Double Heat [Twin Ties: 3] (39 page)

“Good,” Tommy said, sounding more like a kid than anything. “Be sorry. You’ve had this coming. After ditching me. Ignoring me.
Breaking my fucking nose and running out on me again without saying anything!
”

Brennan felt Tommy’s dick pressing at his opening and cried out, trying to wriggle away or throw him off or turn over, but Tommy just held him down with a bruising grip and drove into him harder.

Brennan’s cry broke off. He wished he could deny what was happening, what Tommy was doing. His body wasn’t prepared or wet enough to allow it, but Tommy forced his way inside anyway, opening up small tears that had only recently begun to heal. Gasping harshly, Brennan tuned out Evan’s cries, wishing he could tune Tommy out, too.

“Please just stop,” Brennan choked out, breathlessly.

“He’s next, you know,” Tommy was saying. “You left me for him, so he gets to pay, too. If it wasn’t for him, you’d still be mine. You hurt me so bad, Bren. I have loved you so much. Don’t you see that? And you throw away what we had, for
him
? For a chance at some joke relationship with twins when what we had was real? You’re the bad guy here. You’re the one who gets off on hurting people.”

Each word was punctuated with a snap of Tommy’s hips. It felt like Tommy’s dick was covered in razorblades, like he was scraping at Brennan’s insides with each thrust. Brennan couldn’t stop staring at the gun. Alek was due home. That was a fact. He was going to walk in on this. And Tommy had a gun. Tommy had lost his fucking mind and Tommy had a gun. If he saw Alek, Tommy would shoot him. Brennan knew it instinctively. Tommy wasn’t thinking straight. All he understood were his own hurt feelings, and he didn’t have a firm grasp on what the consequences would be. Whenever they’d screwed around in Brennan’s old room, Tommy would talk real tough about getting one over on Maggie, but then would wear his guilt right on the surface as he left and desperately avoided having to look her in the eye. Being faced with her would snap him out of it.

But now Maggie was gone. They were the adults, not the kids. There were no parents headed home to scold them.

Brennan didn’t know what to do. He had no idea how to get Tommy to snap out of it, or how to spare Evan, or Alek.

He needed to get inside Tommy’s head. If he convinced Tommy he was agreeing with him, maybe Tommy’s anger would lessen. He would focus more on Brennan and less on the others.

“You’re right!” Brennan yelled. “I admit it, okay? I fucked up. Majorly. I just missed you so much, I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

“You didn’t miss me,” Tommy argued, sounding slightly more hurt than angry. “If you’d missed me, you would have called me back. Texted.
Something
.”

“I was embarrassed! I didn’t know what to say. I knew it was wrong to ignore you, but after I did it once, when Maggie’s funeral was still so huge in my mind, I didn’t know how to apologize. I always read your messages. I kept them saved on my phone. Each one.”

“No you didn’t.”

“I did! I swear! Everything in my life was different and some days all I wanted was to have you back, to have things the way they were.”

Tommy slowed down, just a little. Brennan kept talking, “Losing Mom, then losing
you
....”

“You’re just saying that!”

“No!”

“You... you really missed me?” Tommy asked, his movements halted.

“Of course I did! I missed you but I was stuck here. Your messages just reminded me of how much I’d lost when I moved away. That’s why I never replied. Everything was a fucking mess in my life once I got here. Can we talk? Please?” Brennan begged, trying to slow his labored breathing and racing heartbeat.

“Yeah, lemme finish and we can talk all you want.”

“But this is important, Tommy. We should have talked about this months ago. Please.”

“This is important too.”

“T-there’s lube right over—”

“Don’t
need
lube. You always loved rough sex. Try anything once, right? That’s what you’d always say.”

His hips pumped and Brennan grimaced, turning his face away, just bearing it to get through it. There were a few moments of relative silence as Tommy fucked him and Evan continued to shout around the gag. Brennan cried out softly at the pain.

The gun. What about the gun? What about Evan? Alek? What do I do?

