Signs of Life (7 page)

Finally, finally they finished and Kai threw his arm across his eyes, listening as Loren cajoled the twink out of bed, helped him on with his clothes and then sent him on his way. Loren made a stop in the bathroom, water running briefly, before he came back in and threw himself down next to Kai in bed, wriggling under the covers.

“You better not be getting spooge all over my sheets,” Kai grumbled, shoving at Loren with his foot. Loren grinned.

“All cleaned up,” he said comfortably, opening his arms in invitation. Kai glared at him for a moment and then sighed, scooting over and putting his head on Loren’s big chest, feeling him put his arm around him.

“Did you have a good time tonight?” Loren rumbled, rubbing Kai’s back.

“I did, but at the same time it kind of sucked,” Kai said sleepily. “Guy turned out to be a real asshat.”

“Sorry, baby,” Loren murmured, sliding his hand lower and squeezing Kai’s ass.

“Stop it. Didn’t you get enough, ‘Daddy’?” Kai huffed.

Loren squeezed his ass again, chuckling. They lay there in silence for a few minutes until Kai said, “I meant to ask you earlier. How is Elise doing?”

Loren sighed heavily, pushing Kai away and sitting up. “Not too well. We’re all pretty fucking worried about her.”

A few weeks ago Loren had told Kai about a fellow cop who was sexually assaulted while off-duty. Elise was a veteran officer, a badass, but one night she went to check her mail at her apartment complex and was surprised by a blitz attack from behind in the dark. The unseen man forced her to the ground in the shadows, the surprise and viciousness of the assault rendering her helpless to fight back. She was raped and left stunned, bleeding on the ground. Her physical injuries healed, but emotional and psychological ones hadn’t even begun to.

“She’s a mess, Kai,” Loren continued sadly. “She wants to come back to work but her confidence is completely shot to hell. The police therapist told her it might help to take some refresher self-defense classes, but she can’t let the men near her for training, even men she knows and has worked with for years.”

Kai sat up too, running his hand comfortingly up and down Loren’s back, just listening.

“She’s a good cop, Kai, awesome with the domestic violence or sexual assault vics. It’s one of those ‘you never think it’ll happen to you’ type things. She can’t get past the fact that even with all her training she let the guy get the drop on her.”

“See if she’ll come to Krav Maga with us,” Kai suggested. “Something completely not associated with the department, with students who have no idea who she is or what she’s been through. Maybe part of the problem with working with the men there is she knows they know what happened to her.”

“Could be,” Loren said thoughtfully. “But she freezes and starts shaking when a man gets too close to her, much less simulates trying to grab her. She wants to work through this, and it breaks my heart to see her not be able to cope. She thinks she’s weak.”

Kai lay back down, crossing his arms behind his head. “What about a gay man?”

Loren looked down at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Psychologically it might help to train with a gay man, even if logically it doesn’t seem to make much sense since we know that rape is more about power than sex. But if it can help her get past her initial fear, once she can empower herself through training, I think maybe the rest of it will start to resolve.”

Loren’s eyes widened, and he flopped down next to him, pulling Kai into his arms for a hug before kissing him on the cheek. “That’s crazy and sort of brilliant, Kai.”

Kai reached up and patted Loren on the head. “I have my moments. It might not work, but at least it’s something she hasn’t tried.”

“I’ll talk to her about it next time I see her.”

Loren rolled to his back and Kai snuggled once more against his chest. Loren ran his hand down Kai’s back to pat his ass, and he soon fell asleep, leaving his hand where it was. Kai threw one leg across both of Loren’s and followed him into oblivion.

JEREMY HADN’T
slept at all, and he sat now on the balcony of his downtown hotel suite, nursing a cup of coffee, watching the sun rise over the buildings and glint off the Willamette River. He couldn’t stop berating himself for how he’d acted, getting off and then walking away without even a good-bye, leaving a nice man almost certainly feeling like the cheapest rent boy. If he’d handled it differently, that gorgeous man could be in his bed right now, flushed and sated. Jeremy could just picture him, the contrast his rich tawny skin would make against the blinding white sheets of the king-sized bed, his black hair spread across the pillow.

