Bound by Lies (25 page)

“What are we doing?” Brayden says, dazedly, cold fear scraping the words raw. “What the fuck are we doing?”

Jenner sighs and steps into Brayden’s personal space. Taking Brayden’s face in both hands, Jenner looks down at him and tells him steadily, “You need this. So do I. And the rest? Fuck it. It’s none of their goddamned business. This is private. This is about you and me. Master and slave. That’s all. Okay?”

Brayden nods, but feels unsure.

“I can tell that this is all causing you stress, so
I’ll
handle it. I’ll handle everything, no matter whether it’s just us, alone, or around others. You’re mine. My responsibility. My slave. There’s nothing for you to worry about. Nothing at all. At work, it’ll be low protocol, unless I tell you otherwise. If we need to talk, and step away for a moment, you go to my office, close the door and kneel.”

“Okay,” Brayden agrees, feeling a little better with a clear framework in place.

“You trust me?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Jenner traces the curve of Brayden’s lower lip, causing his eyelashes to flutter closed. Softening to the touch, Brayden kisses Jenner’s finger. When Jenner presses it into Brayden’s mouth, between his lips, Brayden licks the tip, and sucks gently on it. He hears the sharp intake of breath from Jenner, and it makes his stomach flip giddily.

Jenner kisses his temple. “Good. Come on.”

Brayden leaves first, after Jenner ensures the coast is clear. A few minutes later, Jenner follows.

Brayden is in the break room. If she presses her cheek to the wall, Max can see him from her place in shadows of the hallway. She can hear him, too. As he paces, cell phone to his ear in the otherwise deserted area, totally unaware of her presence, he holds his forehead in one hand.

“Just give Nan the message, okay, Em? Please? I’ll see you tomorrow. Okay? I promise. We can see a movie or I’ll help you with homework. Whatever you want.”

Aggravated but hiding it fairly well, he sighs heavily but silently. Turning sharply on a heel, he paces back the other way. Max stays perfectly still so that he doesn’t notice her watching him.

She had heard Brayden ask his young cousin to tell their grandmother that he wouldn’t be home that night. It seems like the chickenshit way out to Max, not telling his grandma directly, but that’s just her opinion. And Max also knows why Brayden won’t be home. He’s spending the night at the only other place he could be spending the night—Jenner’s apartment. Of course Brayden hasn’t come out and said as much, but she’s seen the both of them sneaking back and forth from the place more than once.

“I know I’ve been gone a lot lately, and I’m really sorry, Em, but I’ll make it up to you.” There’s a pause and Max watches him closely—the way his face falls and eyes dart. “I’ve been spending time with a friend. It’s important to me. Yeah, maybe sometime you can meet them. Okay? Thanks, Emma. Love you too.”

Brayden hangs up and groans.

Peeling away from the wall, Max walks into the break room. “Hey.”

Looking up sharply, Brayden stares at her, mistrust flickering behind his eyes. “…Hey.”

“Everything all right?”

She knows she could call him on it, the tryst with Jenner, the sneaking around, but something keeps her from doing it.

“Yeah,” he says shortly. “Excuse me.”

Without another word, Brayden pushes past her, hurrying back out into the bar before she can so much as blink.

All afternoon, Brayden watches the bar’s front door like he’s expecting someone, and hardly hears anyone that tries to talk to him, other than the patrons. His mood is sour and he seems to make a concerted effort to not get too close to Jenner, proximity-wise. The two hardly make eye contact. Max knows because she looks for it. It makes for a tense, uncomfortable atmosphere for just about everyone.

At one point Max finds Art in the kitchen and pulls him aside to tell him what she suspects after overhearing the call and noticing the sneaking around.

Art gets a strange look on his face as he listens to what Max has to say. When she’s done, he confesses, “Jenner told me that something’s going on with him and Brayden. He said to keep my mouth shut about it.”

“What do you mean? Like they’re messing around? As in the way Jenner likes to mess around with guys? Oh my god.…”

Art drops his gaze. Max knows all about Jenner’s trips to Manse, and his affinity for BDSM. It’s been going on for years, ever since high school, when she started to find things like leather hoods, shackles and sex toys stashed in his car and his room. She called him on it, and he said he was learning how to be safe and wasn’t out to hurt anyone, himself included. A nervous edge creeps into Max’s voice. “Should we say something? Maybe if we just clear the air and tell ’em we know and we’re fine with it things can go back to normal.”

