May 31, 2013
They wound up staying in Colorado for almost two months, long enough for Nick to finally have his knee surgically repaired and get through enough rehab that the steps on the Fiddler wouldn’t be much of an issue when they returned to Boston. They took a week at the end of May to head for Baltimore, where Ty and Zane were celebrating Ty’s birthday with the grand opening of their new bookstore, which Kelly was distraught to learn was a front operation for the CIA.
He refused to listen to details, and instead raged for an hour as Ty tried to calm him. Nick sat grinning in a corner the entire time, reading and sipping from a bottle of Yoo-hoo he’d pilfered from Zane’s stash in the back of the store.
Ty failed spectacularly at calming Kelly, of course. Ty and Zane were still involved in a life that might get them killed, and Kelly wasn’t fucking having it. It took Nick all night to talk him down. He convinced Kelly, after a lot of discussion and some physical persuasion, that Ty and Zane were just support operators, that they’d never be involved in anything that might kill them again, and therefore that they’d never drag Kelly and Nick into anything ever again either.
Kelly would believe it when he saw it, but he certainly wasn’t going to give Nick grief over it. Nick was no longer Ty’s keeper.
They left Baltimore a week later, and Kelly was content in the relative safety and happiness of his friends.
They went on to Boston from there, and they spent the last day of May systematically cleaning out the Fiddler and preparing her for the summer.
Nick’s mission was to make room for Kelly’s things, and while Kelly hadn’t really thought he was serious, he was surprised to see that Nick really was clearing out half of his possessions to make room for Kelly to truly to move in.
“We’ll store what I don’t want to get rid of and then move it to the cabin later,” he said with a shrug as he headed back down to collect another box full of things to give away, trash, or store. They were really doing this.
Nick was almost six weeks out of knee surgery and was walking much better, and to his admitted dismay he’d been able to mostly get rid of the cane. He was well enough, though, to go up and down the stairs and carry heavy boxes, and sometimes when he got really excited or distracted, he didn’t even limp. Kelly watched the stairwell for a few moments, a smile on his face. When Nick committed to something, he committed with everything he had.
They were really doing this.
He returned his attention to the stuff on the table in front of him. Stacks of papers, books, and old case files that may or may not have been legal for Nick to have kept on the yacht. Nick took unsolved mysteries personally, and Kelly had no doubt at all that Nick had absconded with copies of the files on cases where answers had eluded him to continue puzzling them out.
But now Nick was done with the Boston Police Department. He would never be a detective again; even if his heart and mind were still in it—and Kelly suspected they were—his body was not. The Boston PD had come calling, offering him a bump to lieutenant so he could hide his injuries behind a desk. Nick had turned them down. But when Kelly had tried to put some of those old case files in the trash pile, Nick had quietly moved them to the storage pile.
Kelly grabbed the last handful of trash folders from the coffee table and stood. Something slipped from one of the supposedly empty folders and tapped across the table. He peered over the stack, scowling at the mini SD card he’d dropped.
He clucked his tongue and thumped the files back down, plucking the SD card up and turning it over. There was no telling what was on the thing, or why it had been in a stack of papers Nick had already earmarked for recycling. It was tiny, so it was possible Nick hadn’t known it was mixed up in this stuff.
Kelly ambled through the galley to the banquette where his laptop was sitting, and he slid into the bench seat and powered the Mac on. He’d take a glimpse at the contents, and if anything was on it, he’d just have Nick look it over when he was done with whatever he’d been cursing at down in their cabin for the last couple minutes.
When he found the converter for the mini SD card and pulled up the files, it appeared there were only a handful of videos on it. They weren’t named or dated, merely labeled with numbers, so Kelly clicked on the first one to get an idea of whether this was personal or work stuff.
The video popped up, and Kelly sat back, wide-eyed, when the first few seconds showed Nick in the main cabin of the Fiddler, standing at the side of the neatly made bed, tanned and shirtless and barefoot, smirking at the camera as he unbuttoned his jeans.
Kelly grinned and reached for the volume to turn it up. He didn’t remember making this particular sex tape, but he hadn’t necessarily been sober during all of them. It was always entertaining to relive one of their exploits, and this little gem apparently had five videos on it, all of them at least twenty minutes long.
