Double Heat [Twin Ties: 3] (17 page)

Two thick fingers had brushed back and forth over his opening, through his ass crack. They wriggled at it, moving rapidly back and forth while pressing gently.

“I don’t like it. It feels weird,” Evan had said, clenching up.

“Don’t get tight on me, now,” Drew scolded. One finger pressed harder at the clenched muscle, parting it. Evan grunted hard, head falling back, his stomach a riot of anxiety. “See? Not so bad, huh?”

Drew had only ever put a fingertip in Evan, since he could tell Evan didn’t like it. There was always the sense that Drew was trying to get Evan used to the fingering, so he’d ask Drew to do more. But he didn’t. He never liked it. It felt wrong in ways the touching didn’t.

Backing out of the memory, Evan told Jimmy, “Yeah, scared of a lot of things. The camera was one.” For a moment, it all overwhelmed him a little. He tried to take a drink of the water, then had to set the glass down. His hands were too unsteady to keep holding it. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Sorry I’m laying all of this on you again.”

“There’s no reason to apologize or feel bad about this. This isn’t your fault. None of it is. It has never been your fault, Evan. He’s the one who took advantage of you. He knew you were a child with a father who was never around as often as he should have been, a child who wanted so badly to trust someone and have someone be nice to him, and used that to his advantage.”

“What if he still has the pictures?”

“They’d be evidence of what he’s done to you.”

“But he could show them to someone. He could show them to anyone!”

Jimmy took a deep breath, then seemed to brace himself as he asked, “What’s in the pictures? Is it just you? Or both of you? If he’s in some of them, that would be even more proof he was the one involved.”

Clamming up a little, feeling like a terrible, disgusting person, Evan rubbed his arms. “I want a beer or something. Can I—”

“Come on. You’re doing really well.”

“Fine. Okay. Yeah, he’s in some. He would act like he was showing me how to suck cock, for my own benefit. He would always take pictures and video of that. It was bad. I hated it. He said it was practice, and if I ever wanted a boyfriend, I had to figure it out, fast.”

Evan glanced over at Jimmy.

“Go on. Say it. Say it out loud. I know you’re thinking it.”

“That means we can get him,” Jimmy said, the words tumbling out like they’d been just spinning and spinning around Jimmy’s head. “Not just for possession. That’s statutory rape.”

“I don’t wanna get him,” Evan said urgently. “I just want to feel safe. I want to not have to worry about hiding this shit anymore. It’s not like he was the only one.”

“I’m glad Alek and Luka make you happy. I’m glad you have Brennan. You know that,” Jimmy explained. “But this is too much to keep from them. That’s why you came here, right? Because I’m the only one who knows. You can’t hide something this big from them.
You shouldn’t have to
. Not if they love you as much as they say they do. Let them help you feel safer. Please. Just consider it? I will always be here when you need to talk, but they’re supposed to be your partners. They’re the ones with you every day, trying to make sure you’re all right.”

Evan stood and started to pace a little. “I need to get back. He thought I was just picking something up. I left right in the middle of....” The words trailed off as he realized how weird it must have seemed to Alek for Evan to take off when Alek had just experienced something unsettling and was only beginning to get over it. “Fuck. I have to go.”

He went to the door and stopped.

“I’ll know if you call him. Alek. To ask for the name. And if you force me to explain this to them before I’m ready, I’m not sure I could forgive you. So please, let me do this my way. After I tell them, I’ll give you his name.”

Softly, Jimmy replied, “You’ve promised me that before. You remember that, don’t you? It was just a few days before I found you lying in that field, not breathing and with the empty pill bottles scattered around you.”

“Yeah, I remember. You’ve got some leverage over me now, though. All I’m asking for is a little time.”

Jimmy nodded. Evan opened the door.

“Evan, stay away from that guy. I mean it.”

“No problem.”

He closed the trailer’s door and hurried back to his car, knowing he had to get home.

Before he started to drive, he dialed Alek.

“Hey, I’m really sorry for leaving but I’m on my way back now. There’s another store near Jimmy’s on the way home. You want me to grab the stuff we didn’t get before? It’s not a problem.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” Alek relented. “But come right home after, okay? I kind of need you right now.”