Tommy’s pace quickened, his thrusts shallower, and Brennan knew he was close to coming. But what then? Would he still turn on Evan? Or would he let Brennan pretend to apologize and stroke Tommy’s ego?

With a sigh, Tommy climaxed, coming inside Brennan. Then, he pulled out, drawing a sharp cry at the awful, dry friction.

That’s when Brennan thought he heard the door, then footsteps on the stairs.

From far away, there was a quiet call of, “Ev?”

“W-we can talk now, right?” Brennan said almost frantically. “Let me see you. Is your nose okay? I’m so sorry, Tommy, for hurting you. Just please—”

“Shh!” Tommy shushed, finger to his lips. He reached for the gun and stood. “What was that?”

Another low call of, “You in here?”

“No! Tommy, please, let’s talk! You don’t want to go to jail, right? We can’t be together if you’re in jail! Don’t do anything stupid! Tommy!”

But Tommy was creeping to the door. Wild, primal sounds were coming from Evan, seeing the gun pointed at the door with Tommy’s finger on the trigger.

“Someone’s in here,” Tommy said, after Brennan heard more creaking of the floorboards.

“No! Tommy, don’t! NO!”

The door inched open, pushed by the unseen hand of the person out in the hall. Brennan struggled to get up. He couldn’t see clearly and it was so dark. He needed to run at Tommy, to knock him over, and his feet touched the floor just as the gun’s shot rang out.

“NO!” Brennan screamed. “NO! ALEK! NO!”

He found another burst of energy, driven by his profound terror of death and loss, with all of its finality. Brennan found his feet, got one glimpse of Tommy staring, disbelieving, at the gun in his hands, like he was finally realizing what he’d just done, that it wasn’t all just a game to prove a point.

Pushing off the floor, Brennan threw himself at Tommy with all of the strength left in his body. Tommy was thrown off balance and his skull collided with the dresser’s edge as he fell. Falling in a heap, he lay motionless.

“ALEK! ALEK!” Brennan shrieked, having staggered from the collision with Tommy. He rushed at the door, his hands still bound in the handcuffs, and kicked the door open the rest of the way.

He saw who it was, lying there in the hall, but couldn’t believe it, or understand. It wasn’t Alek.

Evan was screaming into his gag almost as loudly as Brennan, sobbing and struggling. Too stunned to speak, motionless with shock, Brennan looked out through the bedroom doorway and at the man bleeding copiously from a gunshot wound to the neck.

It took a few lost moments for Brennan to be able to turn and walk toward the landline phone on the nightstand. He picked the cordless phone up with his bound hands, turning his back to the nightstand to manage it, and felt his way to the numbers. It took a little while, but he managed it. It was only three numbers anyway. Then, he set the phone down on the bed and knelt by it.

“Please send an ambulance and the police. Someone broke in to our home and we’ve been tied up. Someone’s been shot. The intruder is knocked out right now, but he might wake up at any moment, so please hurry.”

That was as much as he could get out before the room began to blur and tip. The voice on the other end asked questions through the line, but he faded out, distracted by the pain in his body, Evan’s screaming, and the knowledge that someone was dying in the hall.

Losing consciousness, he slumped to the floor.

Chapter 32
Aftershocks

It took Evan a solid five minutes to inch forward mostly through sheer force of will. It was only a distance of two feet at most, between where he’d been and where he could manage a view through the doorway. Brennan was collapsed by the bed. Tommy hadn’t gotten up, but Evan anticipated his awakening at any moment.

All that mattered was getting a view through that doorway and listening for sirens.

When he finally had moved forward enough, Evan first saw a foot, wearing a boot, stuck out across the hall.

Alek didn’t have boots like that.

Possibilities filed through Evan’s head like a flipbook. Luka? Carter? Presley? Jimmy?

Who was shot? Who was dying?

He didn’t want to see the answer just as much as he needed to see it.

Evan inched forward a little more. Finally, he saw.

More than that, he understood, because there was something fallen out of Drew’s hand, lying on the floor of the hall. It looked like zip ties.

And Evan remembered Drew saying not to tell anyone, to keep their secret. If the cops had found his photos, and videos, threatening to charge him with child pornography, the person responsible was Evan.

