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In honor of Mother's Day here in the US this coming Sunday, I wanted to showcase stories with strong, influential mother figures. I say "mother figures" because it isn't always a mom, sometimes it isn't even family, sometimes it can be a stranger who steps up and fills in. Some aren't necessarily even a lengthy factor in the story, perhaps it's even just one chapter, or a flashback, etc. The mother figure has however, left a lasting impression on the characters, the story, and the reader. For Mother's Day 2021, I chose 5 stories where the mother, would-be mother-in-law, and motherly figure helped to shape the characters, intentionally or not, made them stronger and in doing so made the story even more brilliant and left me smiling. If you have any recommendations for great mother figures in the LGBTQIA genre, be sure and comment below or on the social media post that may have brought your here. The purchase links below are current as of the original posting but if they don't work be sure to check the authors' websites for up-to-date information.
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Summary:
RATING:
A Matter of Time Volume 1 by Mary Calmes
Summary:
A Matter of Time #1 & 2
Jory Keyes leads a normal life as an architect's assistant until he is witness to a brutal murder. Though initially saved by police Detective Sam Kage, Jory refuses protective custody—he has a life he loves that he won't give up no matter who is after him. But Jory's life is in real jeopardy, especially after he agrees to testify about what he saw.
While dealing with attempts on his life, well-meaning friends who want to see him happy, an overly protective boss, and a slowly unfolding mystery that is much more sinister than he could ever imagine, the young gay man finds himself getting involved with Sam, the conflicted and closeted detective. And though Jory may survive the danger, he may not survive a broken heart.
Overall Series 5th Re-Read 2019:
Again there's really nothing new I can add that would express how much I love Jory and Sam. Not everyone likes the kind of alpha male that Sam Kage is and I too don't always appreciate that element but when the dynamic between the two men is so powerful as Sam and Jory then I completely fall in love. Just because Sam is so alpha don't think Jory is a pushover, oh no he definitely has no problem voicing his opinion either and I think that is what makes them work for me because its an even balance of push and pull from both.
Now as for the audios, there are four different narrators, three for Jory/Sam and one for Duncan/Aaron in Parting Shot. Some might find that off-putting but I actually found it fitting. Just why there is different narrators I don't know but as a listener, I found each one did a brilliant job and yes they are noticeably different but they bring the perfect nuances for where the characters are in their journey, we all change as life goes and Paul Morey, Jeff Gelder, and Finn Sterling showcase that wonderfully. Tristan James brings Duncan and Aaron's story to life that is a perfect fit for the Matter of Time series.
RATING:
New Tricks by Davidson King
Summary:
Ace's Wild #10
After thirteen years together, Malcolm and Embry are all too familiar with their differences. Malcolm is free-spirited and spontaneous while Embry prefers having everything planned out.
A road trip to spend Thanksgiving with Embry’s family is met with a broken-down car, an unfamiliar town filled with amazing people, and one very interesting store that leads to a bet which could change their lives forever.
This year, Malcolm and Embry share a Thanksgiving like no other and discover that, even though they’ve been together for thirteen years, it’s never too late for some new tricks.
New Tricks is part of a multi-author series of books that take place in the same fictional town. Each story can be read in any order. The connecting element in the Ace's Wild series is an adult store owned by Ace and Wilder. The main characters from each book will make at least one visit to Ace's Wild, where they'll buy a toy to use in their story! The only characters who crossover to each book are Ace and Wilder. And with various heat levels, there's sure to be something for everyone!
For those unfamiliar with the Ace's Wild series, the connecting theme is an adult store named Ace's Wild owned and operated by couple, Ace and Wilder, and can be read in any order as the only recurring point is the main characters visiting the store itself. New Tricks is book 10 and actually the first I read but it won't be the last.
I think there is a certain stigma associated with adult stores and that is everyone who goes in has a certain level of hard kinks. Now as I said this is the first of the Ace's Wild series I read so I can't speak to other entries but one of the things I loved most about New Tricks was the author was exploring the "softer" side of kinks. Malcolm and Embry might have walked into the store thinking they were reasonably vanilla in their sex life but by the end of the book they realized that a little spice was more their way. Maybe I'm just babbling but in my reading experience so many stories are either vanilla or hardcore and the "in-between" kinks get neglected so for that alone I offer a huge applause to Miss King👏👏👏.
Now let's talk Malcolm and Embry. I loved the whole setup of the pair being in a longterm committed relationship when the story begins, too often in holiday stories its the magic of the season that brings people together, so this was another plus. I just want to wrap Embry up in bubblewrap to protect him from his family. Don't even get me started on that Thanksgiving Dinner(at least his family's part). Sometimes strangers have the best way of getting to the point and making one see their mistakes through clearer eyes and thankfully Malcolm and Embry have broken down in a town with the kindest strangers around. I won't say more but I'll just add that there are those in the story(and I think you can guess who they are😉) I wanted to strangle and then there are those that I wanted to Mama Bear hug so tight and never let go.
New Tricks may not be the super-duper-uber-Hallmark-y sugary sweet holiday romance but it ticked all my holiday feels boxes. Whether you call it fate, destiny, powers-that-be, or a dozen other metaphors, Malcolm and Embry ended up in Vintage Ridge at just the right time in life.
RATING:
The Dark Tide by Josh Lanyon
Overall Series 5th Re-Read 2019:
Adrien with an "e", what can I say that I haven't already said? Nothing really because I absolutely adore Adrien and Jake. Yes, there are multiple times I want to whack Jake upside the head but he's learning, albeit slowly sometimes but still learning. There's heartbreak, there's joy, there's murder, and well there's plenty of love(even if it takes Jake a little longer to accept).
All but the final Christmas novella is narrated by Chris Patton and his voice is perfect for these two. I couldn't imagine listening to anyone else bring life to the pair but then when I listened to So This is Christmas, read by Kale Williams, he too is . . . well for the lack of a better word(and not to sound redundant😉) . . . brilliant. Obviously there is a difference between the two narrators but since Adrien and Jake are settled, or as settled as they can be considering Adrien's knack for stumbling into mayhem, which changes people and so the difference in narrators kind of reflects that I thought. So I say spot on to all involved bringing Adrien English and Jake Riordan to life.
RATING:
Christmas Lights by RJ Scott & VL Locey
Sunday Sport Stats: Valentine's Hearts
RATING:
Helena Stone
Helena Stone can’t remember a life before words and reading. After growing up in a household where no holiday or festivity was complete without at least one new book, it’s hardly surprising she now owns more books than shelf space while her Kindle is about to explode.
The urge to write came as a surprise. The realisation that people might enjoy her words was a shock to say the least. Now that the writing bug has well and truly taken hold, Helena can no longer imagine not sharing the characters in her head and heart with the rest of the world.
Having left the hustle and bustle of Amsterdam for the peace and quiet of the Irish Country side she divides her time between reading, writing, long and often wet walks with the dog, her part-time job in a library, a grown-up daughter and her ever loving and patient husband.
Mary Calmes
Mary Calmes lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband and two children and loves all the seasons except summer. She graduated from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, with a bachelor's degree in English literature. Due to the fact that it is English lit and not English grammar, do not ask her to point out a clause for you, as it will so not happen. She loves writing, becoming immersed in the process, and falling into the work. She can even tell you what her characters smell like. She loves buying books and going to conventions to meet her fans.
Davidson King
Davidson King, always had a hope that someday her daydreams would become real-life stories. As a child, you would often find her in her own world, thinking up the most insane situations. It may have taken her awhile, but she made her dream come true with her first published work, Snow Falling.
When she's not writing you can find her blogging away on Diverse Reader, her review and promotional site. She managed to wrangle herself a husband who matched her crazy and they hatched three wonderful children.
If you were to ask her what gave her the courage to finally publish, she'd tell you it was her amazing family and friends. Support is vital in all things and when you're afraid of your dreams, it will be your cheering section that will lift you up.
Josh Lanyon
VL Locey
A Matter of Time by Mary Calmes Volume 1
New Tricks by Davidson King
Mitch & Cian #5
A year after their first kiss, Mitch and Cian have settled into their relationship and life in Dublin. There’ve been ups and downs and one or two unexpected turns in the road, but through it all they’ve gone from strength to strength.
Going home to Castleforest for Christmas means having to stay with their own families. Neither Mitch nor Cian enjoys being apart, but the sting of separation fades in the wake of a surprise from Mitch’s mother, and reconnecting with old and very dear friends lifts their spirits further.
Back in the city for New Year’s Eve, they throw a party for their friends and at last acknowledge the depth of their feelings for each other and the ties that will bind them for the rest of their lives.
This last instalment in the Mitch & Cian series comes with delightful surprises, fabulous parties, and declarations that will make your heart sing.
Original Review December 2019:
What better day than New Year's Eve to read the concluding entry in the Mitch and Cian series? It's sad to see the story end but riding along on the journey of their first year together has been romantic, humorous, realistic, and simply put: entertaining and a pure delight.
I don't really think there is much I can say about The Rest of our Lives that I haven't said in the previous entries other than don't miss out and don't let the novella size fool you because Mitch and Cian's love story is perfect just as it is and jam packed to the rafters with high quality storytelling.
There's just something magical about this one(the whole series really) not just because it's the holidays or because it's their one year anniversary but because of . . . well you'll have to read to decide for yourself, trust me you wont' regret it😉. Another holiday romance gem to enjoy for years to come.
BTW: Mitch's mom being a Star Wars fan is such a lovely treat. As a lifelong devoted SW nerd it always adds a special flare when a character(be it main, secondary, or cameo doesn't really matter) is too and when that character is a woman, that's an even bigger dessert special because too often it's the male character that is the fan so for that element, Thank You, Helena Stone💙
There's just something magical about this one(the whole series really) not just because it's the holidays or because it's their one year anniversary but because of . . . well you'll have to read to decide for yourself, trust me you wont' regret it😉. Another holiday romance gem to enjoy for years to come.
BTW: Mitch's mom being a Star Wars fan is such a lovely treat. As a lifelong devoted SW nerd it always adds a special flare when a character(be it main, secondary, or cameo doesn't really matter) is too and when that character is a woman, that's an even bigger dessert special because too often it's the male character that is the fan so for that element, Thank You, Helena Stone💙
RATING:
Summary:
A Matter of Time #1 & 2
Jory Keyes leads a normal life as an architect's assistant until he is witness to a brutal murder. Though initially saved by police Detective Sam Kage, Jory refuses protective custody—he has a life he loves that he won't give up no matter who is after him. But Jory's life is in real jeopardy, especially after he agrees to testify about what he saw.
While dealing with attempts on his life, well-meaning friends who want to see him happy, an overly protective boss, and a slowly unfolding mystery that is much more sinister than he could ever imagine, the young gay man finds himself getting involved with Sam, the conflicted and closeted detective. And though Jory may survive the danger, he may not survive a broken heart.
Again there's really nothing new I can add that would express how much I love Jory and Sam. Not everyone likes the kind of alpha male that Sam Kage is and I too don't always appreciate that element but when the dynamic between the two men is so powerful as Sam and Jory then I completely fall in love. Just because Sam is so alpha don't think Jory is a pushover, oh no he definitely has no problem voicing his opinion either and I think that is what makes them work for me because its an even balance of push and pull from both.
Now as for the audios, there are four different narrators, three for Jory/Sam and one for Duncan/Aaron in Parting Shot. Some might find that off-putting but I actually found it fitting. Just why there is different narrators I don't know but as a listener, I found each one did a brilliant job and yes they are noticeably different but they bring the perfect nuances for where the characters are in their journey, we all change as life goes and Paul Morey, Jeff Gelder, and Finn Sterling showcase that wonderfully. Tristan James brings Duncan and Aaron's story to life that is a perfect fit for the Matter of Time series.
RATING:
Summary:
Ace's Wild #10
After thirteen years together, Malcolm and Embry are all too familiar with their differences. Malcolm is free-spirited and spontaneous while Embry prefers having everything planned out.
A road trip to spend Thanksgiving with Embry’s family is met with a broken-down car, an unfamiliar town filled with amazing people, and one very interesting store that leads to a bet which could change their lives forever.
This year, Malcolm and Embry share a Thanksgiving like no other and discover that, even though they’ve been together for thirteen years, it’s never too late for some new tricks.
New Tricks is part of a multi-author series of books that take place in the same fictional town. Each story can be read in any order. The connecting element in the Ace's Wild series is an adult store owned by Ace and Wilder. The main characters from each book will make at least one visit to Ace's Wild, where they'll buy a toy to use in their story! The only characters who crossover to each book are Ace and Wilder. And with various heat levels, there's sure to be something for everyone!
Original Review November 2019:
I didn't think I would get to this novella until well into December but then when I was looking back at a book request post I made in a Facebook book rec group for Thanksgiving stories I saw that the author had did a little self reccing about an upcoming Turkey Day story she had. Well, I realized that there are far too few Turkey Day books out there that I knew I had to read New Tricks for my Tales of Turkey Day 2019 post. So I did a little tweaking of my holiday reading "schedule" and jumped in. I read Davidson King's entry for the Ace's Wild multi-author series in 90 minutes(give or take a little) and loved every second of it.For those unfamiliar with the Ace's Wild series, the connecting theme is an adult store named Ace's Wild owned and operated by couple, Ace and Wilder, and can be read in any order as the only recurring point is the main characters visiting the store itself. New Tricks is book 10 and actually the first I read but it won't be the last.
I think there is a certain stigma associated with adult stores and that is everyone who goes in has a certain level of hard kinks. Now as I said this is the first of the Ace's Wild series I read so I can't speak to other entries but one of the things I loved most about New Tricks was the author was exploring the "softer" side of kinks. Malcolm and Embry might have walked into the store thinking they were reasonably vanilla in their sex life but by the end of the book they realized that a little spice was more their way. Maybe I'm just babbling but in my reading experience so many stories are either vanilla or hardcore and the "in-between" kinks get neglected so for that alone I offer a huge applause to Miss King👏👏👏.
