” Charlie said. “So I’ll probably be looking at jobs in New York. Or, uh, elsewhere.”
What was the point in Lorenzo holding back from biting him? He would already be torn apart when Charlie left.
“Right,” he said. “Okay.”
Then again—hadn’t he always expected to lose Charlie somehow?