“Not this shit again.” Aiden growled and stalked away from me, heading to the lobby. “I swear to my mother, I do not understand how this building is so fucking fragile due to a heat wave.”
“Circuits probably getting overheated trying to cool it down,” I said, trailing after him. “What do you usually do when this happens?”
Aiden stopped walking beside the rows of desks, the wings of his brow sloping downward. “Usually it blinks back on. Or we call the super. We haven’t been in this building long enough for me to have a bunch of strategies.”
We stood in the shadows, quiet and waiting for the power to “blink back on.” After a full minute of looking at each other as an odd stillness filled the building, one void of all ticks and hums and chirps of the multitude of electronics that worked in the background of everyday life, it became apparent that there would be no blinking. At least not this fast.
“Goddamn it,” Aiden grumbled. “All right, let me think.”
He rubbed his forehead, already going overtime on stress while I edged away. It almost seemed like he expected me to freak out, or ask him what to do, and he was scrambling to try to come up with a solution before I could lose my shit. But the darkness didn’t bother me none—blackouts in the summer had been a part of life when I was a kid, and that had been in a cramped apartment on Merrick Boulevard. Not some swank office building where the air still held a nice chill, and floor-to-ceiling windows spilled beams of moonlight everywhere.
“Let’s just give it a few,” I suggested. “And be glad I hadn’t already started turning your machines back on. Last thing we need is another dirty shutdown.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
I had no idea if he knew what I meant, but Aiden seemed happy that I was shining a spotlight on a high point of this new development. Shooting him a grin, I walked over to the window with my flip-flops slapping louder than ever against the floor. Unable to help myself, I did another step routine in the dark.
Aiden’s footsteps followed close behind, as did the sound of his warm chuckle. “I love watching you dance.”
“Psh, bro, you just like watching my ass.”
He came up behind me near the window, squeezing on said ass and digging his fingers into the muscles. I’d been born with a round ass inherited from my mother, and I’d started working out regularly in the hopes that it would resemble less of a bubble, to no successful end. Maybe I was fated to have the kind of ass that made a dude like Aiden moan. He loved biting it right before sliding his tongue inside to eat me out.
My dick twitched, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I was such a mess for him and Jace.
“Did you used to be in a step team?” he asked in my ear, still rubbing my butt. “Or do you just put together routines on the fly while wearing flip-flops?”
“Steph was in one,” I said. “So she made me and Tonya practice with her in the park. Dudes used to say I was gay for stepping with my girls, and then Tonya would fuck them up.”
“Tonya sounds like a force to be reckoned with.”
“She was and she still is. Our neighborhood wasn’t the worst, but it wasn’t that great either. She and Ray were so quick to throw hands that people learned not to fuck with me or Steph or Angel unless they wanted to get their faces tattooed with their fists.”
“Sounds like me and Jace back when we lived in Rockaway.”
“I’d kill to see Jace throw down,” I said with a soft laugh. “I bet he was fast and mean.”
“He had to be.”
His voice came out lower, more serious, and I didn’t push from there. I rarely did. I knew enough about their horrifying adolescences to have put a lot of it together myself. Drug-addicted parents, murders, abandonment, and stealing to survive until Aiden had finally accepted money from his estranged father, Kenneth Stone.
It wasn’t the type of childhood story you asked a friend to tell you. Reliving trauma wasn’t fun for anyone. A good person tried to help their friends forget the bad stuff until they chose to unburden themselves. I wasn’t about to pry just to satisfy my own curiosity.
Just thinking about the difference between their days in the Rockaways compared to my childhood in South Jamaica caused my eyeballs to shoot through the window to peer in the direction of Queens. I found myself looking at nothing but darkness except for headlights on the street down below. At first it was hard to reconcile what I was seeing with what seemed possible, but there was no denying that the entire skyline was blacked out. “What the fuck?”
“What?” Aiden asked from where he’d buried his face against my neck.
“Yo, A, the whole city’s power is out.”
Behind me, Aiden became one long frozen stretch of muscle against my back. I could feel the tension building inside of him.
“What? No way.”
I pointed out the window, gesturing to the rest of the city and most damningly, the Empire State building without lights in the distance.
“Crazy shit,” I said. “This happened in 2003. Whole fucking East Coast shut down, remember?”