Now let's talk Malcolm and Embry. I loved the whole setup of the pair being in a longterm committed relationship when the story begins, too often in holiday stories its the magic of the season that brings people together, so this was another plus. I just want to wrap Embry up in bubblewrap to protect him from his family. Don't even get me started on that Thanksgiving Dinner(at least his family's part). Sometimes strangers have the best way of getting to the point and making one see their mistakes through clearer eyes and thankfully Malcolm and Embry have broken down in a town with the kindest strangers around. I won't say more but I'll just add that there are those in the story(and I think you can guess who they are😉) I wanted to strangle and then there are those that I wanted to Mama Bear hug so tight and never let go.
New Tricks may not be the super-duper-uber-Hallmark-y sugary sweet holiday romance but it ticked all my holiday feels boxes. Whether you call it fate, destiny, powers-that-be, or a dozen other metaphors, Malcolm and Embry ended up in Vintage Ridge at just the right time in life.
RATING:
Summary:
Adrien English #5
Like recovering from heart surgery beneath the gaze of his over-protective family isn't exasperating enough, someone keeps trying to break into Adrien English's bookstore. What is this determined midnight intruder searching for?
When a half-century old skeleton tumbles out of the wall in the midst of Cloak and Dagger Bookstore's renovation, Adrien turns to hot and handsome ex-lover Jake Riordan -- now out-of-the closet and working as a private detective.
Jake is only too happy to have reason to stay in close contact with Adrien, but there are more surprises in Adrien's past than either one of them expects -- and one of them may prove hazardous to Jake's own heart.
When a half-century old skeleton tumbles out of the wall in the midst of Cloak and Dagger Bookstore's renovation, Adrien turns to hot and handsome ex-lover Jake Riordan -- now out-of-the closet and working as a private detective.
Jake is only too happy to have reason to stay in close contact with Adrien, but there are more surprises in Adrien's past than either one of them expects -- and one of them may prove hazardous to Jake's own heart.
Adrien with an "e", what can I say that I haven't already said? Nothing really because I absolutely adore Adrien and Jake. Yes, there are multiple times I want to whack Jake upside the head but he's learning, albeit slowly sometimes but still learning. There's heartbreak, there's joy, there's murder, and well there's plenty of love(even if it takes Jake a little longer to accept).
All but the final Christmas novella is narrated by Chris Patton and his voice is perfect for these two. I couldn't imagine listening to anyone else bring life to the pair but then when I listened to So This is Christmas, read by Kale Williams, he too is . . . well for the lack of a better word(and not to sound redundant😉) . . . brilliant. Obviously there is a difference between the two narrators but since Adrien and Jake are settled, or as settled as they can be considering Adrien's knack for stumbling into mayhem, which changes people and so the difference in narrators kind of reflects that I thought. So I say spot on to all involved bringing Adrien English and Jake Riordan to life.
RATING:
Summary:
Owatonna U #4
Under the Christmas lights strung outside a snowy Minnesota cabin, Ryker and Jacob face a future where nothing will be the same again.
Fortunate timing means that Ryker and Jacob can spend a few days together over Christmas in a cabin on the family farm. What’s better is that Scott and Ben are coming as well, with Hayne and Ethan in tow. Ryker can’t imagine a better way to spend time with the man he loves, and the friends he misses, and somehow he knows that this Christmas will be the best one ever. Hockey on a frozen pond, kisses under Christmas lights, and sharing time with Jacob are the best gifts he could ever receive.
Long distance relationships are brutal, Jacob can attest to that fact. So, when Ryker gets a few days off over the Raptors’ Christmas break, the hard-working Minnesota farmer is beyond thrilled. When they find out that their buddies from Owatonna U. are making the trip as well, the holidays are looking to be just about perfect. Jacob has a question for Ryker burning in his heart, and he isn’t asking for much—just a few fun-filled days with old friends and a yes from the man of his dreams.
Fortunate timing means that Ryker and Jacob can spend a few days together over Christmas in a cabin on the family farm. What’s better is that Scott and Ben are coming as well, with Hayne and Ethan in tow. Ryker can’t imagine a better way to spend time with the man he loves, and the friends he misses, and somehow he knows that this Christmas will be the best one ever. Hockey on a frozen pond, kisses under Christmas lights, and sharing time with Jacob are the best gifts he could ever receive.
Long distance relationships are brutal, Jacob can attest to that fact. So, when Ryker gets a few days off over the Raptors’ Christmas break, the hard-working Minnesota farmer is beyond thrilled. When they find out that their buddies from Owatonna U. are making the trip as well, the holidays are looking to be just about perfect. Jacob has a question for Ryker burning in his heart, and he isn’t asking for much—just a few fun-filled days with old friends and a yes from the man of his dreams.
Sunday Sport Stats: Valentine's Hearts
Original Review December 2019:
So much goodness that we've come to know in the world of Owatonna U, Harrisburg Railers, and Arizona Raptors and it's all wrapped up in a wonderful holiday package. Talk about a surprise gift from Santa!🎅
It's no secret that Ryker and Jacob was my favorite in the Owatonna U series and I'm so glad to see another chunk of their story continue on in more than just passing conversations throughout the Raptors series. As for Jacob, well what's not to love? Growing up a farmer's daughter I know how hard it is to keep things going in the wake of health issues and time. There comes a point that no matter how hard you work there may be only one option left, even knowing it's the only course of action doesn't make it any easier to accept. Luckily, Jacob has Ryker.
Now that's about all I'm going to say about Christmas Lights' plot. It's a holiday novella so there is minimal angst, tons of spirit, friends, family, and of course as the title suggests: Christmas lights. We get to see a little bit of the hockey that Scott & Locey's world is full of, we get to see Owatonna U returning favorites, but mostly we see Ryker and Jacob spend the holiday together at one of the most pivotal points in their life: the next big step. Will the holiday go as either plans? For that answer you'll have to read for yourself.
I know this isn't the last time we'll hear from Ryker or see Jacob and their friends, I'm sure they'll pop up in the authors' Arizona Raptors series but if it does happen to be the last time they "star" in a story, it's a wonderful holiday treat.
One last note: if you are wondering about reading order, well I highly recommend reading Rkyer(Owatonna U #1) definitely before Christmas Lights. Scott(#2) and Benoit(#3) are not necessarily a must before this holiday novella, there are a few scenes between the friends and their significant others that will mesh better knowing their respective journeys but it is not a must. To be honest though I can't imagine not having read the series in order but Ryker is probably the only must.
It's no secret that Ryker and Jacob was my favorite in the Owatonna U series and I'm so glad to see another chunk of their story continue on in more than just passing conversations throughout the Raptors series. As for Jacob, well what's not to love? Growing up a farmer's daughter I know how hard it is to keep things going in the wake of health issues and time. There comes a point that no matter how hard you work there may be only one option left, even knowing it's the only course of action doesn't make it any easier to accept. Luckily, Jacob has Ryker.
Now that's about all I'm going to say about Christmas Lights' plot. It's a holiday novella so there is minimal angst, tons of spirit, friends, family, and of course as the title suggests: Christmas lights. We get to see a little bit of the hockey that Scott & Locey's world is full of, we get to see Owatonna U returning favorites, but mostly we see Ryker and Jacob spend the holiday together at one of the most pivotal points in their life: the next big step. Will the holiday go as either plans? For that answer you'll have to read for yourself.
I know this isn't the last time we'll hear from Ryker or see Jacob and their friends, I'm sure they'll pop up in the authors' Arizona Raptors series but if it does happen to be the last time they "star" in a story, it's a wonderful holiday treat.
One last note: if you are wondering about reading order, well I highly recommend reading Rkyer(Owatonna U #1) definitely before Christmas Lights. Scott(#2) and Benoit(#3) are not necessarily a must before this holiday novella, there are a few scenes between the friends and their significant others that will mesh better knowing their respective journeys but it is not a must. To be honest though I can't imagine not having read the series in order but Ryker is probably the only must.
RATING:
The Rest of Our Lives by Helena Stone
Chapter One
“This is going to be weird.” Mitch looked out of the bus window. It was after five in the afternoon, and night had fallen. The bus’s headlights lit up a road sign, and Mitch knew they were less than half an hour from Castleforest.
“Not being together for a week, you mean?” Cian sounded about as enthusiastic about the idea as Mitch felt.
“Yeah,” Mitch concurred. “Do you think our families will ever get so comfortable with us being a couple that they’ll allow us to share a room while visiting?”
The reflection of Cian’s gaze caught Mitch’s in the dark glass, and for a moment, they kept each other captive there.
“I don’t think it’s us being a couple they’re having an issue with,” Cian eventually said. “The idea of us actually sleeping together, never mind having sex, is probably easier to deal with on a ‘what I can’t see doesn’t exist’ sorta level.”
“Do you reckon it would be the same if one of us was a girl?”
“Probably not.” Cian frowned. “Having said that, we’re together less than a year, and they probably still see us as children rather than adults, so who knows?”
It wasn’t the end of the world of course. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d spend time apart since they’d moved in together, four months earlier. On more than one occasion, Mitch had gone back to Castleforest on his own for a weekend when Cian had had a match, just as Cian sometimes went home without Mitch to make up for the times he couldn’t make it. This felt different, though. Being alone because they were in different parts of the country was unavoidable. A separation due to parental overprotectiveness or prejudice—Mitch wasn’t sure what to call it—stung.
“Oh, well,” Mitch said, deciding to keep things in perspective and not ruin their week home before it even started. “It’s only for a week, and it’s not as if we won’t see each other during the day. It could be worse. Imagine if your family lived in Cork. We’d be half the country away from each other.”
Cian’s fingers brushed across Mitch’s hand, which rested on his thigh. Mitch relished the intimacy of the gesture, no matter how fleeting. At the same time, he resented that they couldn’t just hold hands for the duration of the journey. Surely one day they would be able to be as affectionate in public as heterosexual couples without the fear of offending people? He had to believe that; anything else would be too frustrating.
“Have you any idea what plans your mother has made?” Cian asked. “Because my parents have been rather vague, apart from telling me that we’ll be celebrating Christmas day as we’ve always done in the past.”
Mitch thought back to his last conversation with his mother. He hadn’t given it much thought at the time, but now that Cian mentioned it, he remembered she’d been rather circumspect when it came to details.
“She asked me what I wanted to eat for Christmas and made some vague references to surprises.” He chuckled. “Maybe I should remind her I’m legally an adult. She hasn’t teased me with secrecy since I stopped believing in Santa.” He turned to Cian, fully expecting him to laugh along or at least smile. Instead, he encountered a thoughtful expression.
“I wonder what they’re up to?” Cian mused.
“Up to?”
“It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise.” Cian focused on Mitch, his eyes gleaming. “My mother used almost the exact same words with me, last time we spoke.”
For a moment Mitch turned into the boy he’d been when he was seven and still firmly believed in the magic of Christmas, reindeer, and Santa Claus. Excitement rushed through him as he tried to figure out what their parents might be planning.
Something bright illuminated the darkness as they drove into town.
“Are those new?” Cian nodded in the direction of the lights that stretched in rows running across the main street at regular intervals, creating an illusion of ice and snow.
“I think so.” Mitch hadn’t paid much attention to Castleforest’s Christmas decorations in the past. They were there for a few weeks before disappearing again for a year, in the same way leaves came and went on trees.
Two minutes later, as the bus drove on without them, Mitch stared down the street and reconsidered. “It does look better. More festive, I guess.” He focused on Cian, reluctant to take the next step on his journey home.
“What are we like?” Cian grinned ruefully. “Our families aren’t so bad that we have to worry about going to different homes.”
Mitch smiled, unable to deny that they were being silly. “Where do you want to meet tomorrow?”
“At the library?” Cian suggested. “For old times’ sake?”
“Works for me,” Mitch said calmly while pushing down a burst of excitement because Cian had picked the place where they’d first met, almost exactly a year earlier.
He looked up and down the street, finding it mostly deserted. Given that it was dinner time on a Sunday in December, that was hardly surprising, but it served his purpose perfectly. He leaned forward, angled his head, and pressed his lips against Cian’s. If anybody did see the kiss, tough. In a town as small as Castleforest, their relationship had to be common knowledge. He wasn’t inclined to force public displays of intimacy on unsuspecting passers-by, but he refused to hide who he was or, more importantly, who he was with any longer.
Cian returned the far too short kiss, smirking when he pulled back. “What a difference a year makes.” He fixed the strap of his backpack on his shoulder and took a step. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Ten-ish?"
“See you then.”
Watching Cian walk away toward the estate where he lived, Mitch wondered if he’d ever get tired of looking at his boyfriend. He’d been attracted to Cian long before they’d exchanged their first words, and far from lessening, the feeling had only strengthened over time. Cian’s training regime since he’d taken up rugby again helped to make an always tantalizing physique even more irresistible too.
Only after Cian turned a corner and disappeared from sight did Mitch set off in the opposite direction. He resisted the temptation to walk by the old community center on his way home. He’d meet Cian there tomorrow, and it would be the long way around. He had no doubt his mother was eagerly awaiting his arrival, and if he were honest, he looked forward to seeing her too.
The front door to the house he’d grown up in opened before Mitch had a chance to put his key in the lock. His mother’s beaming face welcomed him home, and his answering smile was almost certainly just as delighted. Yes, Mitch would miss Cian, especially at night, when he’d have to settle for sleeping on his own, without a warm body to wrap himself around. However, he couldn’t deny that his mother’s joy whenever he visited made him feel warm and loved.
“There you are.” His mother pulled him into a tight hug before scrutinizing his face. “You look well.” She released him and walked into the house. “Do you want to eat now or later?”
“I have a choice?” Mitch snickered. This was new. His whole life his mother had told him what time dinner would be ready, and it had been up to him to make sure he was present at the appointed hour.
“Sure.” She grinned at him as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. She probably does.
