“Have you spoken to your nephew about being gay?” Jai asked.
They were sitting there in the darkening room, with the screen flickering after Tom had eventually said a reluctant goodbye. As usual Luke had felt guilty knowing Tom was going home to his bloody brother.
“Me being gay you mean,” Luke replied carefully.
“You being gay, him being gay,” Jai’s voice was all impatience. “Either, both. God, Luke, I know you’re not naive enough not to have picked up on that.”
It scared him how quickly Jai had picked up on it. Luke knew Tom’s life couldn’t be out yet here in Dungoon and if Jai could see Tom was gay in a matter of a few hours, Tom could end up outed whether he wanted to be or not.
“No, I haven’t talked to him about either scenario. He has never even brought up the subject with me.” Luke’s voice was cool, he wasn’t particularly enthralled with idea of talking about this subject with Jai, with anyone.
“Because teenage boys always bring up the sensitive subject of sexuality with uncles that they think are straight.” Jai’s dismissive tone ate at Luke’s conscience. This was a subject he had tortured himself about since Tom was thirteen.
As usual though, Luke went for the defensive. “This could be a moot point. We don’t even know if he is gay.”
“I would never presume to define anyone’s sexuality for them. But Luke, that kid thought I was hot. He may be bi or anywhere else on the wonderful rainbow spectrum of sexuality, but he almost certainly isn’t straight and in this town, with his father, that has got to be a confusing experience for him.”
“What am I going to say to him?” Luke clenched his fists and leaned forward in frustration. “Am I going to tell him to be out and proud when his father will kill him, or tell him to be like me and fuck men in secret? Because neither option seems like a good one to me.”
Luke startled at the gentle touch of Jai’s hand on his back. Here in the almost dark, the touch felt more like an understanding than he had any right to feel. He hadn’t ever spoken to anyone about any of this. He hadn’t had to confront before how much of himself he was hiding. Fuck, he felt ashamed.
“You could tell him you know what it is to be confused,” suggested Jai.
“I’m just not prepared to go there with him,” Luke protested.
“Luke, I think you need to think about why you are prepared to let that boy be lonely in his feelings.” Jai said, and Luke felt the removal of the comforting touch of his hand from his back almost as strongly as if it had been a blow. “I’ve been an out-and-proud man for as long as I’ve been a man, and last night in that pub I felt diminished. I can’t imagine how stressful this is for either of you, but I do think in not reaching out to him, you are wrong.”
“When you’ve lived in this town long enough, maybe then you can give me lectures,” Luke said.
He knew he was being cruel and rude when Jai had made such an effort to be gentle, but all he wanted in this moment was to make Jai go away. From the way that Jai got up and gathered his hoodie, it looked like he succeeded.
Before Jai left, he looked down at where Luke sat hunched over himself, fists still in angry balls. “I’m sorry, Luke. I’m sorry you don’t feel you are able to reach out to him. I hope for both your sakes that will change.”
Luke kept his gaze on the floor and didn’t watch Jai leave. Fuck, fuck, fuck. This was supposed to be a relaxing afternoon. He couldn’t pretend he didn’t know how badly last night had gone, and this was a way that he and Jai were supposed to have been able to have fun away from the prying eyes of anyone. Now even a friendship behind closed doors didn’t seem to be on the cards.
Maybe it was better this way. God forbid someone had seen the way Tom had looked at Jai. Luke couldn’t exactly blame the kid, even if it was a bit skeevy they had the same taste. Though he doubted there would be many dudes who liked dudes who wouldn’t have thought Jai was hot. However, having his suspicions about Tom confirmed just made his chest ache. Luke wasn’t ready to have that conversation with Tom. He didn’t have any solutions for him, and Tom seeing the mess his uncle had made of his personal life couldn’t offer the kid any comfort. Yep, fuck.
• • •
A week of no texts from Jai, as well as carefully avoiding meeting him on the doorstep during his shift changeovers, had made Luke jumpy as hell.
Seeing Mitch’s number appear on his phone when he was off shift didn’t help matters.
