Manny Get Your Guy (Dreamspun Desires Book 37) by Amy Lane (2)

Helped and Helpless

TAYLOR was setting Nica’s maple-wood table with china-blue place mats and bantering with her about her classic customer service technique when Brandon walked in.

“Boots!” Nica called without breaking her stride. Taylor had helped her start her first business, Monica’s Dinners To Go, and he’d always loved watching her fly about the kitchen like a mad pixie possessed by a demon of speed.

“Already off!” Brandon called back. “Can I get anything?” He leaned casually against the doorframe that divided the open kitchen/dining room from the living room. He was wearing a clean T-shirt, and around his collar he had streaks that looked like leftover dust after he’d given himself a quick washup. That square American-boy jaw was still firm and his slightly pouty lips still looked soft, and no, Brandon’s broody attractiveness hadn’t lightened up one iota.

“Get out of my way,” Nica called back, not even looking up. “So, Taylor here was just about to tell me stupid stuff I don’t need to know.”

Taylor finished with place mats and started working on silverware. “I was just going to tell you that if you tell your customers right off that their car is a piece of crap and going to die on them, they’re going to think, ‘Oh my God, my baby!’ and take it to another repair shop.”

“There is a thing called honesty—”

“That’s not honest!” Taylor laughed.

“It is too. It’s a thing.”

“It’s cruelty, Nica. Cars aren’t just transportation—they’re our companions, sometimes even our homes. No, you tell the customer, ‘We can make a patch on that, but there’s no guarantee it will last. Eventually the engine will need to be replaced, and that’s bigger than the resale value of the car.’”

“Which is saying the same thing I just said!” Nica protested. She was finely grating the parmesan into some olive oil with crushed garlic, chopped parsley, and basil, and Taylor’s mouth watered. He loved it when she put that on top of a dish.

“But it’s not the same thing!” Brandon winked at Taylor in what must have been an unconscious moment of goodwill. “What you’re saying is ‘take it out and shoot it.’ What Taylor is saying is to make the car comfortable and make sure it’s loved before we honor the DNR order.”

Taylor grimaced, and Nica stopped what she was doing and stared at him. “Oh my God, that’s morbid,” she muttered, wiping her hands on her apron before moving on to slicing the bread.

“It’s a good metaphor,” Taylor considered, “but yeah. Jesus, kid, way to kill a discussion.”

Brandon groaned and rubbed his forehead with a not-quite-clean hand. “Yeah, sorry. Had a physics final yesterday—the professor used a lot of ambulance examples in the word problems. I think I mixed up my worlds.”

Oh great. Taylor was even outclassed by the kid’s schoolwork.

“So how’d you do on the final?” Nica asked, and Taylor frowned at her. There was a trace of that smugness in her voice, one that said, Yes, I know you worked your teeny tiny brain to a pulp on this thing, but my brain could wipe the floor with yours even when pregnancy brain is real and I’m working on four hours of sleep.

“I bombed it,” Brandon said without batting an eyelash. “I always bomb them. You know that. We’re lucky the school has kept me this long.”

Taylor snickered. “Yeah, don’t let her give you any shit about your grades, kid. She was always the smartest one of us, and not ready to let anybody forget it.”

Nica huffed. “You were all slackers,” she said grandly, though her following smile was a little sad. “Actually, you were all the only ones who would put up with me. I was lucky to have friends at all.”

She sounded sniffly, and Taylor looked at Brandon in a little bit of a panic. Brandon was backing slowly out of the room.

“Coward,” Taylor mouthed. He’d thought the boy had more backbone.

“Getting Jacob!” Brandon mouthed back and then disappeared out of the room.

Okay, so not a coward, just showing quick thinking. But Nica was actually crying over her food, and Taylor was stuck in the kitchen with her.

“’Kay, Nica? I love you and it’s time to sit the hell down.”

She gaped at him, mouth opening and closing, and Taylor made his move. He’d worked with a physical therapist for a year to make sure he could deal with a home’s second-most dangerous room, and it was time to pony up.

Gently he took the spoon out of her hand and gestured with it to the table. “Go sit,” he said, meeting her gaze and nodding. “I need you to go sit and rest. Our girl doesn’t cry over being smarter than the whole damned world, and she doesn’t get sniffly over dinner. Go rest and let your family take over for you, okay?”

Nica was short, and she looked up at him, lower lip still wobbly, eyes still red-rimmed. “You know,” she said, voice unaffected by the tears, “this is why I thought I loved you in high school. You were nice like this.”

“Not so nice,” he said, hating the memory. “If I was lying to you all that time, I was not so nice.”

“You had reasons.” He pulled her close so he could lay her head on his chest while he hugged her. Yeah, they’d been good at cuddling in high school. And as hurtful as the truth was, one of the reasons he hadn’t come clean with her back then was that the cuddling was nice.

“It’s a good thing you’re gay,” Jacob said, busting into the treasured moment of human contact.

They stepped back—but not guiltily—and Taylor shook his head. “That’s not what my last boyfriend said.”

Jacob wrapped his arm around Nica’s waist and guided her past the table and toward the living room.

“Jakey—dinner!” she protested.

“How many times has Taylor watched you prepare chicken Alfredo? I bet he could make it with one eye shut.”

Taylor cackled, but Brandon looked horrified. “Jakey!”

“That’s both eyes shut, jerkoff!” Taylor called, and Jacob nodded, continuing to get his wife to the living room.

“Where are the kids?” Taylor asked when they were gone.

“I pulled them inside—they’re hanging out watching cartoons with Conroy.”

“What cartoons does Conroy watch?” This could be important, right?

But Brandon chuckled. “Anything Dustin watches, so right now it’s SpongeBob and Steven Universe.”

“SpongeBob I’ve heard of,” Taylor said, spreading the cheese/olive oil mixture on top of the sourdough bread. “That other guy—”

“Is pretty cool. Very gay-friendly, trust me.”

Taylor set aside the garlic bread and went to stir the ’fredo sauce, very nearly knocking the pan over as he did so.

Brandon caught and steadied it, grabbing the spoon as it fell. A flush crawled up the back of Taylor’s neck. “Thanks,” he mumbled. “Sorry. Depth perception—”

“Yeah, must suck.”

Taylor pulled up a shoulder and took the spoon from Brandon’s hand. His skin, warm and dry, was the first personal male touch Taylor had gotten since before his Humvee was hit by that RPG.

“Better than the alternative,” he said, expecting the kid to move. But he didn’t, just stood there studying Taylor from his blind side and emanating heat and sweat and something spicy that lingered after what must have been a hard day’s work. “Uh, if you’re going to help cook, you should probably wash your hands.”

“Sure,” Brandon said, and another moment—a long moment—later, he stepped away toward the sink. As he was drying his hands on a towel, he asked, “What did your last boyfriend say?”

“What?” Taylor moved to the refrigerator and started pulling salad fixings. He was trying to decide if grated cheese was overkill and if Nica still liked raisins—Taylor didn’t—and the question was right out of context.

“Please, no raisins—”

“Thank God!”

“You said your last boyfriend wasn’t happy that you were gay. Explain that.”

Taylor grunted and set the lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, and cheese down on the counter. “He wanted the closet. I wanted the whole house. We were still fighting when my face blew up.”

Brandon grunted like he’d borne the blow himself. “Dumped you?”

“Dumped implies communication. Haven’t heard a thing from him in three years. Only reason I know he’s not dead is that he was holding the car for me while I was deployed. He sent me the registration when I was laid up.” Nica had been in the hospital when he’d gotten the envelope. For a whole thirty seconds, he’d hoped Duane was coming to visit him. Not so much.

“Nice,” Brandon said. “Here, give me the tomatoes and the carrots—”

“You can have the lettuce,” Taylor said shortly. He’d worked on his hand strength and mobility too hard to let salad vanquish him.

“Sure.” He sounded chastened. They worked for a moment in silence, and Taylor smiled as the sounds of SpongeBob and childish laughter floated down the hall.

“I could watch that show with the—”

“I was an asshole.”

Taylor narrowly missed chopping off his fingertip. “I’m sorry?” he said, trying to put that into context.

“When I said you wouldn’t fit in here. I was an asshole.”

“Did you mean it?” Taylor asked.

“I didn’t know you—”

“You don’t know me now. Look, it’s that simple. I was a lying little shitbag when I was a kid. Now that I’m reformed, I’d rather you be rude than false. Did you mean it?”

“Yeah,” Brandon said quietly but not defensively. Taylor stopped chopping vegetables and looked to his left, and found the kid’s eyes fastened hungrily on Taylor’s face. Taylor expected him to look away, embarrassed because he’d been caught staring, but he didn’t.

He locked gazes with Taylor and clung, his green eyes burning hotly, like he was trying to sear a path into Taylor’s soul.

Taylor’s breath caught. “Do you….” Oh hell. His mouth was dry. He swallowed and tried again. “Do you still think it?”

“No,” Brandon said, eyes steady. “I think you’ll be out of your depth and losing your mind for a week or so, but that’s parenthood. You’ll figure it out.”

He was so impossibly young, and even with a base tan, his complexion was so fair the flush across his cheeks was blotchily apparent.

Taylor had to force himself to turn away. “Well, it took me nearly thirty years—good on you for having it done so early.”

“This isn’t figured out,” Brandon mumbled, but Taylor kept his attention on the vegetables. SpongeBob only lasted so long, and the kids were going to come roaring for food soon enough.

DINNER was civilized, which surprised Taylor because he remembered horsing around with his brothers at the dinner table and how his mother always tried to calm them down. His dad had told her to lighten up, let boys be boys. He’d seen the family at Channing’s house, but he’d thought that had been grandparent manners.

Apparently the idea that boys were violent and rude was something not every family embraced. Or at least not Jacob and Nica’s.

“Dustin, you pass those rolls to Belinda right now.”

“Da-ad….”

“She asked you nice, and those are the house rules.”

Taylor watched with admiration as Jacob and Nica talked to each kid in turn and made sure the kids learned to communicate in whole words and not just grunts. He’d seen the same dynamic when Nica was a kid, but somehow that had just seemed like Nica, Tino, and Elena being good kids.

It was starting to dawn on him that it was a whole family dynamic he wasn’t used to.

He and Brandon washed up, standing side by side at the sink, Taylor rinsing, Brandon stacking in the dishwasher. They were quiet the whole time, and Taylor found himself edging away from the heat Brandon’s body threw off. It wasn’t until Brandon’s bicep rubbed against his own that he realized what he was doing and why.

One contact—that’s all it took. One brush of arm against arm and Taylor’s groin swelled, aching against the confines of his briefs and his shorts.

Brandon turned his head as though shocked. “Sorry,” he said gruffly. “Didn’t mean to bump you.”

Then he shifted his eyes to Taylor’s face again, quick and sultry. This time he was standing on Taylor’s right side.

“No,” Taylor said, his voice gravelly. “Kid….”

Brandon was around six feet two or three, maybe an inch or so taller than Taylor himself. For a moment they stood face to face, the air between them steaming with promise.

Brandon leaned in and kissed him.

A brief brush of breath and tongue, and Taylor gasped just as Brandon was backing away.

“What in the hell—?”

Brandon’s eyes went to half-mast, and he licked his lips. “Nice,” he said. “I liked that. We should try that again.”

“No,” Taylor said again. “Bad idea. So bad.” He threw all his energy into wiping down the sink now that Brandon was setting the controls on the dishwasher. “Bad, bad, bad, bad—you don’t even like me!”

Dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. He was not an ingénue.

“I think you’re hot,” Brandon said confidently. “Does that count?”

“No!” Oh, this must be what karma felt like—he was paying back for being an arrogant prick who thought all gay ass was his for the taking. “And I’m not hot. I’m….” He flailed with his left hand toward the scars on his face that the kid could see, and the scars on his shoulder, his hip, his thighs, his calf, that the kid couldn’t. “I’m wrecked, and you are way too young for me.”

Brandon’s flush returned with a vengeance. “You’re not even thirty!”

“Well, I feel thirty. Hell, I feel forty-five. And you need… young and horny. Not old and wrecked. Go away.”

Brandon cocked his head. “Go away?”

Also a dumb thing to say. “I didn’t mean, like, go away. I just meant find somebody your speed.”

“What is my speed?” Brandon asked like he was humoring Taylor, which was irritating in the extreme.

“Apparently zero to sexy in the time it takes to wash the dishes!”

Brandon narrowed his eyes and took a step into Taylor’s space. Taylor backed up, and again, until Brandon was standing toe-to-toe with him while Taylor tried to crawl into the sink ass-first.

Once again the kid’s green-eyed gaze tried to drill a hole into the depths of Taylor’s soul.

“Are you saying that didn’t do it for you?” he taunted. “I think we both know that’s a lie.”

“Kid….” Taylor’s voice came breathily, and he bit his lip as the ache of arousal made him drop the pretext of resistance. “Of course I want….”

Deliberately, Brandon reached into the almost nonexistent space between them and outlined the shape of Taylor’s erection through his clothing. He spent an extra couple of millennia playing the definite ridge of the bell, teasing until it wept, leaving a damp spot on the front of Taylor’s pants.

Taylor couldn’t look away, and desire ramped up in his chest, in his groin, tingling in his extremities, until he remembered the hostility this kid had greeted him with and the arrogance of what he was doing now.

Taylor grabbed his shoulders and whirled him around against the refrigerator, taking his mouth in a punishing kiss.

His tongue barged in, demanding adult no-bullshit things, and he swept hard, knowing hands down Brandon’s ribs to his hips, shoving underneath the waistband of Brandon’s jeans and kneading the bare, vulnerable skin of Brandon’s ass, spreading his cheeks suggestively and bucking against him until he groaned and broke away.

As soon as Brandon turned his head, Taylor pulled his hands out of his pants and stepped back, panting, ravaged as much as he’d ravished.

“Your own speed,” Taylor repeated through clenched teeth. “I’m a long haul on a bumpy road.” He took another step back and tried not to look at how Brandon was staring at him, dazed, rubbing his thumb gently around his bruised and swollen lips. “Nica! Jacob! I’m going to take off. Thanks for dinner!”

“Thanks for cleaning up,” Jacob called back. “Have Brandon walk you out. See you tomorrow.”

“Don’t bother,” he told Brandon quietly. With that, he turned without preamble and headed for the front door.

Brandon caught up with him before the door closed and followed him out into the still-bright summer’s night.

“This isn’t over,” he said seriously as Taylor tried to look purposeful and not to limp.

“Sure it’s not. I’m going to pick up some ice cream on my way back to my shitty apartment and watch Marvel action movies and drool.”

“You’re going to stop for lube and stroke yourself thinking of me,” Brandon snapped back, and Taylor did stumble, catching himself on the driver’s-side door of his Ford before he went down.

“Jesus, kid.” His hands shook as he fumbled with the key fob. “What a thing to say.”

Brandon took a step in and closed Taylor’s fingers over the clicker. They both heard the snick and the beep as the door unlocked. “Did you think that kiss was going to scare me off?” he asked, smiling kindly. “Just made me want more. Sorry, Taylor. You can’t scare me away.”

“You should be very scared.” Sweat stuck the back of Taylor’s shirt to his skin. “And you were right. I don’t belong here at all. Not with this nice family, not with you. I’m sure Nica will be looking for my replacement just as soon as my loan comes through.”

“You’re her friend. Is that why I haven’t seen you here before? I’ve lived here for two years—I knew Nica went to visit ‘a friend’—but you never came here. Is it because you thought you didn’t belong?”

Arrogant—but not stupid.

“I don’t. Now move, kid. I’ve got to go.”

“Plants to water?” Brandon mocked softly.

“Cat to feed. The witch tries to trip me when I walk through the door if I wait too long. Now move!”

Brandon did, but the touch of his hand sliding down the small of Taylor’s back and drifting off his backside lingered long after Taylor had driven away.

HE wasn’t lying about the cat.

One of the first things Nica had given him after he’d lived in his apartment for a month had been Marilyn. The tiny, princessy white kitten was well on her way to growing into a grand duchess, and to practice the role, she was now bitching mightily about Taylor being gone for the night.

She was the reason he’d crept out of Channing and Tino’s guest bedroom at six o’clock that morning, feeling foolish for getting drunk on butterscotch gelato and beer.

If he didn’t feed Marilyn at nine o’clock at night, to the click of the second hand, it didn’t matter how much food she had left in her bowl, she would whine at him for at least an hour before planting her fat, furry butt on his chest and poking small holes in the skin of his neck for another hour while he tried to watch TV.

Not that Taylor had much cause to blow up the schedule.

Oh, the kid—Taylor just kept thinking of him that way, because to think of him as the man would mean something else entirely—had been damned on target with the reason Taylor had kept away from the whole Robbins family once he’d gotten out of rehab.

All that niceness. All that functionality. Just highlighted that even the parts of Taylor’s life he’d tried to make normal had fallen apart.

Brandon apparently thought damage was sexy. As Taylor dumped a can of cheap soft food over a mounded bowl of kibble, he started the nightly stretching regime that let him walk every morning, and begged to differ.

When Marilyn was settled, still berating him soundly between mouthfuls, he turned on the television to find something action-packed and science-fictiony. He crossed his bad arm in front of his chest, pulling on it gently from the middle of the forearm to increase the stretch. Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch… ah….

The release of the tightened muscles rippled through his body, and some of the tension bled out too.

And now for over his head, the warrior pose, stretch out the chest… ah…. One stretch at a time, he went through the whole regimen, remembering his form, his stance, his breathing. Twenty minutes in the morning, twenty minutes at night, and various stretches in the middle of the day all helped keep Taylor from becoming a gnarled screaming knot of muscle cramps.

Only when the last muscle released did he allow himself the luxury of sitting on his overstuffed tapestry couch with a glass of milk and some golden Oreos.

Just in time for a commercial break, of course. He leaned his head back against the couch, closed his eyes for a moment, and tried to force the Oreos to wash away the taste of Brandon.

