Round and Round (17 page)

Lights by the dozens flashed outside Kevin’s office, where everyone was gathered away from the building.

“Damn, this is going to be harder than I thought,” Antonio said. “There are so many people.”

Kevin saw the managers herding people away from the building. “They take roll to make sure everyone is out. They would know if anyone’s there who shouldn’t be,” he said as Antonio pulled in and parked.

“Both of you stay here.” Antonio got out and strode up to the people in charge. Kevin watched through the window as Antonio spoke to others in uniform and then to a small group of the vice presidents before returning to the car. “He was here, but all the security protocols probably scared him off. It seems he couldn’t get very far into the building so he tried to set a fire in one of the lobbies. It was discovered and put out almost immediately by one of your coworkers. They’re going to send copies of the video once it’s retrieved.”

Kevin sighed. “Do they know the fire was set because of me?”

“No. I saw no reason to inform them of that. I only told them that I believed it was set by an arsonist we were looking for, and Camp Hill police have agreed to work with us.” Antonio sat back down and closed the car door. “I’m not as big a dick as everyone thinks I am.”

“You’re not a dick, I guess. Just grumpy,” Kevin said, and Angus started laughing.

“He has your number,” Angus said.

“I did hear that Officer Grumpy remark earlier.”

“There are worse things he could have nicknamed you,” Angus commented and then started laughing again.

“I am a police officer,” Antonio snapped.

“And I’ve seen you naked. Once that happens, you can be as grumpy as you like, but it doesn’t have the same effect.” Angus was teasing, but Kevin wasn’t sure how he felt about knowing that they’d been together. His hands clenched and he had to consciously keep his breath from hitching. He had no cause to be jealous of Antonio; things were clearly over between them.

“How long are we staying?” Kevin asked as he slid down the seat.

“The fire seems to be out, with little actual damage, from what you said,” Angus said.

“Yeah.” Antonio put the car in gear and slowly pulled away. “There isn’t anything else we can learn right now. You didn’t see the guy from the video, did you?”

“No. And if I got out, I’d be in a lot of trouble. The doctors said I should take it easy for a few days.”

“I need to get him home,” Angus said.

“All right. I’ll take you back to the station.”

The ride back to Harrisburg was quiet, and Kevin sat in the back with Angus, wondering how his life could have fallen apart in just a few weeks. Someone had tried to burn the club, then they’d set his home on fire and killed his friend. Now where he worked had been attacked. This had to stop. Kevin yawned and leaned against Angus. When they arrived at the station, they got into Angus’s car and went back to his house.

Kevin lay down on the sofa when they got upstairs and fell asleep quickly. He woke under a blanket with Angus in the nearby chair watching television with the volume turned low. Kevin rolled over, stretched, and curled under the blanket once again.

“Zach called. He said he’ll be here in a few hours. Apparently he and the guys are going to the club tonight.” Angus furrowed his brow. “I think he was asking if you’d like to go along, but I told him that wasn’t a good idea.”

“No. I need to rest, and going to the club wasn’t what the doctor had in mind for resting.”

“That’s what I thought, so I invited them here. Zach is bringing a video-game console of some sort, and he said he’d ask Jeremy to grab some snacks and stuff.”

Kevin smiled. “You don’t have to do that.”

Angus shrugged. “Get some rest.”

Kevin shifted his legs back on the sofa, and Angus came over. Before he sat, Kevin lifted his feet, and Angus settled them on his lap, then rubbed them. “That’s really nice.”

“Just relax and rest.”

Kevin closed his eyes and let himself wonder how in the hell he’d gotten so lucky. Sure, he’d lost a lot, but Angus had been there through it all—a guy he hadn’t known until that first fire at the club just a couple weeks earlier. “Why?” Kevin asked sleepily. “Why are you doing all this? It isn’t like I’m some great catch, and with all the drama surrounding me lately, I have to be more trouble than I’m worth.” He swallowed. “What if he decides to try to burn down your house? If whoever this guy is has been following me, then he knows I’m here, and he’s already tried to burn down all the important places in my life.”

“He’d be a fool to try,” Angus said. “I built this house a few years ago, and there are fire-suppression systems everywhere, including sprinklers and smoke alarms. I have a fire extinguisher on every floor, and a special alarm in the garage, since it’s on the first floor and I live above it. You’re as safe here as you can be anywhere.” Angus rubbed his feet and then up his leg, sending a shiver through him.

