Chapter Twenty-Four

Vargas silently sat in his office on the first floor of the club, his hand clutching his cell phone where it lay on his desk. It had been going on like that for nearly a half hour. He just couldn’t pick up the phone, let alone place the call.

He let go and sank back in his chair.

He also couldn’t stop going over the night before, trying to determine if he’d used the right words, said the right things, made the right move in asking Seth to return to his bed with him. They hadn’t talked any more about why Seth had been packing or if he believed Vargas’s words. They had simply gone to his room and gotten in bed together.

Vargas held him and waited until Seth drifted off to sleep. Then he’d returned to his office to delete the video file Seth had found. After he had that finished, he went back to the bedroom and curled up around Seth. He didn’t get much sleep, though. Too much kept rolling through his mind.

It had been unhealthy for him to watch that video as often as he had, to obsess over what Seth had been like before the attack or what could’ve been done to prevent it from ever happening in the first place.

It was not right for him to continue letting someone else’s actions have so much power over him.

He breathed deep, grabbed his phone, and dialed. When Dr. Arteaga’s answering service picked up, he opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. He knew what he needed to say, that he needed help. Not just to show Seth that his guilt wasn’t controlling everything in his life, but also for himself. He had to find a way to let this go. He just couldn’t get the words out. He hung up and slammed the phone down. Mumbling a curse, he pushed away from the desk and headed out into the club.

When he got to the apartment upstairs, he refrained from immediately calling out for Seth. Instead he quietly scanned the living room and the kitchen for him, then the bedrooms and the office, but Seth was nowhere in sight. Vargas’s heart thundered away as he stopped outside the empty guest room. There was no sign of the bags they’d left on the bed the night before.

“Shit.” He pulled out his cell phone, ready to dial Seth’s, but he eased up. He absolutely needed to make sure Seth was okay, but he also knew that if leaving was what Seth wanted, he had to respect that. Seth didn’t need to feel pressured or manipulated.

That’s when he spotted the open safe room door.

“Seth?” He strode forward and stopped in the doorway, relief washing over him at what he found inside.

Seth was lying on the floor on top of a pile of pillows and blankets he’d taken from the benches. He had an open book perched beside him. One of his arms was wrapped around Charlie who lay on the makeshift bed with him. Both looked like they’d been asleep for a while. Seth’s cane was leaning against the bookshelf. Earlier that morning he’d been using it on and off, but he seemed to be relying on the cane less after his success without it the night before.

Vargas couldn’t take his eyes off Seth. He looked peaceful, like his dreams were no longer chasing him with the horrors of his past.

Then Seth’s even breathing changed as he stirred and opened his eyes. He smiled as soon as he spotted Vargas in the doorway. “Hey.” He stretched and sighed, running both hands down his face. “Guess I fell asleep.”

“You look comfortable.”

“I like it in here.”

“I’m glad.”

Seth shifted on the pillows until he was sitting up. “It’s comfy.”

Charlie spotted Vargas in the doorway and darted for him. Vargas gave him a pat on the head, and Charlie took off out of the bedroom and down the hall, probably going to check his bowl for fresh food.

Seth glanced around the small room. “I was thinking… I’d like to try something. Could we close and lock the door so I can see what it’s like? I can’t decide if it would freak me out or if it would feel like my closet at my place. Do you mind?”

“Not at all.” Vargas took a step backward into the bedroom. He gestured at the safe room door. “Give it a try. I’ll be right here if you need anything. If you want to stay in longer than fifteen minutes, just remember to enter that all-clear code I gave you so the police don’t show up.”

“No. I was… I thought maybe you’d come in here with me.”

“Oh.” Vargas’s mouth went dry, and he felt his face flush as his blood pressure rose. Sweat formed at the back of his neck.

Same response since he’d been a kid.

One look at the hope on Seth’s face, though, and Vargas didn’t give it another thought. He moved into the safe room. It wouldn’t be for long.

He pulled the heavy door shut and spun the handle, securing the first set of metal bolts. Using his thumb, he engaged the biometric lock and then entered the code. The second set of bolts locked into place. The display panel’s indicator light changed to red. The word activated lit up in the center of the screen. He faced the room and tried for casual as he searched for any sign that this was too much for Seth.

Seth glanced around the sealed room. “It’s loads bigger than my closet.” He continued surveying the area as if he were seeing it for the first time, assessing the enclosed space and his feelings about it.