He wanted to say sweet, but while sweet was fine in a cookie or butterscotch gelato, it was not usually what Taylor looked for in a lover.

Taylor liked a little more bite from a kiss. Brandon had that. Like the bite of alcohol in a mojito—some citrus, some mint, and some wow. Absolutely lethal.

Taylor used to be able to pound mojitos by the gallon. How long could he kiss Brandon—arms like cannon shot, a stomach with the teeth-rattling corrugation of a gold-sifting cradle?

For a baffling minute when Brandon had first kissed him, before Taylor felt compelled to show him what he was playing with, Taylor had wanted to let that youth and that strength take over.

He tried to laugh now, even as his body responded.

Always had to be the top, always had to be the man’s man. For a sugar-sweet moment, someone had kissed him, had come on to him, had tried to tell him that life would all be okay because someone else would be in charge.

For that brief moment, Taylor wondered. What would it be like to let somebody take care of him? What would it be like to be on the receiving end?

Not just the sexual position—the emotional one?

With the drone of car commercials in the background and the unsatisfyingly sweet taste of Oreos permeating his senses, he closed his eyes and wondered what that would be like. If he just let Brandon take over—kiss down his neck, down his chest, down his stomach. For his dream, he conveniently ignored the crosshatching of shrapnel and surgical scarring that marred a body he’d once been so proud of, and concentrated on being touched. Brandon’s hands, callused, rough, demanding, cruising his skin without apology. Brandon’s kisses, bold, a little inexperienced maybe, but given with a whole heart and no fear.

Those hands, that mouth, servicing his erection, pleasuring his erection, gripping, squeezing, stroking….

Taylor slid his hand under the waistband of his shorts. Oh yeah. Pressure, stroking—it was his own damned cock, and he knew his own damned spots. Squeeze, stroke, fondle, squeeze, stroke, fondle. He knew his rhythm, knew what exactly it took for him to build the arousal in his own body. A pinch to the nipple, a squeeze to his cock… for a year since he’d been out of the hospital, it had been him and his good right hand—and his slightly maimed left one.

His stroking continued, and he arched his hips in the air with abandon, forgetting in the moment that he was alone on his frayed couch in his tiny, drafty apartment. Forgetting too that his hands were knowledgeable and familiar. But nothing was as wonderful as someone else’s hands, someone who cared, someone who exulted in bringing pleasure to a lover with every touch.

In that moment he imagined Brandon’s mouth on him, Brandon’s hands, fumbling perhaps, inexpert but trying. He imagined those knowing green eyes studying his face, waiting to see what he liked, what really turned his key.

What turned his key was a tongue digging into his slit, and a squeeze at the base, and some tugging on his balls. Some bold action underneath, some playing with his cleft—oh yes, some penetration, not complete, just a little…. But maybe Brandon wouldn’t be satisfied with that. Maybe Brandon would want to penetrate all the way.

Taylor had never been taken. Not once.

Would this kid with the probing green eyes and the uncomfortable flush be that brave? Would he lubricate and penetrate and take Taylor with everything he had?

In the safe place of his imagination, Taylor imagined that, being topped, being cared for. Imagined someone else telling him to relax, it would be okay. Imagined someone making it okay and thrusting into him, stroking him, making his body sing like it hadn’t even before the explosion in the desert had made the simple notes painful.

Taylor wanted it back, wanted a lover’s touch on his body, wanted more.

Wanted to open himself up to somebody who wouldn’t hurt him, who would take care of him, who would catch him after he came apart.

He shoved his shorts and underwear down his thighs and continued to stroke with one hand while he sucked on two of the fingers of the other.

He whimpered, trying to concentrate on two things at once. His erection was ripe, aching, ready to explode, but his perineum, his pucker, they ached too. They ached with neglect, needing touch, and he pulled his fingers out of his mouth, kicked his shorts off, and splayed his knees. Awkwardly he shoved his fingers into himself while he stroked some more.

All that stimulation, and it was Brandon’s eyes and his swollen lips and his promise—This isn’t over—that sent Taylor over the edge.

His body, stretched and loosened, gathered tight like a spring. Oh God, yeah, some more squeezing around the head, some thrusting with the fingers, and….

Yes!

He might have shouted the word out loud.

His body spasmed hard, and he came and came, shooting over his abs, his ribs, his chest. A sob tore from his throat, and another, orgasm cries, and he didn’t bother keeping them quiet in his living room, all alone in front of his television.

When he was done, he lay panting, trailing his index finger through the mess on his skin.

The empty quiet of his apartment drifted over him.

Pulling himself off the couch to go wash up proved such an effort that he decided to just set his phone alarm early and go to bed.

Tomorrow would be spent studying; parenting tips abounded on the internet, and he planned to do some research. He didn’t want to warp Nica’s kids for life. The rest of the week would be helping Nica during her day so when she went to the office on Monday, he’d know what she expected. Sleep would be necessary.

He wiped down and washed his hands, stripped to his boxers, and slid between the sheets, tired enough that sleeping would be no problem.

Or it shouldn’t have been.

Until that vision of Brandon on his knees, servicing Taylor with pleasure, invaded his thoughts again.

With a groan, Taylor rolled over and tried to let the exhaustion of the day and the soporific of orgasm lull him to sleep.

It worked and it didn’t.

He closed his eyes and darkness swept him under, but he still dreamed of Brandon.

Brandon with the green eyes and the knowing smile, who took him and rode him and made him come…

And then whispered kind things in his ears afterward, telling sweet lies of home and family and happy ever after.

He woke up that morning with Marilyn on top of his chest and an emptiness inside.

He’d seen a happy family, and he’d seen a young man with a future.

These things were not for him.

Binocular Vision

IT took Brandon’s team a day to prep the work site and set up safe zones that would let the kids go into the backyard to play without being at risk from the construction. They’d lucked out in that Jacob and Brandon had poured sturdy concrete paths on either side of the house, and the lot itself was big enough to accommodate guys carrying loads of lumber, as well as some of the machinery necessary to do the job.

Brandon didn’t get a chance to see Taylor much during his first day solo—just a lot of him herding kids out of the house, then leaving to go get them all again. Nica had mercifully scheduled back-to-back activities for everybody. Even though it was the first day of summer vacation, nobody was getting a break, and given the chaos of turning a house into a construction site, Brandon figured Taylor was probably relieved.

But that didn’t mean Brandon wasn’t disappointed.

The look on Taylor’s face after that first kiss—wounded and hungry and half-afraid… it hadn’t been what Brandon had expected at all. He’d expected the angry, baiting kiss at the beginning. He’d been hoping for it, hoping Taylor would take over, take what Brandon was offering, grab his hand and haul him to some bolt-hole out of time and place, and put searing hands all over Brandon’s body, branding him for life.

So help him, Brandon had read a lot of his mother’s romances as a child. She’d used them to escape the realities of being married to Brandon’s father, and Brandon had always been good at picking stuff up by watching.

And he’d watched Taylor. Watched him shy away from touch, watched him shudder and react to Brandon’s touch. Brandon might have been a frustrated virgin, but Taylor was actually much worse off.

The need that rolled off him in waves—between that and the fierce independence and prickly demeanor, Brandon’s entire body was on high alert.

He took care of people. It was what he admired about Jacob—the way he took care of his family. It was why he’d crushed so badly on Tino—he’d been the family caretaker.

And here was a man who was doing his best to take care of Brandon’s family—and he was desperate to be cared for himself.

Brandon’s furious desire to care for Taylor surprised him, but it also invigorated him. He’d been waiting all his adult life to have a prince come sweep him off his feet.

Imagine his shock to find that he was the prince, and he had a job to do.

Unfortunately his actual bill-paying, get-Brandon-through-school job was currently getting in the way of that other one.

“Grayson!”

Brandon pulled his brooding attention from the house, where Taylor and Conroy were currently occupied, probably trying to get Conroy settled down for his postlunch nap, to the job scene at hand.

“Sorry, Gus. We about ready to take a break?”

Gus grimaced and scratched his shining bald head—and then under his shining bald volleyball stomach. He was one of those guys who’d seen the death knell of his high school locks at twenty-five. At thirty-five, he had a few strands of gray in his beard and a perfectly round head to match a heavily concentrated bowling ball that had gathered from a two-beer-a-day habit. But he was quick and good-natured, and most importantly, he didn’t mind working for Brandon even though Brandon was younger and gay.

In fact, those last two items were pretty much the criteria Brandon had used for picking his entire team—and it worked. Luis, Ray, Carl, Rufus, and Gus worked well together. They used their heads, took Brandon’s direction, and didn’t cut corners.

But as decent as all the guys working for Brandon were, and as much as Brandon appreciated them, the eleven forty-five break was something they just were not getting.

“Brandon!” Luis whined, taking off his hat and slicking back his glossy black hair. “It gets hot out here, man! Do we really have to—?” He made random gestures with his hands.

“Yeah, I know,” Brandon admitted. “It’s a pain in the ass, and we’re not ready to rest yet. But guys, he’s a little kid. If we can tone it down for just fifteen minutes, he’s going to be out for an entire hour and a half. I mean, you have kids, Luis. What would your wife give to know they were going down for a nap?”

Luis’s eyes grew dreamy. “Fried ice cream and a blow job.”

Brandon stared at him, but Rufus nodded, his graying ponytail bobbing. “Dude, my wife totally put out for me when I could get the kids down for a nap.” His smile grew dreamy too. “Think it’s how we ended up with three.”

Gus grunted. “Wife didn’t care. Kid was stuck in his room whether he was sleeping or not.”

Brandon grimaced at him, but Gus rolled his eyes. “He’s going to college and isn’t homicidal, but fine. I’ll give this kid a fifteen-minute head start on a nap. Anyone needs me, I’ll be in my truck, finishing my coffee and sneaking a smoke.”

Ray and Carl, college students like Brandon, blond surfer boys who were sleeping off perpetual hangovers, shrugged and headed for their cars, probably to cop a nap of their own.

“Back by 12:05!” Brandon called. He nodded at Rufus and Luis, who were going for the ice chest of water and Gatorade before finding a place in the shade. “I’m going to go check on Taylor. We were making a helluva racket just then—want to make sure the baby isn’t too freaked-out.”

Rufus frowned. “Didn’t you say you weren’t going to be wearing two hats at this one?”

Aw hell. “Yeah, but… he’s the baby, guys, right?”

He expected another ration of crap, but to his surprise, both of them nodded, suddenly serious. The baby was as sacrosanct as the nap. Good to know.

Careful not to make too much noise, Brandon stomped his boots free of dirt on the mat outside the garage door and took off his tool belt and hard hat, leaving them by the mat before he slid inside.

Breakfast dishes were halfway finished, but Taylor hadn’t yet gotten to the rest of the kitchen. There was a giant stain on the floor by the sink that could be anything—mustard, syrup and pancake mix, mustard poop… so many bad, bad options in that direction.

Taylor’s job—Brandon had to remind himself of that. Of course, he knew Taylor would probably cut off his good arm before letting Brandon help him anyway.

Brandon was just stepping over a sippy cup—thankfully empty—when he heard Taylor’s voice in full-on panic mode.

“Conroy? Jesus, kid. Where’d you go?”

Oh shit! Brandon crashed through the kitchen toward the hallway, heading for the boys’ room where Conroy’s crib was kept.

“Conroy!” Taylor yelled. “Dammit, kid, you were right in your crib!” The distinctive sound of the flat of a hand hitting a wall reverberated through the house, as did the startled cry of a two-year-old.

“Oh.” Brandon’s steps slowed as he heard the anticlimax in Taylor’s voice. “Oh hell. Kid. I’m so sorry. You were right in your crib. Oh man. Baby, I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to scare you, ’kay?”

“’Kay, Taylor.”

“God, you’re sweet. Okay, Uncle Taylor’s gonna rub your back and you’re gonna fall asleep again, deal?”

“Mm….”

Brandon crept to the doorway and looked in. Conroy was lying under a deep-blue nap blanket, wearing a deep-blue onesie, with deep-blue sheets.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened.

Brandon stayed until Conroy fell back asleep—with this kid, it took about a minute and a half—and was waiting when Taylor emerged from the darkened room, closed the door gently, and fell back against the hall.

“Jesus frickin’ Christ,” he breathed. Brandon could see the sweat stains under his arms and the shiny gloss of his face—poor man had been terrified.

“Couldn’t see him, huh?” He made sure to keep his voice casual and sympathetic. He could not imagine how terrifying it would be to think he’d lost the kid.

“Not even a little,” Taylor rasped. “I thought that kid had jimmy-rigged the window or something.” He smacked his eye patch lightly with his palm. “Crap on toast, that sucked.”

“Not your fault,” Brandon told him. Taylor swiveled his head, and Brandon nodded because he meant it. “I might have thought he was lost too. He pulls the blanket over his head all the time.”

“Disappeared right off the grid.” Taylor closed his eye, swallowed, and shuddered. “That was…. God.”

Brandon stepped closer to him, rubbing a tentative circle on his bicep. “You’re doing fine, you know.”

“Have you even seen the kitchen?” Taylor asked bitterly.

Brandon had to laugh. “Well, yeah. And I think I tracked juice through the hallway, so you’re welcome. But, Taylor, he was fine. You didn’t break anything looking for him. You hadn’t called the cops yet, so there wasn’t too much panic. Kids’ll do that. Two years ago, when Conroy was a baby? It was Melly. She hid under the coffee table playing hide-and-seek—but she never told anybody else we were playing the game. Nica was running for the pool to see if the fence had been left open and Jacob was picking up the phone to call the cops when she popped out and said, ‘Surprise!’ I swear, I’ve never been so relieved in my life.”

Taylor swallowed and nodded and leaned his head back against the wall like he was still trying to get it under control.

Brandon took advantage of the moment.

He kissed him.

For a fierce, free second, Taylor opened his mouth and responded. Brandon fell into the kiss like falling down the rabbit hole. When Taylor wrapped his arms around his shoulders and pulled him close, Brandon went, and they were chest to chest, equal to equal, Brandon sweeping his tongue through Taylor’s mouth and tasting and tasting. Pancakes, juice box, panic, desire—it was all there for the taking, and Brandon took.

Taylor broke it off after a moment and pushed away. “Comfort’s over,” he said gruffly. “Gotta go pick up the kitchen. And hell, you really did step through the juice puddle and track it down the hall, didn’t you?”

Perfect waffle-stomper prints in purple were seeping into the beige carpeting as they watched.

“Sorry. I’ll get that. You get the kitchen.”

“Don’t you have a job to do?” Taylor glared at him, and Brandon remembered his crew, who would be getting antsy in about five seconds.

“Okay, fine. You can clean up my mess. But I need a favor.”

“You need a favor for me cleaning up your—”

“Stay,” Brandon said quickly. This was Thursday. For four days, Taylor had managed to pick up and bail right when Jacob and Nica got home. Brandon was sick of it—he was pretty sure Taylor was going to the gym, maybe, and then to his own apartment to brood or hang upside down like a bat or whatever. Brandon wanted a chance and was not above begging.

“I’m sorry?”

“You should be. They ask you for dinner every night, and you bail.”

“They don’t need me hanging around every night while they try to have a—”

“Stay,” Brandon insisted. “Stay tonight. Stay and have dinner with us.”

Taylor shifted uncomfortably. “Kid—”

“Brandon. And stay. Please. Do you think you’re the only one with pride?”

Taylor dropped his chin to his chest and massaged the back of his neck. “Fine. Tonight I’ll stay.”

Brandon let out a sigh of relief and followed him down the hall. When they hit the kitchen, Brandon allowed himself the luxury of trailing a hand from between Taylor’s shoulder blades to the small of his back, stopping for a moment to caress his ass through his jeans. “Thank you,” he said softly.

Taylor shuddered and kept his face turned away. “You are scary persuasive,” he mumbled.

Brandon smacked him on the ass and laughed, then walked outside to tell the troops that Conroy was settled and they could start working again.

TAYLOR ate quietly, smiling at Jacob and Nica, teasing the children gently but not getting in the way of their parents’ nightly ritual.

Brandon took the opportunity to watch him, noting the almost hungry look in his eyes as Nica and Jacob took care of their family.

Tino said he’d been beaten.

The thought popped into Brandon’s head unbidden. Taylor had been abused as a child, probably for being gay.

A tough man—a soldier—who had fought his way through rehab and was working to get out and finish his degree. So much determination to do something good with his life, so many strikes against him, and what he seemed to want—seemed to crave—was right here in this room.

And he had to be pressed into staying.

Brandon needed to know why.

“Dustin….” Nica’s warning voice pulled Brandon away from his study of the man to his right, and all eyes landed on the boy, who was squirming in his seat.

“Yeah, Mom?”

“Your swim teacher called me today. She said you were going to drown.”

Jacob spit up rice pilaf. “Seriously?”

“Oh yes,” Nica told them all grimly. “Apparently Dustin has been faking the dying dog paddle all week.” Melly and Belinda snickered, and Dustin sent them a killing look. “Now why would you be doing that? We all know you can swim very well! Why are you faking it?”

“’Cause he’s bored shitless,” Taylor said casually before stuffing another bite of rice pilaf into his mouth.

All eyes turned to him, including Brandon’s. It was the most he’d said since they’d sat down, including “Pass the milk.”

“Taylor!” Nica hissed. “Language!”

Taylor wrinkled his nose. “Okay. He was bored spitless. Or witless. Or brainless. He was so bored that peeing in his pants felt like a good idea, because it was at least something to do.”

“Eww!” the little girls said in tandem, but Brandon got a good look at Dustin’s face.

Dustin had the wide cheekbones and little pointed chin of Nica’s family, but he had Jacob’s flush-easy skin tone. Right now his cheekbones sported bright rosy spots of color, and he was biting his lower lip to keep from cackling.

Oh yeah—sure as hell’s afire, the little snot had been peeing in the pool.