It had been the hottest sex of his life, and Jeremy couldn’t believe he was thinking that about an encounter with a stranger in a dirty alley, but he’d never before felt the urge to consume someone, to crawl inside their skin, to
own
them like that. Sex with Brent had been amazing, loving and tender. He would never have dreamed of treating Brent so roughly, growling filthy words into his ear while he emptied himself all over him. Sex wasn’t the foundation of their relationship, and during Brent’s depressive episode, there wasn’t much of it at all. Brent hadn’t wanted it, and the few times he did, the different medications he was trying sometimes inhibited his performance, sending him deeper into a pit of despair. After a while Jeremy stopped trying to make love to him, not wanting him to feel shame, to feel like less of a man because his body wouldn’t cooperate with his brain.

The sheer intensity of the sex with Kai threw Jeremy for a loop. He’d been horrified, both because of his actions and because he suddenly felt more alive than he had in a long time. The usual guilt had roared through him and caused him to panic. He hadn’t meant to enjoy himself quite so much.
But you did
, he told himself ruthlessly,
and the world didn’t come to an end and Brent is still dead
.

Jeremy put his coffee cup down and stood up, leaning against the railing, feeling shaky. Brent was gone. He was gone forever, and if Jeremy decided to bring a beautiful stranger back to his hotel room and enjoy his body, enjoy his company until they were both satisfied and went their separate ways, it would make no difference. Whether Jeremy fucked Kai through the mattress all night or not, Brent would still be gone. When he was alive, Jeremy hadn’t failed him, hadn’t let him down. He’d died happy, secure in Jeremy’s love and devotion. Nothing Jeremy did now would take away from what he’d felt for him or diminish the life they’d had together.

Jeremy stood there, caught up in his little epiphany. Brent was dead. Jeremy had a
new
life now, a new normal, not one that he’d asked for or would have wanted, but it was the only one he had and it was time to play the hand he’d been dealt. He firmed his lips with resolve. Starting today things were going to be different.

Thank you, Kai
, he said silently.
Thank you for being just what I needed tonight.

“DA FUCK
is this shit?” The teenager looked belligerently at Kai as he held his quiz up over his head.

“I told you, Terrell,” Kai said with studied patience. “It’s not going to be graded. It’s just a tool for me to see where you are right now, what you might have forgotten over the summer, and what areas I might need to focus on as we get started with the year.”

“Well, fuck that. If it’s just for you and not for no grade, I ain’t doin’ it.”

Kai knew he was posturing, challenging Kai’s classroom management, trying to see what he could and couldn’t get away with. The problem was typical classroom management techniques wouldn’t work with students like this, students who hated and had no respect for authority, who just had their butts in a seat to keep their probation officers off their backs so they could stay out of juvie. The best tactic was not to engage, and try to do the best he could for the kids who were here and actually wanted to learn.

So he leaned back against his desk in a relaxed manner, crossing his arms and his ankles, a picture of unconcern.

“If that’s your choice, Terrell, I’d just ask that you sit quietly and respect the other students that may want to do it.”

Terrell made a show out of crumpling up his paper and shoving it aside, crossing his arms mutinously. A couple of other kids followed his lead and did the same thing, drawing the line in the sand, just as Kai expected. Part of the reason he did this little exercise at the beginning of each year was for this very thing: he wanted to see who followed the herd and who was self-confident enough to buck the trend.

After a few minutes of observation, he had his classroom mentally divided into three groups: Terrell and his followers; the ones who might want to do the work if they weren’t afraid of not fitting in with Terrell and his followers; and the ones who determinedly turned their backs on those other two groups and put pencil to paper. There weren’t all that many of the last, but Kai would take it and run with it. He was a firm believer that education was power, and it had saved him, so he would do what he could for those who would let him.

“Mr. Daniels?” a tentative voice asked.

“Yes, Missy,” he said, smiling reassuringly.

“Can you go over what the least common denominator is again? I forgot.”

So it went, Kai considering the class a success since Terrell and his cronies pulled out their phones and spent the rest of class time in relative quiet, allowing him to teach the kids who wanted to learn. Two other periods followed, pretty much repeats of the first, and then a quick half hour for lunch before his science blocks started.

