Dirty Laundry (17 page)

“So your mom was—” It was a delicate conversation, one I didn’t think I could maneuver through without damaging Jae’s sensibilities. “Okay, your mom had an affair with a married guy and got knocked up. Now your uncle… third cousin… whatever… wants his grown son to step into the family business ’cause the original model is dead?”

“Yes.” Jae nodded. “Uncle’s sent my mother money to support Jae-Su. Now, she feels like he’s being taken away from her… and she’s going to lose whatever hold she has left over Uncle… and probably any money he’d been sending her. I don’t know… it’s
complicated
. How do I tell her I love men? Now? When it looks like I’m the only son she has left?”

Fucking hell. Jae’s mother already had a tenuous hold on reality. Losing a meal ticket would send her over the edge. Losing Jae, however, would kill me.

“So you came here to break it off with me.” Made sense in Jae’s mind. My guts weren’t too fond of the plan, but I had to admit to his logic. “Going to be honest with you, I’m kinda glad you couldn’t go through with it. What changed your mind?”

“I want to be happy, Cole-ah.” Resting his cheek on my arm, he stared up into my face. The old-fashioned lights along the walk were on, pouring a soft yellow glow through the living room windows. It softened the agony lines on his face, although not as much as the smile he gave me when he touched my face with his fingertips. “I want to be happy with you. I
want
… you’ve made me want things I can’t have, and now, when I feel like I’m losing everything… that I
have
to lose everything, you’re still here. Holding me. Loving me. And that hurts me, Cole-ah. As much as I love having you, it breaks me inside.”

It was time to be brave. Even if it broke me. I had to be… a man.

“Do you want me to let you go?”

Jae’s guileless brown gaze raked over my face, searching for something I didn’t know if he’d find. If he wanted me to let him go, I would. I was tired too. But if he needed me to be, I’d be strong enough to walk away. Or at least walk until he couldn’t see me. Then, I’d be able to stumble into the broken glass he’d left behind for me to fall on.

“No,
agi
.” Jae twisted in my lap, straddling my thighs. Placing his palms on my cheek, he kissed me.

After months of having him in my life, his kisses could still take my breath away.

When he was done, I decided breathing was really highly overrated.

“So, no, then?” I cocked my head, staring up at the pretty-faced, feral man who could only tell me he loved me in Korean. “Because I’m telling you, once you say
No, Cole, don’t let me go
, that’s a done deal. You’re never going to be able to get rid of me.”

He brought his lips close to mine so I could feel his mouth moving against mine and said, “No, Cole-ah, don’t
ever
let me go.”

This time, it was my kiss that stole the air from our lungs, and Jae somehow ended up underneath me and pinned to the couch. His hands were in my hair, twisting about and pulling me closer, refusing to let me up. Our tongues fought their own battle, ignorant of the explosive sex we’d already shared. My cock stirred, telling me it was ready for round two. I ignored it.

Sometimes, it was all about the kissing and cuddles. Especially when a certain feral Korean needed to be held.

“I need to be this man with you, Cole-ah. A man who loves men, and it scares me. It scares me so deep inside, I am cold from the fear of it, but,” he whispered in the deepening darkness, “I want to come home to you. When we’re here, I feel…
safe
. I feel wanted. You make me doubt when I’m happy because I feel like I can’t hold it inside of me. Being with you is like… my soul coming with happiness. Does that make any sense?”

“It makes total sense.” I bit his chin, getting him to laugh. “If it makes you feel any better, you make my soul come too.”

“Good to know I am not the only one, then.” He laughed again, a sharp sound but freer than I’d heard in a long time. “What am I going to do? My mother… this would kill her. I know it. Even if I’m not… Jae-Su, she depends on me.”

Mostly, I thought she used him for money, but that was my take on their relationship. “Is Tiffany going to stay with you?”

“No.” Jae shook his head. “She has to go back. She has school. But my mother, she’s not well.”