Kevin closed his eyes once again. “You still didn’t answer my real question.”

“Maybe because it doesn’t deserve an answer. You seem to think you aren’t good enough or that there’s something wrong with you and you don’t deserve to be happy, and I don’t understand that.”

“It’s not that. The guys I like either don’t like me or they don’t stay around too long.” Kevin kept his eyes closed. It was easier talking about this if he couldn’t see Angus’s face. “I used to have a crush on Harry, Bull’s partner in the club. I thought he was interesting, but Harry really liked Tristan, and rather than seeing me, he actually waited Tristan out and helped him when Tristan needed to get rid of the guy who turned out to be a drug dealer. The two of them are happy, and as part of the whole adventure, I met Ken. He was with the police, and he was pretty hot, but he moved away.” Kevin pulled his feet back, ready to get up, but Angus held him still.

“You think my life has been a bed of roses? I’m a firefighter. It’s what I love to do. But guys aren’t particularly interested in someone who works for a solid week, can get called in at just about any time, and who might not come home. It’s a dangerous job, and most people can’t take it. So for me, it was always easier to just have simple relationships that never went too far.”

“Is that the only reason?” Kevin asked, and when Angus turned to him, the darkness in Angus’s eyes told him there was a lot more to it. He’d seen that look a few times before, and each time Angus had turned away and hadn’t talked about it. “What happened? Is it about your family?”

“I don’t have any family. Not anymore,” Angus whispered and released Kevin’s feet.

Kevin could feel Angus pulling away from him as they approached the same point where Angus had lashed out on their first date. Kevin waited and wondered how Angus was going to react.

“Can you just tell me what happened?” he asked.

“I don’t like to talk about it,” Angus said.

“Yeah. There are things I hate to talk about too, but I did it anyway, because you asked. So I’m asking. What happened to you?” Kevin sat up and took Angus’s hand. “You’re so strong all the time, but it’s okay to be vulnerable sometimes, especially with people you care about.”

Angus shook his head, and Kevin pulled his feet away, slowly standing. He checked the time and yawned once again. “You’re supposed to be resting,” Angus said as Kevin put the blanket over the back of the sofa. “If I tell you what you want to know, will you sit back down?”

“I keep wondering what could be so bad that you’d hide it like this. Did you kill someone?”

“No.”

“Get arrested for something stupid, like streaking at a soccer game?”

Angus smiled. “Where did that come from?”

“I don’t know, but it made you smile.”

“I don’t like to talk about it. That’s all. It isn’t as though I did anything. I grew up in Scotland, at least until I was sixteen. We lived in Edinburgh in a small house. My dad owned a pub, and he provided pretty well for us. It was good and I was popular with the other kids because… my dad owned a pub.”

“What happened?” Kevin asked.

“I was staying with a friend. He’d invited me for a sleepover. When I got up the next morning, his mom was there. She sat me down in the lounge and told me that there had been a fire during the night, and that my mom and dad—” Angus’s voice broke. “I can hear her even now trying to tell me through gasps and near sobs that my parents had both been killed. One of the pieces of kitchen equipment had apparently caught fire, and they didn’t make it out.”

Kevin swallowed. “Is that why you became a firefighter?”

“Yes. Part of it, I think. I always wondered if things would have been different if I’d been there. I might have been able to get them out.”

Kevin sat down next to Angus. “You were a kid. Now, I have no doubt that you’d have saved them like you saved me. But then, you could have been killed too.”

“So many times I wish I had been,” Angus whispered. “After Mom and Dad died, there were no relatives in Scotland. My mom was an only child, but my dad had a brother who lived in Carlisle. So he came over and took me back with him. I was sixteen and ended up moving partway around the world. I’d lost my parents and then everything else I knew. The kids here picked on me because I talked funny. So I worked hard to lose my accent and try to fit in. I was strong and athletic, so that helped, but it was still hard. Then, of course, I realized I liked guys instead of girls, and that made things even worse.”

“What about your uncle? Did he understand?”