“I need you too. Okay. I’m coming. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

Chapter 14
Meant to Be

When Brennan woke up, Hailey was out at a yoga class, but had left a note for him, on the coffee table beside the couch. It encouraged him to sleep in and get some rest, saying they could go out for brunch and talk once she returned.

Though he appreciated Hailey trying to help, there was only one place Brennan wanted to be that morning.

He got dressed, grabbed his phone, wallet and keys and left the apartment, using the spare key Hailey had lent him to lock up.

A detour to a coffee shop provided some breakfast fuel. He sat eating a few bites of bagel while his coffee cooled off, collecting his thoughts. He remembered several birthday mornings where he’d find his mom sitting in the kitchen, staring blankly at the only thing on the table in front of her—her phone. He’d never understood it, chalking it up to loneliness, wishing there was more family to call and send their wishes along to her. Now he knew why she’d done it. In fact, he found himself staring at his phone, too, as he sat there, thinking of Evan just like she had done.

He knew he should call, just like Maggie had known she should call. There was not the heavy weight he’d seen behind her gaze, a thousand crushing pounds of grief, regret, and lost years with her baby boy. For Brennan, there was only yearning.

It would have been better if Evan was with him. It would have been so much easier to manage the painful realizations that he no longer belonged to his old town, his old friends and life. Slowly, he was carving out a new family, a new support system in Pennsylvania, but that in-between tension made him feel stretched thin, like he didn’t really belong anywhere.

That wasn’t true, though. There was somewhere he would always belong, but he couldn’t keep relying on Evan to enable him to get him through this visit. It wasn’t fair to him. It had been Brennan’s choice to go back to Monroe for Maggie. All he really needed to do was follow through on his promise, to visit her one more time, give her some more daisies, then start the long trek back up the country to his real home.

Maybe his life did suck, but it was all he had. He couldn’t change what had happened, and refused to forsake the men he loved so very much. It didn’t matter if other people didn’t understand. It worked for him, and that was enough.

The coffee was still too hot to drink, so after an abbreviated call to Alek just to check in, Brennan got moving again. He stopped by a flower stand in town, near the hospital where Maggie had received so many treatments, getting her fresh, beautiful daisies. Then it was on to the cemetery.

It was quiet there, with hardly any other visitors or groundskeepers around. There was one elderly woman maybe a quarter mile away, past rows and rows of stones, but then she, too, got back in her car and drove away. Then he was alone.

He scalded his tongue on a few careful sips from his steaming cup, then got out of the car, bringing the flowers with him.

After adding them to the flowers from the day before, he stood there, wishing he could bring himself to sing to her. There just was no way he could. There was nothing joyous and celebratory in what he felt. He just missed her so much.

Closing his eyes, he tried to recall a happier memory, before she’d gotten sick, before he’d gotten so angry. He went back in his mind, through the years and so many birthdays, yet somehow not enough. Not nearly.

“You should be here,” he said. “You should have been here, with us. Both of us.”

“I don’t know, Bren, maybe it’s better that she’s not.”

Brennan’s heart stopped, startled to hear a reply. He knew that voice.

Spinning around, backing up a step, he saw Tommy Koch walking swiftly closer, his car parked in the road by Brennan’s, just behind it.

“Sorry, maybe that was mean. Hey, Bren,” Tommy said with a grin. “It’s really good to see you.”

“Fuck,” Brennan breathed, taking backward steps just to get farther away, driven by instinct.

“Well, if you insist,” Tommy teased, coming even closer. He glanced around at the empty grounds, but then brought his gaze right back to Brennan. It swept up and down his body.

“Get out of here!” Brennan said, his voice hoarse with shock and emotion, his mind still too full of Maggie. He felt repelled by how much he didn’t want to be facing Tommy, but he couldn’t step too far away from Maggie’s grave. Strangely, he felt the need to protect her from him. “You can’t be here! How did you know I’d—”

“How did I know? Come on, Bren. You’re kind of predictable,” Tommy said easily, looking as perfect as ever. His white, straight, toothpaste-commercial teeth gleaming with his All American Boy smile. He tossed his dark brown hair back out of his eyes. “It’s her birthday, right? That’s why you’re here. In Monroe. At the cemetery. I was having coffee, right over there.” He pointed at some stores located across a busy road from the cemetery’s gates. “Waiting for you to show. Since you won’t call me back or anything, I knew I had to see you in person. You know June? Hailey’s friend? They both go to that yoga class. She saw you hadn’t gone with Hailey, and were likely on your own. Here. June and I hang out. She’s pulling for us, Bren. She knows how in love we are, how we’re meant to be together.”