Aiden’s tension mushroomed and exploded in a flurry of motion as he stepped back and fumbled with his phone. In the wash of silver moonlight, his fair complexion had bleached to a bone color as he frantically unlocked his phone.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Jace was on the subway. If the power went out, the trains would stop running.” Aiden’s voice was full of anguish and worry. His big shoulders had hunched forward as he sucked in deep breaths. “He’ll be so fucking scared, Chris. Trapped underground like that? You have no idea what he— Fuck, he’s not picking up.”
With every one of his words, my own heart had begun thumping in my chest. A violent budum-budum-budum until it seemed possible that it would quit just like that, twenty seconds after expanding in my chest because I’d felt so at peace with Aiden pressed up against me.
“When did you speak to him last?”
“Fuck, I don’t know, Chris.” Aiden stabbed a thick finger at Jace’s number again, pacing. “Goddamn it. He will flip. Have a meltdown.”
“Aiden, don’t think about that—”
“How can I not?” he roared. “You don’t understand. He isn’t good with being trapped. Or the dark. He’ll literally have a fucking breakdown if he has to walk through a subway tunnel with a group of strangers, man.”
The image he was putting in my mind was too horrifying to digest. Jace was a little guy, shorter than me with a slight stature even though his attitude and big mouth were about four times his size. With his long waves of dark hair, rich dark eyes, and dainty features, you’d expect him to be soft, but Jace was quiet and intense from carrying a lifetime of pain on his back. He could also be mean as a viper if you came at him wrong.
I cautiously walked over to Aiden, hands up as he gripped his phone. He was one of the strongest people I knew, but this possibility had stripped him down to terrified bare bones. I touched one of his shoulders, not flinching when his first response was to rear back and tense further.
“Is his phone going straight to voice mail, or is it ringing?”
“What?” Aiden stared at me blindly, still breathing hard. “It’s ringing.”
“Then he’s not in the subway. If he was, he’d have no signal for a call to go through or ring.” I squeezed him hard, digging my fingers in. “He’s prob walking over here right this second, hurrying his fine ass up with a bag of snacks and a six-pack.”
Some of the stress fled Aiden’s broad face, and he started nodding slowly although his eyes were so wide I could see the whites around his pupil. I flashed an encouraging smile and jerked my chin at him.
“If the whole city’s power is out, you know we’re gonna be camped out here for a while. Everything will be shut down, and for all we know, people will start wilding out, thinking it’s free rein to act dumb as hell.” Wrong choice of a distraction—the words had Aiden staring down at the darkened city once again. I grabbed his jaw and forced him to focus on me instead. “Let’s figure out the plan we’re gonna pitch to Jace when he shows up and realizes we’re all trapped for a couple of hours with nothing to do. ’Cause you know he’ll just be ready to get naked and fuck until the lights come back on, instead of coming up with a way to get home.”
Aiden guttered out a short laugh. “You’re right. He’ll know I’m working on one in the back of my mind so he won’t have to worry about it.”
“Exactly. You’ll be stressed the fuck out while he tries to do everything to forget that this whole darkness thing makes him a little uneasy. Which means mad sex.”
Aiden nodded, but he was giving me this serious look, one full of half astonishment and half knowing. “You know us.”
“Of course.”
“There’s no ‘of course’ about it, Chris. A lot of people spend time with me and Jace, but most folks do not get us the way you do.” Aiden’s eyelids lowered, and he dipped his head so we were eye level. “Why do you think we both want you so much?”
I tried for a snort, a smart-ass laugh. “Because I have a big dick and a nice ass?”
Aiden’s breath whooshed out in a warm wash across my face. “You having a big dick and nice ass is why we want to fuck you. You getting us, effortlessly, is why we want you.”
The words hit too close to home and scattered my senses almost as quickly as they captured my heart. “What does that mean?”
“You really want to talk about it now?” he asked. “Because you seemed to think we should wait for Jace. And now I kinda agree.”
We stared at each other for a moment before I jerkily nodded. “Call him again.” My voice came out in a gravelly croak. “I bet he picks up.”
Aiden unlocked his phone and called Jace once again, but he did it without breaking eye contact. That stare was intense enough to burn a hole through my head, and I was convinced that’s what he was trying to do. Imprint on my brain his thoughts, desires, and all the ways he wanted to ruin me with whatever he was about to say. Unless he was going to say the thing I’d been waiting to hear.
