Chapter 3
Jordan
Jordan watched Ethan, gauging his reaction. At least he hadn’t slammed the proverbial door in Jordan’s face. Not yet anyway. He moved further away from the connecting door, just in case.
“A lot has changed in the past seventeen and a half years. For one, I told my family and friends that I’m gay,” he said.
“You did?” Ethan raised a single skeptical eyebrow.
Jordan didn’t fault him. Nothing in their past hinted toward Jordan coming out, ever.
“A few years after you left, actually.”
Now Ethan cocked his head, and Jordan could almost hear his thoughts. They were along the lines of what the fuck.
“If you’ve known where I was all this time, why didn’t you get in touch?”
Ah, yes. Going as he figured. Jordan sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He’d practiced enough times, the words should have been coming easily.
“Would you have believed me?”
“You know what?” Ethan said before Jordan could say anything further. “I need another drink. And, no, I don’t think I would’ve.”
Pivoting, Ethan headed toward the mini fridge, craftily hidden underneath what looked to be an antique desk.
An interior light came on when Ethan opened the door, and Jordan saw it was well-stocked with miniature bottles of liquor and mixer.
Reaching inside, Ethan grabbed a bunch of the little bottles, set them on the desktop, and then added what looked like tonic or soda water to the collection.
“Gin and tonic or whisky soda?” he asked, resting on his haunches in front of the small appliance.
“Once a whisky man, always a whisky man.”
Ethan stood up, barely missing the edge of the desk. He opened two of the bottles without seeming to read the labels and poured the alcohol into the heavy glass tumblers provided by the hotel. Jordan figured Ethan needed time to process and this was how he was taking it.
“So,” Ethan began, “you thought you’d show up here and then what? I’d fall back into your bed, just like old times?”
“No,” said Jordan as he stepped across the room.
He grabbed one of the tumblers and slung the contents down his throat, not caring what it was or strong it might be. The whisky burned. “I was thinking it might be possible to fall back into your life,” he managed to rasp as he coughed.
Those were not the words he’d practiced. Ryder had said that he would need to grovel. To be completely honest.
Ethan and I aren’t best friends or anything, but we’ve worked together for a while now, and I know him well enough. He’s not going to take an apology or whatever it is you’re going to offer at face value. You need to prove yourself.
“I mean—dammit, Ethan, you still get me all mixed up. I’m out, no more hiding, no more lying.” He released a gusty sigh. “And I’ve never stopped loving you.”
Jordan wasn’t sure if there was anything worse than declaring his love for Ethan Moore and having the man stare back at him with a carefully blank expression plastered on his face.
Leaning his ass back against the edge of the desk, Ethan eyed him, assessed him, trying to figure out if he was telling the truth.
It was an expression Jordan recognized from their past, when he’d watched Ethan study femurs and hip bones, coaxing their secrets from them.
Everyone in the department had known Ethan would go far, that he was the real thing.
Jordan wanted to protest to that dissecting gaze that he was being truthful. But he couldn’t; Ethan had to decide for himself.
“As cliché as it sounds, I never meant to hurt you. I was protecting myself. A forest-for-the-trees situation, I guess.” Jordan carefully stayed put. At least they were talking now. Progress.
After continuing to stare at him for what felt like an eon, Ethan downed his drink and set it on the desk behind him with a clink. Then he crossed his arms over his chest.
“Don’t stop now. Feel free to keep apologizing. And don’t you dare say something vapid like it wasn’t you, it was me. I already knew it was you. So fuck you.”
Twisting, Ethan grabbed another airplane-sized bottle and poured it into his empty glass, forgoing mixer this time, then continued.
“Back then, I pushed too hard, asked too much. Flew too close to the sun, whatever.” Ethan snorted.
“You weren’t ready and I own that. But why did you have to flaunt her in my face when you got back from your little trip? ”
Of the entire I want to be with Ethan Moore who makes me feel things but I’m too scared of how my family and coworkers will react disaster, Karin was the second worst part. Because, in the end, Jordan hurt her too. He’d hurt her, and Ethan, and had ended up alone.
“My thinking was that if you saw me with… someone else, you would be happy and go your own way. I had thought more metaphorically though, not to central Mexico. Plus, my parents liked her.”
From Ethan’s expression, that was the wrong thing to say.
“Yeah, well, I got the invitation to join the dig that Tuesday and didn’t hesitate.” He didn’t have to explain what the invitation had been.
Even after eighteen years, Jordan still remembered where he was when he’d learned that Ethan, the darling of the department, had accepted a position with a team investigating a suspected mass burial in Mexico.