The shakiness in his constable’s voice got his attention very quickly. “Sarge, we need you down at the Lawson house; there has been a critical incident.”
Years of practice had Luke pulling on his uniform in under a minute while questioning Mitch over the phone.
“We got a call out for a welfare check from a concerned neighbor who hasn’t seen either of the couple for a few days,” said Mitch, his voice steadying as he started the familiar reporting to Luke, something they had done hundreds of times over the years. “I went out to the Lawsons’ farmhouse and the place looked quiet. The cat’s bowl was dry, which didn’t seem right, so I went around the back and I knew something was wrong from the smell. I broke in the back door and found them in the sitting room.” There was a gulp in Mitch’s voice before he continued. “It’s really bad, Sarge. He used a shotgun on both of them. It’s still in his hand.”
“Fuck.” By this time Luke was out to the car, keeping the connection on the phone, he let himself feel a moment of sorrow. He hadn’t known the Lawsons well; they had been a different generation with no children, but they were part of the fabric of this town and for things to have gotten so bad… Just fuck.
Damn it, he didn’t have time for this indulgence, especially with Mitch sounding so shaky.
“Don’t go back in until I get there,” Luke ordered. “Call Kenny and tell him he’s on overtime. He can meet us out there and deal with any other calls that come in. I’ll call murder squad and see how they want us to deal with it. I can’t imagine we’ll be doing anything other than securing the scene until forensics arrives. As soon as I get there, we’ll get working on finding out who is next of kin. The notification is going to be on us, and I’d like to get on it before the media starts to leak. I’m fifteen minutes away.”
“And Mitch,” Luke continued. “Call your wife. Don’t tell her the details yet, but warn her that it is going to be a bumpy few days.”
That was both the best and worst thing about being single in this job. There was no one to mind the long hours and delayed plans, but there was also no one to listen to the nightmares that would inevitably come from what Mitch had seen and from what Luke was about to walk into.
“Thanks, Sarge,” Mitch replied. Luke figured he’d be relieved to pass it up the chain and know that someone else was going to be by his side shortly. Being a country cop working alone and walking into an unknown scene was particularly stressful. There was something about being the sole witness to horror that amplified it. Luke was just glad the scene wasn’t more isolated and he would be there relatively quickly. “Glad” was a relative term Luke thought as he found a mint to suck on.
• • •
Twenty-four hours later Luke managed to come off shift. Pulling in outside the station house, he sagged at the wheel. There was still plenty of paperwork he could be working on, but everything was going to have to wait until morning, as he had reached the end of his reserve. Now all he had to do was convince his body to walk up the front steps to his home. He desperately needed a shower and sleep. One of the Parkes constables had handed him a sandwich about eight hours ago, but now he was long past the idea of food.
It had been a few years since their last murder out here, but Luke didn’t think he’d ever seen much worse than last night. A 63-year-old woman with her brains splattered across the wall and her reportedly loving 65-year-old husband, who was also gruesomely dead after doing that to her. No note had been left, so it was going to be the job of murder squad to figure out the reasoning behind it.
There was nothing in Luke’s opinion that would justify the violence of what they had found, and they were certainly images that he, and everyone else on the scene, were going to have to live with forever.
• • •
Zombielike, Luke let himself in the front door, showered, changed, and then walked straight out of his house. He stood, slumped outside Jai’s door for almost a minute before he put up his hand to knock.
Jai opened the door and took one look at him before stepping aside to let him in the house.
Luke stepped inside and then stood there; he had gotten to the point where functioning was beyond his mental capacity. Jai didn’t say a word as he closed the door behind him and took Luke’s hand, as if he was a child, leading him over to the couch, and sat down with him. Even after they had sat down Luke wasn’t ready to relinquish Jai’s hand and was thankful that Jai didn’t pull away. The warmth of the contact felt like the only thing that was keeping him tethered to the here and now.
“I’m sorry,” Jai said softly. “I heard about what happened at the hospital.”
“It wasn’t good.”
Jai didn’t push him on his understatement; he let his thumb play across Luke’s hand in a gentle pattern. For a long time, the silence felt like enough, and Luke felt some of the tension in his body leave and the roaring in his head quiet.