“I’m having takeaway delivered. I was thinking fish and chips?”
Mitch’s mouth watered, but he was surprised. “Delivered? I’m impressed. Castleforest is moving up in the world.”
“Oh, stop it. We’re not that much of a backwater.” But his mother smiled at him, taking the sting out of her words.
“I’ll just put my stuff away,” Mitch said. “Then I’m good with whatever you want to do.”
An hour later Mitch settled on the couch in the living room with a full belly. “That was great.”
“Good. Does it make up for having to share a living space with your old ma for a few days?”
Mitch didn’t need mind-reading powers to recognize the question wasn’t only meant as a joke. He sighed.
“Living with you has never been hard,” he said honestly. “It isn’t difficult now either. It’s just…” Mitch didn’t want to upset his mother so soon after arriving, but he didn’t want to lie to her either.
“What?”
He shrugged. “It’s a bit frustrating that nobody minds that Cian and I live together in Dublin, but at the same time won’t allow us to sleep in the same house when we’re here.”
His mother gave him a look he knew all too well. This stare indicated that, in her opinion, he hadn’t thought hard enough before opening his mouth. Unfortunately, recognizing her expression didn’t mean he knew the reason behind it.
“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe Cian’s parents would like to have him to themselves for a few days to catch up? Or that I might like spending some time with my son without having to share his attention?” Mitch gaped at his mother, disinclined to tell her that the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind.
She sighed. “We’re not stupid. We know you two are all grown up and living your own life together. But it feels like only yesterday you came running to me because you’d fallen off your bike and hurt yourself. Give an old woman a chance to adjust to the fact that you’re no longer a child.”
Mitch got up and crossed the room. When he reached his ma in her comfortable chair, he leaned forward and hugged her. “You’re not an old woman,” he whispered while relaxing into her embrace. He allowed himself to revisit the younger version of himself she’d described, surprised to find he welcomed the security her arms offered as much now as he always had.
“I’m sorry.” Mitch murmured the words against her shoulder. He hadn’t meant to upset his mother. “It’s just that I’m so used to being together with Cian it feels a bit weird when we’re not. Especially since for once we’re home at the same time.” He straightened and sat on the armrest of his mother’s chair.
“It’s okay.” She patted his leg. “I do understand, you know. I used to be young once, a long, long time ago.” She looked up at him with a cheeky glint in her eye. “Did I mention I have a surprise for you?”
“You did.” The sudden change in subject caught Mitch off guard. “I thought you’d keep me in suspense until Christmas.”
“That would defeat the purpose.”
The plot thickened, and Mitch was still none the wiser. “Well then, don’t keep me hanging.”
“We had a raffle in work,” his mother said, at first glance apropos of nothing. “I won the first prize.”
“Congratulations?” Mitch had no idea why his mother made such a big deal about having won a box of chocolates or something similar, but he was willing to wait her out.
“I’ve now got two tickets to see the Symphony Orchestra perform the music from Star Wars. Tomorrow night, actually.”
“Nice one.” Mitch was delighted for her. His mother was a huge Star Wars fan. In fact, she’d watched the movies so often over the years Mitch knew large chunks of them off by heart. “But what has that got to do with me?” Surely, she hadn’t made him come all the way home today, only to travel back to Dublin tomorrow?
“I was wondering if you’d let us use your apartment for the night.” Her gaze bored into him as if she was expecting a certain reaction. “Marian is coming with me, and neither of us fancies driving all the way home at midnight. Since your place will be empty...”
Mitch chuckled. “We have two bedrooms, remember? There’s no reason you can’t stay with us, even when we’re there.” He sobered as he tried to remember what state they’d left the place in before leaving, suppressing a sigh of relief when he recalled they’d done a rather thorough cleanup because they didn’t want to return to chaos. “Of course, you can stay there.” But how is that a surprise for me? He kept that thought to himself.
“And now you’re wondering how me winning concert tickets constitutes a surprise for you.”
Mitch blinked at his mother, shocked to discover that four months after he’d moved out, she could still read his mind with ease.
“I’m disappointed.” The sparkle in his mother’s eyes belied her words. “I thought you would have recognized your opportunity by now.”
The beginnings of an idea formed in Mitch’s mind. Surely, she doesn’t mean...?
“How did I manage to raise such an eejit?” The sigh she expelled was obviously exaggerated. “Why don’t you get on your phone and see if Cian wants to spend tomorrow evening and night here?”
“Really?”
His mother gave him a blank stare. “Really.” She reached for the remote. “Now, either settle or go and do your own thing. I’m watching The Empire Strikes Back tonight.
Mitch reached for his mother, hugging her again and placing a kiss on her cheek. “Thanks. That’s the best surprise ever.” He got up. “Enjoy your movie. I’m going up to my room.”
He was texting Cian before he was halfway up the stairs.
“This is going to be weird.” Mitch looked out of the bus window. It was after five in the afternoon, and night had fallen. The bus’s headlights lit up a road sign, and Mitch knew they were less than half an hour from Castleforest.
“Not being together for a week, you mean?” Cian sounded about as enthusiastic about the idea as Mitch felt.
“Yeah,” Mitch concurred. “Do you think our families will ever get so comfortable with us being a couple that they’ll allow us to share a room while visiting?”
The reflection of Cian’s gaze caught Mitch’s in the dark glass, and for a moment, they kept each other captive there.
“I don’t think it’s us being a couple they’re having an issue with,” Cian eventually said. “The idea of us actually sleeping together, never mind having sex, is probably easier to deal with on a ‘what I can’t see doesn’t exist’ sorta level.”
“Do you reckon it would be the same if one of us was a girl?”
“Probably not.” Cian frowned. “Having said that, we’re together less than a year, and they probably still see us as children rather than adults, so who knows?”
It wasn’t the end of the world of course. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d spend time apart since they’d moved in together, four months earlier. On more than one occasion, Mitch had gone back to Castleforest on his own for a weekend when Cian had had a match, just as Cian sometimes went home without Mitch to make up for the times he couldn’t make it. This felt different, though. Being alone because they were in different parts of the country was unavoidable. A separation due to parental overprotectiveness or prejudice—Mitch wasn’t sure what to call it—stung.
“Oh, well,” Mitch said, deciding to keep things in perspective and not ruin their week home before it even started. “It’s only for a week, and it’s not as if we won’t see each other during the day. It could be worse. Imagine if your family lived in Cork. We’d be half the country away from each other.”
Cian’s fingers brushed across Mitch’s hand, which rested on his thigh. Mitch relished the intimacy of the gesture, no matter how fleeting. At the same time, he resented that they couldn’t just hold hands for the duration of the journey. Surely one day they would be able to be as affectionate in public as heterosexual couples without the fear of offending people? He had to believe that; anything else would be too frustrating.
“Have you any idea what plans your mother has made?” Cian asked. “Because my parents have been rather vague, apart from telling me that we’ll be celebrating Christmas day as we’ve always done in the past.”
Mitch thought back to his last conversation with his mother. He hadn’t given it much thought at the time, but now that Cian mentioned it, he remembered she’d been rather circumspect when it came to details.
“She asked me what I wanted to eat for Christmas and made some vague references to surprises.” He chuckled. “Maybe I should remind her I’m legally an adult. She hasn’t teased me with secrecy since I stopped believing in Santa.” He turned to Cian, fully expecting him to laugh along or at least smile. Instead, he encountered a thoughtful expression.
“I wonder what they’re up to?” Cian mused.
“Up to?”
“It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise.” Cian focused on Mitch, his eyes gleaming. “My mother used almost the exact same words with me, last time we spoke.”
For a moment Mitch turned into the boy he’d been when he was seven and still firmly believed in the magic of Christmas, reindeer, and Santa Claus. Excitement rushed through him as he tried to figure out what their parents might be planning.
Something bright illuminated the darkness as they drove into town.
“Are those new?” Cian nodded in the direction of the lights that stretched in rows running across the main street at regular intervals, creating an illusion of ice and snow.
“I think so.” Mitch hadn’t paid much attention to Castleforest’s Christmas decorations in the past. They were there for a few weeks before disappearing again for a year, in the same way leaves came and went on trees.
Two minutes later, as the bus drove on without them, Mitch stared down the street and reconsidered. “It does look better. More festive, I guess.” He focused on Cian, reluctant to take the next step on his journey home.
“What are we like?” Cian grinned ruefully. “Our families aren’t so bad that we have to worry about going to different homes.”
Mitch smiled, unable to deny that they were being silly. “Where do you want to meet tomorrow?”
“At the library?” Cian suggested. “For old times’ sake?”
“Works for me,” Mitch said calmly while pushing down a burst of excitement because Cian had picked the place where they’d first met, almost exactly a year earlier.
He looked up and down the street, finding it mostly deserted. Given that it was dinner time on a Sunday in December, that was hardly surprising, but it served his purpose perfectly. He leaned forward, angled his head, and pressed his lips against Cian’s. If anybody did see the kiss, tough. In a town as small as Castleforest, their relationship had to be common knowledge. He wasn’t inclined to force public displays of intimacy on unsuspecting passers-by, but he refused to hide who he was or, more importantly, who he was with any longer.
Cian returned the far too short kiss, smirking when he pulled back. “What a difference a year makes.” He fixed the strap of his backpack on his shoulder and took a step. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Ten-ish?"
“See you then.”
Watching Cian walk away toward the estate where he lived, Mitch wondered if he’d ever get tired of looking at his boyfriend. He’d been attracted to Cian long before they’d exchanged their first words, and far from lessening, the feeling had only strengthened over time. Cian’s training regime since he’d taken up rugby again helped to make an always tantalizing physique even more irresistible too.
Only after Cian turned a corner and disappeared from sight did Mitch set off in the opposite direction. He resisted the temptation to walk by the old community center on his way home. He’d meet Cian there tomorrow, and it would be the long way around. He had no doubt his mother was eagerly awaiting his arrival, and if he were honest, he looked forward to seeing her too.
The front door to the house he’d grown up in opened before Mitch had a chance to put his key in the lock. His mother’s beaming face welcomed him home, and his answering smile was almost certainly just as delighted. Yes, Mitch would miss Cian, especially at night, when he’d have to settle for sleeping on his own, without a warm body to wrap himself around. However, he couldn’t deny that his mother’s joy whenever he visited made him feel warm and loved.
“There you are.” His mother pulled him into a tight hug before scrutinizing his face. “You look well.” She released him and walked into the house. “Do you want to eat now or later?”
“I have a choice?” Mitch snickered. This was new. His whole life his mother had told him what time dinner would be ready, and it had been up to him to make sure he was present at the appointed hour.
“Sure.” She grinned at him as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. She probably does.
“I’m having takeaway delivered. I was thinking fish and chips?”
Mitch’s mouth watered, but he was surprised. “Delivered? I’m impressed. Castleforest is moving up in the world.”
“Oh, stop it. We’re not that much of a backwater.” But his mother smiled at him, taking the sting out of her words.
“I’ll just put my stuff away,” Mitch said. “Then I’m good with whatever you want to do.”
An hour later Mitch settled on the couch in the living room with a full belly. “That was great.”
“Good. Does it make up for having to share a living space with your old ma for a few days?”
Mitch didn’t need mind-reading powers to recognize the question wasn’t only meant as a joke. He sighed.
“Living with you has never been hard,” he said honestly. “It isn’t difficult now either. It’s just…” Mitch didn’t want to upset his mother so soon after arriving, but he didn’t want to lie to her either.
“What?”
He shrugged. “It’s a bit frustrating that nobody minds that Cian and I live together in Dublin, but at the same time won’t allow us to sleep in the same house when we’re here.”
His mother gave him a look he knew all too well. This stare indicated that, in her opinion, he hadn’t thought hard enough before opening his mouth. Unfortunately, recognizing her expression didn’t mean he knew the reason behind it.
“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe Cian’s parents would like to have him to themselves for a few days to catch up? Or that I might like spending some time with my son without having to share his attention?” Mitch gaped at his mother, disinclined to tell her that the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind.
She sighed. “We’re not stupid. We know you two are all grown up and living your own life together. But it feels like only yesterday you came running to me because you’d fallen off your bike and hurt yourself. Give an old woman a chance to adjust to the fact that you’re no longer a child.”
Mitch got up and crossed the room. When he reached his ma in her comfortable chair, he leaned forward and hugged her. “You’re not an old woman,” he whispered while relaxing into her embrace. He allowed himself to revisit the younger version of himself she’d described, surprised to find he welcomed the security her arms offered as much now as he always had.
“I’m sorry.” Mitch murmured the words against her shoulder. He hadn’t meant to upset his mother. “It’s just that I’m so used to being together with Cian it feels a bit weird when we’re not. Especially since for once we’re home at the same time.” He straightened and sat on the armrest of his mother’s chair.
“It’s okay.” She patted his leg. “I do understand, you know. I used to be young once, a long, long time ago.” She looked up at him with a cheeky glint in her eye. “Did I mention I have a surprise for you?”
“You did.” The sudden change in subject caught Mitch off guard. “I thought you’d keep me in suspense until Christmas.”
“That would defeat the purpose.”
The plot thickened, and Mitch was still none the wiser. “Well then, don’t keep me hanging.”
“We had a raffle in work,” his mother said, at first glance apropos of nothing. “I won the first prize.”
“Congratulations?” Mitch had no idea why his mother made such a big deal about having won a box of chocolates or something similar, but he was willing to wait her out.
“I’ve now got two tickets to see the Symphony Orchestra perform the music from Star Wars. Tomorrow night, actually.”
“Nice one.” Mitch was delighted for her. His mother was a huge Star Wars fan. In fact, she’d watched the movies so often over the years Mitch knew large chunks of them off by heart. “But what has that got to do with me?” Surely, she hadn’t made him come all the way home today, only to travel back to Dublin tomorrow?