“We can’t just out Jenner and Brayden,” Art whispers. They’re tucked into a corner of the room behind a rack of supplies. “Jenner made it pretty damn clear that it was none of our goddamned business whatever it is he’s doing with Brayden. You know how he gets. If we push too hard or at the wrong moment, he might fire our asses and just never speak to us again.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Max scoffs.

“Wouldn’t he?”

“They’re just, you know, dating or something, right? What’s the big deal?”

Art laughs, softly, shaking his head.

“What?” Max frowns.

Regaining some of his composure, Art scans Max’s face. “It’s none of our business, Maxie. Capice? Just do me one favor and keep an eye on Brayden.”

“What do you think I have been doing?” Max hisses, annoyed.

“Well, good. Keep on doing it then. And if he starts acting weird or you’re worried about him, then we’ll say something.”

“Worried about him how?” Max thinks of the phone call she’d overheard only an hour or two ago, and the way Brayden had brushed her off after.

Art searches for the right way to say it, and the longer he does, the more concerned Max becomes. “Well, Jenner’s a big guy, right? A heck of a lot bigger than Brayden. He’s intense. He likes kinky shit. He gets paranoid that people are going to find out he’s gay and into BDSM, that his precious reputation would never recover. And he’s been obsessed with the kid. You’ve seen the way they get around each other, the looks they give each other. Seems like a dangerous combo to me, but I could be wrong.”

Max remembers how Jenner has always dealt with stress and peer pressure. He hasn’t always hung out with the nicest people. Max and Art were a few tiers down from him on the popularity scale. Jenner was always at the top, and he liked it that way. Being popular and a big deal on the football team, sometimes he acted like more of an asshole than she knew he was, just to make it look good for everyone watching. She’s seen him stand by and watch someone smaller than him get picked on, ridiculed or tormented, acting like it was fine, like it was funny, only to get upset about it in private, later. As the years have gone by, and Jenner has only gotten bigger, more skilled at defending himself, more immersed in alternative lifestyles, the lines have blurred. Is he still the guy who feels bad for the losers, berating himself for not speaking up or stepping in, or is he someone else now? Someone who’s gotten so good at looking the other way and making excuses for bad behavior that he’s still acting the tough jock to Brayden’s helpless outcast even when no one’s watching? If Jenner ever turned that corner, maybe thinking it’s the only way to get Brayden in bed, Brayden would have no way to defend himself. Max has been alone with plenty of guys who were a hell of a lot bigger than her, who had specific goals in mind, driving every word, every touch. Sometimes they got so caught up in what
they
wanted, that they stopped seeing her entirely. In those moments, she was an object, not a person, and it was dangerous—very much so.

Hating that she’s doubting her best friend, she asks, “You think he’d hurt Brayden?”

“We’re the only ones that even suspect they’re up to something. It’s not like Brayden’s got a huge support system here. And how many times have you heard Brayden say how badly he needs this job?”

“Fuck,” Max gulps. The blood drains quickly from her face. She starts to dart away, toward the bar. Art grabs her arm to keep her there.

“Settle down.”

“But he
is
being weird! Brayden won’t even
look
at Jenner. And he never seemed gay to me before. What if some bad shit’s already happening? What if Jenner’s, like, blackmailing him into having sex? Or worse?”

Art’s reaction isn’t what Max expects it to be. He gets quiet and drops his gaze.

“What? What is it? You know something, don’t you?”

Max swats him, but he doesn’t move or react.

“Art!”

“Brayden has, um, bruises. A bunch of them. They’re on his wrists, arms and chest. I saw them when he was getting changed.”

Again, Max tries to bolt for the bar, seething, “Goddammit!”

“Hey!” he barks at her, then lowers his voice to a growl. “Jenner’s not a bad guy. The kind of guy who would do that to Brayden? That’s exactly who Jenner’s been defending you from for years.”