“Why would he be bored?” Nica asked, and Taylor swallowed the bite of rice and wiped his mouth carefully before answering.

“Because the teacher is sort of geared up for people Melly’s age. But Belinda’s a little old for her already. And the kids are already crack swimmers. I mean, if you want to give them a challenge, maybe sign them up for a water safety class. They’ve got junior lifeguard classes at the same place just half an hour later. Melly and Belinda could go to the swim lessons, and Dustin could go to junior lifeguard, and we could do our half hour at the library after story hour and not before, and then I can drop them off at ABC Club without the extra half hour to spare beforehand.”

Nica scrubbed at her face. “But what about Conroy’s nap?”

“Why would that affect Conroy’s nap?” Taylor frowned, obviously trying to use his brain for a spreadsheet. “Besides, I need to take Conroy on an extended ride home afterward, so he can sleep in the car or something. Brandon’s got the guys closing down shop while Conroy goes down, and that won’t get the place done any quicker.”

Now everybody was staring at Brandon. Or rather Nica was staring and Jacob was smirking.

“You got the crew to shut down construction so the kid could nap?”

Brandon smacked Taylor’s arm, and he didn’t even flinch. “Yeah, Jakey—so what? It’s a nightmare trying to keep everybody on schedule when he’s cranky. Fifteen minutes at naptime and he’s pure gold.”

“But it’s damned early for six grown men to be taking their break,” Jacob returned. “Maybe Taylor has a point. Not about driving around. But if maybe we reschedule ABC Club for the session half an hour later, he could drop the kids off and get Conroy here in time for a real lunch for the construction crew.”

Taylor grunted.

“What?” Brandon asked, sensing his disapproval.

“I was really hoping to avoid the half hour before ABC Club,” he muttered. “But never mind—”

“The ladies are really rude,” Dustin said, nodding sympathetically at Taylor.

And suddenly everybody was looking at Dustin again. “Clarify ‘rude,’” Nica said, sounding dangerous.

Dustin’s jaw had the exact same clench his mother’s did. “They just offer him all this advice and tell him that he’ll be all happy when he doesn’t have to do this anymore and say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry you can’t get a real job—’”

“That’s not what she said,” Taylor grunted, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but the table. “And it’s fine. Dustin, the schedule’s complicated enough as it is. I can deal with all those chicken coop women. It’s no big deal.”

“What…,” Nica said slowly. “What exactly did the woman say?”

Taylor clenched his jaw and shook his head, looking anywhere but at the people at the table. “Leave it alone, Nica. I’m—”

“Oh no. No, no, no, no. Who was it, and what exactly did the woman say?”

Brandon hated the ferocious helplessness that radiated off Taylor’s body.

“She said being wounded was no excuse for doing a woman’s job. And I have no idea who it was—her kid’s name was Kelsey, but there’s about six Kelseys in their session, so there you go. We all know who was being mean to Taylor, and I’m a big boy and can take it, and that’s not the point.”

“That’s exactly the point,” Nica said furiously.

“No, the point is, Dustin needs a different swim class, and we need to stop keeping Brandon from doing his job. The rest of it is my bullshit—”

“You’re our bullshit!” Nica snarled. “We’re not throwing you to the wolves again—”

“This isn’t the same thing at all,” Taylor maintained, slamming his fork down.

The whole family stared at him, and he swore quietly to himself. “Look, Nica—please, no. I can deal with stupid people, okay? Let’s just get the kids in a decent class. That woman teaching their swim class has the smallest, most annoying bird brain in the world. She’s going to make them hate swimming, and they’re part fish. Let’s just stick to that.”

“N—”

“Sure.” Jacob was apparently taking both balls in his hand to override his wife. “We will stick to that.”

“Jakey!”

Jacob looked at her, his face a sunny mask of dude-bro slacker that might have fooled people when he was younger. But after the past ten years of watching Jacob raise a family and keep his businesses running and be an amazing husband and father, Brandon was not particularly fooled.

“Monica!” Jacob returned, laughing. “Please—we can talk about this later, after we’ve got the schedule locked, and we can convince Brandon not to bankrupt his company just so Conroy can have a nap.”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Brandon muttered.

“Well, we can make it a smaller one and get Conroy here for your regular lunch. I’ll make the calls tomorrow when I’m taking Taylor through his rounds.”

“No,” Taylor muttered.

“You can’t change the schedule—everybody needs a parent’s signature, and I’ve got no problem taking the time off. I’ve got guys to do my job, and Nica’s needed there. So I’ll get that done and we can just—”

“Jacob,” Taylor said desperately, eyes closed, “I would give you actual money to not do this.”

“You don’t take shit from no one,” Jacob said sternly.

“I’m—”

“Done with the subject.”

“Can I be excused?” Taylor asked with exaggerated patience.

“Sure,” Jacob said, stabbing his own pork chop with some violence. “But go into the living room and watch TV. Don’t stop at the sink and do dishes. We have a housekeeper, and your shift’s done. You’re here as a guest.”

Taylor stood, looking lost and a little upset, and Brandon set his own fork down.

“While you’re here, I’ll show you how to get around the construction site so if you take the kids out to the pool, you’ll know the easiest way.”

Taylor’s open skepticism was well warranted, but this way Brandon could get him out of the obviously uncomfortable dinner.

“C’mon,” he urged, walking his plate to the sink. “It’s nice outside.”

Taylor’s surliness didn’t diminish, but he followed Brandon out of the kitchen and through the open construction on the back porch. Brandon paused to turn on the floodlights so they could see all the way out to the pool.

Brandon led the way, proud that his site was this clean even when it wasn’t being used. Taylor stumped along behind him, and Brandon could tell by his gait that he was tired.

They passed through the yellow tape to the backyard, and when Taylor didn’t even acknowledge the flimsiness of Brandon’s excuse, Brandon knew he’d needed to step away.

“They mean well,” he said softly.

“Course they do.”

Taylor wandered to the pool patio and looked moodily out over the water. The underwater light was on, and the pool glowed like a jewel against the quiet velvet of the summer night.

“It’s not right, the women being shitty—”

“I’m not a little kid, Brandon. I know what I look like. I look like a guy who couldn’t find a job doing man’s work. I think it’s one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever done and she can choke on her diamonds and die—but it doesn’t have to be a thing.”

“But they couldn’t be there when you needed it,” Brandon said, forgetting Taylor had never told him this story himself. “They want to make up for that.”

Taylor laughed shortly. “Been gossiping?”

“I was worried at first. You know that. My parents—well, they were a little cold when I came out. And then they got arctic when I didn’t change my mind. I transferred from junior college to Sac State, and Jakey offered me a place over his garage. I’ve been everybody’s favorite freeloader ever since.” Brandon kept his voice light, but Taylor would know. “This place, these people—they’re family to me. They’re trying to be family to you. I just think….”

Taylor pinned him with an irritated glare. “Think what?”

“Think you should take them up on it.”

“I’m not a college kid—”

“You’re going to be!”

“And I’ve been out on my own for a decade—”

“So wouldn’t it be nice to come in from the cold?”

“And seriously, I’m just lucky Dustin hasn’t booby-trapped the house at this point—”

“I think he actually likes you—”

“And what do you get out of this?” Taylor kicked the chain-link-fence pole in frustration.

Brandon stood about four feet to Taylor’s right, and he mimicked one of Taylor’s slow swivels to pin him with a no-bullshit gaze.

Taylor’s mouth dropped open and his eyebrows raised—even his eyepatch shifted.

“No!” But he sounded more bewildered than anything else.

“God, you’re dense.” Brandon took two steps to his left. Taylor’s body heat charged the air against his arm.

“I could say the same!” Taylor shook his head in exasperation—and took two steps to his left.

“Are you going to play the age card?” Brandon asked. “Because I could point out that playing Simon Says is not really mature.” Two steps to the left again. He made his steps bigger—their arms actually touched.

Taylor grunted and shifted away, raising his hand to pull it through his hair. “Brandon….” He let out a breath. “Please. Just… not tonight.”

Brandon wrapped his arm around Taylor’s waist and felt the shudder that racked him. “I’m not hitting on you—not right now,” he promised. “Just… you had a rough day, Taylor. Lean on me. Just for a few minutes. Who’s it gonna hurt? How will anyone know?”

“I’ll know,” Taylor said miserably. But he didn’t move away.

“And so will I. But that’s okay. I won’t think bad things about you because you needed someone, just for a minute.”

Taylor relaxed infinitesimally. “You’re right about the day. It really sucked.”

“Tell me about it?”

Taylor shook his head. “I’d rather just listen to the quiet.”

Brandon took a deep breath and tried not to fill the moment with noise. Two houses down, the Condits’ dog barked, and some kids on the block across the street were mangling rock music in their garage. A faint breeze drifted through the backyard, and Brandon closed his eyes and let some of his day blow with it.

Taylor’s body, warm and solid, continued to generate warmth, and Brandon took comfort in that too.

“I was so scared.” Taylor’s voice barely penetrated the silence. “I… I’ve been in battle. I’ve… I’ve seen people hurt… killed. I don’t ever remember panicking that bad. That kid—he depended on me, and I’d turned around and he’d disappeared.”

“He’s part of your family, Taylor—you’re going to feel that a little more deeply.”

Taylor let out a grunt. “I don’t remember feeling that for my family,” he said after a moment. “What does that make me?”

“A kid.” Brandon swallowed, thought of his own father. “Like me. A hurt kid.”

Taylor turned his head and ever so gently nuzzled Brandon’s temple. Ahh…. Brandon closed his eyes and sighed. He wasn’t alone—and there was proof.

“Were you a hurt kid?” Taylor asked softly.

“My boss knows my parents.” Brandon had tried hard not to think of this over the past week. “He says my dad’s not doing too good. My mom’s trying to get him to go to the doctor’s, but like he ever listened to her anyway, right? My brothers are out of the house and never call… and suddenly it’s, like—they’ve called me, like, four times in two years? I don’t even get a Christmas letter—Jacob’s family gets the Christmas letter. And I’m expected to call him up or go visit or something and tell him to go to the doctor’s before he has a heart attack. And I’m pissed. Because… because….”

“Because family should treat you better.” Taylor punctuated that with a kiss on Brandon’s cheek.

Brandon turned and took his mouth instead.

He didn’t ravish—this wasn’t about sex. This was about comfort and understanding. Brandon got that.

Still, when Taylor sighed and opened his mouth, Brandon could be forgiven for pressing the advantage. He took over, turning so they were chest to chest, and cupped the back of Taylor’s head firmly so Taylor would know he was wanted.

Taylor let him finish the kiss out, responded as if he needed more. But when Brandon pulled back and leaned his forehead against Taylor’s, both of them panting quickened breaths into the jewel-lit darkness, Taylor cocked his head a fraction—just enough to make it inconvenient to continue.

“Is Simms still open?” he asked out of the blue.

Brandon had to blink several times before he even understood the question. God… every nerve ending in his body was tingling, every sex-center—cock, taint, pucker, mouth, nipples—felt swollen, and the only thought he had in his teeny tiny sex-depleted brain was How do I get this guy somewhere private so I can show him how it’s done? The fact that he’d never done it before notwithstanding, Brandon wanted so much to prove to Taylor that he could make it good, make it caring, make it wonderful.

He wanted to give Taylor wonderful.

So he felt like a frickin’ genius when he actually responded intelligently. “The pool hall?”

Taylor smiled faintly and—oddly tender—kissed his forehead. “Yeah. Is it still open?”

“Yeah. Why?” Taylor wasn’t moving away yet, and Brandon was calling it a win.

“’Cause—wanna go shoot some pool with me tomorrow? You know, bad hot wings, a beer or two, pool?”

It took Brandon a moment—and that was embarrassing.

“A date?” he asked dumbly.

“Do people have those still? I was in the hospital for more than a year—that hasn’t become politically incorrect, has it?”

Brandon had to laugh. “No, Taylor. Just… usually pool halls… not romantic.”

Taylor grunted. “Well, fine, then. We can invite Jacob.”

“No, no, no!” Dammit, he looked serious about that! “It can be a date.”

A wistful smile flirted with Taylor’s lean mouth. “Good. I was never good with the dating part. The sex part—that I could do.”

A wildfire flush swept Brandon’s body from his toes to the roots of his hair. Taylor must have felt it—must have felt it—because he whimpered and nuzzled Brandon’s temple.

“You got hot all of a sudden,” he said softly. “Don’t get too excited. For all I know, I don’t even remember how to do it with another human being.” He shrugged and stepped backward. “Seriously—nothing to write home about.”

Brandon snorted. “At this point any sex will be something to write home about.” He paused. “If, you know, I wanted my dad to really have that heart attack.”

Taylor made a sound like “Erkplk!” and Brandon smacked his face with his hand.

“I did it again, didn’t I—said something really morbid. Sorry. I should probably just cop to the fact that I am that guy.”

“Yeah,” Taylor rasped. “Morbidity I can live with. Did you say you’re a virgin?”

Brandon thought about the few hand jobs he’d given in junior college and the one half relationship that had ended when the guy confessed to swapping blow jobs with another friend. “Pretty much. Mostly. Seven-eighths a virgin. I’ve held another penis and seen another penis but have not actually tasted another penis. Or seen a whole other person naked.”

“That’s almost an entire virgin, you idiot!”

Brandon tagged him in the arm. “There’s no reason to shout.”

“Oh dear God. Why me? What about the guy you didn’t think could be the nanny made you think ‘Him! He is the one! I shall hit on him!’”

Brandon started to chuckle. “Well, for one thing, you’re really hot.” Taylor turned an outraged glare at him, and he sobered. “And for another, I was stupid. I looked at you—the scars, the gruffness—and Jacob wasn’t excited about you at the beginning. And I thought the worst. But you’re not the guy you were in high school. Jacob knows that—or he knows you’re the best of that guy now and not the worst. And that’s a really good guy. Is it so wrong that I want to know you better?”

Taylor grunted and backed up hurriedly. Brandon shuddered in the sudden cool left by his body and turned to follow him back into the house.

“Taylor, wait! Does this mean we’re not going to play pool? Taylor, where are you going?”

Taylor didn’t even look over his shoulder. “I’m going to go ask Jacob if he wants to come with us tomorrow!”

For a man who claimed to be physically wrecked, he was moving awfully fast. Brandon gave up trying to keep up with him and stopped to jump up and down in a supremely childish fit of frustration.

“Goddammit!”

“You are telling me!” Taylor returned, and then he was through the construction site and slamming the door to the kitchen, leaving Brandon alone in the romantic summer dark.

Bad Boys

“SO why am I here again?”

Jacob looked bored, and given that he had yet to sink a single ball in the pockets, Taylor could see why.

Pool was obviously not his game.

“To protect your cousin’s virtue,” Taylor responded absently. Unlike Jacob, who was apparently raised by wolves who didn’t play billiards, Brandon had played pool before. In spite of his enormous muscular frame, he held the cue with the delicacy of Picasso with his brush, and Taylor really could enjoy the night just watching him.

Or he could have if the whole rest of the world wasn’t all over Brandon’s tight, beefy ass as it stretched his faded jeans.

Jacob looked from Taylor to Brandon, who stood poised to clear the final ball into the corner pocket. A petite blonde girl had her hand on his shoulder so she could give him instructions like he’d never played before, when he obviously had. And her equally blond gay best friend was stroking his backside when she couldn’t see, either trying to score or trying to dick with Brandon’s concentration—either way, striking out on both counts.

“I’m supposed to protect his virtue?” Jacob asked numbly.

“Yes.”

Brandon shot straight and true, and the cue ball rebounded off the far bumper and glanced off the eight ball, sending it spinning right on target.

The girl jumped up and kissed him square on the mouth, and the boy grabbed his ass from behind.

“I’m doing a shitty job.”

“Yes, yes you are.”

Across the table, Brandon turned ironic eyes toward them and lifted an eyebrow specifically at Taylor.

Taylor’s jaw tightened, and he narrowed his eyes and glared at the interlopers, who ignored him. Probably because he made them feel uncomfortable, but he didn’t really give a crap.

“Do you have any suggestions?” Jacob asked, leaning philosophically on his cue. “Is there something in the extended friend-and-family handbook that tells me how to break up this situation?”

“You’re a dad!” Taylor burst out. “And they’re like, what? Twelve?”

“They’re obviously twenty—uh, eighteen. Eighteen at the least.”

They were supposed to be twenty-one, but as Blondie squealed and slobbered all over Brandon’s bicep, petting it like a kitten, Taylor had to keep himself from striding around the table and spanking her. And then forcing her to put on a T-shirt, because her boobs were falling out all over the place.

“Dude!” said the GBF at Blondie’s side. “Wanna get outta here? We can ditch the old dudes, you know—and doesn’t matter who you choose. We both like to watch!”

Brandon’s eyes widened comically, and Jacob sputtered laughter before moving to set up the frame.

“So, Brand,” he said, pulling the balls out of the slot, “you ready to ditch the old dudes?”

“No,” Brandon said darkly. “Particularly since I’m on a date with the hot one.”

Jacob regarded him with a straight face. “You mean I’m not the hot one?”

“Ew—you’re married. And my cousin. No, Taylor’s the hot one.”

Taylor knew his own eye widened. “Not that I’m saying you should go home with Romper Room here, but I still think you’re stretching that a bit.”

He wasn’t sure how the kid did it. Brandon was surrounded by barely-eighteen-year-olds jumping in his space, petting his chest, and he managed to make an incredibly awkward moment in a crowded pool hall into a moment of intimacy.

“You are the reason I’m here,” Brandon said softly, and it was funny how words like that could empower a man.

Taylor strode around the pool table to the horniness twins and tried to very carefully disengage them from Brandon’s body.

“Okay, princesses, it’s time to go find someone your own speed. I mean, I know he’s pretty, but he’s not for either of you, okay?”

“Killjoy,” muttered the girl.