“I was wondering if you’d let us use your apartment for the night.” Her gaze bored into him as if she was expecting a certain reaction. “Marian is coming with me, and neither of us fancies driving all the way home at midnight. Since your place will be empty...”
Mitch chuckled. “We have two bedrooms, remember? There’s no reason you can’t stay with us, even when we’re there.” He sobered as he tried to remember what state they’d left the place in before leaving, suppressing a sigh of relief when he recalled they’d done a rather thorough cleanup because they didn’t want to return to chaos. “Of course, you can stay there.” But how is that a surprise for me? He kept that thought to himself.
“And now you’re wondering how me winning concert tickets constitutes a surprise for you.”
Mitch blinked at his mother, shocked to discover that four months after he’d moved out, she could still read his mind with ease.
“I’m disappointed.” The sparkle in his mother’s eyes belied her words. “I thought you would have recognized your opportunity by now.”
The beginnings of an idea formed in Mitch’s mind. Surely, she doesn’t mean...?
“How did I manage to raise such an eejit?” The sigh she expelled was obviously exaggerated. “Why don’t you get on your phone and see if Cian wants to spend tomorrow evening and night here?”
“Really?”
His mother gave him a blank stare. “Really.” She reached for the remote. “Now, either settle or go and do your own thing. I’m watching The Empire Strikes Back tonight.
Mitch reached for his mother, hugging her again and placing a kiss on her cheek. “Thanks. That’s the best surprise ever.” He got up. “Enjoy your movie. I’m going up to my room.”
He was texting Cian before he was halfway up the stairs.
A Matter of Time by Mary Calmes Volume 1
After careful thought and consideration I have come to the conclusion that things happen to me for two reasons. First, I have a terrible habit of tuning out in the middle of a conversation. I’ll hear the beginning, start thinking about what I’m going to do later, and then come back in time to hear the end. This gets particularly dicey when I’m getting directions, because you never want to ask someone to repeat something they have already gone over in specific detail. This is why I often end up in some spooky neighborhoods after dark. I’m winging it. Second, I am not the most discriminating person on the planet. So when a friend of mine asks me to do them a favor, I’ll usually just do it without asking a lot of questions. Not that I would be listening to the whole explanation anyway, since like I said, I’m probably the poster child for ADHD, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, unless you’re my boss or a really hot guy.
The night my friend Anna called me, sobbing on the other end of the phone, I immediately went into nurture mode and walked out of the club, so I could hear her better. There is no way to hear anything over trance music, so I had her wait to spill her guts. I was happily surprised to hear that she was finally leaving her husband. She had stayed with me or her sister many times, after he’d hit her for the millionth time. It’s hard to watch your friends come to class wearing oversized sunglasses, and makeup that’s so thick it could have been applied with a putty knife. Everyone knew her husband beat her, I just never knew how bad or constant it was. I lost track of her after graduation, when she moved to the suburbs, but when she called I was right back there, instantly in that place where I was ready to help any way I could. I told her that of course, I would do whatever she needed.
In all the movies on the Lifetime channel, which I watched the last time I was home sick—hung over and hurling—the wife always has to go back to get her kid’s stuffed animal from the house of horrors she lives in. But before she can put the pedal to the metal and point the late-model station wagon with the faux-wood paneling into the sunset, she has to return for Boo-Boo Bunny or Mr. Snuggles, or a teddy bear that has been loved so hard and long it now resembles an iguana. Anna didn’t have any kids, but what she did have was her beagle, George. She couldn’t go back, but neither could she leave without her partner in crime. They had apparently executed all manner of petty crimes and misdemeanors against her husband over the years. From peeing in shoes—George’s part—to hiding miscellaneous items—Anna’s part—they had made Brian Minor’s daily existence annoying, in exchange for the abuse he had handed out with fist and word. It had given her some degree of satisfaction knowing that, one day, vengeance would be hers. She knew she’d been a coward to not just leave, but she suspected her husband was far more sinister then he let on. So Anna was finally ready to call it a day with Brian but he would have suspected something, and probably killed her, if she’d tried to take her dog. She needed me to get her puppy to make a clean break of it. Because I wanted her out of there so badly, and because I would have gone back for my own dog were he still alive, there was no way to say no.
After leaving my friends dancing at a club on Halsted, I took a cab and headed out to the suburbs. I tried never to leave the city and had only been outside of downtown Chicago on two previous occasions. On the way over there I tried to remember where in the house she had told me the dog was, but since I hadn’t heard that part it was useless to try and dredge the information from my brain. I figured when I got to the house, which I had only been to once, it wouldn’t be hard to find a beagle.
The problem turned out to be finding the house itself. I forgot the address and I didn’t want to call Anna back and look like I hadn’t been listening. Even though I hadn’t. And by then enough time had gone by that if I had called her she would have wondered why I just didn’t call her earlier, so… the cabbie and I took the tour of La Grange until I remembered the street in an energy-drink-fuelled vision after I made him stop at a gas station. It had only taken two hours to get to her huge three-story apparition. I asked the driver to wait for me and he said he’d rather drink Clorox. I understood. I can be exhausting at times. I watched him drive away before I headed toward the house.
The front door swung open when I went to ring the doorbell. I called for Brian and got no response. When I called for George, I heard muffled barking from a room to the left. It was the study, and as soon as I walked in I realized the noise was coming from behind the curtain. When I checked, there was another door behind it. If you weren’t looking for it you would have never seen it, but there was no missing the high-pitched puppy whining. When I opened the door, George was all over me, whimpering, dancing, his whole little body moving with his wagging tail, trying like mad to claw through my jeans. I bent to pet him, and when I did, without meaning to, without even thinking about it, I stepped into the office. The door was open but behind the curtain, so even though I had never intended to hide, I ended up doing just that. It was only for a second and I was ready to step back out when I heard the crash. George yelped and retreated behind my leg. I peeked around the drape and saw a man lying on top of the remains of the heavy glass coffee table that I had walked by seconds earlier. He was covered in blood and mumbling softly.
There are those moments that seem like a strobe light is going off in your head. You see pieces of things but not the whole picture. I saw the shattered glass, the burnished black leather shoes of the guys standing on the royal blue Persian rug; I saw the polished marble floors and Brian holding a gun on the guy. It doesn’t sound like it does in the movies. When a gun goes off, there’s no boom, it’s more of a firecracker pop. I saw the guy jerk, heard him scream out “no,” and watched Brian unload the gun. It was fast, like a jump cut in a movie, and it was over. All the guys took a turn spitting on him, and it was at that moment that two things happened simultaneously. First, my phone rang, which does “Karma Chameleon,” and second, George bolted through the drape. I lunged for him and caught his collar but not in time to stop my forward momentum. It was like being on stage. I came out from behind the curtain. Like ta-dah!
My eyes swept the room; I saw every face before I settled on the one I knew the best, the guy holding the empty gun.
“Jory!” Brian roared, and because I have no fight reflex whatsoever, I went immediately to flight. I yanked on George’s collar and whipped him back into the other room. As I dived after him I heard the shots and Brian screaming my name. He’d never been all that crazy about me but we were definitely in another place by that moment.
I got my legs under me and ran. I yelled for George and he was running along beside me as fast as his little legs would carry him. I saw a guy in front of me but instead of slowing down I sped up. When he pulled his gun, I dropped to my knees and slid halfway across the polished wooden floor. It would have been very cool if I weren’t running for my life at the time. He fell on top of me, but I got untangled and ran for the front door. When I threw it open, I was faced with Darth Vader.
“Get down,” he ordered me, and what sounded like a baseball hit him in the chest.
I dove for the ground and he stepped on me and then somebody else kicked me and then my arm got yanked so hard I thought my shoulder was dislocated. Outside, someone dragged me to my feet before pulling me into the street where like a hundred police cars were, lights flashing everywhere. It was cold and I registered that before anything else. There were more shots and I got shoved back down to my knees on the ground. I lost my balance because I got bumped and pushed and then somebody covered me in a jacket that weighed like a thousand pounds. I fell back and George was on me, licking my face as I tried to breathe. I was winded and when I finally grabbed the dog and hugged him so he’d stop I realized four men were standing over me. Not one looked pleased. One guy in particular looked like he wanted to strangle me right there in the middle of the street.
“Two years of undercover work blown in seconds,” he told me icily.
What to say? “Sorry?”
“Who the fuck are you?” he snarled at me. The scowl looked permanent.
I coughed twice. My ribs hurt. “Jory Keyes.”
“What are you doing here, man?” one of the others snapped at me.
I tried to take in some air. “I came to get the dog,” I told them, which was really all the explanation I had. It had seemed like such a nothing task at the time.
“The dog?”
Their expressions were priceless and even lying there on the pavement I had to smile.
If I didn’t watch so much TV, real life wouldn’t be so disappointing. As it was, I was expecting the interrogation room from Law & Order and the reality was nothing like that. It wasn’t dark, it was really bright, and the metal table was bolted to the floor. The chairs were cold and metal without any padding, and just basically had no atmosphere or character to speak of. It was just plain anticlimactic and so I was bored. I had an ice pack on the back of my head, a Sprite for my stomach, which had gotten queasy when my adrenaline ran out, and a pen and paper so I could write down everything I remembered. I had recounted what I’d seen to a lot of different people ten different ways. When Anna had come to get George, they wouldn’t let me see her. She was being taken somewhere safe right that second. I couldn’t blame them. I didn’t want her to get hurt either. My head was down on my folded arms when the door opened. So many people had been in and out that I didn’t even look up.
“Mr. Keyes."
I rolled my head sideways and realized that Detective Sam Kage was back. He was, I’d decided, the one that hated me the most. I had screwed up his undercover investigation with my need to be rescued. He and his fellow vice detectives had to break cover, turn their guns on Brian Minor, and save me. The only luck they had all night was that Brian had actually killed a man in cold blood and they had an eyewitness to that… me. He was going to jail for a long time. It was just as good, they said, as racketeering, bribery, blackmail, and extortion. First-degree murder had its own time frame that worked for them.
“Sit up and look at me.”
I lifted my head off my arm and leaned back in my chair, staring at him. He had changed out of his Kevlar body armor and was now in a shirt and tie. He was trying to pull off mild-mannered police detective but I wasn’t buying it. I’d seen the beast inside of him already. The others, his tall but balding captain, his dark sort of eastern-European-looking partner and the two others, who looked like poster boys for the Marine Corps, all of them were nicer than Detective Kage. I wanted anyone else but him in the room with me.
“Mr. Keyes, you—”
“What kind of gun is that?” I asked, pointing to his holster.
“What?”
“What kind of gun?”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I was just wondering.”
“It’s a Glock 22.”
“Okay,” I yawned, letting out a deep sigh. That exchange had maybe killed a second and a half. What was next on the agenda?
“Tell me about yourself, Mr. Keyes.”
I looked back at him. “Whaddya wanna know?”
“Where are you from?”
“Kentucky,” I said flatly because I usually said LA or Miami just to make it sound more glamorous, but I figured he was looking for the truth, being a police officer and all.
“How long have you been in Chicago?”
“I moved here when I was seventeen.”
“You run away from home?”
“Nope. I graduated from high school when I was seventeen. See my birthday’s in January so I started school at four instead of—”
“Can we move on?”
Rude much?
“Well?”
“Rude much?” I said out loud instead of just thinking it in my head.
“Sorry, go on.”
“Never mind,” I snapped at him. I hated getting caught rambling on to people that didn’t give a crap. It was mortifying.
“Just talk already, sorry for interrupting.”
He wasn’t sorry, but I figured if I were waiting for actual sincerity I’d be sitting there a long time. I was better off just letting it go. What did it matter to me if he cared or didn’t? “Okay, so I got here and got a job and I’ve been here ever since.”
“Uh-huh. So what, your family’s still there in Kentucky?”
“No,” I breathed out. “There was only my grandmother and she died when I was ten.”
“Where are your folks?”
“I have no idea.”
“You have no idea where your father is.”
He said it like he didn’t believe it. “No. I don’t even know who he is. It doesn’t even say on my birth certificate, and my mother left when I was like three months old or something. Her name was… is Mandy, but that’s all I can tell you. She never came back so I’ve never met her.”
“I see. So you were raised by your grandmother, and when she died, what?”
“I went into foster care.”
He looked straight at me. “Any horror stories?”
“No, I was lucky. I lived in a group home from the time I was ten to the time when I graduated from high school.”
“You close to any of those people?”
“No. Why?”
“Why not?”
“I dunno. You’re acting like I have a character deficit or something.”
“Was I?”
“It was implied,” I assured him.
He grunted.
“It was a group home, Detective. It wasn’t the whole mother/father deal. It was like a dorm. I wasn’t close to anyone. They could have cared less if I was there or not.”
“Did that bother you?”
“I don’t need some bullshit psych eval here, all right? It was what it was, it doesn’t matter.”
He nodded. “So you graduated and what?”
“I bought a bus ticket from Lexington, Kentucky to Chicago, Illinois.”
“And so you got here and then what happened?
“Why is this important?”
“I just need some background, Mr. Keyes, if you don’t mind.”
Did I mind? “Okay, so I got here and got the job I have now. I worked all through college and when I was done I decided to stay instead of doing something else.”
“And where do you work?”
“I work at Harcourt, Brown, and Cogan,” I said proudly.
“By your tone I’m assuming I’m supposed to know what that is.”
I felt my brows draw together.
“What’s with the look?”
“Are you kidding?”
“No I’m not kidding.”
“You’re serious?”
“I said I was.”
“Huh.”
“What is whatever you said?”
“Harcourt, Brown, and Cogan… it’s one of the premier architectural firms in the city.”
“Uh-huh.”
“My boss, Dane Harcourt, he’s the main architect. Miles Brown does interior design and Sherman Cogan is the landscape architect.”
“What does main architect mean?”
“He designs houses.”
He stared at me a long minute. “Does he?”
“Yes. He’s very famous.”
“If he’s so famous why haven’t I ever heard of him?”
I scoffed at him. “I bet the people you haven’t heard of could fill a book, Detective.”