A lump formed in the back of Vargas’s throat. He turned to the door, bracing his hands on the steel frame.

“I don’t really feel—” Seth abruptly cut off. Vargas heard him shifting off the pillows behind him, but he couldn’t compel himself to turn around and help Seth stand. How much of an ass did that make him? It still took Seth some effort to do something like get up from the floor. Vargas closed his eyes and let out a ragged breath. That did nothing to relax him or slow his labored breathing.

“Vargas?” Seth stood beside him then, one hand on his upper arm.

Vargas asked, “What don’t you feel?”

“Trapped. Are you okay?”

He nodded.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” He kept still, kept his focus on the closed door before him.

Seth gave a tug on his arm. “You’re lying. Why?”

He hadn’t meant to. Not to Seth. It was just his standard reply whenever he felt like this. He said it without thinking.

“Vargas, are you claustrophobic?”

Vargas sucked in another long gulp of air, trying to steady his nerves. “A little bit.”

“A little? Maybe a lot?”

He nodded, barely able to move his head that time. The slightest movement made everything worse.

“Oh my God.” Seth shifted around him and went for the control panel. “You didn’t have to do this.” He scanned his thumb, input the code, and pressed the release button, but nothing happened. The red light was still visible on the screen. He tried again. Still nothing. He looked to Vargas. “Am I doing something wrong?”

“I don’t think so.” Vargas moved in and gave it a try. Again the door remained locked. Then the screen went completely blank. He randomly clicked on various parts of the touch screen, but everything stayed dark. The safe room had power, but it was like the control panel didn’t.

“Here.” Vargas pointed to the edge of the doorframe. “There’s also a backup spring-loaded release. It’s only accessible from inside.” He tugged on the lever, but there was no sound of the bolts retracting. He tried the handle, but it wouldn’t spin with the lock still engaged. He gave the door a tug anyway. Panic hit hard when it wouldn’t budge. “This was supposed to be thoroughly tested after it was installed.”

Seth bent and examined underneath the bottom edge of the control panel. “Maybe there’s a short in it.”

Vargas searched his pockets. “Dammit. I left my phone with my keys on the hall table. You have yours?”

“It’s on the desk in your office.”

Vargas indicated the cabinet along the wall beside the bookcase. “There’s supposed to be an emergency phone in those supplies.”

Seth placed a hand on Vargas’s arm again. “I’ll get it. Stay here.” He went to the cabinet, taking care without his cane but also moving with surprising deftness. He opened the cabinet doors and knelt before the bottom row of plastic storage tubs. Vargas couldn’t help himself. Just taking in the sight of Seth moving with more ease, he suddenly felt lighter. His breathing slowed. He moved in and got down to help him.

Inside the first tub were energy bars, bottled water, and canned goods. They continued on to another tub with extra blankets, a flashlight, batteries, and a deck of playing cards. The next: a first aid kit, pepper spray, duct tape, a roll of paper towels, and a switchblade knife.

“Shit.” Vargas chucked the items he’d pulled out back into the last tub. “It should be with this stuff.”

Seth had stopped searching and was staring down at the canister of pepper spray in his hand. “Dylan went to self-defense classes a few months ago. He’s really into it now. I think he even mentioned taking the test to try to get into the police academy.” Seth rotated the pepper spray from one hand to the other. “I think I’m ready to take a class.”

“Sounds great.”

“I should’ve done it months ago with Dylan.”

“You do things when you’re ready. Besides, might be easier now that you’re not relying on the cane so much.” Vargas indicated where the cane lay propped against the bookshelf.

Seth glanced at it and smiled. “Yeah.” He refocused on the open tub. “Is the phone in there?”

“Haven’t found it yet.” Vargas lugged everything out again until he was at the bottom. No phone. “Tucker and Walter are great guys, but I’m going to kick their asses for recommending this safe room company.”

Seth laughed.

That sound was definitely helping Vargas with his anxiety. Until that thought had him remembering they couldn’t get out of there.

Shit. “It’s going to be okay.” He got off the floor and faced the steel door. “Once the door is sealed and locked from the inside, the security company is notified. If no one here enters the all-clear code in fifteen minutes, they’ll contact the police and my security here at the club.”

“Okay,” Seth said. “So we just have to wait for maybe ten more minutes.”