“Tacky.” Her friend rolled his eyes and sauntered off, and the girl was two steps behind him when the veneered wooden door that kept Simms dark and disreputable, even in the daytime, swung open.

“Maureen!” a giant screamed. “Maureen! We know you’re here because your mother tracked your GPS here ’cause we’re not stupid! Now where the hell are you? It’s twelve o’clock at night!”

“Oh my God!” the blonde girl—apparently Maureen—shrilled and then came running back to Brandon. “Daddy! I can have a life! This is my new boyfriend, his name is Brandon, and Phillip totally approves.”

“Dude, I so do.” Phillip leered.

“Jesus!” Taylor snapped. “How old are you two?”

“I’ll totally be eighteen next year,” Maureen said, her eyes rolling hard enough that it must have hurt, and Brandon and Taylor both groaned.

“Sweetheart, go home,” Brandon said kindly.

“Kid, get the hell out of here. Go make up with Daddy—Jesus, be grateful he gives a damn, okay?”

She looked at Taylor and stuck out her tongue, and then turned to Brandon and threw herself into his arms.

He dropped her like she was toxic waste.

She landed on her ass with a squeal, and Taylor could swear the pool table shook and the balls rolled with the percussion of her father’s footsteps. “Did you just hurt my little girl?”

“Sir, I don’t think she can be hurt—I think she’s like a cockroach or a wolf spider and she’ll just keep coming back!”

Taylor stared at him, and Jacob made a sound like a broken squeaky toy.

“Death wish much?” Taylor whispered. The rest of the pool hall had gone totally silent.

Jacob managed to find enough wind to say, “I coulda sworn he wasn’t that stupid.”

“What did you just say about my daughter?”

Taylor absolutely positively had to do something. “Sir, he didn’t mean that. He’s… he’s got a morbid metaphor problem, that’s all. He just… he wasn’t interested in her, you know? She’s jailbait, and he’s not stupid.”

The guy swung around, and Taylor heard his own audible swallow. “You, sir, are really big,” he said, remembering the last time he’d gotten in a fight at Simms. It had been his own damned fault for blowing two guys in the bathroom the same night, but he seemed to recall that Gordie was not fond of fights in his pool hall.

Especially when breakage was involved.

“Daddy, that really hurt,” Maureen said, struggling to her feet.

Taylor watched her father—six foot six if he was an inch, with the square craggy face of a dockworker and hands to match—look at his darling little handful.

And melt.

And Taylor thought, Oh shit. This guy is going to kill us all.

“Are you saying someone would have to be stupid to love my little girl?”

“No, but I’m starting to think it would help,” Brandon muttered—but in the deadly stillness of the pool hall, everybody heard him.

“What did you say?” Maureen’s father yelled, and Brandon grimaced like it was just starting to hit him that he could have dealt with this better.

“Look, sir, my date didn’t mean any harm.” Taylor wondered what made him think he could make peace now. He’d been the equivalent of Maureen and her little friend and her father when he’d been a teenager—he of all people knew how this ended. “We were just trying to play a round of pool, and she and that Phillip kid were all over him. He’s a little frustrated, that’s all.”

“Are you saying my little girl’s a slut?”

One look at him clenching his hands and releasing them, gritting his teeth, shifting from foot to foot, and Taylor got it.

This guy had probably thought his little girl was dead. His blood was up, his good sense was vapor, and there wasn’t a soul leaving this fine billiards establishment unless some violence went down.

“Yes, sir. That’s what I’m saying. And I’d rather your slut kept her hands off my date.”

Taylor dodged the heft of the blow because he was ready, but just the impact glancing off his cheekbone hurt like hell. Still, he remembered how to do this—he spun on his weak leg but recovered, throwing himself back at Maureen’s father with a few quick jabs to the stomach and a hook to the jaw.

Dad stumbled back, looking surprised, and hit the pool table, which held firm. He bounced forward, barely keeping his feet, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looking at the blood that came away with interest.

Then he looked up at Taylor and smiled. And made the time-honored Come at me, I’m ready to roll sign with both hands.

Next to Taylor, Jacob said, “I hate you for this.”

Taylor’s bloodlust was so hot his head swam. He sank to a crouch and nodded, beginning the dance. “You can go if you want.”

“My wife would skin my balls with a potato peeler. Tell her I loved her so.”

With a massive heave and a yell, Maureen’s father launched himself at the two of them like a freight train. Brandon leaped on his back, and the battle was on.

TINO Robbins-Lowell surveyed the wreckage with raised eyebrows.

“Really, Jakey? This was your idea of a night out?”

“Wasn’t my fault,” Jacob mumbled through an ice pack held over half his face. “Blame Brandon.”

“Me?” Brandon had his own ice pack, but from what Taylor had seen, he was holding it over his eye and nothing else.

Taylor would have glared at him, but his one good eye was swollen halfway shut. “Yes, you!” he snapped. “Jesus bleeding Christ, kid, you called that man’s daughter a slut!”

“No, Taylor,” Jacob said with no irony at all. “That was you. Brandon said you’d have to be stupid to love her and compared her to a cockroach.”

“That’s fair.” Taylor was sitting on the now-broken pool table, and his leg was starting to cramp. “Either way, it’s not Jacob’s fault.”

Surprisingly enough, Tino chuckled. “It never is. People don’t get mad at Jacob. I swear, he knocked up my sister, and my parents damned near bought him flowers.” He put his hands on his hips again and surveyed the damage. “So, Mr. Simms, how much do I owe you?”

Gordon Simms, who had terrified Taylor for much of his raging youth, stood about five four and weighed maybe ninety pounds. He had a face like a boiled potato, and a constantly unlit cigar clenched tight beneath his brown teeth. Every so often during the night, he’d stick his head out the swinging door and spit, and God help anyone who was about to come in when he did it.

Now he put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “Well, insurance will take care of most of it. Haven’t had a fight in here since the last time this one”—he nodded at Taylor—“almost took the place apart. Wasn’t his fault this time.” Simms shrugged. “Much.”

“Yes, well, it’s a good thing my husband wasn’t here, or he would have dived in with a prehistoric laptop and things really would have gotten dire. Do we even know the other guy’s name?”

“Ran like the coward he was,” Simms said, and sure enough, a stream of chewed cigar arched away from the men in the center of the room and into the wreckage on the fringes. “His kid and her buddy were trailing after him too, whining about defending her honor. Twit.”

Tino laughed until Jacob pounded him helpfully on the back. “True story,” Jacob said, and Taylor nodded in support, even though he couldn’t see Jacob’s expression. “He heard Simms yelling for the cops and left so fast, I think Brandon’s got a bruise on his ass from being dumped.”

“Serves him right,” Taylor muttered, and that made Tino laugh some more.

When he was finished wiping his eyes on the inside of his microfiber T-shirt, he managed to pull himself together enough to talk business. “Well, we’re grateful to you for not pressing charges. Are you sure we can’t help you with some of the damage?”

Simms sighed and quirked his mouth almost apologetically at Taylor. “Help with the deductible would be most appreciated,” he admitted.

Taylor groaned. “I’ve got—”

“Done,” Tino said. “Jacob, you take Brandon home, and I’ll go talk numbers with our friend Simms here. Taylor, I can give you a lift when I’m through.”

“I can help—”

“Please don’t,” Tino said with a wink. “It’s all okay. Jacob needed a guys’ night out like no man in history. If this doesn’t make him happy to be home with my sister, we’ll have to ship him to a developing nation and have him nurse a village through cholera, because nothing else will.”

“I don’t even know what I was doing here,” Jacob complained. He hauled himself to his feet from his crouch by the broken table and turned to shake Taylor’s hand. “But damn, Tino’s right. That was fun. Don’t want to do it again, but that was pretty awesome while it lasted.”

Taylor laughed and shook his hand back. “Glad to help.”

“Yeah, good. Nica will be by tomorrow with some more ice packs and food and stuff. Once I tell her the story, she’s going to greet you like a hero.”

Taylor’s chest hurt, and he thought of how he’d fruitlessly tried to protect Brandon’s honor. And protect Brandon in general.

“Aces,” he said, but the words lacked passion.

Jacob sighed and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Wasn’t your fault, Tay—the guy was gonna cream one of us. He was just spoiling for a fight. You made yourself a target. It was like throwing yourself on the man-grenade.”

“That he did,” Simms said, puffing with admiration. “I remember you, you know, when you were a hell-raising little shit. Who knew you were building up to greatness! I am impressed as hell, kid. You have no idea.”

He shook Taylor’s hand with a gleefully hard grip, and then he and Tino turned back toward the office for their weird voodoo money rites or whatever. Taylor didn’t even want to think about Tino picking up his bill.

“Coming, Bran?” Jacob asked, taking a couple of steps toward the front door.

“Naw,” Brandon said, and Taylor looked at him sharply. “If Nica’s coming over tomorrow, I’ll catch a ride back with her. I want to talk to Taylor tonight.”

“And crash on his couch,” Jacob said, as though that was the only way it could possibly happen.

Taylor looked at Brandon in time to see him batting those big green eyes at his cousin. “Sure, Jakey. I’ll sleep on Taylor’s couch.”

Taylor’s mouth hung open, but no sound was coming out. “My place?” he said after Jacob had let himself out and the door shut behind him.

“Yeah.” Brandon swung his legs under the edge of the table and pushed off. “Your apartment.”

“Why?”

Brandon walked into his space and gently put the ice pack back. “So we can finish our date.”

Taylor must have been hit harder than he thought. “We’re going to—”

“Talk,” Brandon said, trailing his fingers along the back of Taylor’s hand. “Believe me, Taylor, I don’t want to do anything more physical tonight. But we were going to have a date. You owe me.”

“Defending your honor doesn’t count?” Taylor asked grumpily. God, had he even done dishes? Had he made his bed? Had the fat white thing recently defiled her sandbox?

“What’s the matter, Taylor? Afraid you didn’t scrub the bowl until it gleamed?”

Oh, this kid was karma—smug and cocksure and… and stroking the side of Taylor’s face with the scars, the side that hadn’t been beaten this night, the side that Taylor barely touched with a washcloth because he hated the roughness of the scars under his own fingers.

The side that hungered for touch.

“It’s not ready for company,” Taylor said with some belated dignity.

“Well, I’ll have to make myself at home,” Brandon said softly, keeping up that mesmerizing stroke of Taylor’s damaged jaw.

“Kid, what are ya doing to me?”

“You jumped to my rescue. That’s knight-in-shining-armor shit, Taylor. How am I supposed to not want to get to know that better?”

Taylor growled, trying to push him back one-handed. “You’re barely older than what’s-her-face—”

“I’m twenty-two. I’ve told you that before. Tino and Channing are ten years apart—I don’t see you arguing about that!”

“That’s because you weren’t there when I was trying to get into Tino’s pants,” Taylor growled, thinking this—this might be the thing to make him stop trying.

“How old were you?” Augh! He was impossibly big, and he was all over Taylor’s space like the smell of sweat and something surprisingly dark and musky.

“Eighteen,” Taylor admitted. “It was the summer Nica and Jakey got together and your cousin knocked up my best friend.”

“And before Channing and Tino got together. So you weren’t trying to be a homewrecker, you were just trying to hit that.”

Taylor groaned and jerked away from Brandon’s gentle hands. “He was cute,” he admitted.

Brandon laughed throatily and lowered his lips to Taylor’s good ear. “Still is. But he’s off-limits. And I’m not.”

“That’s not why I want you,” Taylor ground out and then wished for death.

“Really?” Oh, he was obscenely excited. “Then why?”

Taylor closed his eyes and shook his head. “Way too many reasons,” he confessed. “But kid, you’re still going to be staying on the couch tonight.”

Brandon’s grin took out what was left of his eyesight. “But I am going to be staying the night. I’m not ruling anything out.”

“Augh!”

Brandon’s gentle chuckle only made the defeat worse.

TINO drove them both to Taylor’s little apartment, no questions asked.

Until he drove up to the ratty concrete apron and took in the flaking stucco and cracked driveway.

“How in the hell did you find an apartment complex this shitty in Rocklin?”

Taylor winced. “It took skill and bad judgment.” He closed his eye, glad he couldn’t see the place. “Really, really bad judgment.” He’d found the place online while he’d been in the hospital. The day of his release, Nica had met him at the doors in a borrowed truck hauling all his earthly possessions from storage.

Tino came to a stop in front of the little complex, and Taylor had his hand on the door latch to get out when Tino stopped him with a sentence.

“A month,” he said like he was figuring something out.

“I’m sorry?”

“When’s your rent due?”

“Uh… twenty-five days.”

“Good. Did you sign a lease?”

“No….” Because the place really was that shitty.

“Better. You have twenty-four days to have your stuff ready. Channing and I just renovated a complex that’s a mile from Nica’s. We’ll rent the truck and move you in.”

Brandon chortled from the back seat. “Oh my God, Tino—you sound just like Channing. That’s amazing!”

“Ten years—I’ve learned something.” Tino poked Taylor, making sure Taylor was giving him absolute attention. “I’m not messing around here, Taylor. Nica should have told us about this place. You’ve got three and a half weeks. You have everything packed and—”

“My cat!” Taylor protested, mostly because it was the only objection he could think of.

“Your cat is welcome. We’ll put you in a place that kept the old rug. Do you hear me?”

“Tino, no. I mean, it’s my crappy apartment—”

“Top or bottom floor?”

“I live in the top—” But he hated the top floor. After a long day, those stairs about wrecked what was left of his calf and thigh.

“We’ll put you in the bottom.”

Brandon guffawed, and Tino rolled his eyes.

“We’re talking apartments, Brandon—the rest of that is your own personal stuff. But no. You came and asked my mom for help, and now you’re family. We don’t let family live in death traps. This place should be condemned.”

“But—”

“Thanks, Tino,” Brandon piped from the back. “I’ll tell Nica when she comes to get me tomorrow. Jakey’ll want to help.”

“Course.”

Brandon opened his door. In spite of the fact that it was one in the morning at the Friday end of a very long week, he bounded out of the car like a big muscular jackrabbit. Taylor felt a little ill at the thought.

While Taylor was still flailing at the idea of moving so soon, Brandon opened Taylor’s door and offered him a hand up. Taylor ignored it.

“But, Tino, I just moved here—”

“So you’re probably not even unpacked. Don’t.”

“But it was furnished!” Taylor hadn’t had anything when he’d gotten out of the military. Well, some saved pay. And a crapton of scars.

“As will this one be,” Tino said, pulling out his phone and making a notation. “Now I hate to complain, but it’s one in the morning, and you’ve seen my husband. I’d like to get back to him.” He looked at Taylor expectantly, and Brandon thrust his hand into Taylor’s line of vision again.

This time Taylor took it.

“Thanks for bailing us out,” he managed, right before Brandon shut the door and Tino drove off.

Brandon still hadn’t let go of his hand.

Taylor shook him off. “The couch is awful. I hope you wreck your back.”

Brandon’s throaty laughter sounded obscene in the quiet of the cul-de-sac. With a grunt, Taylor led the way up the stairs.

“MARILYN,” he called, and an indignant meow met him before he even cleared the door. “Come here, darlin’.” He bent stiffly and scooped the cat into his arms. He’d known he’d be gone that night, so he’d left her soft food that morning, but he had no doubt that had already been devoured and forgotten.

But Marilyn apparently loved Taylor even more than her food bowl, because she went nose to nose with him for a good thirty seconds in an attempt to mark him thoroughly.

Taylor obliged, ignoring Brandon, who was close enough to scratch the fluffy white thing behind the ears as Taylor made out with his cat.

Finally—finally—she wiggled to be let down, and Taylor fed her, then hobbled to the living room, aware that Brandon was taking in everything: U-shaped kitchen, Formica table, cracked white tile, stretched beige carpeting. Even the miserable plaid couch. All of it screamed “broke” and “temporary,” and Taylor’s embarrassment was acute.

But Brandon didn’t say anything. “Here—Taylor, sit down, at least. You’re not walking good.”

Taylor grunted. “Aren’t you in college? It’s been a while, but I could swear there’s a grammar class somewhere in the first two years. I mean, seriously.”

“Are you going to sit down or not?” Typical Brandon—unaffected by criticism. Maybe Taylor should stop offering it.

“No, actually.” Taylor toed off his tennis shoes—they had special inserts in the soles—and began that stretching regimen he was so proud of. “Sorry. My bedroom doesn’t have a lot of room in it, so I’m going to do these here while I can still move.” His calves and thighs were feeling most of the strain at the moment, so Taylor moved into the lunge position, left leg in front, right leg in back, hands clasped in front of him. Ah, that was it. Raise the back heel, lower it. Raise his head, lower it. He breathed carefully, exhaling as he stretched, inhaling when the stretch released, and just the breathing relaxed the muscles strained from the fight and the long night.

For once Brandon was blessedly quiet, and Taylor switched his legs, going into the lunge with his hands linked behind his back and raised off his ass so he could stretch his chest and shoulders.

Ah… ah… ah….

“Shit!”

The spasm contorting his left leg was enormous and merciless.

“What! What!” Brandon leaped off the couch, almost like he’d been napping as Taylor stretched.

“Cramp,” Taylor managed before going to his knees and falling sideways. To his surprise, Brandon rolled him immediately to his back, hands big and capable.

“Left leg?”

“Yes!” Taylor gasped, working hard to push against his heel and aim his toes to his chin in the classic dorsiflex.

“Here, press against my hand.”

Brandon pressed against the ball of his foot with one hand and then—oh God love him—pressed the palm of his other hand along the cramping arch of Taylor’s foot, and as that softened, he pressed his shoulder against the foot and moved both hands to Taylor’s calf, pushing hard until he’d worked the knot of muscle loose.

Taylor’s breaths slowed down, and he allowed himself to melt into the crappy carpet as he tried to see which part of his body was going to react worse to what he’d just done.

“Here,” Brandon said softly, standing and offering him a hand up. “Go lie down and strip to your boxers.”