“You’re a punk, you know that?”
I smiled at him. “Particularly nice comeback, Detective.”
“So that’s it, no family, just you?”
“Just me.”
“This’ll be easy then.”
“What will?”
“Making you disappear.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Protective custody, witness protection… are you starting to get it?”
I shook my head. “Just tell me when I can go home.”
His eyes narrowed more than they already were. “Are you stupid?”
I just waited, staring at him.
“Mr. Keyes, you are never going home again. You are going into the witness protection program. Federal marshals will be here in the morning to transport you to—”
“Yeah, right,” I got up. I was tired of being treated like I did something wrong. “I’m going now. I’m beat and I gotta go to work in the morning.”
“Mr. Keyes, people want to kill you. Do you understand that? Brian Minor is very well connected and—”
“I gotta go,” I said as I got up and headed for the door.
“Mr. Keyes, you are going into protective custody.”
“Uh-huh,” I scoffed at him, stopping at the door only as long as it took to open it and go through. At the end of the hall, Brian was being walked to wherever he was being taken by two uniformed police officers.
“Jory!” he yelled at me. “You’re a dead man! Do you understand me? Dead!”
I smirked at him and flipped him off. He yanked free and came charging down the hall toward me. I had no idea what he thought he was going to do to me, handcuffed like he was, but he came anyway. He’d always been so big and brutish, one of those bull in a china shop kind of guys. A lot of big men were still fluid when they moved, like their size was perfect for them, but Brian had always seemed unaware of how strong he was or the confines of his own shoulders and legs. Plodding like an animal was what had forever come to mind. So when he got to me I ducked and crouched and swept my leg underneath him. He went down with a hard face-plant into the tile floor at my feet. I stood there a second and then very theatrically stepped over him.
“You sonofabitch!” he shrieked at me.
“Shut the hell up,” I said irritably.
“Jory!” he screamed at me as I jumped over his thrashing legs before he was buried under five policemen. “I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you… you fuckin’ faggot! You hear me! Jory! You goddamn cocksucker!”
“Oh, go to hell, Brian,” I groaned, turning to walk away from him. “And that whole faggot crap is so old. Who even uses that word anymore?”
“Jory!” he screamed after me.
“People with pickup trucks and gun racks, that’s who,” I chuckled, my own laughter sounding a little unhinged. I was ready to pass out.
“Jory!” His voice had lost some of its power but he was still shrieking.
I headed toward the stairs.
“Mr. Keyes!”
I pivoted around and Detective Kage was there with his nice captain that I’d met earlier and another of the square-cut jaw/square-cut hair guys who had been on the street with him. He did the two-fingered poke into my collarbone like he was trying to drill through my skin.
“Where the hell do you think—”
“Sam,” the captain cautioned him, putting up his hand. “Let’s not—”
“He’s an idiot,” he gestured at me, “and he’ll be dead this time tomorrow.”
“And who would do that? Brian?” I smirked at him. “Gimme a break.”
He gestured at me again but said nothing.
“Mr. Keyes,” the other detective began, his voice gentle, soothing. “Even though you think of Mr. Minor as simply the sonofabitch husband of one of your girlfriends, you must believe us when we tell you the man is not that benign. He’s a drug dealer, a murderer, and someone you don’t want to cross. There are a lot of people that don’t want him in the position of choosing between jail time or talking about them. You alone have the power to put him behind bars. Without you, he walks. Do you understand that?”
“I get it,” I told him. “I do. I will testify. I will do whatever you need so he never sees Anna again as long as he lives. I promise, but seriously—I have a life. I mean, I get from being here for the last five hours that you guys don’t think being someone’s assistant is important. But I promise you that, to my boss, I actually matter. I’ve got so much shit to do, you have no idea.” I let out a quick breath, finally shaking my head. “Call me and tell me what day I need to appear in court.” I said, heading down the stairs to the exit.
“Mr. Keyes.”
I sighed and turned around, looking up at the captain.
“They’ll come after people you love.”
I shrugged. “Good luck finding any.” I said, before I turned back away from him.
Outside the air was cold. I had forgotten I was still in my dancing clothes, which consisted that night of a black spandex T-shirt, tight, brown, distressed boot-cut jeans and motorcycle boots. So because it was November, I was freezing. It smelled like it was going to rain and the breeze was icy. My teeth started to chatter as I looked for a cab.
A car slowed down beside me and I heard the sound of the automatic window going down. When I turned, a guy was smiling at me from the driver’s side.
I waited for the come-on line.
“Hey, man, you need a lift?”
The whole ick factor of some middle-aged man in a van trying to pick me up in the same ride that he took his kids to school in made my skin crawl.
“I’m talking to you, pretty boy.”
“No thanks,” I said quickly, hoping he’d just drive away. “I don’t need a ride.”
“C’mon,” he persisted, “how much?”
“I’m not hustling, man, I’m just walkin’,” I said, moving faster.
“Sure you are,” he leered at me. “Get in.”
And I thought, it’s the club clothes outside of the club, downtown, walking the streets alone at two in the morning. I couldn’t fault his logic. I had rent boy written all over me. “I.…”
The horn scared us both. I jumped, and the guy was so startled that he gunned the motor and drove away. It would have been funny if my heart weren’t pounding so hard. I shivered in spite of myself and looked up when someone shouted my name.
I saw the enormous SUV then, named after something nautical, black and shiny, and through the lowered window was Detective Kage. He was motioning me over. I shoved my hands down in my pockets as I walked over to see what he wanted.
“Get in,” he snapped at me as soon as I peered in the window.
“I—”
“Mr. Keyes,” he said sharply, and the exasperation was not lost on me. “You’re this close to being put in the vehicle whether you like it or not.”
The way he said the word vehicle, so clinical, so like the cop that he was. Step away from the vehicle, put your hands on top of the vehicle, get in the vehicle.… it was funny. “Oh yeah?” I baited him because I figured I could move before he got a hold of me. “You think so?”
“Yeah,” he warned me, his gaze level and dark. “I think so.”
And it wasn’t so much the ominous tone or the way he was looking at me as the muscle that flexed in his jaw. I realized I was closer to jeopardy than I realized. He was bigger than me, so the chances that he could hurt me were pretty good.
I opened the door and climbed up into the seat, swinging the heavy door shut hard.
He grunted at me. “Put on your goddamn seat belt.”
“Do you know where I live?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he almost growled. He had one of those voices that was low and husky, the kind that under other circumstances I would have found sexy as hell.
“I don’t live in the city.” I wanted to make sure he knew where he was going. “I live just on the other side of Austin Avenue in Oak Park.”
He didn’t respond so I gave up. There was some cowboy crap playing on the radio but it was low so I didn’t complain.
“Did you hear me?” I asked him, checking.
“I know where you live,” he said fast, clearly exasperated. “It was one of the many questions you answered for me, as you may recall.”
I rolled my eyes as my phone rang. “Hello?” I answered.
“Where the hell did you go?” Taylor Grant asked me irritably.
“To get a friend out of a jam,” I smiled, slouching down in the seat.
“Were you gonna come back or call?”
I chuckled. “I thought that wasn’t our deal. Either one of us could split at any time. It’s your rule,” I reminded him cheerfully.
Long silence.
“Right?”
“Yeah, right,” he said, the annoyance clear in his voice. “So where are you?”
“On my way home.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Tell me where that is.”
“Nah. I’ll call you,” I told him.
“Jory,” he said softly. “Please lemme see—”
“Later,” I yawned and hung up. I wasn’t in the mood for company. I just wanted to go home, shower off the night, and pass out in my bed.
“Friend of yours?”
“Not really,” I told him, “just a guy.”
“You got a lot of guys?”
I turned slowly to look at him.
“What?” he asked gruffly.
“What kind of question is that?”
“Fair, I would say.”
I went back to staring out the window.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.” I clipped my answer, trying not to snap.
“Twenty-two,” he repeated.
“Yeah.”
“How can you afford to live alone?”
It was a weird question. “I told you already, I have a good job.”
“And what else?”
I turned again to look at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I think you know.”
“I don’t think I do, Detective. You need to spell it out for me.”
“Fine. Does some guy help you out with your rent in exchange for fucking you?”
That was definitely clear. “No,” I barely got out through my clenched jaw.
“No?”
“How do you know I’m even gay, Detective?”
He glanced at me, scoffing. “Dressed like that?”
“You know what, just lemme out.”
“Knock it off. Don’t be so dramatic.” He was annoyed and his voice was dripping with it. “All you guys are so goddamn dramatic.”
All you guys? “You mean gay guys?”
“Just drop it, all right? I’m tired and I don’t feel like getting into a pissing contest with you. I’m driving you ’cause if I don’t, you’re gonna freeze to death. You don’t even have a jacket.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Just sit there and shut up.”
And I granted his request and didn’t say another word to him for the rest of the ride. When he dumped me in front of the old Victorian house that had been converted into four apartments, I got out. I slammed the door and ran across the lawn without a backward glance. I didn’t check to see if he waited.
When I got inside I immediately fell down on my bed, fully clothed, with my shoes still on. I was exhausted. Having people shooting at you as you ran for your life was really very draining.
The night my friend Anna called me, sobbing on the other end of the phone, I immediately went into nurture mode and walked out of the club, so I could hear her better. There is no way to hear anything over trance music, so I had her wait to spill her guts. I was happily surprised to hear that she was finally leaving her husband. She had stayed with me or her sister many times, after he’d hit her for the millionth time. It’s hard to watch your friends come to class wearing oversized sunglasses, and makeup that’s so thick it could have been applied with a putty knife. Everyone knew her husband beat her, I just never knew how bad or constant it was. I lost track of her after graduation, when she moved to the suburbs, but when she called I was right back there, instantly in that place where I was ready to help any way I could. I told her that of course, I would do whatever she needed.
In all the movies on the Lifetime channel, which I watched the last time I was home sick—hung over and hurling—the wife always has to go back to get her kid’s stuffed animal from the house of horrors she lives in. But before she can put the pedal to the metal and point the late-model station wagon with the faux-wood paneling into the sunset, she has to return for Boo-Boo Bunny or Mr. Snuggles, or a teddy bear that has been loved so hard and long it now resembles an iguana. Anna didn’t have any kids, but what she did have was her beagle, George. She couldn’t go back, but neither could she leave without her partner in crime. They had apparently executed all manner of petty crimes and misdemeanors against her husband over the years. From peeing in shoes—George’s part—to hiding miscellaneous items—Anna’s part—they had made Brian Minor’s daily existence annoying, in exchange for the abuse he had handed out with fist and word. It had given her some degree of satisfaction knowing that, one day, vengeance would be hers. She knew she’d been a coward to not just leave, but she suspected her husband was far more sinister then he let on. So Anna was finally ready to call it a day with Brian but he would have suspected something, and probably killed her, if she’d tried to take her dog. She needed me to get her puppy to make a clean break of it. Because I wanted her out of there so badly, and because I would have gone back for my own dog were he still alive, there was no way to say no.
After leaving my friends dancing at a club on Halsted, I took a cab and headed out to the suburbs. I tried never to leave the city and had only been outside of downtown Chicago on two previous occasions. On the way over there I tried to remember where in the house she had told me the dog was, but since I hadn’t heard that part it was useless to try and dredge the information from my brain. I figured when I got to the house, which I had only been to once, it wouldn’t be hard to find a beagle.
The problem turned out to be finding the house itself. I forgot the address and I didn’t want to call Anna back and look like I hadn’t been listening. Even though I hadn’t. And by then enough time had gone by that if I had called her she would have wondered why I just didn’t call her earlier, so… the cabbie and I took the tour of La Grange until I remembered the street in an energy-drink-fuelled vision after I made him stop at a gas station. It had only taken two hours to get to her huge three-story apparition. I asked the driver to wait for me and he said he’d rather drink Clorox. I understood. I can be exhausting at times. I watched him drive away before I headed toward the house.
The front door swung open when I went to ring the doorbell. I called for Brian and got no response. When I called for George, I heard muffled barking from a room to the left. It was the study, and as soon as I walked in I realized the noise was coming from behind the curtain. When I checked, there was another door behind it. If you weren’t looking for it you would have never seen it, but there was no missing the high-pitched puppy whining. When I opened the door, George was all over me, whimpering, dancing, his whole little body moving with his wagging tail, trying like mad to claw through my jeans. I bent to pet him, and when I did, without meaning to, without even thinking about it, I stepped into the office. The door was open but behind the curtain, so even though I had never intended to hide, I ended up doing just that. It was only for a second and I was ready to step back out when I heard the crash. George yelped and retreated behind my leg. I peeked around the drape and saw a man lying on top of the remains of the heavy glass coffee table that I had walked by seconds earlier. He was covered in blood and mumbling softly.
There are those moments that seem like a strobe light is going off in your head. You see pieces of things but not the whole picture. I saw the shattered glass, the burnished black leather shoes of the guys standing on the royal blue Persian rug; I saw the polished marble floors and Brian holding a gun on the guy. It doesn’t sound like it does in the movies. When a gun goes off, there’s no boom, it’s more of a firecracker pop. I saw the guy jerk, heard him scream out “no,” and watched Brian unload the gun. It was fast, like a jump cut in a movie, and it was over. All the guys took a turn spitting on him, and it was at that moment that two things happened simultaneously. First, my phone rang, which does “Karma Chameleon,” and second, George bolted through the drape. I lunged for him and caught his collar but not in time to stop my forward momentum. It was like being on stage. I came out from behind the curtain. Like ta-dah!
My eyes swept the room; I saw every face before I settled on the one I knew the best, the guy holding the empty gun.
“Jory!” Brian roared, and because I have no fight reflex whatsoever, I went immediately to flight. I yanked on George’s collar and whipped him back into the other room. As I dived after him I heard the shots and Brian screaming my name. He’d never been all that crazy about me but we were definitely in another place by that moment.