He flopped down onto a couch in the teachers’ lounge and took a huge bite of his PB&J on wheat, washing it down with a few slugs of cold water.

“Hey, Kai,” said a woman as she rummaged in the freezer and then popped her frozen meal in the microwave.

“How’s it going, Trish?” he mumbled around another bite of his sandwich.

“Can’t complain, only had one desk get thrown all morning.” She grinned ruefully at Kai.

“You okay?” he asked with concern. Trish taught classes with the emotionally disturbed kids, and outbursts and throwing desks were all part of her day.

“Yeah,” she said, picking at the label on her bottle of juice as she waited for her lasagna to cook. “Santo took care of it pretty quickly.” Santo was one of three burly security guards employed at the school, and Trish’s classroom was closest to their office; she or her teaching assistant could alert them with the touch of a button mounted underneath the lip of her desk.

“Other than that it was okay. Looks like I have a pretty good group.”

Unlike Kai’s homeroom students, who moved from classroom to classroom for each instructional block with the various different teachers, Trish’s students stayed in one room all day, and the different teachers came to
them
in order to provide more structure and stability, establish a routine. Kai was scheduled to start his math and science rotation with them during second quarter, so he’d be working with them eventually.

“What about the desk thrower? What’s his story?”

“Aw, it was basically just first-week jitters, Kai. I really think that once we work out our routine and settle into it, he’ll be fine.”

Kai really admired Trish. Not a whole lot fazed her.

The microwave dinged, and Trish sat down at the small table with her lasagna, picking at it and blowing on each bite before gingerly eating it.

“How’s your day been?” she asked.

“Typical,” Kai answered, finishing his sandwich and throwing his balled-up plastic baggie in the trash. “Narcissistic bully rallies his minions, the rest of the sheeple fall into line. Phones are put into play while the brave few who dare to laugh in the face of danger halfheartedly listen to my chalk-and-talk, maybe do some work if they feel like it. If I’m lucky I’ll get through to one or two of
them
by the end of the year. At least there hasn’t been any desk throwing, though.”

Trish laughed quietly at Kai’s description, raising her juice bottle in a silent toast, sharing an understanding smile. They made a few more minutes of small talk about their respective summer breaks before each lapsed into silence, enjoying some peace and quiet before the afternoon session.

Kai drifted a little, thinking about his summer. He had done a lot of solo hiking and had gone camping with Loren a time or two. There was even another trip to the Portland club, although this time Kai sat at the bar the entire evening, not interested in a random hookup.

When he finally went back to the seedy hotel room after midnight, he found Loren passed out drunk in bed, their room rifled, Loren’s wallet and cell phone missing. He got Loren up and into the shower, then argued with him over making a police report.

“I can’t call the fucking police, Kai. I
am
the police!”

“You’re not the police here, dumbshit, you’re the victim of a crime. You need to report this.” Kai had watched Loren pace, both hands clutching his hair in agitation.

“But I can’t risk it, Kai. I can’t risk my department finding out that I was up here. How would I explain that?”

“You don’t have to explain shit to anyone, Loren! You took a trip up to Portland and you got robbed. End of story.”

“I can’t risk it,” Loren repeated. “You know I’d have to disclose who I was with, list my movements during the night. If anyone on my squad found out I was at a gay club—”

Loren didn’t finish his thought, his distress written all over his face. Kai grabbed his hand and pulled him down to sit on the bed next to him.

“You know your work situation better than I do, man,” Kai said, rubbing Loren’s back soothingly. “If you don’t feel comfortable reporting it, then don’t. Okay?”

Loren nodded. “I can’t, Kai. It’s not just about me, it’s my dad and brothers—”

“I know. I get it. I’m not judging you, Loren.”

Totally subdued, they packed up their stuff and headed back home, not caring if it was the middle of the night. As Kai drove, Loren borrowed his phone to make as many calls as he could, reporting his credit and debit cards stolen. He finally hung up and sighed heavily, then reached over and laced his fingers with Kai’s, resting their joined hands lightly on Kai’s knee.