It was quiet enough for me to hear the trill of Jace’s phone ringing in his ear. It rang twice before the trill was mirrored by another sound, louder and muffled at the same time, coming from the direction of the lobby.
I turned away from Aiden to jog to the front doors of QFindr, smiling broadly once I saw Jace on the other side of the glass. He pounded his fist against the door, and I scrambled with the locks so I could swing it open.
Jace instantly threw himself into my arms, burying his face in my neck and shuddering against me as he sucked in deep breaths. That was when it hit me—we were only nine floors up, but he’d made that trek in the pitch-dark. The slight tremor in his slim body was enough to spell out just how much it had triggered his phobia, so I stroked his back and shushed him as he clung like a little kid who’d just gotten lost in the supermarket. These fragile moments were always the easiest to remember, even after the rarely seen explosions of his temper, which ran wild and hot like fire on a windy day.
“Baby,” Aiden breathed, joining us by the door to enclose Jace from the other side. “Why the fuck didn’t you pick up the phone? I was worried sick.”
Jace tensed. Uh-oh. Wrong question, Aiden, King of Worriers.
“He was too busy sprinting up eight flights of stairs apparently,” I said, pulling away. “Man, you must be in way better shape than me. My ass would be about to double over and pass out by now.”
Jace went from bordering on irritation at the instant third degree to deflating against Aiden with a little smile. “Ashton makes us go for runs. It’s awful. Especially since Mere is a terrible influence with her flask of vodka and chain smoking along the way.”
Aiden downshifted from one worry—his husband—to another—his half sister. “Shit, I need to check in with her. Who knows where she gets herself off to on Friday night. Need to call Caleb too, and make sure he got home safe.”
“Caleb probably took a cab,” I said. “Besides, the power has only been out for like ten minutes. I’m sure everyone is fine.”
Aiden shook his head and began jabbing at his phone again, so I let it be and tugged Jace deeper into the office. He looked less shaken but gripped my hand tight enough for his fingernails to dig into my palm.
Cringing, I petted him and drew him onto one of the long couches lining the windows. Jace set down his backpack and the plastic bags he’d been carrying to curl into my side like a puppy trying to burrow into a soft place. I kissed his forehead and eased back on the couch, which was a lot plusher than I’d anticipated. It was in a sitting area that broke up the rows of desks, and way nicer than anything in my own office. If we were going to be stuck anywhere for a few hours, the swanky and hipstamatic offices of QFindr weren’t bad.
“What’s going on?” Jace asked, frowning out the window. “I’d just gone through the turnstile in the station when the lights went out.”
“Not sure, but let’s look,” I said, sliding out my phone. “Aiden just about lost his shit when he realized you might be trapped underground. Full-on worried papa bear.”
Jace glanced in the direction of his husband, watching his strapping form pace near the lobby while speaking into his phone.
“He won’t settle down until he knows everyone is okay.” Jace chewed on his lower lip, watching Aiden thoughtfully. “I hope he calls his mom and dad.”
I did a double take. “His mom I get, but is he even talking to his dad lately?”
Jace shrugged. “Not really. Not since Kenneth forbade them from using trust fund money for QFindr. But . . . Kenneth still checks in with me.”
This did not surprise me. From what I’d gathered, Jace had been the mediator between them for years, even though they had hidden the true nature of their relationship from Kenneth for most of that time. Or tried to. Apparently, he’d always known.
“Is his mother still in Long Island?”
“Yup. I wonder if she lost power too.”
“Let’s do some investigating,” I said, opening my phone’s browser. I checked CNN, found nothing but normal headlines, and switched to Twitter. I flicked through my feed before checking the trending hashtags, and saw blackout as the first one. I made it through a few swipes before the feed stopped loading and my 4G went wonky. “Fuck, baby, looks like this is all over the state and Jersey.”
Jace groaned. “I thought they fixed whatever caused this to happen last time.”
“That was probably something different, because that blackout affected the whole Northeast. Started in Ohio.” I kept trying to load my Twitter feed to no avail, only pausing after Twitter stopped responding in general. Rolling my eyes, I shot a quick text to my squad. You all good?
“What are we going to do?” Jace asked. “If the power’s out, that means the MTA is gonna shut down. We will literally be stuck in this building for who knows how long.”