I got my legs under me and ran. I yelled for George and he was running along beside me as fast as his little legs would carry him. I saw a guy in front of me but instead of slowing down I sped up. When he pulled his gun, I dropped to my knees and slid halfway across the polished wooden floor. It would have been very cool if I weren’t running for my life at the time. He fell on top of me, but I got untangled and ran for the front door. When I threw it open, I was faced with Darth Vader.
“Get down,” he ordered me, and what sounded like a baseball hit him in the chest.
I dove for the ground and he stepped on me and then somebody else kicked me and then my arm got yanked so hard I thought my shoulder was dislocated. Outside, someone dragged me to my feet before pulling me into the street where like a hundred police cars were, lights flashing everywhere. It was cold and I registered that before anything else. There were more shots and I got shoved back down to my knees on the ground. I lost my balance because I got bumped and pushed and then somebody covered me in a jacket that weighed like a thousand pounds. I fell back and George was on me, licking my face as I tried to breathe. I was winded and when I finally grabbed the dog and hugged him so he’d stop I realized four men were standing over me. Not one looked pleased. One guy in particular looked like he wanted to strangle me right there in the middle of the street.
“Two years of undercover work blown in seconds,” he told me icily.
What to say? “Sorry?”
“Who the fuck are you?” he snarled at me. The scowl looked permanent.
I coughed twice. My ribs hurt. “Jory Keyes.”
“What are you doing here, man?” one of the others snapped at me.
I tried to take in some air. “I came to get the dog,” I told them, which was really all the explanation I had. It had seemed like such a nothing task at the time.
“The dog?”
Their expressions were priceless and even lying there on the pavement I had to smile.
If I didn’t watch so much TV, real life wouldn’t be so disappointing. As it was, I was expecting the interrogation room from Law & Order and the reality was nothing like that. It wasn’t dark, it was really bright, and the metal table was bolted to the floor. The chairs were cold and metal without any padding, and just basically had no atmosphere or character to speak of. It was just plain anticlimactic and so I was bored. I had an ice pack on the back of my head, a Sprite for my stomach, which had gotten queasy when my adrenaline ran out, and a pen and paper so I could write down everything I remembered. I had recounted what I’d seen to a lot of different people ten different ways. When Anna had come to get George, they wouldn’t let me see her. She was being taken somewhere safe right that second. I couldn’t blame them. I didn’t want her to get hurt either. My head was down on my folded arms when the door opened. So many people had been in and out that I didn’t even look up.
“Mr. Keyes."
I rolled my head sideways and realized that Detective Sam Kage was back. He was, I’d decided, the one that hated me the most. I had screwed up his undercover investigation with my need to be rescued. He and his fellow vice detectives had to break cover, turn their guns on Brian Minor, and save me. The only luck they had all night was that Brian had actually killed a man in cold blood and they had an eyewitness to that… me. He was going to jail for a long time. It was just as good, they said, as racketeering, bribery, blackmail, and extortion. First-degree murder had its own time frame that worked for them.
“Sit up and look at me.”
I lifted my head off my arm and leaned back in my chair, staring at him. He had changed out of his Kevlar body armor and was now in a shirt and tie. He was trying to pull off mild-mannered police detective but I wasn’t buying it. I’d seen the beast inside of him already. The others, his tall but balding captain, his dark sort of eastern-European-looking partner and the two others, who looked like poster boys for the Marine Corps, all of them were nicer than Detective Kage. I wanted anyone else but him in the room with me.
“Mr. Keyes, you—”
“What kind of gun is that?” I asked, pointing to his holster.
“What?”
“What kind of gun?”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I was just wondering.”
“It’s a Glock 22.”
“Okay,” I yawned, letting out a deep sigh. That exchange had maybe killed a second and a half. What was next on the agenda?
“Tell me about yourself, Mr. Keyes.”
I looked back at him. “Whaddya wanna know?”
“Where are you from?”
“Kentucky,” I said flatly because I usually said LA or Miami just to make it sound more glamorous, but I figured he was looking for the truth, being a police officer and all.
“How long have you been in Chicago?”
“I moved here when I was seventeen.”
“You run away from home?”
“Nope. I graduated from high school when I was seventeen. See my birthday’s in January so I started school at four instead of—”
“Can we move on?”
Rude much?
“Well?”
“Rude much?” I said out loud instead of just thinking it in my head.
“Sorry, go on.”
“Never mind,” I snapped at him. I hated getting caught rambling on to people that didn’t give a crap. It was mortifying.
“Just talk already, sorry for interrupting.”
He wasn’t sorry, but I figured if I were waiting for actual sincerity I’d be sitting there a long time. I was better off just letting it go. What did it matter to me if he cared or didn’t? “Okay, so I got here and got a job and I’ve been here ever since.”
“Uh-huh. So what, your family’s still there in Kentucky?”
“No,” I breathed out. “There was only my grandmother and she died when I was ten.”
“Where are your folks?”
“I have no idea.”
“You have no idea where your father is.”
He said it like he didn’t believe it. “No. I don’t even know who he is. It doesn’t even say on my birth certificate, and my mother left when I was like three months old or something. Her name was… is Mandy, but that’s all I can tell you. She never came back so I’ve never met her.”
“I see. So you were raised by your grandmother, and when she died, what?”
“I went into foster care.”
He looked straight at me. “Any horror stories?”
“No, I was lucky. I lived in a group home from the time I was ten to the time when I graduated from high school.”
“You close to any of those people?”
“No. Why?”
“Why not?”
“I dunno. You’re acting like I have a character deficit or something.”
“Was I?”
“It was implied,” I assured him.
He grunted.
“It was a group home, Detective. It wasn’t the whole mother/father deal. It was like a dorm. I wasn’t close to anyone. They could have cared less if I was there or not.”
“Did that bother you?”
“I don’t need some bullshit psych eval here, all right? It was what it was, it doesn’t matter.”
He nodded. “So you graduated and what?”
“I bought a bus ticket from Lexington, Kentucky to Chicago, Illinois.”
“And so you got here and then what happened?
“Why is this important?”
“I just need some background, Mr. Keyes, if you don’t mind.”
Did I mind? “Okay, so I got here and got the job I have now. I worked all through college and when I was done I decided to stay instead of doing something else.”
“And where do you work?”
“I work at Harcourt, Brown, and Cogan,” I said proudly.
“By your tone I’m assuming I’m supposed to know what that is.”
I felt my brows draw together.
“What’s with the look?”
“Are you kidding?”
“No I’m not kidding.”
“You’re serious?”
“I said I was.”
“Huh.”
“What is whatever you said?”
“Harcourt, Brown, and Cogan… it’s one of the premier architectural firms in the city.”
“Uh-huh.”
“My boss, Dane Harcourt, he’s the main architect. Miles Brown does interior design and Sherman Cogan is the landscape architect.”
“What does main architect mean?”
“He designs houses.”
He stared at me a long minute. “Does he?”
“Yes. He’s very famous.”
“If he’s so famous why haven’t I ever heard of him?”
I scoffed at him. “I bet the people you haven’t heard of could fill a book, Detective.”
“You’re a punk, you know that?”
I smiled at him. “Particularly nice comeback, Detective.”
“So that’s it, no family, just you?”
“Just me.”
“This’ll be easy then.”
“What will?”
“Making you disappear.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Protective custody, witness protection… are you starting to get it?”
I shook my head. “Just tell me when I can go home.”
His eyes narrowed more than they already were. “Are you stupid?”
I just waited, staring at him.
“Mr. Keyes, you are never going home again. You are going into the witness protection program. Federal marshals will be here in the morning to transport you to—”
“Yeah, right,” I got up. I was tired of being treated like I did something wrong. “I’m going now. I’m beat and I gotta go to work in the morning.”
“Mr. Keyes, people want to kill you. Do you understand that? Brian Minor is very well connected and—”
“I gotta go,” I said as I got up and headed for the door.
“Mr. Keyes, you are going into protective custody.”
“Uh-huh,” I scoffed at him, stopping at the door only as long as it took to open it and go through. At the end of the hall, Brian was being walked to wherever he was being taken by two uniformed police officers.
“Jory!” he yelled at me. “You’re a dead man! Do you understand me? Dead!”
I smirked at him and flipped him off. He yanked free and came charging down the hall toward me. I had no idea what he thought he was going to do to me, handcuffed like he was, but he came anyway. He’d always been so big and brutish, one of those bull in a china shop kind of guys. A lot of big men were still fluid when they moved, like their size was perfect for them, but Brian had always seemed unaware of how strong he was or the confines of his own shoulders and legs. Plodding like an animal was what had forever come to mind. So when he got to me I ducked and crouched and swept my leg underneath him. He went down with a hard face-plant into the tile floor at my feet. I stood there a second and then very theatrically stepped over him.
“You sonofabitch!” he shrieked at me.
“Shut the hell up,” I said irritably.
“Jory!” he screamed at me as I jumped over his thrashing legs before he was buried under five policemen. “I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you… you fuckin’ faggot! You hear me! Jory! You goddamn cocksucker!”
“Oh, go to hell, Brian,” I groaned, turning to walk away from him. “And that whole faggot crap is so old. Who even uses that word anymore?”
“Jory!” he screamed after me.
“People with pickup trucks and gun racks, that’s who,” I chuckled, my own laughter sounding a little unhinged. I was ready to pass out.
“Jory!” His voice had lost some of its power but he was still shrieking.
I headed toward the stairs.
“Mr. Keyes!”
I pivoted around and Detective Kage was there with his nice captain that I’d met earlier and another of the square-cut jaw/square-cut hair guys who had been on the street with him. He did the two-fingered poke into my collarbone like he was trying to drill through my skin.
“Where the hell do you think—”
“Sam,” the captain cautioned him, putting up his hand. “Let’s not—”
“He’s an idiot,” he gestured at me, “and he’ll be dead this time tomorrow.”
“And who would do that? Brian?” I smirked at him. “Gimme a break.”
He gestured at me again but said nothing.
“Mr. Keyes,” the other detective began, his voice gentle, soothing. “Even though you think of Mr. Minor as simply the sonofabitch husband of one of your girlfriends, you must believe us when we tell you the man is not that benign. He’s a drug dealer, a murderer, and someone you don’t want to cross. There are a lot of people that don’t want him in the position of choosing between jail time or talking about them. You alone have the power to put him behind bars. Without you, he walks. Do you understand that?”
“I get it,” I told him. “I do. I will testify. I will do whatever you need so he never sees Anna again as long as he lives. I promise, but seriously—I have a life. I mean, I get from being here for the last five hours that you guys don’t think being someone’s assistant is important. But I promise you that, to my boss, I actually matter. I’ve got so much shit to do, you have no idea.” I let out a quick breath, finally shaking my head. “Call me and tell me what day I need to appear in court.” I said, heading down the stairs to the exit.
“Mr. Keyes.”
I sighed and turned around, looking up at the captain.
“They’ll come after people you love.”
I shrugged. “Good luck finding any.” I said, before I turned back away from him.
Outside the air was cold. I had forgotten I was still in my dancing clothes, which consisted that night of a black spandex T-shirt, tight, brown, distressed boot-cut jeans and motorcycle boots. So because it was November, I was freezing. It smelled like it was going to rain and the breeze was icy. My teeth started to chatter as I looked for a cab.
A car slowed down beside me and I heard the sound of the automatic window going down. When I turned, a guy was smiling at me from the driver’s side.
I waited for the come-on line.
“Hey, man, you need a lift?”
The whole ick factor of some middle-aged man in a van trying to pick me up in the same ride that he took his kids to school in made my skin crawl.
“I’m talking to you, pretty boy.”
“No thanks,” I said quickly, hoping he’d just drive away. “I don’t need a ride.”
“C’mon,” he persisted, “how much?”
“I’m not hustling, man, I’m just walkin’,” I said, moving faster.
“Sure you are,” he leered at me. “Get in.”
And I thought, it’s the club clothes outside of the club, downtown, walking the streets alone at two in the morning. I couldn’t fault his logic. I had rent boy written all over me. “I.…”
The horn scared us both. I jumped, and the guy was so startled that he gunned the motor and drove away. It would have been funny if my heart weren’t pounding so hard. I shivered in spite of myself and looked up when someone shouted my name.
I saw the enormous SUV then, named after something nautical, black and shiny, and through the lowered window was Detective Kage. He was motioning me over. I shoved my hands down in my pockets as I walked over to see what he wanted.
“Get in,” he snapped at me as soon as I peered in the window.
“I—”
“Mr. Keyes,” he said sharply, and the exasperation was not lost on me. “You’re this close to being put in the vehicle whether you like it or not.”
The way he said the word vehicle, so clinical, so like the cop that he was. Step away from the vehicle, put your hands on top of the vehicle, get in the vehicle.… it was funny. “Oh yeah?” I baited him because I figured I could move before he got a hold of me. “You think so?”
“Yeah,” he warned me, his gaze level and dark. “I think so.”
And it wasn’t so much the ominous tone or the way he was looking at me as the muscle that flexed in his jaw. I realized I was closer to jeopardy than I realized. He was bigger than me, so the chances that he could hurt me were pretty good.
I opened the door and climbed up into the seat, swinging the heavy door shut hard.
He grunted at me. “Put on your goddamn seat belt.”
“Do you know where I live?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he almost growled. He had one of those voices that was low and husky, the kind that under other circumstances I would have found sexy as hell.
“I don’t live in the city.” I wanted to make sure he knew where he was going. “I live just on the other side of Austin Avenue in Oak Park.”
He didn’t respond so I gave up. There was some cowboy crap playing on the radio but it was low so I didn’t complain.
“Did you hear me?” I asked him, checking.
“I know where you live,” he said fast, clearly exasperated. “It was one of the many questions you answered for me, as you may recall.”
I rolled my eyes as my phone rang. “Hello?” I answered.
“Where the hell did you go?” Taylor Grant asked me irritably.
“To get a friend out of a jam,” I smiled, slouching down in the seat.
