Dirty Kiss (35 page)

I lingered long enough to brush the back of my hand against his smooth cheek. I’d teased him about not growing facial hair, wondering aloud if he was old enough to be in my bed. He’d shoved me down and shown me how wicked his mouth could be when he put his mind to it, and I moved slowly, feeling a slight bruising along the inside of my thighs left by his teeth. Kissing the back of his neck, I let him sleep, sliding from the bed and shushing Neko when she mewed at me.

My bed was empty when I got out of the bathroom, and the smell of coffee came from downstairs. I thanked God for Jae’s domesticity as I dressed quickly, then grabbed my Glock from its lock box. Jae was right. There were too many people dying around us, and while I wasn’t planning on a shootout at the OK Corral, I’d feel more comfortable with my gun under my jacket. The Widow Kim probably killed Park when he became unnecessary. I didn’t have any illusions that she’d find any use for me.

I was greeted with a full mug. Then Jae-Min kicked me in the balls before I’d even had a sip of coffee. Or at least it felt like he did, then punched my teeth out for good measure. I set my mug down on the kitchen counter hard, almost burning my hand when hot coffee sloshed out.

“What did you say?” It seemed like an innocent question, certainly not controversial enough to earn me Jae’s wary gaze as we moved around the kitchen. “I wasn’t sure I heard you?”

“They’re releasing my SUV today,” he mumbled around his mouthful of tea. “So I’m going to go looking for a place to live.”

“I’m not good enough to live with now?” It was petty of me, but I was fighting a bellyful of pissed off, and Jae’s resigned sigh didn’t help matters. I knew he wasn’t going to live with me. In the back of my head, I’d known he’d be leaving, but I wasn’t ready for it. Certainly not when it looked like someone seemed to be killing off everyone Hyun-Shik knew.

“You knew I can’t….” He took a breath and turned, resting against the kitchen counter. His mug joined mine, steaming, squat towers on grey granite. Jae rubbed at his face, running his fingers through his hair and pulling at the ends before answering me. “I can’t live with you. It’s too… hard… too soon… just too everything. Being here is complicated.”

“For you,” I said. “It’s only complicated for you in your head. For me, it’s fine.”

“I’m not going to leave until you feel I’m safe,” he said softly, tucking his fingers into his jeans pockets. “But I have to get my life going again, Cole.”

“And what about us?” I moved in to straddle his legs, placing my hands on either side of his hips to lean into him. “Where does that put us?”

“Us?” He licked his upper lip and stared at me. “What us is there? Do you know? Can you tell me? Neither one of us said anything about forever. We don’t even talk about right now.”

“Then let’s talk about the right now.” I clenched my mouth shut and forced my anger down. He was back to cold, a glacial front to my heat, and if I didn’t turn down my temper, he’d close me out. Jae put his hand on my stomach and tried to push me back, but I refused to budge. His body tightened, angling hard as he tilted his jaw up. “No, I’m not going to let you run away from this.”

The cant of his head was defiant, and if I’d gained any common sense where Jae was concerned, I’d have backed off, but I wasn’t willing to give in. “Fuck you. I’m not running away from anything.”

I hissed, fighting not to spit angry words back into Jae’s face. Growling, I took a breath and closed my arms tighter around his waist, cupping the small of his back. He was rigid, standing on the balls of his feet as if prepared to take me in the ring. Forcing myself to look at him, I swallowed hard, and his breathing hitched.

“Talk to me about this.” My nerves were shaken, and I wanted to touch Jae’s face, but there was a good chance he’d bite my fingers. “You can’t go back to that area. It’s a shithole.”

“I’m going to look for something around here, if you want me to,” he replied, exhaling hard. “Someplace cheap where I can have Neko.”

“Around here would be good,” I said, somewhat relieved, but the pissed still rankled my gut. “And I don’t know what you mean by complicated.”

Jae bit his lower lip. “I don’t know. It’s confusing sometimes. I think I need some time to figure out what we are doing with each other.”

“I thought I’ve been pretty clear on what I’ve been doing to you.”

“No jokes, hyung,” He cautioned with narrowed eyes. “I’m serious. Being with you makes me forget who I am and what I should be doing. I don’t like this confusion. It would be easier for me to walk away from you and pretend I never was here.”

“Then why don’t you?” I asked softly and held him tighter when he tried to break free from my arms. “I’m not looking for an argument. I’m serious. You know there’s something between us. What’s wrong with seeing where we go? Suppose it’s something solid? Do you want to give up on that?”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Jae replied calmly. “You’re asking me to give up my family.”

“I’m not doing that….”

“You are,” he insisted. “If my mother finds out I’m gay, then she’ll turn me out of the family. I’ll be nothing to them, and no one from the rest of my family will acknowledge me. I’d be dead to them.”

I remembered Joshua Yi saying that about his cousin, and I struggled to comprehend. “Other people get cut out of their families’ lives and they do fine. If they don’t accept you as you are, then they don’t know the real you.”

“Who I am isn’t important to me, Cole. Not like it is to you.” He looked frustrated. “I can’t hurt my mother that way. Without me, she has to scrape by. Jae-Su doesn’t give her any money, and my sisters are teenagers. They need things. I can’t be selfish like that.”

“So your mother will turn her back on you even if you’re the one sending her money to live?” It seemed too stupid to be true. “She’d be cutting her nose off to spite herself.”