And that he’d left the day before, hadn’t bothered to say goodbye.
Jordan hadn’t earned a goodbye, he’d known that, but he’d still been angry, had gone out and gotten drunk that night.
“That was fucked-up thinking,” Ethan said. “You looked miserable at the party, by the way. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
“Yeah, I was miserable.”
Showing up at an end-of-term staff and grad student potluck with his parent-approved girlfriend-slash-beard had been shitty.
It had seemed like the best idea at the time—ripping off a Band-Aid, so to speak.
But seeing the hurt and the pain that Ethan had been unable to hide was a memory he’d repeatedly stabbed himself with over the years.
Even after that party, Jordan had refused to acknowledge he was gay for another year or so.
It had nothing to do with the life he was building in Seattle and everything to do with his toxic home life.
He’d hurt so many people.
They fell silent. Jordan could hear the tick of a clock, the murmur of voices down the hall, the whoosh of the elevator door opening and then closing.
Ethan wasn’t looking at him. Instead, his attention was somewhere over Jordan’s shoulder, maybe on the English-style garden beyond the French balcony doors.
What was he thinking? Would he consider getting to know the new and improved Jordan? Had he believed him when Jordan said he still loved him? Did he have more than a snowball’s chance in hell?
From Jordan’s two conversations with Ryder Mann, he’d learned that Ethan was single and had been for as long as Ryder had worked with him.
Which was sad but gave Jordan hope after all these years.
None of the West Coast Forensics folks did social media, so finding out about Ethan that way had been a dead end.
Ryder Mann calling with a bogus contest had been a lightning strike out of the blue.
Jordan snorted. Ethan looked over at him, his eyebrows raised in a do carry on sort of quirk.
“My conversation with your coworker was a bit of a roller coaster. He called me asking all sorts of probing questions, as if someone was running a background check, but also claiming I’d won a contest. Seeing as I’m still gainfully employed by the University of British Columbia and, as far as I knew, had never entered a contest, I wanted to know what the hell was going on.
He made some ridiculous excuse and ended the call. But I called him back.”
Jordan was tired of standing, but Ethan wasn’t offering him a seat.
He took one anyway, crossing the room to make himself comfortable on a velvet-covered settee positioned near the balcony doors.
There was a lot of velvet in this place.
He downed the last of his drink and eyed the remaining airplane bottle.
Maybe he shouldn’t have led with “I still love you.”
“I might not work with law enforcement or super spy agencies, but I’m a damn good interrogator.”
It was Ethan’s turn to guffaw. “Ryder Mann is about as tough as wet tissue paper, and he has no sense of self-preservation. He’s also nosey as fuck. Look, do you mind if I put some music on?”
“Of course not,” Jordan said, wishing Ethan would respond somehow to what he’d said.
“Do you want another drink?”
“Yeah, that would be great.” Why not? They didn’t really have to join in the murder hunt tomorrow, after all.
Watching Ethan make their fourth—or was it fifth?
—drinks that night, Jordan remembered that the man always had a tune in his head.
Back in the day, he’d claimed he worked best when he could shut the rest of the world out and just focus on his work, which music helped him do.
One more thing that was still true about Ethan Moore.
After pouring more whisky into each of their glasses, Ethan fiddled with his cell phone, and soon enough Jordan heard Chris Cornell crooning the lyrics to Black Hole Sun.
“This music okay?” Ethan handed Jordan his tumbler, the golden liquid swirling lazily in the glass.
Their fingers briefly touched, sending sparks up and down Jordan’s spine. Whoa.
“It’s fine.” Not exactly romantic, but at least Ethan wasn’t telling him to go back to his room. Yet.
“Good, because I’m not turning it off.”
“I came out to my parents,” Jordan said again.
Ethan stared at him, then narrowed his eyes.
“You mentioned that. How’d that go?” What did he want Ethan to say? Congratulations? About time? What? Jordan wasn’t sure.
“Stings a bit less these days. Not a shock that they didn’t take it well. Mom has sort of come around, but Dad never did.”
Growing up in a conservative Christian community and coming to the realization that he was gay after he’d left for college was one of the most frightening things that had ever happened to Jordan.
He’d known that his parents and most of the people he’d grown up with would shun him.
What he hadn’t realized was that when he did come out, there was another community waiting for him, a community that had helped him survive and even heal.
“Did?” Ethan sat down on the edge of the bed rather than sitting next to Jordan.
Jordan never knew how to say this, seeing as he’d been written off years before by the man. “He passed away a few years ago.”