CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
It was ten o’clock on a Thursday night, and Jarrod wasn’t at work. He was frying eggs in my kitchen, while I sat in silence on the aged couch instead. I looked numb, still, but the proof that this was all real was sitting on the coffee table, beside the half-empty bottle of beer.
It wasn’t the most money Jarrod had ever seen in one place, that had been at a party he’d worked at Long Beach, along with Shane, when they’d serviced a crowd of guys, all tanked on coke snorted through brand new bills, but it was still a big stack of notes.
And then there was the contract, underneath the money. I would be in a blockbuster movie. The eggs splattered and sizzled, and Jarrod tipped the pan to make the fat run over the top of the whites a little. It didn’t matter how cheesy the movie sounded, not when it meant that I would get my son back, my life back.
The fact that I had come back for Jarrod, walked into the brothel and taken him away, was almost more than Jarrod could get his head around. Not that he’d needed rescuing, because he hadn’t. Not that he’d hated what he’d been doing, though the feeling he was letting his life slip away from him had been growing upon, since the day that I came to work for Eamon.
It was that I had said I loved him. I loved Jarrod, despite all the men that had taken him. I loved him tired, and sad and lost.
Jarrod used the egg slice to divide the eggs up, then carried the frying pan over to the plates on the bench and slid the eggs out of the pan on to the piles of bacon.
The pan went back on the element, and while Jarrod waited for the fat to sizzle again, he ran a smug hand over his shaved scalp.
It felt weird, he was so used to having shoulder-length hair, but in twenty minutes in my bathroom, he’d gone from being Rod, a pretty hooker, back to be being Jarrod, the kid from a small town. There was a bundle of newspaper in the bin, holding several handfuls of hair, and there was more hair, stuck to the shining tiles in my shower, clumped in the drain, rubbed off on his borrowed towels.
My track pants didn’t fit him, and he had to hitch them back up every few minutes, and the T-shirt had holes around the hem, but the kitchen floor wasn’t sticky beneath his bare feet, and he was happy.
The fat-bubbled, and Jarrod dropped two slices of bread into it. He’d not had fried bread since he’d left London, and it seemed symbolic somehow, a sign he’d come home, to a clean kitchen and a new life.
There was a quiet domesticity to eating a fry-up while sitting on my ancient couch, the news on as background noise, and Jarrod found he couldn’t keep his eyes off of my face. Sebastian’s numbness was passing, replaced by food-round quiet conversation and then contentment, and Jarrod found this his chest was tight and he felt like he would cry.
It was one thing to tell someone you loved them in a crowded nightclub, it was one of those slippery social lies that everyone used; but it was something else to say it on a musty couch, with tired eyes and the smell of bacon fat in the air. This was a domestic love, and no one had offered Jarrod domestic love before.
Sebastian was solid beneath him, his hands gentle, and Jarrod closed his eyes when Sebastian sucked on the skin of his neck, marking him. Every time they’d been together, there had been something desperate about it, too much unsaid, too much that was unsayable, but this time, this time…
Sebastian was whispering against Jarrod’s ear, wonderful words, and his hands slid over Jarrod’s hips, pushing his borrowed track pants down, then fumbled between them, and they both groaned at the first blissful brush of their cocks together.
The couch creaked, twanging, and Jarrod’s mouth settled over Sebastian’s cock, slow suck, and slide, and two fingers pushed into his ass. Something let go inside Jarrod’s chest, and when he curled his fingers, gentlest of touches, Sebastian mewled.
Everything that was known had gone, and he was new and raw, and Sebastian’s fingers circled around Jarrod’s cock, sending waves of feeling rippling through him.
Jarrod might have come, at least a little because it bathed him in golden bliss, then there was a wondrous feeling of lowering his weight back on to Sebastian, pressing into him.
This was too intense, too much to bear, but Jarrod never wanted it to end; the first thrust was ecstasy, second so far beyond, and the third made Jarrod lift himself up off the couch, arching a back that didn’t arch anymore, clutching at Sebastian who was gasping with each thrust.
There came when Jarrod’s cock was like steel, deep inside me, and there was come wet and slick, spreading across his belly, slippery around his cock too, then Jarrod collapsed down onto me, breath rasping, mouth wet and open against my shoulder.
“Damn it,” Jarrod whispered, and I chuckled, shaking us both.
“Think we broke the couch too,” I said, and Jarrod propped himself up on his elbows, taking his weight off me.
Jarrod felt light-headed, dizzy with happiness, and Sebastian stroked his shaven head. “Don’t think you should waste any of your new found wealth on a new one,” Jarrod said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“I’ll wait until we’re bored with each other,” I said. “Might be prudent.”
It was the laughter that broke the couch.
Later that afternoon, I went to see Billy at June's house.
Billy was an air-borne wriggle, launching himself at me, clinging to me and shrieking with delight, and I carried him into June’s house, and I could feel the grin on my face making my cheeks ache.
“I’ve got great news, kiddo,” I said, dumping Billy down on the couch. “I will make a movie. I will get this court order thing sorted out once and for all, and we’ll go back to how we were before.”
Billy shrieked an ear-splitting pre-adolescent shout of glee and bounced back into my arms as I sat down on the couch beside him.
“Really?” Billy shouted, and my ears rang for a moment from the volume.
“Really,” I said, hugging Billy. “I’ve quit my job, so there’s no reason for the court to stop me from seeing you. This is almost over.”
“What about Jarrod?” Billy asked, and he sounded more than curious. He sounded worried.
“Jarrod’s quit too, and he’s not gone away,” I said. “You’ll be able to see him every time you come over.”
Billy squirmed, clambering across me and hugging me tighter. “Good,” he said.