“No, this isn’t happening.” Brennan moaned, holding his head, wanting to leave. He didn’t want to be with Tommy there, in Maggie’s final resting place. It was wrong. It was awful. “We’re not together anymore, Tommy. I know you’re not this delusional.”

Tommy’s smile faltered, and that was even worse, because then Brennan could see what was beneath it. Too many months of failing to reply, to answer, to do anything, had made Tommy angry. And Brennan knew it was always really bad when Tommy was angry with him.

Brennan’s phone and keys were in his hand. The yoga pants he was wearing didn’t have pockets, so he’d had to carry everything from the car with the flowers. Tommy spied the phone and grabbed it. Right away, he started to tap at it, unlocking it and poking around.

“Give that back,” Brennan said. “You have no right to look through that! What’s wrong with you anyway? Just leave me alone!”

“But you know I love you, Bren,” Tommy countered. “We’re meant to be. We always talked about going to school together, getting our own place. We can do that now! I know you’re going through this phase, running away, acting out. Once you get over the whole thing with Maggie, you’ll come back to your senses. It can all still happen. We can still have everything we talked about.”

Brennan had to laugh, even though he wanted to cry, or run, or disappear into thin air. “That was
your
fantasy, Tommy! Not mine. I didn’t mind you saying that stuff before, when we were together, because everything with Maggie sucked so much. I liked to think there could be something to look forward to, after. But we broke up! We’re not together anymore!”

“What’s this?” Tommy held up the phone. It showed a photo of Alek and Luka sitting on either side of Brennan, each of them kissing one of his cheeks.

Brennan’s stomach sank. He felt cold all over.

“Give it back.”

“There are a
lot
of pictures of these guys in here,” Tommy commented with dull amazement, like the joke was on Brennan, which it kind of was. He tossed the phone away carelessly. It ricocheted off of a headstone with a splintering crack. “Gee, I’m sorry, Bren,” he said sarcastically. “I think I might have broken it.”

“Tommy, I don’t want to do this with you. I’m not your boyfriend anymore, okay? I haven’t been for
months
. You don’t have any right—”

“You’re fucking both of them, aren’t you?” Tommy laughed. “
I know you
, you know. I know how you are. Can’t help offering up that ass to anyone who’s somewhat interested. I really had my hands full with you in school, keeping people away, making sure they knew you were mine.”

“Don’t,” Brennan pleaded, as Tommy stepped closer, wrapping a hand around Brennan’s hip and another around the back of his neck. Brennan tried to squirm free, but Tommy was bigger and persistent as hell. Plus, that anger was there, underneath. It was a cold glint in his eyes, meanness in his touch as he grabbed too hard, too rough.

“I can’t stand by and let you turn into a
whore
,” Tommy said, then smiled a handsome, perfect smile, speaking in that same condescending tone. “Your brother was in those pictures. Did you watch those other twins fuck your brother, too?”

Brennan felt himself go pale and start to shiver.

Leaning in, Tommy whispered, “You’re not fucking your
brother
, are you, Bren?”

Tommy looked at him, his reaction, and that cold fire burned like ice in his blue eyes, like he’d just found some fuel to keep it going. When Tommy started to laugh, Brennan felt tears well up.

Tommy’s hand pushed greedily down inside the back of the yoga pants to palm Brennan’s bare ass, groping it.

“Stop.”

Sniffing Brennan’s hair, Tommy said, “Missed your blond hair. Missed how fuckable you look in these damn yoga pants you love so much.”

The hand at the back of Brennan’s neck gripped tightly enough to bruise, clamped down around the top of his spine to keep him from going anywhere as the hand in his pants pulled at the muscle of his cheeks, the fingers questing sharply inward.

Brennan shoved at Tommy’s chest, then tried to get his hands up around Tommy’s throat or to go for his eyes. He was too close to get a knee up between his legs. They started to wrestle. Tommy blocked Brennan’s hands, let go of his neck and pulled his hand out of the yoga pants to grab Brennan’s wrists.