“Are you fucking recording this?” Nick asked as Kelly ratcheted up the volume. Kelly’s cock stirred appreciatively at the growl of Nick’s voice, at the predatory look in his eyes as he stared almost directly into the camera.
The camera jittered as it was set on a hard surface and left there, aimed at the bed. “For posterity, O’Flaherty, come on.”
Kelly’s body flushed with ice and his stomach flipped at the sound of the voice. It wasn’t him talking. The man moved toward Nick and into the view of the camera, shedding his last stitch of clothing as he drew closer to Nick. The guy was about Nick’s height, with jet-black hair and a beard. He was fit and well-defined, with a body type that spoke of manual labor and real strength, not just hours on a machine in a gym.
This wasn’t a video of Kelly and Nick fucking. It was of Nick and someone else.
Kelly’s heart hammered in his throat, and he felt light-headed, his entire body tingling and his eyes burning because he was neglecting the need to blink.
The video rolled on, the naked stranger reaching for Nick’s jeans and tugging at him. The way Nick looked at him . . . the way they touched with familiar brushes of their fingertips . . . this was not a recording of their first time together. And there were four more of these videos on this card.
“You are a sight for sore eyes, babe,” Nick growled, right before they kissed passionately.
Nick’s hands swept down the man’s back, and the guy melted into him, like he knew Nick was about to turn on that dominant switch of his.
Kelly jerked and he reached for the keyboard to stop it. But he couldn’t. He was analyzing the details of the footage almost against his will. The video was relatively recent; he could tell by the décor of the cabin, the style of Nick’s hair, and the definition in his broad shoulders. It was before Nick’s last brush with death, though, because his ribs were free of the scar that should have marred him where he’d taken the knife in the fight in Miami.
Kelly realized with the slow burning shame of jealousy that his first thought, his first clear thought, was to wonder if this was before he and Nick had committed to each other, or after.
They’d spent the entirety of their relationship thus far in what was essentially a long-distance arrangement. Kelly had never questioned Nick’s fidelity, he’d never had a reason to. But he realized with something like a wrecking ball to the gut that if either of them had ever wanted to step out, to set up a video camera and record themselves fucking some stranger in one of the beds they shared when they were together, they’d both had all the opportunity in the world to do so.
Kelly’s stomach churned as he watched Nick manhandle this guy into the very same bed he and Nick had slept in last night. After a few more minutes of sitting, stunned, Kelly was subjected to the sight and sound of his boyfriend fucking this stranger. He wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. He heard Nick whisper the guy’s name. Aidan.
“The fireman.” Kelly swallowed hard, shaking his head. This was the guy Nick had been casually seeing when he and Kelly had acted on their attraction in Colorado. This was the guy Nick had given up to be with Kelly.
Kelly’s eyes began to lose focus. This had to be from before. Nick wasn’t the kind of guy to step out, he never had been and he never would be. But telling himself that didn’t help the swirl of nausea in Kelly’s gut, the spike of jealousy, or the odd dose of being turned on from the moans of pleasure emitting from the laptop. He knew what Nick was doing to this guy. He knew intimately.
He heard a noise on the steps to his side, but he was still too traumatized to move. He merely sat there, staring at the laptop as the passionate sounds of two men fucking filled the pilothouse.
“Are you watching porn up here?” Nick asked incredulously, a hint of exasperated laughter in his voice as he thumped a box down on the top step and shoved it away from the staircase. “You’re supposed to be working!”
Kelly ripped his attention from the laptop. Nick was grinning, but as soon as Kelly met his eyes, his expression morphed into one of alarm. His smile dropped, his eyes widened, and his shoulders tensed as he pulled himself to his full height.
“Are you okay?”
“Why?” Kelly croaked.
“What’s wrong,” Nick asked as he stepped closer. “What happened? What are you doing?”
Kelly stared into Nick’s green eyes, trying to wipe the image of the video from his mind and tell himself that Nick would never hurt him.
“I . . .” Kelly was at a loss for words, though. He looked back at the laptop screen, shaking his head.
Nick slid into the banquette beside him, turning the laptop so he could see the screen. It took a few seconds of watching and listening for Nick to realize that he was seeing himself and Aidan. “Jesus, Kels. What the fuck?”
“I found an SD card in a file.”
“Kelly!”
“Needed to check what was on it.”