“Were you gonna come back or call?”
I chuckled. “I thought that wasn’t our deal. Either one of us could split at any time. It’s your rule,” I reminded him cheerfully.
Long silence.
“Right?”
“Yeah, right,” he said, the annoyance clear in his voice. “So where are you?”
“On my way home.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Tell me where that is.”
“Nah. I’ll call you,” I told him.
“Jory,” he said softly. “Please lemme see—”
“Later,” I yawned and hung up. I wasn’t in the mood for company. I just wanted to go home, shower off the night, and pass out in my bed.
“Friend of yours?”
“Not really,” I told him, “just a guy.”
“You got a lot of guys?”
I turned slowly to look at him.
“What?” he asked gruffly.
“What kind of question is that?”
“Fair, I would say.”
I went back to staring out the window.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.” I clipped my answer, trying not to snap.
“Twenty-two,” he repeated.
“Yeah.”
“How can you afford to live alone?”
It was a weird question. “I told you already, I have a good job.”
“And what else?”
I turned again to look at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I think you know.”
“I don’t think I do, Detective. You need to spell it out for me.”
“Fine. Does some guy help you out with your rent in exchange for fucking you?”
That was definitely clear. “No,” I barely got out through my clenched jaw.
“No?”
“How do you know I’m even gay, Detective?”
He glanced at me, scoffing. “Dressed like that?”
“You know what, just lemme out.”
“Knock it off. Don’t be so dramatic.” He was annoyed and his voice was dripping with it. “All you guys are so goddamn dramatic.”
All you guys? “You mean gay guys?”
“Just drop it, all right? I’m tired and I don’t feel like getting into a pissing contest with you. I’m driving you ’cause if I don’t, you’re gonna freeze to death. You don’t even have a jacket.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Just sit there and shut up.”
And I granted his request and didn’t say another word to him for the rest of the ride. When he dumped me in front of the old Victorian house that had been converted into four apartments, I got out. I slammed the door and ran across the lawn without a backward glance. I didn’t check to see if he waited.
When I got inside I immediately fell down on my bed, fully clothed, with my shoes still on. I was exhausted. Having people shooting at you as you ran for your life was really very draining.
New Tricks by Davidson King
Chapter One
Malcolm
“You only have a quarter tank of gas left before you hit empty, Mal. You’ve decided on a crazy route to my parents’ and there’s no way of truly knowing when we’ll see a gas station again. I did however, see a sign a few miles back for one if you take the next exit. Better to be safe.”
It was times like this I had to remind myself I loved Embry Chaisten, my partner of thirteen years. My love for him outweighed the fact he drove me nuts sometimes. He was the order to my chaos, the plan to my spontaneity. Together we oddly made sense. But lately, with the holidays looming, he got worse. His anxiety spiked and with that, his need for order and control took the driver’s seat. I knew it even annoyed him sometimes.
“I have a GPS, Em. It tells me where all service stations are, just chill.”
His huff made me smile. We were headed down to Belle Isle, Florida, to visit with Embry’s parents for Thanksgiving. This would be the first trip we made to see them in five years when Embry and his family had had a huge argument. They’d never been pleased about their son being gay, and when he’d announced he wanted to marry me, it had sent them over the edge. It had ended with unforgivable words that had left thick scars. And we still hadn’t tied the knot.
I knew that with every birthday and holiday that had passed Embry by, he’d hoped he would get a call from his parents telling him they were sorry, and they wanted nothing more than for him to marry whomever made him happy. But he just got the generic cards and two-minute calls. I never brought marriage up to him, and I was content with how we loved, but I hated how Embry still let his family hold him back. I think when the invitation to come down for Thanksgiving this year was given, he was hoping this was it. Acceptance.
“You did get this beast serviced before the long drive, right?” He turned toward me, his gorgeous blue eyes sparkling, yet nervous. The sun glinted perfectly, making the auburn and golden streaks of his hair almost glow.
“I did.”
“You didn’t ask your friend Zell, did you? I researched him and I was right, no licenses, nothing.” He tsked and shook his head.
“No, I didn’t ask Zell to do it. I went to the mechanic by your work, remember? You picked me up when I dropped off my Land Rover.”
I peeked over at him and found him looking out the window. He didn’t answer me, just scrunched his nose and shrugged. When Embry felt out of his element, he got defensive. I often called him out on it, but I knew sometimes you had to let things go. He was likely a mess in that brilliant head of his.
I never wanted to go to Belle Isle for Thanksgiving. I wanted to stay in Queens and have the holidays with my very loving, very inclusive, very non-conservative family. My mother had a way with Embry, and my dad thought he was hilarious. Not that Embry intended to be funny, my dad just thought he was. We were a huge family with my four brothers and two sisters, and we supported each other. Completely opposite to the Chaistens.
Embry’s father had also made it known that he considered Embry being a teacher less than. Embry enjoyed teaching high school history. He lit up when he told me about a student who finally got something he’d been trying to drill into their head for weeks. He loved his job and he couldn’t even share that with his family.
His mother wasn’t much better. She’d never stood up for her son and had a sneer that would freeze fire in its place. Her opinions were cutting to everything Embry was as a person. When they’d called three weeks ago and told Embry they missed him and asked him to give them another chance, he’d clung to it. I didn’t want to go, but I knew Embry loved his family in his own way and I wanted to support him. The condition was that we drove there and didn’t fly. I thought it would give Embry time to calm down and maybe have a small adventure.
“How long have we been in the car? Feels like a million hours,” Embry said as we passed another exit.
“Just over two hours since we finished lunch. Good thing you teach history and not math.” I chuckled when Embry rolled his eyes at me good-naturedly. It was about a sixteen-hour drive to Embry’s folks, but we agreed to do it in two days so we wouldn’t show up at an ungodly hour. There was no chance in hell I was staying with Embry’s parents, so I’d booked a room at the nearest hotel to their house. I figured I’d tell Embry when we got closer to Belle Isle.
“We should stop soon. I need to call my mother and let her know we’re on schedule. She’ll be grateful for the update.” I knew he was saying that more for his own benefit than mine— convincing himself she’d want to know.
“I’m the one driving, go ahead and call her while we’re on the road.”
His head whipped in my direction and I wanted to laugh at his expression. I was sure it scared his students, but I just thought he was adorable.
“Mal, you know how unsteady a call is if we’re moving! The call could drop and then my mother would think I hung up and…”
“And you’d have to call her back and say you didn’t? If you think she wouldn’t understand a dropped call, then you’re not ready for this visit, Em.”
He released a sigh, his shoulders sagged, and I knew he was wound tight. He needed a break.
“How about this, we’ll stop closer to the ocean, have some coffee, maybe pie?” I winked knowing it was a weakness of his. “You can call her and let her know, and then we’ll drive a few more hours before breaking for the night. Sound good?”
“It’s a plan?” He asked because I didn’t do plans. I was a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of guy. But plans made Embry feel grounded.
“Yeah, Em, a plan.” I pulled over and checked the map on my GPS. “Okay, let’s head toward Raleigh. We just have forty-five minutes to get there. Then we’ll drive closer to the shore and you can call your mom. We’ll have been driving for over eight hours by then and we’ll both appreciate a bed.”
Em nodded, pleased with the plan, and his body immediately relaxed. I put the new destination into the GPS and pulled back onto the highway. Worrying about Embry’s parents exhausted him. I wished he’d let me deal with things more. He had to have his order and his way, but his way wasn’t working, especially lately. Sometimes I wished I could push his boundaries and help him let go. Show him how freeing and amazing it could be to just go with the flow for a bit.
I’d need some sort of a miracle to put a plan like that into action. Of course, I should be careful what I wished for; karma had a funny way of helping a guy out. We had just passed a sign that said Welcome to Vintage Ridge when there was a horrible sound coming from the car, followed by smoke, and a clang and a crash.
“What the hell?” Embry shouted.
My Land Rover bucked and then like a switch turned off, it stopped.
“Damn.” I hit the steering wheel in frustration and dared to look over at Embry. His eyes narrowed and his lips were thinned out. His beautiful pale skin began to turn a lovely shade of red, and when he opened his mouth, I waited.
“You did take it to Zell to service it, didn’t you?”
“No! I took it to the place you recommended and look what happened.” I gestured to the lightly smoking hood of the car.
“Sure, blame me. I suggested the place, I expected you to do your research, Mal.” He folded his arms over his chest and glared at me.
“I’ll call our roadside assistance. Maybe now would be a good time to call your mom and tell her there may be a delay.” I hopped out of the car to make my call without waiting to hear Embry’s reply. I loved him and I understood him, but sometimes, it was best if I stepped away.
Luckily, roadside assistance said there was a service station in the town we had just entered and I took the time, while I watched Embry through the windshield talking to his mother, to order an Uber.
I couldn’t for the life of me understand what happened to the car, but judging from his expression, I knew whatever the mechanic told me was going to be less painful than what Embry’s mother was saying to him right now.
The Dark Tide by Josh Lanyon
Reaction hit me, and I slid down the wall and dialed 911.
I was having trouble catching my breath as I waited — and waited — for the 911 operator, and I hoped to hell I wasn’t having a heart attack. My heart had been damaged by rheumatic fever when I was sixteen. A recent bout of pneumonia had worsened my condition, and I’d been in line for surgery even before getting shot three weeks earlier. Everything was under control now, and according to my cardiologist, I was making terrific progress. The ironic thing about the surgery and the news that I was evidently going to make old bones after all was that I felt mortal in a way that I hadn’t for the last fifteen years.
Tomkins pussyfooted up to delicately head-butt me.
“Hi,” I said.
He blinked his wide, almond-shaped, green-gold eyes at me and meowed. He had a surprisingly quiet meow. Not as annoying as most cats. Not that I was an expert — nor did I plan on becoming one. I was only loaning a fellow bachelor my pad. The cat — kitten, really — was also convalescing. He’d been mauled by a dog three weeks ago. His bounce back was better than mine.
I stroked him absently as he wriggled around and tried to bite my fingers. I guessed there was truth to the wisdom about petting a cat to lower your blood pressure, because I could feel my heart rate slowing, calming — which was pretty good, considering how pissed off I was getting at being kept on hold in the middle of an emergency.
Granted, it wasn’t much of an emergency at this point. My intruder was surely long gone.
I chewed my lip, listened once more to the message advising me to stay on the line and help would soon be with me. Assuming I’d still be alive to take that call.
I hung up and dialed another number. A number I had memorized long ago. A number that seemingly would require acid wash to remove from the memory cells of my brain.
As the phone rang on the other end, I glanced across at the clock on the bookshelf. Three oh three in the morning. Well, here was a test of true friendship.
“Riordan,” Jake managed in a voice like raked gravel.
“Uh…hey.”
“Hey.” I could feel him making the effort to push through the fog of sleep. He rasped, “How are you?”
Pretty civil given the fact that I hadn’t spoken to him for nearly two weeks and was choosing three in the morning to reopen the lines of communication.
I found myself instinctively straining to hear the silence behind him; was someone there with him? I couldn’t hear over the rustle of bed linens.
“I’m okay. Something happened just now. I think someone tried to break in.”
“You think?” And he was completely alert. I could hear the covers tossed back, the squeak of bedsprings.
“Someone did try to break in. He took off, but —”
“You’re back at the bookstore?”
“Yeah. I got home late this afternoon.”
“You’re there alone?”
Thank God he didn’t say it like everyone else had. Alone? As though it was out of the question. As though I was far too ill and helpless to be left to my own devices. Jake simply looked at it from a security perspective.
“Yeah.”
“Did the security alarm go off?”
“No.”
“Did you call it in?”
“I called nine-one-one. They put me on hold.”
“At three o’clock in the morning?” He was definitely on his feet and moving, dressing, it sounded like, and I felt a wave of guilty relief. Regardless of how complicated our relationship was — and it was pretty complicated — there was no one I knew who was better at dealing with this kind of thing. Whatever this kind of thing was.
Which I guessed said more than I realized right there.
Jake’s voice was crisp. “Hang up and call nine-one-one again. Stay on the line with them. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I said gruffly, “Thanks, Jake.”
Just like that. I had called, and he was coming to the rescue. Unexpectedly, a wave of emotion — reaction — hit me. One of the weird aftereffects of my surgery. I struggled with it as he said, “I’m on my way,” and disconnected.
Christmas Lights by RJ Scott & VL Locey
Chapter One
Ryker
Coach Carmichael paced the full length of the locker room, his gaze landing on each of us before he stopped right in front of Alex. This was what he did before every game. He zeroed in on one of the guys and imparted words of wisdom. Sometimes it was just a quick “get this done” with a lift of an eyebrow; other times it was this whole speech about teamwork and how good the picked-on player could be if only he did X, Y, or Z. On most occasions, he lightened the tone. Sometimes he even made a joke, although none of us laughed in case he was being ironic; none of us wanted to get on Coach’s bad side after all.
Before the last game, it had been me under the spotlight, being reminded that scrappiness in the corners was a prerequisite and not a choice. I’d held his gaze, even as Alex had snickered next to me, and Jens had scrubbed his face with his hands, trying not to laugh. One turnover against Boston and I would be labeled as the guy who got sloppy in the corners for the rest of the damn season, but what everyone had failed to mention was that I’d had Brady Rowe all the fuck over me and I’d been intimidated. Every rookie had their first time breaking under intimidation, and that had been my moment, and I’d sure as hell wanted to own it. But that was the last game. This game it was Alex who would get the pep talk. I waited with bated breath and a barely held snicker at this payback.
Coach crossed his arms over his chest. “The Railers will put Tennant Rowe’s line out against the JAR line.”
I exchanged glances with Jens, who was the J in the Jens/ Alex/ Ryker line, or JAR as we were now known by pundits, haters, and fans alike, and he gave me a look that spoke volumes. Going up against the Railers was something that only happened a few times a year. After all, the Pennsylvania team was in the Eastern Conference, and we were in the West, but given they were third in the overall table to our scratchy twenty-third, we all knew that tonight was going to be one long-ass fight to come away with any points at all.