“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself,” Max says, getting upset. “All of those guys? The ones who still grab my ass and joke about what a slut I am? Those are his
friends
.”

One of her ugliest memories surfaces, of Jenner trying to throw one of Max’s old boyfriends, Austin, out of the bar. Austin had been drinking, but he wasn’t drunk. He was talking a little too loudly, and a homophobic slur wove into the conversation. To this day, she has no idea if Austin actually said it, or if it was one of his idiotic friends. Max had no chance to mediate. One moment they were sitting at a table, the next Jenner was dragging Austin out of the building and into the road. Granted, Austin took the first swing, but Jenner didn’t just hit back, he
kept
hitting back.

Finally, Art was able to pull him off of Austin, but it was too late. There was a concussion, broken teeth, a broken jaw and a broken relationship. A lot of guys stopped wanting to date Max after that, even if they were from out of town. Their reputations had spread that far. But even if they knew nothing about it, one trip home to see Max’s housemates was all it took. They were intimidated by Jenner and her close friendship with him. Maybe she should have killed the friendship then and there, after the brawl with Austin, but she didn’t. She’s stuck by Jenner even if part of her has never forgiven him.

Though Max understands how much Jenner resents having to live up to his friends’ and family’s possibly unresasonable expectations of him, and having to lie about being gay, the fact that he’s never been able to let anything go makes her afraid that one day, he’ll hurt someone else like he did with Austin. She imagines all of that anger turned on Brayden, whom she likes, and likes in not just a friendly way. She’s been hoping for more with Brayden. The thought of him giving himself, his body, over to Jenner to idly fuck and smack around for the sake of a stupid job—it makes her sick.

Maybe her feelings for Brayden are clouding her judgment. Maybe she’s totally got it wrong, but if she doesn’t…

“If he’s really doing this… I’ll kill ’im,” she growls.

“Jenner’s a lot bigger than you too, you know. You didn’t see how violent he got when I confronted him about Brayden. You can’t say anything, to either of them,” Art warns. “Let me do it. I can handle him if he picks a fight over it. Got it?”

Max’s eyes widen and fill with unshed tears, shaken with the idea that her best friend could secretly be a rapist.

“Got it?” Art presses when she doesn’t reply.

“Yeah. Yeah, I got it. I’m sure it’s nothing, and it’s all a big misunderstanding,” Max says. It sounds like a lie. She yanks her arm free and leaves him standing there. Pushing angrily through the kitchen door, she exits into the heavy gloom of the bar beyond.

The more Art watches Brayden—the tiredness written in his posture, the strain on his face, the way he’s careful not to look directly at Jenner unless he absolutely has to—the more convinced Art becomes that something bad is going on there. It’s all too easy to imagine what the consequences might be if Jenner got as frustrated with Brayden as he’d gotten with Art. Brayden, who’s a foot shorter than Jenner and a hell of a lot smaller in mass. Even if it was about lust instead of anger, it still came down to using physical intimidation to take control and make things go a certain way. Once Art consciously attunes himself to the energy crackling between his co-workers, the easier it is to feel it. The tension between Jenner and Brayden is so intense it’s like it has its own physical presence.

At the first lull in customer demands, Art walks up to Brayden where he’s restocking behind the bar a few feet away from Jackson. Brayden gives Art a sideways glance from the corner of his eye, but says nothing.

“Hey, can I talk to you a minute?”

“Sure,” Brayden murmurs without turning or stopping what he’s doing, “What’s on your mind?”

“Um, actually, can we talk in the break room?”

Brayden freezes and Art can see that he’s sensed something. Brayden’s hackles rise. He says to Art, “I’m a little busy right now. Maybe after I finish with this, okay?”

He’s blowing me off, Art realizes. “This is important.”
More important than restocking the damn shelves
, his tone conveys.

Brayden looks up at him, understanding, and says, “What’s this about?”

Art’s eyes flick momentarily toward Jenner at the far end of the room and away. Brayden sees and looks instantly stricken. “Excuse me,” he says, pushing past Art and walking quickly around the bar, toward the exit rather than the break room. Brayden runs from the prospect of speaking privately with Art about Jenner and it confirms every single one of Art’s suspicions.