Taylor took the hand because he had no other choice and found himself supported by Brandon’s arm around his waist as he limped to the bed.

“Maybe I should shower first,” he said, thinking of the bliss of pounding hot water.

“Sure. I’ll help you in and out of the shower, and then I’ll help you dress.” Brandon’s bland tone told Taylor all he wanted to know about how much of a maiden aunt he was being.

Still. “Doh!”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Showers are for men who can walk. Do you have a bathtub?”

“Not that I want to put my bare ass next to.”

“God, Taylor, I swear if you don’t take Tino up on his offer willingly, I’ll move you myself.”

“I am not a child!”

“No, but that doesn’t mean we don’t all need some caretaking, even if we’re, oh God save us, twenty-eight—”

“Nine!”

“Yeah. Twenty-nine years old. Jesus, you’re a pain in the ass.”

“Then go home.” Taylor couldn’t remember ever, in his whole life, feeling this wretched. This embarrassed.

“No,” Brandon said softly. “Here, let me take off your shirt.”

“I smell really bad,” Taylor warned.

“So do I. Remember, neither of us showered after work. It was a hundred degrees today.”

“Conroy had an epic three-wall diaper that may have scarred me for life,” Taylor admitted. “I was playing the entire first game of pool hoping nobody sniffed the air and shouted, ‘Hey! That guy! He smells like baby poop!’ I’ll never be clean again.”

Brandon laughed and stripped off the shirt, careful not to make Taylor raise his game arm too far over his head.

He gasped softly when the scarring came into view, and Taylor hurried up and unbuttoned his cargo shorts to get it over with. They hit the floor with a thump, and he grimaced. “Dammit—my phone.”

“I’ll get it.”

Brandon wrapped his warm hand around the back of Taylor’s thigh as he squatted to pick up the phone. He stood back up, and Taylor indicated the charger sitting on the decrepit end table next to the bed.

The absence of that warm hand hurt when Brandon moved away.

Taylor pulled in a big gulp of air and consciously released it, trying to relax the knot that had formed when his shoulders tightened.

“What was that sigh for?” Brandon asked, turning back around and pulling the bedding down. At least the sheets were clean. And the quilt was something he’d picked up in his travels—all cotton, with bright embroidery and appliques of sheep, chickens, and horses across the front. It had cost a mint to ship it home from overseas, but Nica had put it into his storage facility without a word.

When she’d shown up at the hospital the day of his release, she’d been driving a borrowed truck with all Taylor’s earthly possessions in the back, including this quilt.

“Trying to get the knots out.” Taylor carefully folded back the quilt just a little more.

“Here, I’ll get a towel. Don’t lie down just yet.”

Taylor was still wearing his boxers, but he couldn’t remember feeling more naked. Cramped, hurting—his eye still ached, as did a thousand places on his body that shouldn’t have been fighting tonight but had been caught doing that anyway.

He was relieved when Brandon came bustling back in with a giant beach towel and a bottle of vitamin E and aloe body lotion.

“Is there a pool here?” he asked, spreading the towel over the double bed.

“Yeah. It’s not great, but—”

“But you’re too proud to use the one at Jacob and Nica’s, and the swimming helps your body,” Brandon assessed. “I’m stealing your trunks on the way out of here, by the way.”

They were hanging on the towel rack. Of course.

“Why?” He didn’t resist as Brandon’s broad-palmed hands pushed him down on the towel face-first.

“Because. They have a perfectly nice pool. And kids who would love to play with you. I don’t know how much chlorine they use in whatever they have here, but the smell in the bathroom made my eyes water. That’s bad for your skin.”

“Hence the lotion,” Taylor confessed, and Brandon must have pumped some into his hands, because the comforting almond-cherry smell washed through the room.

“Flowery.” Brandon put those big hands on Taylor’s shoulders and began to work his muscles, and Taylor could have cared less what the stuff smelled like.

“My mother’s smell,” he said, fighting off weakness from every angle. Body weakness, the brittleness in his heart from being alone for so long, his fragile barrier keeping Brandon out when the man—not boy—so insistently wanted in.

“Mm, yeah.” Brandon didn’t stop when the knots came out. He just kept working and working until the muscles were melted butter. “Mine wore something that smelled like plums and violets. Purple. Wears, probably.”

“I should look for man smell.” Taylor pressed his face against the towel and tried not to let his voice get thick. Unbidden, tears of relief from the pain, from touch starvation, fell, and he just could not stop them.

“They have it, but it never seems to be as soft. It’s like they put extra alcohol in man’s smell so it doesn’t work as well.”

“Ugh… ahh… oh damn. Probably my father’s idea. Oh God, kid, really?”

Brandon was working on the withered bicep of his game arm, his touch careful but still firm. “You lost a lot of muscle here,” he commented quietly. “In your shoulder too.”

“The flesh was gone to the bone,” Taylor told him. “I barely kept the arm.” The scarring, thick and twisted, had to be stretched constantly to let the muscle build underneath.

“And the leg?”

“The eye was a fair trade.” It had been. In those months of physical rehabilitation, Taylor had given thanks day in and day out. He could still see colors. He could still drive—during the day was preferable, but he could still drive. He could still walk. He could still…

Hold a man’s body in two capable hands.

Well, he hadn’t dared think about that last one, but he was sure thinking about it now.

Brandon’s hands stopped working for a moment, and he bent and kissed Taylor’s shoulder. “To have you come back so I could meet you? Sure.”

“Kid—”

“Don’t.” Brandon’s voice had grown thick, just like Taylor’s. And now Taylor was grateful he was lying on his stomach, because his tears were falling hot and helpless from his one good eye.

Physical, spiritual, emotional—he’d been in a void for so long. The rush of stimulation around his heart, mind, and body was way more than he’d been ready for.

“’Kay,” he grunted. “I won’t.”

Brandon just kept working on him, his back, his ribs, his arms, his glutes, his thighs, his calves. When he passed the calves, he prodded Taylor to roll over.

By then the tears had stopped falling, but he knew what he’d look like.

“I’m fine,” he mumbled, pulling up his knees and rolling over onto his good side.

“This’ll work too,” Brandon decided, and then, bless him, he had Taylor stretch out his leg so he could work his arch and instep again.

Taylor gave a sigh of bliss. “You’ve got good hands.” The thickness was gone from his voice, thank God. “For an engineer.”

“Yeah, well.” Brandon kept working, although his fingers must have been getting tired. “I was going into kinesiology for my first two years in school. Wanted to do this for a living.”

“Mm… why’d you stop?”

Brandon’s quick bark of laughter surprised Taylor. He hadn’t expected bitterness. “My bedside manner is crap—I say more morbid shit than anyone I know.”

“Which puts you right there with the EMTs in the military,” Taylor told him. He’d been “Mr. Bones” for a month in the hospital. But those same guys who’d given him shit when they’d pulled him out of the sand had come to check on him during that month—Taylor could deal with their shitty sense of humor. “Didn’t you want to?”

“Well, yeah!” Brandon sounded surprised, even to himself, maybe. “But there was the coming out, and the weird cold vibe from my folks, and… well, they’d been the ones to suggest kinesiology and all that. So I moved in with Jakey and….”

“Dumped the good stuff about your parents with the bad?”

“Ugh. That sounds mature.”

“Have you met me, ki—Brandon? I seem to be the king of living with bad mistakes I made as a kid.”

“That’s… that’s reassuring, actually.” And the optimism was back. Thank God.

“Reassuring?”

“Well, yeah. ’Cause… ’cause you’re going to take Tino’s help and get out of this apartment, and that’s going to be a mistake you don’t have to live with.”

Oh hell. “Fine.” He didn’t have to be graceful about it.

“And I can look into kinesiology again. I’ve taken a lot of engineering and physics classes that can apply, and the general ed is always helpful. I may only add a year or two to my sentence.”

“You’re really revoltingly happy, do you know that?”

“Here, give me your other foot.”

Taylor fought hard not to melt, drool, and ooze through the cotton sheets.

“And….” Brandon lowered his voice like he was talking himself into something. “And… and tomorrow I’ll go see my dad and mom. And even if they’re jerks about it, I can at least say I tried.”

“I’ll come with you,” Taylor mumbled, because apparently he’d had a big old endorphin rush and was high as a kite. Please let him say no thank you, please let him say no thank you—

“That would be awesome! Thank you, Taylor!”

Taylor was tempted to feign sleep. “Welcome, Brandon. Thank you for….” For taking away the pain. For talking to me like a human being. For touching me voluntarily.

For touching me at all.

“For the massage,” he finished. “Thanks for the massage.”

He felt Brandon’s kiss on his cheek, but he really was close to sleep by then, so he didn’t say or do anything.

He might have smiled.

Adulthood 101

BRANDON didn’t sleep on the couch.

Taylor fell asleep, obviously content in a way he’d not been in a while, and Brandon got up and undressed down to his boxers. The apartment was small and cramped, but the swamp cooler worked pretty well, and he turned that on and adjusted the vents so the bedroom, at least, was cool.

Then he kicked the sheets down to the bottom of the bed and crawled in next to Taylor.

No, he wasn’t planning to attack the guy in his sleep, not that he wasn’t tempted. But baby steps—tonight Taylor had let Brandon touch him, and Lordy, how he’d seemed to need it. Brandon would be happy with that for the night.

Besides, he was tired and achy and they both smelled. Even if Taylor hadn’t had the big physical and emotional suitcases parked next to the bed, Brandon wouldn’t have wanted them to do anything romantic this particular night.

It was enough that Taylor had jumped to his rescue, thrown himself in front of an oncoming tank, and borne the brunt of its fury.

It was enough that Taylor had let him through the front door, let him into this bare, painfully neat apartment with the spoiled Persian cat who ate on the kitchen table because Taylor obviously wasn’t using it.

Right now, this moment, watching Taylor, his face unguarded in sleep as he breathed in peace, was enough.

Brandon shivered and reached down to pull the pretty cotton quilt and the top sheet over their bodies just in time for the cat to jump on the bed with the grace of a sandbag.

“Hello, Marilyn.” The cat sashayed between them and plopped her giant white fuzzy self right at face level. Brandon laughed softly and turned over on his other side, content for the moment. Taylor would come with him the next day. He could live with that.

HE woke up early and texted Nica, then swapped his phone for Taylor’s on the charger and fell back asleep. When Nica texted him back, he had enough time to get out of bed and glare at the phone before he heard her knocking.

He ran to the door and opened it in his boxers, shushing as he did.

“He’s still asleep!” he whispered. “Please, Nica! The guy was a hero last night!”

She stepped inside, holding a pink pastry box in front of her like protection against bullshit, and eyed Brandon’s bruised face with open skepticism. “I see a few bad guys slipped through Captain America’s shield.”

Brandon winked. “Well, he can’t hog all the glory. Did you bring my clothes?”

She swung the bag over her shoulder down to the floor, and he picked it up. “Tino’s waiting outside—”

“Why Tino?”

“Because my husband was apparently also a hero last night, and he’s vegging on the couch with kids in his arms, wishing he was asleep or dead.”

Good for Jacob. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I wish I was with him. Those are good Saturdays.” He nodded seriously as he unzipped the bag and started pulling out clothes. “Especially when someone gets donuts.”

The tiny dimples in the corners of her mouth told him that was exactly her plan, and then she put the pastry box on the table next to his car keys. He kissed her cheek with glee. There were probably a few big versions of this box in the car with Tino.

“Well, he tries to put on a good face about it, but the new baby threw him for a loop too. He’s all about doing everything I want—some nights he gets to get drunk and stupid.” She grimaced. “Or, you know, drunk one night and stupid last night, because he was pretty sober when he got home.”

“The fight wasn’t his fault.” Brandon chuckled softly. “Wasn’t Taylor’s either, but Taylor set himself up to take the worst of it.”

Suddenly Nica was 100 percent sober. “You and Taylor….”

He stopped rummaging through the bag and stood up with what he needed, including his shaving kit. “He fell asleep before he could point me to the couch, that’s all. Two guys lying side by side. Nothing to see here, folks.”

Nica’s eyebrow had that incredible, almost vertical slant some women could achieve. “Sure. Nothing to see. Except you were on a date last night, and I’m dropping off your car and three days’ worth of clothes, including your work clothes for Monday.”

Brandon glanced over her shoulder and saw Taylor hadn’t moved.

“No promises,” he said softly. “I have no promises that anything’s going to happen. Just… just hope, you know?”

She let out a little breath. “Yeah. I know hope. And I know Taylor too. He may have been a player when he was a kid, but he’s grown up. He doesn’t want to hurt you, baby, but he’s damned afraid of being hurt.”

“I know I’m young and stupid, but even I figured that out.”

She grimaced and kissed his cheek—and sighed tiredly. “Okay, I’m going to trust you two to know what’s best. This baby’s kicking my ass. I don’t have the strength to mother two grown men.”

He gave her a quick one-armed hug. “Go home and veg with your family. You’re looking pretty wrecked. Don’t worry about us.” She was, in fact, looking awfully pale. “When’s your next doc appointment?”

“Next week. And you’re right—need some food that’s not sugar and some sleep.” She paused with one hand on the door. “Be careful, Brandon. Taylor—he’s a good guy, but….”

“Damaged.” Brandon tapped his temple. “Young, not stupid.”

She nodded and left, and Brandon grabbed his clothes and headed for the bedroom and the attached bath.

Taylor pushed himself groggily to one elbow as Brandon came in. “Wazzat Nica?”

“Yeah. She left donuts, but don’t get out of bed ’til you’re ready. I’m going to shower, if that’s okay.”

“Knock yourself out. I mean, be careful on the tile, ’cause it’s all slippery and you might just knock yourself out.”

Brandon grinned and ventured near the bed to run a careful fingertip around Taylor’s swollen eye. “How is that this morning? Obscuring your vision?”

Taylor let out a humorless bark of laughter. “That’s funny.”

“Don’t be an ass. How’s your eye?”

Taylor’s expression was bored, not chastened. “Peachy. Or, you know, patriotic today.”

“Because it’s red, white, and blue—ha-ha. Now do we need to ice it again?”

Taylor flopped back against the mattress. “Kid, you are killing me in that outfit. Could you please go shower so I can shower, and we can pretend you never spent the night on the couch?”

Wonderful. They were doing this again.

Not.

“Sure, I’ll go be naked in your house and covered in hot soapy water. And by the way? I didn’t sleep on the couch last night, and I’m not going to sleep on the couch tonight, and I’m not going to sleep on it tomorrow night. But I am staying here and taking you to Nica’s Monday morning, so you can get your car then. And now you know.”

He charged into the bathroom and wished—just wished—he could slam the door, but he was pretty sure if he did that, the thing would fall off its hinges. Then, if he was judging the situation right, the mirror would fall off the wall and the pedestal sink would fall over, disconnecting the water and sending it fountaining all over the tile, which crackled with dry rot underneath.

Which would send Brandon plummeting through the floor if he tried to turn everything off.

He closed the door very carefully and scowled through his shower in the one-person cubicle.

Tino’s threat to move Taylor out forcibly could not be carried through soon enough.

WHEN Brandon came out, dressed and stomping down on his temper, Taylor was in the front room doing lunges, a five-pound weight in his left hand and a twenty-pound weight in his right. He was wearing running shorts and nothing else, and sweat sheened his body.

It took Brandon a moment to realize he was sweating because he was in pain.

He swallowed, and Taylor switched from lunges to triceps presses, sucking in his core and adjusting his form, the little furrow of concentration on his forehead enough to tell Brandon this wasn’t easy either.

Quietly—Taylor’s back was to him—he made his way to the kitchenette and the coffee machine, which had just finished brewing.

He poured a cup and doctored it with lots of milk and sugar, and then sat down to that pink pastry box with lust in his eyes.

“C’mon, Nica, c’mon, c’mon—”

“Touch the maple cream-filled and you’re dead,” Taylor muttered. He was on his back now, both weights held against his stomach with crossed arms as he did crunches.

“She bought two,” Brandon said, peering into the box. “Am I safe?”

“Yeah, sure. Two is good. There’s fruit and eggs in the fridge if you want. Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two….”

“I figured we’d have donuts now and then get a big lunch on our way up to Truckee,” Brandon said casually, not surprised when he heard the weights thump on the floor.

“Truckee?”

“Yeah—it’s where my parents live. You said you’d come with.”

“Oh. Yeah. Okay. I just didn’t know…. Truckee? Geez, kid, that’s a long way away.”

Brandon looked over at Taylor as he hefted himself to his feet and grabbed the weights. He staggered slightly as he set them down carefully in the corner.

“I’m sorry. Do you not want to go now?” He had to force the words out, but it was only fair.

Taylor glanced at him quickly and looked away. “No. Didn’t say that. If you’re sure you want me there.” In the daylight, in his shorts, the lost flesh and the scarring of his body were even more apparent. Was he embarrassed about that?

“I’d really like it if you came.” Brandon waited until Taylor made eye contact and nodded firmly.

Taylor shrugged and headed to the bedroom. “Save me a cream-filled.”

The shower started, and Brandon let out a sigh of relief. Prickly. He’d assumed it was all arrogance at the beginning. He was starting to see the self-consciousness, the regret, all of it thrown in the same well.

Didn’t make the water bitter, but it did make the taste… complicated.

Unlike, say, that of the éclair, which was everything Brandon had hoped for and more.

He was finishing up his second donut when the giant white thing that had planted herself between him and Taylor the night before bounded up on the small table. The coffee and donuts were at one end, kitty-corner, where the two chairs sat, and the cat plonked herself down on the other end, where her food bowl overflowed onto a place mat. Brandon regarded her like an old and respected adversary.

“You and me, cat, we’re going to have a talk about boundaries.”