Vargas returned to the door. His heart was thundering away, his blood pressure skyrocketing once again. He reached for the spindle handle and gripped it in his clenched fists. He gave it a turn, but the wheel was still secured by the lock. He tried opening the door anyway. No go. Placing his palms flat to the surface, he leaned in, resting his forehead against the cool steel.

Seth came to him and laid a hand on his back. “You okay?”

“Sure.” He rotated his head to look at him. “You?” After what Seth had lived through when he’d been held captive, Vargas couldn’t believe he wasn’t panicking at being locked in there, but he looked calm and steady.

“I’m fine. I’m just sorry I got you stuck in here.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” Everything would be fine once the goddamn-fucking-son-of-a-bitch door opened. Vargas faced it again. The air in the room was turning warm and thick, even with the power on and the ventilation system working.

“Vargas?”

He looked Seth’s way again. The concern was evident.

“I’m okay. It’d just be a hell of a lot better if I knew for sure when someone would show up. It’s worse when I don’t know when or how I’ll be able to get out.”

“How long have you been claustrophobic?”

“As far back as I can remember, but it got worse in middle school.”

“Did something happen?”

He paused, trying to put together the words without mentally reliving that day. “There was an older kid who liked to torment the hell out of me. One day after lunch, he and some of his friends jumped me and dragged me into the school’s gym. They held me down and rolled me up inside a wrestling mat. I could barely breathe. I couldn’t move so much as an inch. It was quite a while before a teacher found me. I already hated tight spaces before then, but since that day it’s been worse.”

“Assholes.”

“Yeah. I’m okay most of the time, but small spaces like this, with the door closed…” He shook his head.

“Elevators?” Seth asked.

“Hate them. I avoid the hell out of the one here at the club as much as I can.”

“But… Vargas, you ride in elevators all the time with me. At my apartment building, the doctor’s office, everywhere.”

“Yeah. It’s not like I can’t use them at all.” He hesitated. “You need to take them, and I’m not about to abandon you when it’s hard enough for you to leave your apartment.”

Seth gave him a long look of appreciation. “Thank you. I wish you would’ve told me, though.”

“I almost did a few times, but I thought that might change things for me. It’s easier to pretend taking the elevator doesn’t bother me when I’m doing it for you.” Before Seth could say anything to that, Vargas laughed, trying to pretend he was just having a normal, lighthearted conversation, not discussing one of his greatest fears. “Guess I knew pretty early on I was never going to be the type of guy who was into the kinky shit. Being tied up, held down…” He shook his head again. “That’s not my thing. I don’t like doing it to anyone else either.”

He needed to shut the hell up. This wasn’t the kind of thing to talk about with Seth. Being stuck in there, he just couldn’t think straight.

Seth ran a hand down his back in a comforting touch. “I can’t believe you had a school bully. How did you get him to quit being mean to you?”

“I didn’t. After that day, my mom talked to the principal. The boy’s parents were called in and that was that. It was over.”

Seth cocked his head to the side like that surprised him.

“Everybody needs help sometimes.” Funny, considering the call to Dr. Arteaga he’d been unable to place earlier.

Seth nodded, then crossed the room and sat on the pile of pillows and blankets. “Tell me more about your childhood, about your family.”

“I don’t want to bore the hell out of you.”

“I want to know. There’s still so much stuff I don’t know about you.”

Vargas scoffed. “You know a lot. More than anyone, really.”

Seth held Vargas’s gaze. “I want to know the rest. I want to know everything.”

“All right.” Vargas gave one last look at the steel door, then went to Seth and sat beside him on the floor. “Like what?”

“Does anyone ever call you Raymond? Or Ray?”

“My mom calls me Ray. That’s about it.”

“What about your dad?”

“He did too.”

“How did he die?”

“Car accident. On the freeway. He was killed on impact.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He was a great dad. Worked hard. Loved my mom something crazy. I always used to wonder what he would’ve thought about me being gay, but then it hit me one day that I already knew. He would’ve been fine with it. My mom always has been. Even before it was fashionable. I’ve never doubted their love for me.”

“That’s gotta be nice.”

“I’m sorry your parents weren’t better to you.”

Seth shrugged. “It is what it is. I can’t change it. So you’re still close with your mom?”

“Yeah. She lives back in my hometown.”

“Where’s that?”

“Tecumseh, Michigan.”

“That’s where you grew up?”