Had he come to try to get Evan to drop the charges? Or had he simply just come to get Evan?

There was so much blood. Drew wasn’t moving, or blinking.

All of Evan’s muscles relaxed. He exhaled a heavy breath through his nose and closed his eyes, the tears squeezing out and sliding sideways.

Snippets of conversation played back in his memory as Tommy began to groan and sirens grew steadily closer, screaming at the dusk. It was a matter of luck. How many times had Jimmy or Charlie told him he’d had bad luck all of his life? It had followed him like a curse, threatening his health, his sanity, his family, his life—everything. And, it had all built up so much, it turned a corner, transforming into something else entirely.

When he heard the footsteps rushing up the stairs, Tommy was getting to his feet. Brennan was still passed out. Evan was completely immobilized.

The police came up the hall, cursing at the sight of the body on the floor, yelling for the paramedics even as other officers came in, guns drawn, yelling, “Freeze! Drop the weapon!”

Tommy had the gun in one of his hands, which was trembling. His eyes were wide, disbelieving. The gun fell to ground with a clatter. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.... I—”

Bodies swept around where Evan lay, as they cuffed Tommy and confiscated the weapon. The paramedics came in immediately after, stopping first at the body in the hall.

“In here too!” one of the officers yelled.

A female EMT came in and ran to Brennan while one of the officers cut the ropes binding Evan. They pulled the gag from his mouth and asked, “Son, are you all right? Are you hurt at all?”

“No,” Evan said, shifting to sit, wincing at the aches in his limbs. “But my brother...” he glanced Brennan’s way tearfully. “He was raped by that guy. His name is Tommy Koch. He shot that gun. He k-killed Drew.”

“I live here! This is my home! My family! Let me through! Please! Please, are they okay?!” It was Alek’s voice. Dread lifted from Evan, replaced by relief, some of the spell broken.

“Alek!!” Evan called hoarsely.

“That’s him! That’s the guy who was sending the messages! He threatened my boyfriend just a little while ago!”

Alek rushed through the doorway, standing aside as the police led Tommy from the room. All Evan could do was marvel at the self control keeping Alek from lashing out at Tommy in that moment, and how he just let Tommy pass instead. Maybe Alek could see things clearly enough to have some control, even then, not knowing what state he would find Evan and Brennan in. Because the bad luck had turned at last. Tommy had been caught red-handed and Drew was gone. It was done.

“Alek,” Evan cried, and Alek fell to his knees at Evan’s feet and embraced him. The EMTs were giving Brennan oxygen and speaking quietly to him. That meant he’d woken up. That was good.

“He hurt Brennan,” Evan said hoarsely. “Bren was so brave. Trying to talk him down. We thought... we thought it was
you
in the hall. That Tommy had....”

Alek sighed and held him tighter, caressing Evan’s head, keeping him anchored. “I’m right here. I’m fine. It’s gonna be okay. They’ve got him now. And Drew....”

“I can’t believe it. He didn’t deserve that, Alek!. No one does.”

“He came here to get you,” Alek told him. “He sent me messages, threatening messages, when I was on my way home. That’s why I was a little late. I called the detective to let him know.”

He pulled back to look Evan in the eyes. “He didn't deserve to die,” Evan insisted. “He never hurt anyone, he just... he's Drew. For a little while, h-he was all I had. He liked me.”

Alek kissed him with a sad look in his eyes, letting out another sigh. “I’m so glad you’re both okay. Nothing else matters.”

Luka came running from the hospital’s elevator with Jimmy right behind him, striving to catch up, though Luka was a hell of a lot faster.

Alek was glad to see him. Every step closer Luka got, the easier it was for Alek to breathe and the slower Luka ran.

“They’re okay,” he told his brother, who was crying, and had been crying for a while from the looks of him. Alek drew him into a hug as Luka clutched Alek fearfully to his chest. “They’re both okay. Brennan is being examined. His injuries are minimal. It’s mainly shock and a mild concussion. Evan is with him.”