“Yes, you’re violating hers,” Taylor said, coming in from the bedroom smelling like spicy bodywash and mint. He wore clean cargos and a tee, just like Brandon, but no flip-flops—tennis shoes instead. It hit Brandon that he never wore sandals, in spite of the California heat, and that these shoes probably had special inserts to help him walk. Brandon reassessed the man sitting down next to him, struck again by how much work he did just to be active in the world.

“What’s that for?” Brandon asked, indicating the light wrapping of gauze around Taylor’s head, covering his maimed eye.

“It needs to air-dry.” Taylor’s mouth twisted. “Thought I’d spare you the freak show.”

Brandon grunted as though struck and stood up as Taylor sat down. He knelt by Taylor’s chair on his right side and placed gentle fingers under that freshly shaven square jaw.

“Let me see,” he directed.

“No. Jesus, get off—”

“Taylor, let me see.”

“You just ate breakfast. It’s gross.”

“Shut up and please let me see.”

Taylor cocked his head, turning so his scarred side was less accessible. “Why?”

“Because you think it’s going to push me away. I’ll see it without the eye patch and I’ll stop my stupid little crush, and you won’t have to be responsible for me anymore.”

Taylor flicked a glare at him. “If that was true, I’d be shoving it in your face.”

“Which means you sort of like me around. Now let me see. You can let it air-dry like it should, and we’ll have it out of the way.”

Taylor grunted. “Fine.”

He pulled the gauze off, and Brandon saw the reason for the eye patch.

The scarring was extensive, but normally Taylor would have received a prosthetic at the hospital, probably before he’d been released. In fact, with the extent of his other injuries, he might even have healed from the original operation before he realized he couldn’t see.

But in this case, there seemed to be excess scar tissue around the seam where the lids had been sewn shut, and Brandon frowned as he gently skated his fingers along the periphery of the ocular orbit.

“Why no prosthetic?” he asked, trying to figure out what this other scarring meant.

“A bitch of an infection,” Taylor muttered. “Every time they tried to put a prosthetic in, the entire area just blew up with strep. They figured out later the materials had been contaminated somewhere else, but I was just done, you know?” He shrugged. “Give me an eye patch. Like Tino said, they’re dead sexy.”

Brandon smiled and, without thinking about it, brushed his lips against Taylor’s in a casual kiss. “They are. And this looks fine, you know. No scary monster here.”

There was, in fact, a lump of muscle—probably relocated from Taylor’s thigh—under the seam of the skin grafts of his eyelids. It looked like he’d closed his eye and lost all his lashes, but mostly it looked like a closed eye with lumps of tissue around it.

“The patch is my favorite,” Taylor told him softly. “I keep telling Nica I need to get a leather one with a diamond stud for special occasions.”

“That would be very cool,” Brandon agreed and kissed him again.

Different this time. Taylor opened for him, soft, vulnerable. No domination games, no prickliness. Sweetness. Brandon wanted more of it, and he pressed forward, gratified when Taylor pressed back. Brandon cupped Taylor’s face in his palms and stroked the inside of Taylor’s mouth with his tongue until Taylor’s moan of gratification resonated between them both.

Brandon could barely pull away.

He stood shakily and bent to kiss Taylor’s forehead. “We’re coming back here,” he promised. “We’re coming back here and we’re gonna finish that.”

Taylor’s expression twisted something in Brandon’s chest. “Please, Brandon. You don’t know what you’re—”

“I do. I mean, I may need a little assistance with the actual act—”

“Tab A, slot B or C—not brain surgery,” Taylor muttered, and to Brandon’s delight, he could see the flush spreading across Taylor’s cheeks.

He stroked a pink crescent gently with his thumb. “I know what I’m doing with my heart, Taylor. Please—please give this a chance.”

“You’ve known me, what? Two weeks?”

“I could know you for two hundred years and I think there’d still be more to know. Two weeks is a start.”

Taylor shook his head, obviously out of words.

“Here.” Brandon reached into the pink box and sat a maple-covered éclair on the napkin in front of Taylor. “Do you want milk or coffee?”

“Yes?”

“Combined?”

“Preferably.” Taylor cracked a smile, though. “You don’t have to wait on me.”

“Just eat your donut. Like I said, we’ll get lunch on the way up to Truckee, see my folks, and be back down before dark.” Brandon grabbed the other mug from the cupboard and started doctoring the coffee.

Taylor grunted. “Can’t wait. Why do you want me along again?”

Well, it wasn’t like Brandon was great at lying anyway. “’Cause it’s gonna suck. And you seem really strong. I figure you can help it not suck.”

Taylor’s mask slipped a little, and the expression on his face was oddly tender. “It’s gonna suck,” he said, but not like he was happy about it. “I can’t change that it’s gonna suck. But yeah. I wish… I mean, Nica would have been there for me if she’d known how bad it could get. I didn’t want her to know. So I can do this for you. It’s not a thing.”

Brandon set his coffee down. “It’s a huge thing. Now come on. It’s going to be 105 today, and the best part of that is, we’ll be out of town.”

“If we’re not here by nine, Marilyn will disembowel us in our sleep. You know that, right?”

The cat hadn’t moved except to wrap her paws possessively around her mostly filled cat food bowl. Brandon stared at her, and she stared back, yellow eyes imperious and unwavering.

“You know, most people don’t let the cat sit on the table.”

“Most people don’t have the healthy respect I do for their cat,” Taylor said grandly.

Marilyn turned her attention to Taylor, and Brandon could swear she held nothing but worship in her eyes.

Yeah, well, she’d have to get in line.

Or at least off the bed.

Chill and Shadows

BRANDON drove, and Taylor relaxed into the drive. The day remained hot, but Nica had dropped off Brandon’s Chevy truck. Battered and dented and not the original color? Yes. But it boasted an outstanding air-conditioning system, and Taylor approved.

Conversation flowed surprisingly well.

Brandon told him about kinesiology classes and about what he’d learned trying to be an engineer and about construction, and how he liked the physicality of it all.

“Yeah—physical therapist would be a good thing for you,” Taylor told him. “The folks in the rehab center, they were like you. Strong, enthusiastic.” He grunted. “Frickin’ relentless.”

Brandon smiled so widely Taylor wondered if the glare off his teeth blinded oncoming drivers.

“I do my best,” he said proudly.

The road narrowed, wound, and Brandon drove ably, without any of the fear people sometimes had on winding roads. Taylor opened the truck window a bit and let the fresh air, smelling of dust and forest, wash in. He closed his eye, turning his face to the sun, and enjoyed the sensation.

“You do that.”

He didn’t even startle at Brandon’s voice. “Do what?”

“I’ve watched you. Sometimes you just… savor. Like, you never know when you’re going to enjoy this again.”

“You don’t.” Taylor hated to articulate the obvious. “Kid, when I went away to the desert, I was so full of… want, I guess. I wanted a job, I wanted an education, I wanted to get laid. I wanted it all, and I wanted it now. And even when I was there, it was about one want after another. And one day we were on recon. I was in the back of a Humvee thinking, ‘I want to get back to the barracks so I can have dinner and plan my future, and maybe read a book before bed,’ and the next thing I know, my life exploded.”

“I’m so—”

“You’re not getting it. I was with guys that day. Good guys. I wasn’t thinking about how good it was to be with good guys—and I never saw most of them again. The desert was… I mean, it was ungodly hot, but sometimes it was beautiful and sometimes the people… they had whole different lives, and I never looked at them to see what their lives were like. I never got that do-over. And the list goes on. The things I could have been seeing, the things I could have felt, could have said, could have done. And then I was on my back in the hospital, and I had all the time in the world to want. I was almost crazy with it. I was a bastard, screaming and throwing tantrums, and then this guy gets put next to me—lost both legs and an arm. And I listened to him talk to his wife on the phone. You know what he wanted?”

“What?”

“To hold his baby, who had just been born. And it hit me. When he gets a chance to hold that baby in his one arm—that’s going to be the best thing in the world to him, because he’s lived to do that, all odds to the contrary. And suddenly I didn’t want anymore.”

“You have.”

He said it so softly that Taylor knew he got it.

“I’ve got a nice drive, a pretty sky, trees, and air that doesn’t smell like freeway—” He sniffed. “Okay, it smells a little like some of those truckers need to learn how to use their brakes. But yeah. I had my favorite donut this morning because my best friend brought it by, in spite of the fact that I tried to kill her husband last night.”

“Jacob loved it.”

Taylor smiled—couldn’t help it. “He did. But you see, right?”

“You have. You have good things in your world right now.”

Yeah. “Yeah.”

Brandon’s hand in his surprised him, but Taylor didn’t pull away.

“You have me.”

“For this moment,” Taylor admitted. “Yeah.”

“Enjoy it,” Brandon said, rubbing a callused thumb over Taylor’s knuckle.

“Yeah, sure.”

How could he not?

But Brandon needed to reclaim his hand eventually, and when he did, Taylor looked around the little town with interest.

Small buildings with façades lined the short curve of the main street, and Taylor saw restaurants and a diner—very picturesque and touristworthy. The area was beautiful. Many of the residents were simply there for the summer, or even for a brief vacation. Lots of people in the city kept a cabin or a time-share in the Sierra Foothills. Brandon had stopped and filled up in Auburn, and given the price of gas in Truckee, Taylor was glad they didn’t need to stop again. Instead Brandon drove about five miles past the town proper and turned left onto a gravel track that cut through the woods.

The truck jounced down the uneven road, and Taylor held tight to the hail-Jesus bar over the window, noticing that Brandon didn’t seem bothered by the divots at all.

Apparently learning to drive on an obstacle course was something you took for granted in Truckee.

Less than a hundred yards down the road, he hung a right, and Taylor actually gasped.

“That is the cutest, most normal-looking little house I’ve ever seen.”

Two stories, painted bright yellow, and pretty large. Taylor imagined five or so bedrooms and two large sitting rooms, just judging from the number of windows in the upstairs and downstairs.

“You didn’t expect normal?” Brandon asked, skidding to a halt.

“I don’t know. We’re in the middle of the woods, and you’re built like a lumberjack. I sort of expected you to be birthed from a log cabin by sort of popping out the chimney. This I didn’t expect.”

Brandon chuckled, a thing he did a lot and easily. Taylor wondered what living with him would be like. Laughter every day. It was something he’d seen with Nica’s family but had never imagined with his own.

“Yeah—I mean, people live here, right? There’s businesses and schools, same as everywhere else. My dad runs the propane supply company up here, and believe me, business is good. Mom’s a receptionist in the shop. They do okay. They made enough to put my brothers through school—”

“Not you?” But Taylor knew the answer.

“Not after I came out,” Brandon said, and some of his ebullience faded. “Which is why I don’t get why Garrett and Cliff haven’t come up and talked to him. Garland—that’s my boss; he and my dad are friends—told me Dad looks like hell. You’d think they’d know or something.”

Taylor gave a short bark of a laugh. “Your dad’s probably a ‘man’s man’—doesn’t like to admit he’s sick.” Taylor had played football once with a hairline fracture in his wrist—hurt like hell, and when he’d finished the game, he’d been done for the season too. The doctor had asked him why he hadn’t complained, and his response had been “I can take it like a man.”

God, men were idiots sometimes.

Taylor didn’t see any reason Brandon’s dad should be any different than Taylor’s. He got out of the truck with the firm conviction that Brandon was too good for these people—but Taylor would stand behind him anyway.

“BRANDON!” With a little cry, the tiny, fit woman in her fifties launched herself at Taylor’s behemoth-who-wouldn’t-leave.

She had fair skin and dyed her hair a gentle orange. It had probably been Brandon’s auburn brown in her youth. Her face—pixyish and elfin, without Brandon’s wide cheekbones—boasted few lines and more freckles, and her expression when she saw her son hit Taylor right in the stomach.

The last time he’d talked to his mother, to tell her he was getting out of the rehab facility, she’d said she was glad he was okay but not to come home.

This woman obviously didn’t feel that way.

“Hi, Mom. I’m sorry we didn’t call—”

“No.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I should have. Called, written. We just… I mean, your father just….” She swallowed and looked over her shoulder to the living room. “He’s a stubborn asshole, Brandon. Hasn’t changed. But I think he’s missed you.”

“Doubt it,” Brandon muttered. “Is he going to start yelling when I walk in there?”

She squinted at him like he’d lost his mind. “He never yelled at you before!”

“No, but you guys got weird.”

She stepped back and ushered the two of them into a nice suburban-style home—at odds, maybe, with the rustic setting, but cream-colored walls, hardwood floors, area rugs, and potpourri didn’t lie.

“How were we supposed to get?” his mom asked him, puzzled. “Is there a manual?”

“Yes,” Taylor said, irritated. “It says he’s the same kid who didn’t wipe his shoes when he was twelve. Brandon, were you born in a barn?”

Brandon’s sheepish glare was heartening. Taylor had been feeling remarkably young in this relationship, and it was good to be on top, if only for a moment.

“No, nor was I raised in one,” he said with dignity, stepping back outside to knock some of the mud off his boots. “Sorry, Mom.”

“I’m just so happy you’re here. Who’s your friend, sweetheart?”

Brandon shut the door, moved forward, and put his hand firmly in the small of Taylor’s back—and Taylor returned the glare, but with no sheepishness at all. “This is Taylor Cochran. He’s a friend of Nica and Jakey’s.”

Oh good—no “here’s my boyfriend” crap.

“And we’re seeing each other.”

Taylor kicked his shin in passing, but the idiot didn’t have the decency to shut up.

“Stop it, Taylor. I’m not ashamed or embarrassed, and you shouldn’t be either.”

“I am not happy-parent material,” he hissed. “You are trying to make a good impression here.”

“I’m happy to meet you. I’m Ann-Marie, since Brandon really doesn’t have any manners.”

Taylor stuck out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Ann-Marie. He’s young. He’ll train up.”

“You don’t look that old yourself, Taylor.” She smiled, warm but uncertain, and Taylor remembered the social niceties that used to get him laid.

“I’m thirty in October,” he said, shrugging. “I’m told the eye patch adds ten years.”

Brandon’s inelegant snort actually gave him a warm little glow in his chest. Couldn’t fight that off, nope.

“Apparently not,” he said dryly. Brandon had the nerve to grin at him. Taylor just wasn’t going to shake this, was he? That threat to continue where their kiss left off… for the first time since that morning, Taylor realized it could be a real thing. That threat was credible.

It was almost a promise.

“You look too young to have scars like those,” Ann-Marie said, pulling him away from the heat washing over him in the wake of that promise. “The service?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he muttered, uncomfortable with what came next.

“Thank you for your service.”

Yup. Some guys loved hearing that. He wasn’t one of them. “You’re welcome, ma’am. That’s kind. Brandon, did you need to speak to your father?”

“How about food first? Did you boys eat lunch?” Ann-Marie smiled too brightly, and Taylor kept his sigh to himself.

“No, Mom.” Brandon smiled wistfully. “But we wouldn’t want to put you out.”

Taylor manfully refrained from saying “Oh hell you wouldn’t!” because any mom in the world would have heard that yearning and said—

“Okay. If you’re sure.”

Watching Brandon’s disappointment hurt. She sounded relieved, and Taylor got it.

They weren’t bad people, but they weren’t comfortable. The offer that probably would have rolled off her tongue with her other sons wobbled and tripped here.

Brandon was right. This was a crapshoot. It was solid ground one moment, a wobbly tightrope in a windstorm the next.

But he couldn’t hate Ann-Marie, and he was willing to bet he couldn’t hate Brandon’s dad. Which was why it was going to suck.

No offer of lunch forthcoming, they ventured into the living room. A throwback to the nineties, the room boasted gold-striped wallpaper with floral arrangement motifs, and overstuffed leather furniture.

Brandon’s father sprawled in the middle of a club chair, looking less like a human and more like a mushroom with a flop sweat.

Taylor grimaced and looked to see what Brandon thought.

Judging by the tightness of his jaw and around his eyes, he thought the situation was not good—not good at all.

“Mitch? Mitch, look who came to visit.”

Brandon’s father took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders, turning to look at them as they came in. “Bran… don? What are you doing here?”

His breathing was so awful, Taylor couldn’t tell if he was happy or not. The man’s lips and nail beds were tinged blue.

Brandon looked at his father for a stricken moment. He was a big man and probably meant to be built like a human powerhouse, like his son. He had his son’s broad cheekbones, and graying hair that might have once been brown. He looked deconditioned now, but Taylor knew enough about heart disease to know that feeling like crap had probably preceded the lack of energy, rather than the other way around.

“Taylor?” Brandon asked, his voice wobbly. “Uh….”

Ann-Marie probably hadn’t seen it happening. Taylor could envision the progression, clear as day. “Mitchell, are you okay?” “Fine, hon. Just tired.” “Mitchell, do you want to go for a walk?” “Not today. I’ll be fine….” It could have happened in a matter of months.

“Hi, Mr. Grayson,” Taylor said cordially. “Brandon and I are here to take you to the doctor’s.”

“I’m not… going.”

Taylor took out his phone and grimaced. Weak service. “Brandon?”

“Yeah?”

“Where’s the landline?”

Brandon pointed wordlessly to the kitchen.

“Go get your father’s insurance information. I’m calling an ambulance.”

He didn’t stay for the shock, the outrage, or the inevitable discussion. Whether it was a heart attack today or a heart attack next week, the thing was coming, and Brandon had asked him for help. Taylor couldn’t make peace between Brandon and his family, and he couldn’t fix awkward, but he could do this.

The mail on the counter was a lucky break. He punched 911 without hesitation, gave the address, and told the woman that an adult male was having breathing distress, enough to hinder movement and speech.

They could hear the ambulance from town as Taylor hung up the phone.

THEY followed the ambulance to Tahoe Forest and sat in the waiting room while Brandon’s mother went into the exam room. Brandon’s father had complained—or tried to complain—during the entire process of getting him loaded into the ambulance, but it was hard to make a case when you could hardly breathe.

“I expected to be home tonight.” Brandon sighed. “I didn’t expect this.”