“If she wanted to stay… she can stay here with me… with us,” I offered, and even in the shadows, Jae’s glance drizzled hot sarcasm over my sincerity. “I’m serious. Hell, there’s enough room for both of your sisters. If you think your mom can’t be trusted with them anymore, we’ll move them in. Whatever you need.”

“And if I need to move someplace large enough for my sisters but not here, you’d be okay with that too?”

“No.” Making a face, I gave myself points for honesty. I wasn’t going to let myself feel elation. It burbled up from some fragment of hope I couldn’t seem to kill over the past week. Damned hope didn’t spring eternal. It grew like fucking kudzu in places I couldn’t reach. “But if that’s what you need, then yeah, okay. I’ll do that with you too.”

Jae would need time. He was always cautious, warily easing into something new after viewing it from all angles. The only time he lost himself was behind a camera… and when we were making love. As passions went, they were limited, but he threw everything he had into those moments. Seeing him lose control… and knowing I’d brought him there… fed my ego like nothing else did.

“You make me feel like being nothing to my family is worth it. I have to get used to that. I have to… learn how that feels.” He sniffed at himself and made a face. “Can… you make me some tea? Or should I shower first? I smell.”

“How about if you hop into the shower and I’ll bring you up your tea?” Leering at him, I waggled my eyebrows. “Or maybe we can just go have hot piggy-bunny sex in the shower, and then I can make you tea?”

“Piggy-bunnies do not have hot sex,” Jae grumbled, sliding off of me. I missed his warmth, but he was right. We were odiferous.

“If anything should have hot sex, it should be piggy-bunnies.” I stood, hugging him from behind and biting the velvety skin of his nape. “Bacon and rabbits. Both very conducive to the smexy. Come on. I’ll even show you where they got the word porking from.”

J
AE
left me with kisses and a promise to call me. He took my heart with him too, but that I didn’t mind. The Dr Pepper shirt I was beginning to miss, but he’d claimed it as his. He also left me the cat. The morning dawned, and other than my muscles aching from being stretched over Jae’s body, I was feeling pretty good.

“Don’t give me that look,” I told Neko when she came down to investigate my boots. “Your daddy came by. Fed you
again
, like you needed it. You’re going to sleep off that fat belly. You’re not even going to know I’m gone.”

She miaowed a complaint at me. It could have been about anything from the price of salmon to the state of my socks. With Neko, one never knew.

Bobby opened the door without knocking. He had a key and wasn’t too shy to use it. Leaning over to scritch the cat, he looked up the length of my legs, raking his gaze up my body until he got to my face, then smirked. “You had a booty call.”

“
You
have booty calls,” I grumbled, sitting down on the hallway bench to pull on my boots. “I make love. Especially where Jae’s concerned.”

“Did you call him?” The foyer light caught on the few silver strands in Bobby’s close-shorn hair. “Or did he call you?”

“Neither,” I admitted. “He was waiting for me on the front porch.”

“So, he pretty much knew it was a sure thing, then?” Bobby buffed his nails on his chest, posturing against the banister. His bulk blocked out most of the light I needed to see my shoelaces. I pinched him in the ass. I couldn’t get much meat through his jeans, but it was enough of a squeeze to get him to move. He shifted, but only to block more of my light.

“Dick.”

“Asshole,” Bobby countered. “You guys good, then? Kissed up and made it all better?”

“No, not… better.” I cocked my head to look at him. “Different. We’re in a different place now. He’s struggling still, but at least now he knows I’m there with him. It feels… stronger. More solid. My insides don’t have tentacles in them anymore.”

“Just don’t get hurt, kid. Jae’s too pretty for me to kick his teeth in. I’d feel bad.” Bobby’s rough, handsome face softened, and he smiled crookedly at me. “But could you hurry it up, Princess? We’ve got a woman to interrogate.”

“We’re not interrogating her,” I reminded Bobby. “I just want to ask Madame Sun a few questions and give her my condolences about Vivian. I tried calling her, but it goes straight to a messaging service. They told me she’ll be in but isn’t seeing anyone. She’s probably taking it pretty hard.”