That’s defeatist, my dad’s words flew into my thoughts. He always told me that the game was won in a man’s head way before he started to play, and I respected the hell out of my dad, who was coach to the same damn Railers team we were facing tonight.
“You know you’ll have their best D-Men out against you, Ulfsson and Sato-West, so for fuck’s sake keep your heads up and stay on task.” He waved to include me and Jens. “To quote the Great One, 'skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been’, okay? Watch for any space and play the game. I want shots on goal because tonight we’re playing the statistics game.”
My brain went immediately to another well-timed Gretsky quote, ‘you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take’.
Yay for that to pop into my thoughts when we were potentially going to come away losing ten-one to one of the best teams ever fielded in the NHL.
“Coach,” Alex murmured, and we all said the same. The pep talk wasn’t just for Alex. It was for all of us, really, and we knew that. “We can do this,” Coach added and slowly turned a full three-sixty.
“We can win against this team. We have the pieces in place. We just need to move in the right direction. Let’s call the starting lineup,” he instructed and handed the clipboard to Colorado, who was our backup goalie tonight, nursing a sprained groin muscle. Whether or not it was from hockey or one of his particularly active sex marathons he talked so much about , we didn’t know. Still, he was there if we needed him, but on the other hand, we really hoped we didn’t because just recently he’d become even more erratic than he’d been before. Colorado grinned wolfishly, then tapped the board in an imitation drum roll.
“Forwards: Jens, Cherry, Madsen; D-men: Novikov, Myers, and Lemon is our starting goalie.” At that point, he fist-bumped Andre LeMans, who just sighed at the fact that his nickname had somehow become Lemon, just as Alex Garcia had become Cherry. Part of me wished I’d get a cool nickname as well, but Mads was already taken by my dad, and even though other players used it, I kind of wanted my own. One day.
Each name was met by a small cheer, and by the time we were lined up in the tunnel, waiting for warm-ups, I was pumped. This was going to be good. I just had to forget it was the Railers and focus on the fact that I’d practiced against Ten, my unofficial/ official stepdad, for so long over the summer I’d begun to learn some of the things he did so well. Of course, seeing him tonight wasn’t going to be fun like we’d had in the heat of summer. This was serious shit. The Raptors needed the points desperately, and I couldn’t even look at my dad on the Railers bench in case he smiled at me with encouragement or was in coach mode and scowled at me as an opposing player. Unfortunately, Ten hadn’t gotten the memo about avoiding me as he was waiting at the center line as I passed.
“Ry.” He nodded and skated slowly away, giving me a smile that was half love and half we’re-gonna-crush-you. I smiled back and returned his nod, sending a puck across the ice to land on his stick. He passed it back, and that was all we did by way of acknowledging each other as opponents.
Then after a short break, it was game on, and the Railers were three goals up in the first period with Ten’s line out every single damn time the JAR line was out. There wasn’t a hope in hell of them making a mistake so we could steal the puck.
But then, early in the second period, Adler Lockhart, made a mistake. He turned over the puck, and I could hear the collective gasps in the arena and probably from every single person watching this game on TV. The Railers didn’t do turnovers, and at first, our line froze, and then it became obvious what had happened. Lockhart’s stick had tangled after a heroic dive from our best D-Man and captain, Vlad.
Vlad shuttled the puck to Alex, and what Alex did next was a thing of beauty. He hared up the rink toward Stan Lyamin, making it look as if he was going straight to shoot, and then in a highlight reel move, he passed left to Jens, who sent it streaking from his stick onto mine. There was no way I could dust this pass off; we didn’t have time. We’d caught the Railers off guard, and I had to shoot now. Otherwise, Stan would close that tiny gap he’d left, thinking Alex was firing a slap shot from the other end. Everything slowed down, instinct kicked in, and I visualized where it was going. I could feel every muscle in me screaming to make this the right shot for this moment.
When the puck left my stick, it didn’t even wobble or waver. It headed straight for the hole between Stan’s glove and his beloved pipes— a hole that was closing, even as the puck flew. He missed the flying rubber disc by an inch, the net straining as the puck hit it, and somehow the Raptors had scored against the Railers, and we had pulled a goal back. The siren sounded in the arena, the Raptors fans going wild, and I went to one knee, celebrating in the most dramatic way I could. That goal, the first I’d ever scored against my dad and Ten, was one I would remember forever.
After that, it was almost okay that we lost by four goals.
Alex and I met Dad and Ten after the game. With only three days to go until Christmas, it was hard to find any suitable place we could meet up, so we’d asked them back to our place, which had a tiny tree in one corner and lights around the arch into the kitchen. We were done with official games before Christmas, with five days off because of the way the game schedule fell for us. Not so much for the Railers, who had games in Dallas and Florida close to Christmas Day.
After tomorrow’s practice and postgame analysis, my Christmas break started, although losing to the Railers five to one wasn’t a brilliant result for us to discuss as a team. Whatever. Nothing was going to mess with my excitement at spending an entire five days with Jacob.
Ten waltzed into our place, looking all kinds of badass, then hugged me so tight I couldn’t breathe.
“So proud of you, Ry,” he wouldn’t let me go until Dad pried him away.
“Nice goal, son,” Dad said gruffly and held me almost as tight. “So fucking tight.”
“What about my feint and pass?” Alex teased when we all separated, and he got included in hugs as well, along with congratulations from Ten. Alex was spending time with his family, and that included his partner, Sebastian, and I know he was apprehensive, although things had been better recently. At least Sebastian had been invited to spend time with Alex’s family, so that was a win.
“Presents!” Ten announced, and I heard Dad groan. Ten had this way of going into a shop and buying everything. No joke. From a bargain-bin bobblehead to expensive skates, he just wanted to give everything to everyone, donating a shit ton of money to local charities anonymously and helping to make peoples’ Christmases good ones.
Even Alex was in on the gift exchange, and we spent a good hour laughing and drinking beer and celebrating Christmas early. Part of me was sad that I wasn’t seeing Mom and Dad in the break, but Dad was down south, and he had Ten, and as for Mom, she was on vacation in Mexico with her husband and my little sisters. Everything had worked out so well for both of them, but I knew if I’d been alone, then either Mom or Dad would have been there for me.
Only this year, I wasn’t going to be alone at all.
I was going to Jacob’s farm, staying in some old cabin he and his dad had spent the fall renovating. Scott was coming with Hayne, and Benoit was visiting with Ethan for at least three days. The six of us had been planning this Christmas break since the NHL bigwigs had released the schedule, and it would be so good to catch up with Scott and Ben, if only to shoot the shit and remember life before everything had gone to hell. Owatonna College seemed so long ago, and chilling with friends was exactly what I needed. Not that it was only a college reunion. After all, we’d invited Henry as well, but he was only coming out of the therapy facility for a few days and spending the time with his family this Christmas, although he didn’t seem all that happy with that particular state of affairs. He was getting more morose and confused with every visit, so much so that his key therapist had suggested we stop visiting for a while.
Alex went to bed a little after two a.m., Ten pleaded exhaustion, and then it was just Dad and I, sitting by the tree in silence, enjoying each other’s company, and sipping coffee, which I knew would likely keep me up.
“Is it okay if I ask you something, Dad?”
He glanced up from his coffee and smiled at me. “Always,” he murmured. We’d had our bad times, Dad and I, but there was no man I wanted more in my corner in my public and private life. The question I had was very relevant to the thoughts spinning in my head right now. Jacob and I. The future.
“Did you know Ten would say yes when you asked him to marry you?”
His eyes widened a little, and then he nodded. “You have to remember Ten wasn’t in a good place back then, with his injury and with the residual…” He tapped his head, and I couldn’t help but recall the awfulness of that Christmas. Through it all, Dad and Ten had fought the effects of the injury to stay together and in love, and then the wedding, it had been so beautiful.
“But you knew he’d say yes, right?”
He paused, but that was my dad; the focused, calm one, he never let words fly that weren’t considered and thoughtful.
“Ten is the other half of me, and despite everything, in my heart, I knew he’d say yes. Why?”
“No reason, just been thinking about things, is all.”
“Is something worrying you? Is someone on the team messing with you about me and Ten?” Abruptly, he was fiercely defensive of his son, and I loved him for that.
“No way would Coach Carmichael let any of that fly,” I reassured him. “I just…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. The enormity of what I felt for Jacob was difficult to put into mere words.
“What is it, Ry? Are you okay?” He looked so concerned, and it didn’t take much for me to see that I was coming over as a weird-ass kid who was worrying his dad.
I wanted to tell him that Jacob and I would be together forever. But he might’ve thought I was stupid, and say that we couldn’t know what we wanted yet. Dad loved me whatever I did, but what if he said I was too young to think about tying myself to one person?
I’m twenty-four, and Jacob is my forever, I defended myself in the imaginary scenario in which Dad might think less of me or question my decisions. Of course he could be good with everything, but on the off chance he wasn’t, I kept my truth that Jacob was my everything to myself for now.
“I’m fine, Dad, just happy to see you and Ten so good together.”
Dad pulled me into a sideways hug.
“Love you,” he said.
“I love you too.”
“Merry Christmas, son.”
Helena Stone can’t remember a life before words and reading. After growing up in a household where no holiday or festivity was complete without at least one new book, it’s hardly surprising she now owns more books than shelf space while her Kindle is about to explode.
The urge to write came as a surprise. The realisation that people might enjoy her words was a shock to say the least. Now that the writing bug has well and truly taken hold, Helena can no longer imagine not sharing the characters in her head and heart with the rest of the world.
Having left the hustle and bustle of Amsterdam for the peace and quiet of the Irish Country side she divides her time between reading, writing, long and often wet walks with the dog, her part-time job in a library, a grown-up daughter and her ever loving and patient husband.
Mary Calmes lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband and two children and loves all the seasons except summer. She graduated from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, with a bachelor's degree in English literature. Due to the fact that it is English lit and not English grammar, do not ask her to point out a clause for you, as it will so not happen. She loves writing, becoming immersed in the process, and falling into the work. She can even tell you what her characters smell like. She loves buying books and going to conventions to meet her fans.
Davidson King, always had a hope that someday her daydreams would become real-life stories. As a child, you would often find her in her own world, thinking up the most insane situations. It may have taken her awhile, but she made her dream come true with her first published work, Snow Falling.
When she's not writing you can find her blogging away on Diverse Reader, her review and promotional site. She managed to wrangle herself a husband who matched her crazy and they hatched three wonderful children.
If you were to ask her what gave her the courage to finally publish, she'd tell you it was her amazing family and friends. Support is vital in all things and when you're afraid of your dreams, it will be your cheering section that will lift you up.
Bestselling author of over sixty titles of classic Male/Male fiction featuring twisty mystery, kickass adventure and unapologetic man-on-man romance, JOSH LANYON has been called "the Agatha Christie of gay mystery."
Her work has been translated into eleven languages. The FBI thriller Fair Game was the first male/male title to be published by Harlequin Mondadori, the largest romance publisher in Italy. Stranger on the Shore (Harper Collins Italia) was the first M/M title to be published in print. In 2016 Fatal Shadows placed #5 in Japan's annual Boy Love novel list (the first and only title by a foreign author to place on the list).
The Adrien English Series was awarded All Time Favorite Male Male Couple in the 2nd Annual contest held by the Goodreads M/M Group (which has over 22,000 members). Josh is an Eppie Award winner, a four-time Lambda Literary Award finalist for Gay Mystery, and the first ever recipient of the Goodreads Favorite M/M Author Lifetime Achievement award.
Josh is married and they live in Southern California.Her work has been translated into eleven languages. The FBI thriller Fair Game was the first male/male title to be published by Harlequin Mondadori, the largest romance publisher in Italy. Stranger on the Shore (Harper Collins Italia) was the first M/M title to be published in print. In 2016 Fatal Shadows placed #5 in Japan's annual Boy Love novel list (the first and only title by a foreign author to place on the list).
The Adrien English Series was awarded All Time Favorite Male Male Couple in the 2nd Annual contest held by the Goodreads M/M Group (which has over 22,000 members). Josh is an Eppie Award winner, a four-time Lambda Literary Award finalist for Gay Mystery, and the first ever recipient of the Goodreads Favorite M/M Author Lifetime Achievement award.
RJ Scott
RJ Scott is a USA TODAY bestselling author of over 140 romance and suspense novels. From bodyguards to hockey stars, princes to millionaires, cowboys to military heroes to every-day heroes, she believes that love is love and every man deserves a happy ending.
USA Today Bestselling Author V.L. Locey – Penning LGBT hockey romance that skates into sinful pleasures.
V.L. Locey loves worn jeans, yoga, belly laughs, walking, reading and writing lusty tales, Greek mythology, Torchwood and Dr. Who, the New York Rangers, comic books, and coffee. (Not necessarily in that order.) She shares her life with her husband, her daughter, one dog, two cats, a pair of geese, far too many chickens, and two steers.
When not writing spicy romances, she enjoys spending her day with her menagerie in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania with a cup of fresh java in one hand and a steamy romance novel in the other.
Helena Stone
EMAIL: helenastoneauthor@gmail.com
Mary Calmes
BLOG / NEWSLETTER / FB FRIEND
EMAIL: mmcalmes@hotmail.com
Davidson King
EMAIL: davidsonkingauthor@yahoo.com
Josh Lanyon
SMASHWORDS / iTUNES / SHELFARI
EMAIL: josh.lanyon@sbcglobal.net
RJ Scott
BOOKBUB / KOBO / SMASHWORDS
EMAIL: rj@rjscott.co.uk
VL Locey
The Rest of Our Lives by Helena Stone
A Matter of Time by Mary Calmes Volume 1
New Tricks by Davidson King
The Dark Tide by Josh Lanyon
Christmas Lights by RJ Scott & VL Locey
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