Nick stopped the video, then shoved the laptop away from them. “That was Aidan,” he said quickly, turning in the bench so he was facing Kelly. “He liked to use his phone . . . That was the guy I—”
“I know,” Kelly said, but he realized the words hadn’t quite come out.
“Kelly,” Nick said sharply. “Babe, that was before us.”
Kelly shook his head, clearing his throat, and then nodded.
Nick’s hand landed on his shoulder and shook him, turning him so he was forced to face Nick. “Kelly,” he said forcefully. “Look at me. Talk to me.”
“It just . . . I wasn’t prepared for what I was seeing.”
Nick ducked his head, maintaining eye contact when Kelly tried to look away. “Kels. Tell me what . . . Do I need to fix this? What do you want me to do?”
Kelly shut his eyes tightly. “No,” he said, trying to smile and meet Nick’s eyes. His mind flashed back to the look of possessive lust he’d seen in those eyes when Nick had watched Aidan move, and he tried to shake it off. All he managed to do was replay in his mind the moment that Nick had breached Aidan and they’d both moaned as they wrapped around each other. And there were four more videos just like that one. Kelly shook his head violently. “It’s in the past. It just caught me off guard.”
They sat together in the banquette, eyes locked, the laptop casting Nick’s skin in a bluish glow. Kelly’s eyes strayed to the screen, where the video was paused with Nick’s muscular shoulders strained as he held his former lover to the bed, where another man’s legs were wrapped around him.
Nick slammed the laptop closed and yanked out the SD card.
Kelly’s stomach turned and he scooted away from Nick, escaping from the other end of the banquette to stand and pace away.
“Kelly?”
“I need some air.”
“Doc, wait.” Nick scrambled to the edge of the bench seat and grabbed for Kelly’s hand. His grip was gentle, his eyes pleading.
Kelly grunted. “I just need some air, okay?”
“I’m sorry this upset you, babe. I had no idea it even existed. I didn’t know he saved them.”
“It’s not that,” Kelly groaned. He squeezed Nick’s hand, knowing it wasn’t fair to push him away when he’d done literally nothing wrong.
Nick sat on the edge of the bench seat, holding Kelly’s fingers carefully, watching him with a mixture of fear and hope. Kelly hated that Nick looked sick and nervous right now. He hated that Nick was probably ready to do whatever Kelly asked right now to make amends for something that wasn’t even wrong. They’d both been with people in the past. Hell, Kelly had watched Nick have sex with women before, live, right there in the room with him. They’d even shared one night with the same woman: Kelly’s first experience with another man anywhere near him in a sexual way, and it had been with Nick.
It wasn’t the sex that was upsetting him. Not really. Sure, Kelly wasn’t thrilled to have the mental image of Nick with another man in the very same sheets they had on their bed right now, but he knew himself well enough to know that a part of him was a little turned on by it too.
“It’s just . . . I thought it was of us at first,” he managed to say. “And then it wasn’t my voice talking to you. And it wasn’t me you were touching. And my first thought was . . . my first thought was, ‘When did this happen?’ And I hate that I thought that at all.”
Nick huffed out a gust of air like Kelly had jabbed him in the stomach. His grip on Kelly’s fingers loosened more. “You know I’d never do that, right?”
Kelly nodded jerkily. “I know. A year ago, I don’t think I would have even had the thought. But you know . . . I always knew I could tell when you were lying, Irish. And I knew you would never lie to me in the first place. And I knew you would never, ever hurt me. And the past year, everything that’s happened? We both know I was wrong.”
Nick blanched as Kelly met his gaze, the spark of life seeping from his eyes until they were more gray than green. His hand dropped away from Kelly’s, and when he blinked he was no longer meeting Kelly’s eyes.
Kelly’s heart ached, and his stomach turned. He pressed a hand to the old bullet wound in his chest to make it stop tingling. He despised the moments Nick’s vivacious spirit drained from him, but they’d always been honest with each other. Now was no time to stop that, even if it hurt. It would hurt less later. “I guess it bothers me more than I wanted to admit. More than I realized, I mean. But I’m working through it. And this is not your fault.”
Nick’s lips were pressed tight together, and he merely nodded without risking looking into Kelly’s eyes again.
Kelly reached for him, but he stopped himself before his fingers could make contact with Nick’s cheek. He balled his hand into a fist and tucked it against his side instead.
“I need some air,” he whispered, and he moved toward the salon doors before he could be sick.