10. Jace #2
“I don’t know why you want the damn thing,” Kevin said.
It was the sort of thing that encapsulated his entire existence.
If he didn’t want it, everyone wanting it had to be crazy.
He was a man whose views were small and simple, but he could apply them to every aspect of the world and be bewildered—angry, even—that others had something else in mind.
He was confident that he could solve the crisis in the Middle East over several beers in a bar and that all this diversity bullshit was a grand conspiracy to make him look away from the things he called “the real problems,” but he’d never succeeded in defining what those problems were.
And yet, the sound of his raspy, slightly nasal voice sent chills down my spine.
“That roommate,” Kevin said. “He around?”
“No,” Easton said. “He’s out.”
“It’s not right I can’t meet him, Easton,” Kevin said. “I’d like to know who you’re sharing your place with.”
“Next time, Dad,” Easton said.
Kevin hesitated for a time. He was far enough that I couldn’t hear everything he said, but when he spoke of the fine young man, I knew he was referring to Kyle. “Shame,” Kevin said. “It was good for you to be around a guy like that.”
“I don’t know, Dad,” Easton said quietly.
Moving through the apartment, Kevin Harper appeared for the shortest of heartbeats in the crack between the wooden pieces of the door. He stepped in and out of my sight, and the moment kicked me in the stomach.
The punch sent me spiraling back through time. The fire in the attic of our house. Kevin’s hand on my neck. Being dragged by the scruff of my neck through the charred remains of the house. The smell of charcoal and smoke thick in the air.
I grabbed for the edge of the closet to hold myself up on my feet.
My breaths were shallow. The slap across my face when I was twelve landed all over again.
I’d broken Easton’s truck by accident, but I’d acted like it had been intentional because they all thought it was.
What was the point in protesting? Nobody would have believed me.
Easton was in tears, and Kevin was sick of hearing his little boy crying.
All he wanted was to have his beer and watch the goddamn game in peace.
And the little piece of shit wouldn’t give him that.
He worked so hard. Didn’t he deserve a fucking break?
Surging to his feet, he crossed the living room and sent me falling backward before I even knew the slap had landed.
The relief on his face on the day he gave me up. The glee that he finally had a reason good enough to do so without judgment. His house had almost burned down. He was fucking done with this shit.
Holding on to the wooden side of the closet’s interior, I held my breath.
The man who had once been my father looked into my room, his hands tucked into the pockets on the seat of his pants.
He was leaning forward, like the weight of the thing he and Easton had carried made his lower back ache.
His hair was much more salt than pepper, and his beard covered the coarse skin of the lower half of his face. He raised one hand and rubbed his chin.
I saw myself opening the closet door, stepping out, and looking into his pale eyes. I saw a timeline in which I revealed myself to him and made him understand that he would never be free of me.
But before my body could do that, I tightened my fists and stiffened my muscles, holding still in the little closet. Easton would hate me forever if I did something like that. Not that Easton hating me could get much worse.
I watched as Kevin asked Easton for the other half of the rent he’d paid. I watched my cash change hands.
As a very little boy, I’d lived in fear of Kevin Harper.
That fear had switched into daring as years had gone by.
There was very little he could have done to me.
He’d already struck me more times than I could count, and I had learned that being slapped across my face or spanked with his belt couldn’t get worse.
Instead of discouraging me, his punishments had become a bargain.
I would weigh my odds, as young as seven, and decide an act of mischief was worth the punishment.
In fact, my outbursts had only grown more spectacular.
If I was getting my ass belted, I had to make it worth it.
I exhaled slowly as Kevin and Easton moved out of my view and back into the living room. Easton offered Kevin a cup of coffee, and I wanted to strangle him. But when my former Dad refused, a sigh of relief escaped my lips.
I could hear every beat of my heart. I could hear the hairs rising along my neck. But the minutes passed, and Kevin fetched some more things from the car, offered his help to assemble something in the living room, and finally said goodbye.
“You be good, Easton,” he said on his way out. Coming from his lips, it sounded more like a threat than an encouragement.
Some more time passed before Easton walked into my room. “Come out, now. He’s gone.”
I pushed the small door of the closet and stepped out. The obvious jokes passed through my head, but Easton’s trembling fingers and deep frown made me reconsider speaking them. “That went well,” I said.
Easton didn’t move. His mossy green eyes were fixed on me. “That was too close, Jace,” he said.
I acknowledged his worry with a single nod. “And nothing went wrong.”
“But what if…”
“That doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s over now.”
“If he’d seen you in here, Jace,” Easton said and hesitated, shaking his head.
“You don’t understand. Your name was erased from that place.
It was like you’d never existed. And that’s the only way they can live with what happened.
If he saw you here, he would have…I don’t know.
” He surrendered at the end, looking at the floor between us.
What I heard didn’t surprise me. “Easton,” I said slowly, stepping closer to him.
His gaze flicked to my underwear, then away.
I noted it but did nothing about it. “The only reason I stayed in that closet was because of you. I didn’t want you in the middle of it.
Had it been just him and me, things would have gone differently. ”
“That’s not reassuring,” Easton said.
I scoffed in frustration.
“You don’t get it,” he accused me. “I don’t want to know that you’re still holding a grudge against them. I don’t want to know that you would have gladly punched him in the face.”
I sucked my teeth and turned away from him. “Coward.”
“Sure,” Easton agreed. “I am. I’m a coward because I’m sick of living through the worst time of our lives.” He paused for a heartbeat, then changed his tone. “You know what, Jace? Thank you. Thanks for hiding to keep me happy. It makes everything so much better.”
I didn’t love his sarcasm, but I let it go. I found my pants, pulled them on, and sniffed a couple of T-shirts. One passed the check, and I pulled it on. “Whatever, dude,” I said, passing by him and walking out.
He was unbearable and infuriating, and the only things I could think of were to fight him or to stun him into silence with a sudden kiss. A third option had crossed my mind. I could combine the two by spanking him, but I wasn’t sure Easton would be thrilled. So I walked away.
Yet even as I did that, something tugged me to return and bring down this invisible barrier between us.
I hadn’t anticipated just how badly his presence would make me want him.
I didn’t think I could hold back much longer.
And I didn’t know if I wanted to punish him, make him submit to me, or give him the time of his life.
But it all came down to the same thing. Keeping my hands off Easton was not even an option. It was only a matter of time.