“Well, neither did your father, if that helps,” Taylor said, and although Brandon’s chuckle sounded strained, it was still a laugh.

Brandon’s hand on his knee was not unwelcome. “I’m so grateful to you. You… you just swept in. Like Superman. Said, ‘This! This is the thing we must do!’ Dad may never forgive you, but that’s fine.”

He was on Taylor’s good side, but Taylor couldn’t make himself look at his expression. He covered Brandon’s hand instead. “That’s fine?”

“Yeah.” Brandon squeezed. “At the end of the day—or whenever, you know, we get back to your place—it’s going to be you and me and not Mom and Dad. So that’s fine if they’re not comfortable with us.”

Taylor squeezed back. “You deserve better,” he said softly, meaning it. “You… you deserve, like, Tino’s family.”

Brandon laughed, and this time it was as natural and as full as Taylor could ever ask for. “Everyone deserves Tino and Nica’s family. The lucky thing about people like that is that they share.”

“Share?” Taylor knew what he meant, but he liked the earnestness, the optimism in Brandon’s words.

“Share all that acceptance. They adopt everyone. Jakey’s family is nice, but they’re sort of quiet and reserved, you know? But the Robbinses—they just welcome people in. They share.”

“Yeah. They share.”

Two men crowded into the waiting room, and Brandon stood, tugging gently at Taylor’s hand so he’d stand too.

“C’mon, let’s meet my brothers.”

Brandon’s brothers were just as big as Brandon. Taylor stood taller, but for sheer mass, these guys would make two great defensive ends.

They also made two great offensive asses.

“Garrett—good to see you.” Brandon smiled that winning, bluff smile Taylor had begun to treasure because he knew the kid’s scowl just as intimately. Garrett—shorter, beefier, Taylor’s age, maybe, in a polo shirt that showed a thicker middle and the neck of a show bull—narrowed his eyes and ignored Brandon’s outstretched hand.

“What are you doing here?”

“Cliff?”

Cliff favored their mother, which made his nose and chin a little weak for his broad cheekbones, and he reluctantly took Brandon’s hand. “Good to see you, little brother. But what are you doing here?”

“Gar was here a couple of weeks ago. Said Dad wasn’t looking great and I might want to talk some sense into him.”

Garrett snorted. “Mom’s been nagging him forever. What made him finally decide to come in?”

“Taylor called 911,” Brandon said bluntly. “Because he could barely say my name.”

“Who in the hell is Taylor?” Garrett glared at Taylor, so he probably had a pretty good idea. “And why does he get a say in what happens with Dad?”

“This is Taylor. He’s my—”

“Boyfriend,” Taylor said bluntly, because even if it wasn’t true, he didn’t like the sneer in Garrett’s voice—or in his eyes. “And I obviously get a say because I said. And if he couldn’t stand up and tell the paramedics to go away, he was obviously weak enough to need them.”

“So you don’t know my family from Adam and you just waltz into my parents’ house and—”

“I know Brandon. I’m here for him. He didn’t want to fight with your dad, so I called 911. Hate me all you want. Like you said, you don’t know me from Adam.”

Brandon made a suspicious sound, and Taylor focused on him.

“Don’t look at me like that!” Brandon protested. “You’re doing fine on your own.”

Taylor shook his head and wished heartily for both eyes so his utter disgust could be made known. “You owe me lunch,” he muttered.

“I do,” Brandon said, grabbing his hand. “And the hospital cafeteria won’t count.”

Oh geez. He couldn’t let go of Brandon’s hand now. He’d just claimed they were together. “Steak,” he insisted, mostly for show. “I want steak.”

“Deal.”

And for a moment, like magic, they were alone. The hospital ceased to exist. Brandon’s discomfort with his family—even the two men glaring at them—all of it just went away.

Taylor swallowed painfully. Boyfriends, hookups, guys he was banging—never, in all those supposed intimate situations, had he ever felt so actually intimate with a man.

He nodded and forced himself to look away, but Brandon squeezed his hand and he knew he fooled nobody. Whatever the future might hold for the two of them, he’d committed himself to the now. They were together, in whatever capacity Brandon wanted, because Taylor was incapable of spitting in the face of that raw optimism, that boundless hope.

In that moment, in that bubble, he gave up wanting to try.

“I still don’t get it,” Cliff said, penetrating their bubble but not their intimacy. Brandon’s hand in Taylor’s made sure of that. “What right did you have—?”

“He saved your father’s life.”

They all turned toward Ann-Marie, who had walked in unnoticed.

“Mom?” Garrett asked, voice lowered respectfully. “How’s Dad?”

“They’re going to stabilize him tonight, and he’ll go into surgery tomorrow.” She took a deep breath. “They said he needs a triple bypass, and if Taylor hadn’t come in and taken charge, he might have just… just toppled over. Because he was so damned stubborn.” She half laughed and walked up to Brandon, then took him into a truly warm hug. “Thank you, son—for not giving up on us.”

Taylor let go of Brandon’s hand so he could hug his mother and then retreated to the far corner of the room with his phone and a video game so he could ignore the happy family reunion. It wasn’t meant for him anyway.

Brandon flopped down next to him a few minutes later. “If you want to come meet them now, I promise they won’t bite.”

Taylor shrugged. “Wouldn’t blame them if they did. But that’s okay. Let me be the enigmatic stranger who rode into town, did the good deed, and rode out.” He gestured to his face. “I even have a scar.”

Brandon scowled. “No, pardner, you don’t get to do that. Let them thank you—and then we’ll go.”

“I thought you were going to stay for the surgery. I was going to call Nica and ask if she could feed my mangy cat.”

Brandon shook his head. “Mom asked Garrett and Cliff if they wanted to stay at the house. She loves me, Taylor—she’s even grateful to you. But it’s not all sweetness and light.”

“We can stay in a hotel,” Taylor offered, surprising himself. “I saw a couple. When’s he going in?”

“Early,” Brandon admitted. “But—”

Taylor did the unthinkable then—he grabbed Brandon’s hand all on his own. “What’s going to happen will happen, Brand. I… I won’t fight it. The day our convoy got hit, I didn’t feel a tingle, I didn’t have a premonition. There were no strange birds or omens. I don’t believe in signs. Fate, maybe. But if you still want me, I’m not going to stop you.”

He thought that would make Brandon happy, but he looked at their clasped hands with trouble in his eyes. “But you’re not going to fight for me either,” he said, as though this just occurred to him.

Taylor blew out a breath and stood. “I’ll bring you back a sandwich. I really am starving.”

And just like that, Brandon’s optimism returned. “No—no. I promised you steak, and it’s late enough for dinner. You’re right. You can call Nica on the way. I’ll find a hotel. We can leave after he comes through surgery tomorrow.”

Taylor smiled at him, relief making his smile wobbly. “Okay. I’ll… I mean, I can talk to your family for a minute, if you want.”

Ah, that smile. Oughtta be a law.

“Okay—super quick. The restaurants all close at eight, and seriously, I’ll have to eat the furniture or something.”

“Still growing,” Taylor teased gently.

“You too,” Brandon replied with a hint of defiance. “Everyone grows. Now come on!”

GARRETT and Cliff still hadn’t warmed to him by the time he and Brandon left, but the overt hostility had faded. Brandon’s mother hugged her son one last time, and Taylor looked meaningfully at her, hoping he’d get the hint.

He did. “Are you sure you don’t want me and Taylor to stay with you?” Brandon asked, glaring at Taylor over her shoulder.

“No, honey. Your brothers are here. And….” She swallowed and looked over her shoulder at Taylor with sincere apology. “I should have made you lunch. You two go out and get some food. If you want, you can stay the night in your old room—”

“A hotel is fine,” Brandon said quickly, and Taylor laughed quietly to himself.

Transparent. Transparent as glass. But glass could be broken, and Taylor wasn’t going to do the breaking.

“I’ll be back tomorrow at six.” One more hug and they were out.

Once the sun sank below the tree line, the mountains got amazingly cold, and Taylor felt like an idiot for shivering as they got into the truck. He pulled out his phone to talk to Nica, relieved that he seemed to have reception in town. It rang and went to voicemail, so he called Jacob instead—and it did the same.

“That’s weird,” he mumbled. “I hope nothing’s wrong.”

“Call Tino,” Brandon told him. “Here—stay in the car. I’ll be right back.” He stopped in front of one of those grocery stores that looked like it sold everything from chewing tobacco to milk, and Taylor nodded.

“Toothbrushes?” he asked, because yeah. Necessary.

“Course. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.” He waved reassuringly, and Taylor pulled up Tino’s number and dialed.

Finally someone answered the phone. “Taylor? What’s up? Did Jacob call you?”

Tino—serene, unflappable Tino—sounded rattled. And surrounded by children. Taylor heard Dustin’s voice distinctly in the background saying, “I did not hit her! She ran into the wall!”

“No. Is anything wrong?” And suddenly, panic. Because Taylor, in his rotting little apartment, hadn’t fathomed how very much he depended on Nica and Jacob to make his life normal.

“Well, sort of. Nica had some bleeding this afternoon. Sammy and I are here with the kids while the doctors keep her overnight. And, of course, Jacob’s not leaving her side.”

Well, yeah. Because Nica and Jacob, they were true love. Taylor hadn’t ever doubted that, even when Jacob wasn’t talking to him.

“So she’s going to be okay, right?”

“Yes,” Tino said and then calmed down almost immediately, like he didn’t like to get caught freaking out about his little sister. “Yes. Jacob says it’s looking like she’ll need to come home to bed rest, though. Possibly for the whole pregnancy, but at least until the fifth month. So.” Tino tried to sound bright now—Taylor ached for him. “You’re definitely in for job security. Nica won’t want anybody in the house but you.”

All the air whooshed out of Taylor’s lungs. He was needed. He was really, really needed. Oh God. Oh hell. This family needed him. And all his fears about not being enough—all his self-deprecation for the mistakes of the past—that needed to get chucked out the window.

He was the one who would be keeping track of Melly’s shoes and finding Conroy’s woobie and telling Dustin to knock it off and making sure Belinda had time to boss her dolls around. For months, he was going to be in charge. And he could either tell Tino to find someone else or…

Or he could earn that spot at the family table he’d been so afraid of just two days ago.

“Course,” he said now, voice faraway to his own ears. Somebody else. He was somebody else. Somebody who had never lied to Nica, somebody who had never screwed around on a score of guys in high school and junior college, somebody who couldn’t make a relationship work in the military, even stateside. He was a guy like Brandon. Someone these people he loved could depend on. “I… yeah. Not a problem. Brandon and I are out of town this weekend, though—Brandon had some family shit to clean up, and I’m along for the ride.”

“Is Brandon okay?” God—so Tino, so totally concerned.

“His dad had a close call today. We were going to stay for the surgery tomorrow, if that’s okay—”

“No, that’s fine. You guys stay there. Sammy and I have it nailed here, actually. It’s not a problem. You need the time off—I’ve been the nanny, it’s exhausting. And that was just one kid.”

“Thanks, but….” God, he felt like such a weenie. “My damned cat, Tino. I’m sorry. I was calling your sister because she’s got my spare key, and I was going to ask her to feed my cat. Marilyn. She’s sort of a big hefty bitch, actually, and if I don’t feed her and put soft food on the top and clean her cat box at night, well….” He grimaced.

“Not pretty?” Nothing but compassion in Tino’s voice. “Gotcha. I can send Sammy out to do that. Here….” He faded for a moment like he was looking for something. “Here we go. She’s got that key board—”

“Everything’s labeled, with its own key ring.” The thing was a big help, actually: garage, front door, the kids’ locker key at the community pool where they took their lessons, Jacob’s three businesses—everything was labeled and hung on the key board in the laundry room.

“Yup. And here’s you. So we’re good. Don’t worry about it. You’ll be back tomorrow night?”

“Oh yeah. Even if…. I mean, Brandon’s got to come back just to square things at work if things get more, you know, complicated here.”

I.e., if his father died. Ugh. Taylor found himself praying that didn’t happen. The kid deserved another chance. For that matter, so did his family. They weren’t awful people. They were that uncomfortable in-between family, not the Robbinses, but not Taylor’s parents either. They still had good to do in the world. And they’d produced Brandon, and Brandon deserved to be surrounded by family.

“I hear you.” And Tino obviously did. “Hang in there, Taylor. And don’t worry about my sister. We both know she’s too mean to let anything happen that’s not according to her exact schedule.”

“Yeah. Take care of Jacob, though, before we get back. He’s going to be climbing the frickin’ walls, you know?”

“I know.” They’d been best friends for years. Tino must be so worried. “Jakey, he’ll need me.”

“Well, course. Everyone needs friends.” Nica was to Taylor what Jacob was to Tino. Taylor’s stomach knotted, and he closed his eyes and said another prayer.

“So do you,” Tino told him. “Enjoy the time with Brandon, even with the worry. Nica has hopes for the two of you—and I think you’re good for each other.”

“I honestly don’t see what he’s getting from the deal,” Taylor said, glad to be honest with someone.

“He’s getting a good man,” Tino said, surprising him. “You were a handful when you were a kid, Taylor, but that’s not always bad. Sometimes it just means you’re a strong person finding your way in a confusing world. You’ve left the worst parts of yourself in the past. You need to leave your regret for that person in the past too. I don’t think about you and Brandon and think, ‘Oh, Taylor, he’s a lucky idiot to land that kid!’ I think, ‘If anybody can keep Brandon from breaking his back tilting at windmills, it’s Taylor.’ Both of you, Taylor. You’re both good men.”

Taylor’s throat tightened. “Well, you know. Good role models. Not my parents, believe you me.”

“You’re sweet, and I’d love to hear more about my virtues, but I’ve got to make pizza bites and get your key to Sammy. Let us know if there’s any change, okay?”

“Yeah, you too. I’ll pass all this on to Brandon.”

“Deal.”

The call ended, and Taylor looked helplessly at the phone, stretching uncomfortably in the front of the truck. He was starting to cramp, and he cursed his body’s inefficiency. Brandon needed a whole man, healthy and without glitches, to keep him company tonight.

Where was he, anyway?

He emerged right then, shivering, a couple of plastic bags hanging from his hands. “Okay,” he said, opening the door to throw the bags on the bench seat next to Taylor. “I called the restaurant and they’ll be open for another half an hour, and I called Best Western and they’ve got a room for us, so we’re good. Here, hand me one of those sweatshirts, would you?”

Oh, bless him! “Which one?”

“I’ll take black, you take gray.”

“You’re so awesome. Thank you!” Taylor yanked the tag off and pulled the thickly fleeced souvenir sweatshirt over his head. The front read Tahoe National Forest, Truckee, and Taylor thought it was the most beautiful piece of clothing he’d ever own. “God, it was getting cold!”

“Right? I’d forgotten this place—even in the summer!”

Taylor started rooting through the bags. “Okay, we’ve got toothbrushes, toothpaste, a comb—underwear?”

“A two-pack,” Brandon laughed. “You pick the color!”

“Excellent. And souvenir T-shirts, very good, so we don’t look like slobs tomorrow. Thank y—” Taylor stopped at the small toiletry item in the bottom of the bag, his throat dry. “—ou?” he squeaked. “Uh… no, uh….”

“You haven’t had a lover since you got out of the hospital,” Brandon said softly. “Are you? Positive, I mean?”

“No,” Taylor said hoarsely. “I would have told you—”

“I figured. So we don’t need condoms. But lubricant—I understand that’s necessary.”

Being warm wasn’t a problem anymore. Taylor was sweating under the fleecy goodness of the sweatshirt. “Uh… depending on what you’re going to be doing, yes.”

“Excellent.” Brandon hopped into the truck and slammed the door. “We’ve got our bases covered. Let’s go eat steak!”

Fighting For

BRANDON studied Taylor as they ate.

He’d ordered plain sirloin, with mushrooms, garlic mashed potatoes, and broccoli, and the steak house had been glad to pony up. Brandon—always hungry, which was probably another sign of youth—had ordered the twenty-two-ounce T-bone himself.

They’d talked about Nica, Jacob, and the children before the food was brought out, and they dug in immediately once it arrived. For one thing, they were the last people in the restaurant, and it wouldn’t have been polite to linger.

For another…

Brandon was kicking himself. Almost constantly, actually.

But you wouldn’t fight for us, would you.

Why would Taylor fight for them? He hadn’t seen what “them” was yet. He’d seen kids and chaos at Jacob and Nica’s, and Brandon’s mildly dysfunctional family up here.

But other than that, what had Brandon shown him?

Some kisses. Good kisses, but not a week’s worth. Not a month’s. Not enough to promise a lifetime.

He’d given him a massage—comfort, ease—and donuts.

It was all he’d been able to manage on short notice.

And for Taylor’s part? He’d been the one to initiate the date. He’d been the one to jump in the middle of a bar fight and protect Brandon’s honor. He’d been the one to walk into Brandon’s parents’ house and save Mitch Grayson’s life.

What did Brandon know about fighting for something?

Taylor Cochran had, in his surly, irritating way, done nothing but fight for them. Probably as he’d been fighting for any love, any affection, for his entire life.

“What are your parents like?” Brandon asked when he’d dented his hunger with the first half of his meal and was actually chewing the second half.

Taylor was plowing through his own steak at a more sedate pace. He glanced up and took a small bite, coupled with a mushroom, and chewed thoughtfully.

“Loud,” he said after a moment.

“Loud?”

“Dad yelled at Mom, Mom yelled at us, we beat the hell out of each other. Loud.”

“Brothers?”

“Two. Both younger. No, I haven’t talked to them in ten years. No, I’m not going back to see how they’re doing. They don’t care how I’m doing. They don’t talk to Nica’s mom in the supermarket. Nica went and told them I’d been injured—they told her not to come back. I don’t know how my brothers are. There’s no way to find out without opening a huge can of worms.”

“But you miss them,” Brandon said through a full mouth.

Taylor scowled and took another bite of steak.