“It wouldn’t matter. She’s very traditional. In her world, I couldn’t be acknowledged as family,” Jae replied slowly. “Auntie holds it over my head all the time. Every time they need something, I’m there. I have to be. I owe her for her silence.”

“Your aunt’s a hypocrite. Her son was found dead in a private club that caters to gay men. Did she think he went there to watch the show?”

“Hyun-Shik was her only son. She can forgive him for that because he kept it from her sight, or she blamed others. If I lived here with you, what would we do when my mother calls or comes down from the Bay Area? You could stand it for maybe a few months, and then you’d hate me for shoving you into the closet. It’s not fair to you.”

“It’s not fair to you either. That’s a lie, baby.”

“You don’t understand, and I don’t expect you to. You’re too white. You think that everything should be how you want it to be and damn everyone else. I can’t be like that. I don’t think that way. That’s what you’re asking me. You want me to think and be like you, and I can’t. I need… time.”

“Yeah, I get that.” I tried to wrap my head around being tied to people so unwilling to bend their hearts for me. Even in the silent battle with my father, I knew he asked Mike about me, hoping I’d come to my senses and fall in love with a girl. I had friends whose families threw them out, but they found others to call brother or cousin. Jae talked as if he was falling into an abyss. “So that’s it? We’re too different?”

“I don’t know.” At least he was upfront with me. I hated it, but he was honest. “I need to figure out what I’m going to do. I don’t know.”

“What is there to know?”

“Are you with me because you’re getting over Rick?” Jae cocked his head, and I took half a step back. “You can’t talk about what he was like, and it’s been years since that guy killed him. I don’t know if you are with me because I am like him or because I’m nothing like him.”

“I never….” I stopped myself. I didn’t know what to say without sounding like I compared the two of them in my head. They were contrasts, but wasn’t that how it should be? “Shouldn’t I move on with someone that’s different?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Rick’s always there with you… somewhere. I don’t think you’ve let go because you haven’t had to. Now you might have to, and I don’t want you to hate me for it later. If I give up my family for you, is it going to bite me in the ass later because you resent me? Then where would I be?”

“Okay.” Sighing, I stepped back away from the counter. A part of me hurt. I couldn’t tell if it was my gut or my chest, but the ache throbbed and pulsed. “Time I can give you. Space? I don’t know. I don’t want you to walk out that door and not come back.”

“I can’t promise that I won’t one day.” More of Jae’s honesty dug spikes into my guts, leaving me helpless. “But it won’t be now. I want to be happy for a little bit. Even if it’s not real.”

“This is
very
real, Jae.” I stood in front of him. When he reached out to touch my stomach with his fingertips, I nearly lost all sense of control. My cock wanted him wrapped around me, and my heart wanted him to take up residence. I was turning into a girl, and if I wasn’t careful, I’d be picking out china patterns and curtains. “This feels good. We feel good. You know? It feels right. Tell me it’s not good between us.”

“It is,” he agreed softly. “It would be better if it was just sex and I could walk away from you, but I can’t. So please, let me take a step back. I’m not going away, Cole. I promise I’m not. Not now.”

“That’s all I can ask, then,” I grunted. I wasn’t willing to let him go, but I could give him some room. “Just keep talking to me. Don’t just walk away. No matter what, promise me that, okay?”

“Okay.” Jae nodded. “But if things get bad, you have to swear to me you’ll stop looking for Hyun-Shik’s murderer. I don’t want you to die because of me.”

“How much worse can it get?” I bent over to steal a kiss, and his mouth tasted like chai tea, hot, with cloves and cinnamon. “I’m like a roach. Whoever it is has thrown everything at me, and I keep coming back.”

“Just be careful,” he warned me, shoving me aside with a hard poke. “Even roaches die when someone hits them hard enough.”

Firing
up the rental, I stared at the ruin of my front lawn, the bushes blackened as if God had visited to drop off a bunch of stone tablets. The scorched grass was clear of any debris, and someone, probably one of Claudia’s horde, had made a halfhearted attempt to cut away the damage but gave up after a few clips. The lawn was a lost cause.

“Everything’s going to have to be replaced.” I stared at the battered front of my business and home. I’d purchased the beaten-down building to give myself something to work on as I tried to get over Rick’s death. The scar on my chest itched, and I rubbed at it, thinking.

My sweat covered nearly every square inch of the building. I’d bled and cursed over every piece of wood and nail, and the plaster probably had my spit in it too. God knew I’d eaten enough of the damned stuff. The porch tilted slightly where I’d not gotten a beam in perfectly straight, but for all of its flaws, it was mine.

Only mine.

It was time I embraced that.

Tears stung my eyes, and I blinked, trying to get both the memory and the wet from my lashes. No matter what I did, the two men I’d loved in the past were forever going to be bound together in death. I couldn’t think of one without mourning the other as well.

Jae was right. I was fucked in the head.

I let the engine idle, listening to the soft slush of traffic from the streets around me. A misting drizzle coated the windshield, not enough to turn on the wipers but thick enough to leave tiny droplets on the glass. It was the perfect kind of morning to sit and drink coffee, cuddled up under a blanket or on the couch. Instead, I was going to visit a woman who I suspected killed her husband, all for the man I’d left sleeping in my bed.

Scrubbing at my lashes with my hand, I forced myself to relax. I missed Rick. My heart missed him, but the gut-wrenching ache in my body was gone. I’d built the building to please a dead man, painting the walls in Rick’s favorite colors as if he were going to come through the door and gasp in delight at what he saw.