Eventually, Jai broke the silence. “How long since you’ve slept or eaten.”
“I haven’t slept in about forty hours,” Luke replied. “I did get something to eat earlier today.”
When Jai let go of the hand that he had been holding, Luke almost whimpered.
“I know, mate,” Jai said, reaching out briefly to touch his shoulder before heading to the kitchen. “I am going to be back so soon with some dinner for you. I just need a few minutes to nuke it in the microwave.”
Jai was as good as his word and shortly returned with a stir-fry Luke managed to eat half of on automatic pilot.
When he put down the half finished plate, Jai just asked, “Is anyone going to be trying to call you back in tonight?”
Luke shook his head. “No.”
Now that the murder squad had arrived, they weren’t needed for any investigative purposes. He and Kenny had done the death knock to Mrs. Lawson’s sister who still lived locally, which had been pretty hellish. Nothing like trying to explain to a woman that her sister, who she believed had a happy marriage, had been killed in a murder suicide. Now the bodies had gone to the morgue, the local police’s purpose would primarily be crowd control. Mainly they would be stopping the media from getting too close to the property. Hopefully the lack of sexiness in the story would mean the public would lose interest pretty fast.
“Did you want to sleep upstairs here tonight?” asked Jai. “I don’t think you need to be alone.”
“Please,” Luke replied.
He was so grateful for the offer he had to blink back the prickling of tears. If he’d been home he would have tried to numb himself with beer, but tonight his strongest impulse had been to get to Jai. Somehow he’d known his presence would soothe him.
Instead of tidying up the kitchen, like his usual routine, Jai shoved the plate onto the bench and guided Luke upstairs with a reassuring hand on his back.
Once there he waited, until Luke had removed his shirt and shoes, and then pulled back the sheets so Luke could flop exhausted onto the bed.
Jai crawled in after him, wearing just the soft T-shirt and shorts he had been in when Luke arrived. Luke felt a slight push on his shoulder.
“Lie on your side,” Jai whispered.
Luke turned to face to wall. That night he was able to drift off as Jai lay next to him drawing patterns on his back with his fingertips.
• • •
Luke woke, the next morning, to the sound of an unfamiliar alarm. The warm body next to him had also jerked awake and Jai was quickly reaching for it.
“Shit,” Jai cursed. “Sorry about that. I didn’t think you’d managed to set your alarm last night, and I figured you’d probably need to be at work reasonably early.
Luke sat up, bleary eyed, and put his feet on the floor. Despite his exhaustion last night, he didn’t think he’d have managed to sleep the whole night through given the images he hadn’t seemed to be able to escape yesterday, but his only memory of the night was the weight of Jai’s arm on his waist.
Jai seemed to look at him anxiously. Luke couldn’t blame him given his robotic state the night before and his previous freak-outs where Jai was concerned.
“Thanks for that,” Luke said. “Really, thanks for the whole of last night. I had reached my limit and you were very kind.”
“Of course,” Jai replied, looking uncomfortable at Luke’s praise.
“Not really of course. Lots of people might have taken me in, given me a drink, and pushed me back to my own flat. You did more than that and were very kind about it.”
Luke didn’t add, “Especially because I’ve been avoiding you the past week and was a real dick to you before that.” If Jai had come to him as shell shocked as he had been, he would have tried to help him, but he doubted he would have been, could have been, so empathetic.
“Seriously, thanks,” Luke continued. “I’ve got to get going, though, and face the remainder of the disaster.”
Jai gave him a small smile from where he sat on the bed with his legs curled up in front of him. “Good luck with it. I better get up too. It’s ultrasound day and, looking at my appointment book, the town seems to be having a bit of a baby boom.”
Luke got up and, slightly awkwardly, bent over and dropped a kiss to Jai’s forehead. “See you,” he said, not knowing how to continue, so he left before Jai could reply.
Luke desperately hoped as he closed Jai’s front door behind him that this wasn’t the moment that murder squad decided to duck around the back of the station for a smoke. However, he was lucky and no one was out there, so he made it the brief distance to his own door undetected.