“Well, we won’t be stuck in the building,” I said. “You could always head out and walk to Caleb and Oli’s if y’all want. It’s not like they don’t have the room. And I could walk to Nunzio and Michael’s spot uptown. They haven’t moved into their new place yet.”
Jace’s generous mouth pursed into a slash, dark eyes fixing on me with the utmost skepticism and annoyance. “We’re not splitting up.”
“It’s fine, for real. It would take less than an hour—”
“Chris, stop. We’re not fucking splitting up in an emergency. That’s how bad shit happens.”
If he were anyone else, I’d have laughed him off and made a few jokes about how a blackout wasn’t exactly a zombie apocalypse, and how the city had always been fragile to circuit overloads during times of extreme heat, but . . . it was Jace. So I didn’t. For all that my crew and I acted like we were so hard, it was Jace who’d grown up poor as dirt in the Edgemere Houses in the Rockaways with a drug-dealing father and a mother who’d been murdered in front of him at age seven.
It was Jace who’d been used as currency by that same father, until he’d met Aiden’s mom—yet another person struggling with addiction back in the early nineties. And it’d been Jace who’d been abandoned by his father only a few months later.
That was as much as I knew about Aiden’s and Jace’s history. They’d been thrown together by the crack epidemic of the eighties and nineties, raised together from sixteen by a woman who’d had no idea how to even raise one son let alone a kid as wild as Jace had been, and they’d somehow fallen in love. It was the most fucked-up story I’d ever heard, but one that always made me check myself before I belittled one of Jace’s seemingly irrational concerns or paranoid questions. The dude had reason to fear the dark and distrust strangers. And Aiden had reason to be so overprotective.
“All right,” I said, throwing my arms along the back of the sofa and slumping down. “Then we stay here and kick it. I bet you anything they have a kitchen stocked full of goodies for these spoiled-ass employees. All my job keeps for us is some stale peanut butter crackers that were probably engineered during the Cold War.”
Jace relaxed and turned sideways, throwing one of his legs over my lap so he could cling to me with every limb. “They usually have all kinds of nonperishables and cases of water.”
“So we won’t starve?”
“No starving,” he confirmed. “And I bought sandwiches, chips, and lube from the bodega by the house, so we’re covered for dinner.”
A laugh started in my belly, manifesting in a silent shake of my shoulders until I was laughing hard enough for my eyes to tear. The way he slipped in lube so casually in that low husky voice of his had me dead, because only he would add sex as part of a three-course meal.
“All right,” Aiden boomed, striding back over to us. “Internet is already acting funny, but I managed to get everybody on the horn.”
“Who is everybody?” Jace asked. “Your mom? Caleb and Mere?”
“And Clive. They’re all at home and sitting tight for the night.” Aiden plopped down next to me, his bulky body causing the couch to screech backward just a bit. “And my father sent out a stilted-ass fucking group text asking if any of us need the services of his security team. He’s acting like the boroughs could turn into a war zone with the power out.”
“Because it could happen,” Jace muttered. “People are gonna be left stranded everywhere, and security systems will be down in stores. Also, circuits get jammed with the cell phones and most people don’t have access to landlines, let alone a pay phone these days.”
“You’re just paranoid,” Aiden said, waving a hand. “So’s my father.”
I could sense Jace giving him the evil eye, so I patted them both and changed the subject. “Regardless of what happens outside, our asses are in a luxury office that I hope holds onto the semi-cool air through the night with heroes from the bodega and snacks in the office. We have nothing to worry about except who is sleeping on which couch.”
“Aiden has a huge pullout couch in his office for when he stays late,” Jace said. “We can snuggle until it gets hot as fuck and I kick both you sweaty assholes off it.”
Aiden snorted. “You might wanna just banish me in advance. You know I sweat like a fucking beast.”
Jace smirked at his husband and squeezed me tighter against him. “Just me and my boo, then. You can sleep on the floor after we take turns on your dick.”
Aiden’s eyelids lowered to half mast, his lips curving up in a dirty smile as he likely pictured something filthy enough to turn my penis into a traitor. I was supposed to be having serious discussions with them, not fucking in their office building.
I repeated it in my head, but the words faltered as soon as Aiden reached down to adjust the swollen length in his shorts.
Christ, I was screwed.