Angus sighed. “I don’t know. I never told him. Uncle Thad was good to me and treated me well. He was a supervisor in a trucking warehouse, and he worked hard. He never married, and he never talked about anyone he might have loved. As far as I know, he was a bachelor and stayed that way his entire life. Now I wish we’d talked about it, but we didn’t.”

“Where is he now? Can we visit him?”

Angus shook his head. “He died when I was twenty.”

“How?” Kevin breathed and then stopped. The anguish in Angus’s eyes told the story. “No way.”

“Yeah. I was away at college. Mom and Dad had left some money, but Uncle Thad didn’t use any of it. He said it was so I could have a good start in life. Anyway….” Angus shook his head slightly. “I was going to business school. Uncle Thad had said that I should do whatever I wanted and that my mom and dad would be proud of me. I was at school, in class, when I got a call from the police. Uncle Thad had had a massive heart attack. They found him in the basement. He had been dead a few days, and he’d died all alone with no one to help him.”

“Jesus,” Kevin breathed. “So you quit college….”

“…and became a firefighter. Just like that. There was no question. I had to stop other people from going through that if I could.”

“Is that why you rushed back into the building to save me?”

“I guess so. Maybe. Going back in to get you was a gut reaction. I didn’t think about it, I just raced back inside.”

“So you’d have gone back in for anyone?” Kevin asked. He’d thought that he might have been special and that was why Angus had saved him, but maybe he’d been reading things wrong and Angus had just been doing his job. Of course he’d been doing his job. Kevin knew he was being a ninny and kind of stupid but couldn’t stop the disappointment.

“I kept thinking I needed to save you,” Angus said. “I couldn’t let you die, not if there was a chance. So I raced back inside.” Angus leaned closer and slipped his arms around Kevin’s waist. “I acted like such an ass when I got mad at you during our date. You were asking about my family, and I don’t talk about them because I don’t have any. They’re all gone, and instead of saying I didn’t want to talk about it, I got huffy. Then afterward you didn’t call, and I got worried, so I was going to come see you, maybe bring flowers,” Angus smiled. “But then I got the call, your building was on fire, and you weren’t outside.”

“So you rushed in to try to save me.”

“Yeah, I did.” Angus rested his head on Kevin’s shoulder. “Of course I wasn’t fast enough and you nearly died from the smoke, and we both could have died when the building collapsed.”

“You know it’s okay to be scared. Hell, I’m scared of stuff all the time. Every time I meet someone, I keep wondering when they’re going to leave.”

“And I wonder when they’re going to die in a fire,” Angus retorted.

“Okay… you win,” Kevin quipped, hoping to lighten the mood. “But since I’m the one who would have to die in a fire for you to lose me, I guess we both win… or in this case lose.” Kevin’s head began to spin. “I’ll stop babbling now before you think I’m totally stupid.” Kevin leaned back against Angus. “When were the guys going to come over?”

“Zach said about six. They were going to bring food with them.”

“Lord. That means enough junk food and chips to feed an army… and nothing else.”

“I have stuff here,” Angus said.

“So were you a Boy Scout?”

“No. We didn’t have that near where I grew up. But I like to be prepared anyway.” Angus stood slowly and then guided Kevin until he was lying on the sofa once again. “Rest some more. Give those lungs a chance to heal, and I’ll get things ready for your friends.”

“I’m not sleepy anymore.”

“Then watch television, though how you can find anything on that isn’t drivel is beyond me. But you’re welcome to try.” Angus leaned over the sofa and kissed him. Kevin put his arms around his neck and held on, deepening the kiss until he felt like he was going to cough.

“You said you never got serious with anyone. But I want to know why any of them let you go. You’re kind, sweet, gentle, and really easygoing.” Kevin breathed as levelly as he could with Angus’s lips just inches from his. “You’re also super sexy and hot.”

“I didn’t give them much of a choice, I guess,” Angus answered.

“Will you give me a choice when the time comes?” Kevin asked. If that was Angus’s pattern, then Kevin figured it was only a matter of time before Angus returned to it. “How long before you decide I’m not worth it and toss me away along with the others?”

Angus straightened up and turned away. “I’ve never told anyone about my parents and uncle before.” That was the only answer Kevin got before Angus left the room, and a few minutes later Kevin heard him working in the kitchen. He took Angus’s response as a minimal reassurance. If Angus was willing to open up to him, then maybe there was hope.