“Yep. Lived there all through high school. Was even voted homecoming king my senior year.”

“Really?” Seth grinned at him. “Did you wear a crown?”

“Sure. It’s part of the gig.”

“Did you have to dance with a girl?”

“I did. She was my girlfriend at the time.”

“So, you dated women?”

“Until I was nineteen. You?”

“No. But in school most of my friends were girls.” Seth glanced away as if thinking something over. “I can’t imagine being with a woman like that. Never could.” He turned back to Vargas. “You slept with your girlfriend?”

“Sure. I had two serious relationships with girls in high school, then one in college. Slept with all three of them. I broke up with the last one right before I started figuring things out about me and guys. I guess the truth was building inside me, subconsciously.”

They didn’t say anything else right away, and something about the quiet reminded Vargas of where they were and why they couldn’t leave. His chest tightened. He returned his focus to the steel door across the room.

“So, would you call yourself bi?”

He looked back to Seth. “No. I have no desire to be with a woman again. Once I’d hooked up with a guy, I got what it was really supposed to feel like.”

“Sex?”

“That, and just being intimate, being close with someone. It was completely different touching a man, feeling his body against mine.”

Seth bit his bottom lip and nodded. Neither looked away for several breaths, and then Seth asked, “When did you leave Michigan?”

“When I went to college in Ohio. I headed back home in the summers, but then after I graduated I moved again.”

“I can’t picture you sitting in a classroom for four years. What did you study?”

“Business.”

Seth laughed. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

He laughed harder, really cracking up. “Did you ever tell any of your professors about your plans to open a gay sex club? Was that your senior project?” That had Seth’s head tilted back with more laughter.

Vargas laughed with him. “God, that’s great.”

“What?”

“Seeing you smile like that. Hearing you laugh. You have an amazing laugh.”

Seth dipped his head, but the smile didn’t fade.

Vargas offered more. “Back in college I knew I wanted to own a business. Just didn’t know what that would be.”

“Does your mom know what you do for a living?”

“Sure.”

“She’s okay with it?”

He grinned. “She tolerates it. But at the same time, she’s very proud of me. That doesn’t mean she stays here when she visits. I rent us a couple of rooms at a hotel, and I go stay there with her while she’s in town.”

“She comes here a lot?”

“A few times a year. I go back home just as much, so it usually works out for me to see her once every two or three months.”

Seth seemed to be considering that. “But you haven’t gone anywhere since I got out of the hospital. I mean, unless you only went for one or two days. I see you almost every day.”

“I haven’t been back to Michigan since then.” Vargas met Seth’s stare. “I didn’t want to leave you.”

“Oh.”

“I asked her to come here for the holidays and a couple of other visits. I didn’t tell you about it because I didn’t want you to feel bad.”

The deep affection in Seth’s brown eyes had Vargas’s tension fading away even more.

He reached for Seth’s hand and linked their fingers. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“Distracting me.”

“Did it help?”

“More than you know.”

“Good.” Seth glanced toward the door. “But… I don’t think the police or anyone else are coming.”

“They will.”

“What if they don’t?”

“Eventually someone will come looking for me when I don’t check in at the club.”

Seth gestured toward the door. “We could try opening the control panel, take a look inside. Maybe we could find a loose connection. Maybe there’s some tools in the tubs we could use.”

Vargas opened his mouth to tell Seth that was a good idea, but all he managed was a series of gasps. Merely talking about the possibility that no one was coming had the panic back with a vengeance. He really had to get out of there.

Seth slid in close and cupped Vargas’s face with a hand on each side. Vargas turned to him. The complete concern and devotion staring back at him once again blocked out everything else.

Seth searched his eyes. “Talk to me some more.”

“About what?”

“You said you were in love once. Who was he?”

“He was you.”

“Me?” Seth’s mouth fell open. “So…” He stopped and stared some more, then wet his lips. “I’m the only one you…” He gestured with his hand between them as if he couldn’t say the words.

“I’ve never felt this way about anyone else.”

Seth’s bottom lip trembled. He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have tried to leave. I don’t want to leave. All I’ve wanted for such a long time was to be with you, to hear you say that you wanted me too.” He moved in, deliberately and with determination, and pressed their lips together.

It was the same sweet, soft kiss that he’d first given Vargas back at his apartment before they came to the club.

This time when Seth pulled back, the question was clear on his face.