Koreatown was becoming my second home. If my cases kept circling back to the Wilshire area, I was going to have to give a zip code discount. During the day, the area was a bit more businesslike, stashing away its glitter. Approaching early evening, the district was beginning to loosen up with small crowds of people walking to bars and restaurants.

We’d just passed by a twenty-four-hour dumpling soup place when Bobby hit me up for some information.

“Why am I coming with you, again? Other than you probably can’t drive because your dick’s been peeled off and it hurts to pee.”

“I wanted to see if you could ask anyone who works around Sun’s place if they’d seen anything funky,” I explained. “Kill two birds with one stone. I need to see if she knew about Eun Joon’s pregnancy or if Gyong-Si is connected to May Choi somehow but mostly to extend my condolences about Vivian. She’s probably not in the mood to talk much, if she’s there at all.”

“If she’s not, then you owe me some lunch.” Bobby steered around a lumbering MTS bus.

“If she is, I’ll still buy you lunch.”

“Nothing Asian. I want something with meat in it.”

“Dude, Korean food is practically all meat. They even put meat in the damned pancakes.” My stomach rumbled at the thought of a steaming
kimchijeon
.
“You have to
ask
for stuff without meat.”

Bobby stretched his mouth out to a satisfied half smile. “Excellent. Then Korean’s fine.”

“I should have gotten some flowers.” Fuck, it was the one rule Jae hammered into my head. Actually, it was pretty much a universal rule. Someone dies, you bring flowers. Or a casserole. When Rick died, I had enough frostbitten casseroles in my freezer to make pucks for an entire hockey league. “Do you give the boss flowers? Or do you ask for the family’s information?”

“I’d go with the family,” Bobby suggested. “Good way to find out if Vivian was seeing anyone too. She might have been dating someone connected to this. For all we know, she’s hooked up with someone who’s using Sun’s clients for easy marks.”

It was a good plan. A very good plan. Except for one little hiccup. By the time we got to Madame Sun’s salon, the cops had beaten us there, and someone from the coroner’s office was wheeling a dead body out of the building on a squeaky gurney.

“O
KAY
,
Princess,” Bobby sneered playfully as he parked. “Looks like you killed another one.”

“Fuck you,” I muttered, getting out of his truck.

Unlike Gyong-Si’s crayon-bright spa bungalow, Madame Sun saw her clients in a professional building off of Irolo and Wilshire. It was one of those tall blue glass buildings that made people nervous during an earthquake, casting a long enough shadow onto the street that the cheap fast-food restaurants living under its skirt never saw the light of day. The smell of garbage and fried potatoes greeted us when we hit the sidewalk, and I’d gone about four steps before one of Los Angeles’s finest stopped me.

She was a pert-bodied woman, a California blond with a tan and her hair pulled back in a ponytail under the uncomfortable hat some asshole bean counter thought would look sharp with the equally uncomfortable ill-fitting uniform. I could literally smell the new coming off of her, a blood-in-the-water scent most veteran cops sneered at, forgetting a time when they’d not worn the creases out of their street blues.

As I expected, Bobby’s sneer grew wider, especially when she squared off her shoulders and approached us, her hand on the butt of her weapon.

“You remember being that young?” he asked, jerking his chin at her.

“Remember? Fuck, I still am.” I met his smirk with one of my own. “You’re the old man. Not me.”

“Sir… I’m going to have to ask you—” She’d got that much out of her mouth when a familiar face broke away from the pack of cops milling around the building’s entrance and hailed Bobby.

“Dawson!”

The last time I’d seen Detective Dell O’Byrne, she’d busted my chops about one of Grace Kim’s victims. A tanned, lean woman with strong Latino features and dark, sharp eyes, she was a cop’s cop: no-nonsense and blunt. A cop either pulled their own weight or got out of her way. She was the kind of woman one expected to be wearing a bat cowl or wielding a golden lasso. If she were a man, Bobby would have been in love. As it was, she made me seriously consider switching teams.