Oh.

Of course he did.

“Why don’t you say these things?” Brandon asked—but not accusing. “It would be so easy to say, ‘Yeah, Brandon, I’d fight for us.’ Or ‘Yeah, of course I miss them.’ But you don’t. You just hope the world will see.”

“I’m the one who’s supposed to be blind,” Taylor mumbled. He shoved more steak in his mouth, and for a moment they were both chewing.

“Yeah. Well, the world isn’t necessarily good at seeing what’s in front of it,” Brandon said quietly. “Slow down, Taylor. Take your time. We’ve got all night.”

“Think the hotel has a TV?” Taylor asked wistfully after a few moments of quiet. “I don’t have cable at my place.”

“I hope not,” Brandon said, wiping up the drippings on his plate with one of the last bits of meat. “I have other things to do.”

He loved watching Taylor blush. He didn’t look like he could—in fact, looked like the opposite of a man who would flush delicately behind his ears and along his jaw, showing color along his cheekbones.

But he did. And every time Brandon saw those red crescents appear on his cheeks, he thought about how tough Taylor was—and how fragile at the same time. He needed someone to take care of him.

Brandon wanted the job, but he couldn’t do it if he had doubts. If he spooked Taylor with his doubts. For all of Taylor’s worries about being good enough, Brandon would have to do better.

“You know, if you keep building this thing up like it’s the end-all and be-all of your existence, not only is it going to suck, but you’re going to hate me because it sucks.” Taylor was glaring at him like an elder cautioning an overeager child.

Brandon grinned in his face. “Baby, I’m not worried about it being good for me. I’m worried about making it great for you.”

Taylor concentrated on his plate, chewing doggedly. He paused a couple of times like he was thinking of a good comeback, but every time, he stopped, until finally he swallowed and his steak was gone.

He crossed his silverware and put his napkin on top, and Brandon kept plowing through his own meal. He needed to keep his energy up. They were going to be busy awhile.

The check arrived, and Brandon slid it right out from under Taylor’s hand and tucked his card in.

“I promised,” he said mildly.

Taylor took a deep breath, probably getting ready to read him the riot act, and then swallowed it, deflated. “Thank you,” he said grudgingly.

“I told you, I totally owed you steak.” Brandon set the folder down and then reached across and touched Taylor’s hand. “And you’re the one who told my brothers we were together. That means I get to take you out.”

“I was just saying that to—”

“To protect me. I get it. I get it more than you know. But I want it to be real.”

“One night doesn’t make it real,” Taylor said, like he was trying to let Brandon down easy.

Brandon grinned again, unflapped and unfazed. “Sure it does. One night is the beginning of the next day. And the next. And the next. One night can make it all happen. Can’t you believe, Taylor? Believe enough to take a night?”

“I said I could!” He tried to pull his hand away.

“That’s fine. Just believe in it tonight. And it’ll keep happening.” Taylor closed his eyes and nodded, and Brandon squeezed his hand. “C’mon, Taylor. We’ve got our first night ahead of us.”

Taylor swallowed and allowed himself to be led away.

You got him, Brandon. You’d better not screw this up.

THE hotel was only a few blocks away from the steak house, and the only available room had a king-size bed. Brandon drove them around the back to the little room on the ground floor, and they both grabbed plastic grocery bags and hauled in their new purchases, shivering in the cold.

“I know we get spoiled in Sacramento,” Taylor said as they turned on the light and shoved their bags on the table by the television, “but this place must be a delight in the winter!”

“It is.” Brandon kicked off his shoes and opened the bathroom door, flipped on the lights, and checked for shampoo. “Oh, ick—it’s the stuff in the big refillable containers bolted to the walls. Thank God I bought some trial-size.” He moved to the table and rooted through the bags, grabbing the one with the tiny bottles and toothbrushes. He made sure to extract one particular bottle and throw it on the bed for easy access. “We’ve got snow in the winter and skiing and sledding down hills. Everything a growing boy needs.”

“Then why did you move back down?”

Brandon stopped in the doorway and made sure he had Taylor’s absolute attention. “’Cause I may put on an inch and another ten pounds, Taylor, but I swear to you, I’m as grown-up in my heart as I need to be.” He pulled off his sweatshirt and threw it on the one chair in the room, then ventured into the plastic-tiled bathroom to turn on the water.

He emerged a few minutes later, one of the towels still around his waist, and gestured to the shower. Taylor nodded and shucked his sweater, saying, “I turned on the heater, but it’s still damned cold in here. We may want to sleep in our—”

Brandon stopped him there, using the sheer mass of his chest to make him quit that thought. “What’s the matter, Taylor?” he taunted softly, rubbing his finger along the lean curves of Taylor’s lips. “You’re afraid to be naked and in bed with me?”

Taylor showed his teeth, cupped Brandon’s chin, and ravished him.

Body pressing, groins mashing, he shoved Brandon back until he was against the wall, grabbing at Taylor through his clothes, searching for bare skin, heated flesh, the triumph of a naked back. Taylor pulled away with visible reluctance.

“I’m not afraid of you!” he obviously lied, stepping back. “I’m afraid for you.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.” Brandon followed him, pulling Taylor’s T-shirt over his head and running his lips softly along his collarbone. He slid around Taylor’s back, nibbling his neck and working at the button of his cargo shorts. They fell to his feet, and Brandon tugged at his briefs. “You are incapable of dishonor, Taylor—”

“You don’t know who—”

“A stupid kid. That’s all. A stupid kid who thought love was a lie.” Brandon kissed a line down his back and finally got the briefs over Taylor’s thighs. He stood up again and let the towel drop, pressing his body, massive and bulky and strong, along Taylor’s, rangy and lean, still recovering but tougher than it looked. “You’re not that kid anymore,” he whispered in his ear. “And I’m not a kid either. Go shower, and we’ll see what two consenting adults can do.” Brandon gave him a gentle push between his shoulder blades. “Leave the patch off when you come to bed,” he ordered.

“Fine.” Taylor paused at the doorway, not looking back. “Turn off the light? Please?”

“Course. For you.”

But not for Brandon. Brandon didn’t need protection from what Taylor thought of as the ugly parts of himself. Brandon was starting to see how all of it was beautiful.

Brandon slid under the blankets, shivering and glad for the heater. He turned off the light and stretched out, waiting. He’d actually closed his eyes when Taylor got out of the shower, but they hadn’t been closed long.

Taylor kept the towel wrapped around his waist until the last minute, dropping it right before he slid into bed. Brandon was ready, cupping his neck and pulling him into a kiss.

Taylor sighed and relaxed against him, and for a glorious moment their bodies, skin to skin, locked together like they belonged. Brandon wrapped his fingers around Taylor’s bicep, though, and even in the dark, he felt the wince.

“Sore?” he murmured, lips near Taylor’s ear.

“Yeah, sorry. Cramped in the car a lot, no real time to stretch.”

Brandon pulled away and had Taylor lie on his stomach again.

“Really?” Taylor complained, face mashed against the pillow. “Last time I fell asleep! That’s roman—” Brandon ran his hands carefully along Taylor’s sides, sticking his fingers underneath to rub his nipple. “—tic!”

Brandon chuckled and kept massaging, but also bent down now and then to kiss the perfectly symmetrical progression of Taylor’s spine. He flicked his tongue out, taking in the taste of soap, the taste of skin, and kept rubbing down Taylor’s back to his hip. He worked the hip carefully, and the back of the thigh, and then he went back to pay attention to the fun parts.

The seam of Taylor’s backside was especially fun.

He used his tongue to tease, laughing softly when Taylor grunted and spread his thighs. “Want something, Taylor?”

“Shut up.”

Brandon spread his cheeks and ran his tongue along that private place a little more firmly.

“Nnngggh….”

Brandon could have done that all night. Hearing Taylor’s noises grow more and more urgent in spite of his absolute stillness—heady stuff! But he wanted more from their night, so he pulled back with a little tongue wiggle and started rubbing Taylor’s thigh again, and then his calf.

Taylor shifted restlessly, and Brandon chuckled when he moved a hand and adjusted himself so his erection was more comfortable against the cheap sheets.

“Things moving around a little?” he asked wickedly.

“You suck.”

“Not yet, but I haven’t started on your front yet.”

“Ha—” Gasp. “—ha!”

Brandon sat back on his heels and ran his palms all the way up from Taylor’s ankles to his inner thighs, spreading them just enough to make him open, vulnerable, accessible to any caress. He leaned forward and used his hand on Taylor’s lower back, running down the valley of shadows, using his fingers and spit to tantalize Taylor’s entrance.

Taylor pulled his knees up to his chest and reached back to hold himself open.

Brandon kept teasing, kept his fingers at play, kept rubbing, making the tight rim soft, but he scooted up on the bed so his face was next to Taylor’s.

“I’m not ready yet,” he whispered in Taylor’s ear. “Too soon.”

Taylor kept his head turned. Brandon was on his left side, but he didn’t think that was the problem. “Dying,” he confessed, laughing a little. “’S been so long.”

Brandon ran his tongue along Taylor’s ear, feeling the unusual indentations, the twists to the curve. “We have all night.”

Taylor’s response was a controlled nod, and Brandon found the lubricant with his free hand. He paused to dump some on his fingers and then resumed his play.

“Brandon….”

“You beg so pretty,” Brandon whispered, running his other hand and his lips along Taylor’s outer arms, under his core, spanning his tight concave stomach with spread fingers. “I could touch you all night.” He thrust one finger in, allowing Taylor’s greedy moan to vibrate straight to his groin.

“More touching,” Taylor pleaded. “Everywhere.”

“Sure.” Brandon kept thrusting gently, but he continued to press his body along Taylor’s, smooth his hand along Taylor’s thighs, along his backside, along his stomach.

“Lie on your side, facing me,” he ordered in Taylor’s ear. “Spread your legs—”

“Like a clam?” Taylor squeaked. He tried to tighten his knees then, and Brandon stopped playing long enough to manhandle him onto his back.

Taylor rolled to his side, legs together, and Brandon leaned over him, covering Taylor with his massier body, protecting him from the chill dark. “Please,” he whispered, doing his own share of begging. “Please let me.”

Taylor flung an arm over his eyes and stayed, knees splayed open, one foot propped in a classic clamshell position.

Brandon kissed his mouth, gentle at first and then deeper as Taylor moved his arm to cup Brandon’s face in his hands. Brandon palmed his chest then, continuing the kiss but stopping to play with one tiny nipple and the scar where the other one had been.

Taylor gasped—not in pain.

Brandon smiled at him in the dark. “That feels good?”

“Just don’t—”

“That feels good!”

“It’s not—”

Brandon closed his eye with a kiss. “You don’t have to watch me. You don’t have to see. But I’m going to make you feel amazing. Trust me.”

He bent his head and sucked Taylor’s nipple into his mouth, watching him arch impatiently off the bed, knotting his fingers in Brandon’s hair. Brandon kissed his way over Taylor’s chest, noting the beginning of the scarring, making sure he ran his tongue along the whole skin at the edge so Taylor knew he was kissing everything.

The scarring on Taylor’s chest was the thin, papery skin that was often tender to the touch. Brandon was exquisitely gentle, finding the sensitive area by paying attention to Taylor’s gasps and the tightening of his body.

He licked—no teeth here—and kissed gently, exploiting the nerve endings even if the flesh was marred.

Taylor bit his lip and arched his hips, slow at first, and then faster and faster, until Brandon grasped his erection firmly, almost as a means of control.

Taylor froze, quivering, rocking his hips so he was on his back, spreading his knees and planting his feet and shoving himself into Brandon’s palm with an almost frantic desperation.

“Sh….”

More scooting on the bed, so he was even with Taylor’s member, and then a delicate, multitasking dance.

With one hand, he stroked Taylor’s chest, his ribs, his abdomen—anywhere he could reach, because Taylor seemed so starved for it, so needy.

With his other hand he stroked Taylor’s cock, slowly, from base to tip and down, before lapping at the head.

Ah… tangy. The slippery fluid at the end burst salty and sweet in his mouth, and he kept licking across the bell, around the crown.

Taylor made more of those amazing sounds, and for a moment he flailed, scrabbling at the blankets, before he finally grasped Brandon’s wrist as Brandon rubbed his chest—and held on.

“Like this?” Brandon asked, excited. His own erection throbbed against the mattress, and he undulated, a sinuous rhythm of arousal and pleasure. His lover quivered under his hands and mouth, and Brandon craved the taste of him, more, deep in the back of his throat.

He pushed farther, swallowing, coming up for air when he needed to, and again and again and—

“I’m going….” Taylor stopped and forced a deep breath. “To climax….” Brandon tightened the pressure of his tongue in response. “In your mouth.”

Brandon’s palm skated on the sweat from Taylor’s chest as Taylor tried to hold it in. His whole body shook with denial, and Brandon pulled back and then sucked down more so he’d get the hint.

“Please….”

Brandon pulled back again and blew softly on the sensitized head. “I want to taste you,” he breathed. “Don’t be afraid to come—”

The first spurt caught him by surprise, and he opened his mouth to catch the rest. Salty. Salty and bitter. He swallowed and swallowed again. Taylor let out a low cry and thrust hard. Brandon stayed with him, though, keeping the pressure until Taylor let go of his wrist and tugged at his hair.

Brandon pushed up even with him, licking at his lips and laughing. His own erection strained, slippery and damp, against the cool air.

“That was amazing,” he panted, whimpering at the welcome pressure of Taylor’s hand wrapping around him. “I could come in a second just from that.”

He’d thought the moans were good, but Taylor’s wrecked laugh was sweet, sexy candy. “Don’t you… I mean….” He let go then and rolled to his stomach, bottom in the air as he looked shyly over his shoulder in provocation.

Brandon almost came right then.

“On your back,” he whispered hoarsely. “Can you stretch enough for that?”

Taylor turned his head, one shoulder dipping defensively. “Really?”

Oh—oh yes. Brandon rolled over and kissed the sheltering shoulder. “Do I really want to see your face? When I’m inside you?” he asked, lapping at the sweat on Taylor’s skin. “Do I want to watch you hold yourself? Squeeze? Come?” Taylor’s breathy moan told him all he wanted to know. “I want you all, Tay. Let me see you.”

“Idiot,” Taylor muttered, but he rolled over as requested, and Brandon spent a giddy moment lying on top of him, skin to skin, caressing him with the entire length of his body.

Taylor broke, wrapping his arms and legs around Brandon’s shoulders and hips and clutching him tight. “You’d better not be bullshit,” he warned.

“I promise.” Brandon kissed him, hard and deep, until Taylor’s erection pressed at his groin once again.

Brandon sat back on his knees and kissed Taylor’s inner thighs, then poised himself at Taylor’s readied entrance. Taylor stared up at him limpidly, a little afraid.

“First time for both of us,” Brandon said with a little smile.

Taylor nodded and then rocked his world. “Don’t be gentle.”

“Dammit!” Brandon breached him, pushing slowly, watching as Taylor’s entire body went slack to accommodate him.

For a moment his face—always tense, always watching, wary, ready for the worst—relaxed, at peace, waiting for more than his flesh to be invaded. He was waiting to be owned.

Brandon wouldn’t make him wait for long.

Slow. Gentle resistance was met with gentler pressure until, without warning, he was in, sliding firmly home.

Taylor grabbed under his knees, shuddering.

“Good?” Brandon whispered.

“Yessss—move!”

Urgency swept him—he had no choice.

He rocked backward and forward, thrusting home with a little more force, and Taylor sighed. That completely submissive, peaceful look suffused his expression, and Brandon felt the power of it. He brought that to Taylor. He made Taylor feel safe. And as much as Taylor was his first sex, he was Taylor’s first…

Oh God.

Brandon read it in his face then, expressive eye closed, lashes fanning the unscarred cheek—a battered angel.

Taylor needed him. Taylor even loved him. Brandon better not be playing around.

“Faster, dammit!” Taylor’s peace ended as he glared at Brandon and started issuing orders.

“Don’t—” Thrust. “—be—” Thrust. “—bossy!” Brandon laughed, watching as Taylor lost himself. Faster, he’d said. Faster it would be.

He thrust faster, faster, losing himself in the clench around his body, in the rhythm of the dance, in the joy on Taylor’s face.

Losing himself in sex until it consumed him, sweeping his body like a wildfire, until he hauled Taylor’s legs over his shoulders and ravished him, destroying all pretense that they were anything but one.

Taylor didn’t cry out this time—he gasped and froze, eyes clenched shut. He grabbed his own erection with his good hand and squeezed. Brandon felt his orgasm roiling up from the pit of his groin, boiling like cold surf on the jagged rocks of ecstasy.

Crashing through him in a tsunami, surging into Taylor’s body, a willing receptacle, as they lost themselves in climax.

Brandon pitched forward, still thrusting weakly, unable to stop, as Taylor rubbed his shoulders with come-sticky hands and told him he was amazing, a super lover, all Taylor had ever dreamed of.

Brandon laughed, emotion pressing behind his eyes as he buried his face in Taylor’s shoulder.

“I wanted… I wanted to give you the world,” he confessed, young and naked in that moment, all the things he’d been trying so hard not to be. The power of strong emotion washed away his pretenses, leaving him bereft as a child. “It was good?”

“It was amazing,” Taylor told him, kissing his neck, his shoulders, even the intimacy of his ear. “I never knew….”

Brandon smiled then, sliding to the side. Taylor reached for the top sheet and the comforter and pulled them both up to their chins. Brandon wrapped his arms around Taylor and hauled him close, his back to Brandon’s front. Taylor kissed his hands and then held them clasped against his chest.

“Never knew what?” He kissed the back of Taylor’s neck, nuzzling aside some of the straight blond hair.

“Never knew what it could be like. Never knew it could be good like that. Never knew.”

“Taylor?”

“Yeah?”

“This isn’t over. This isn’t a night. Or three. Or twelve. I can feel it in my stomach. This is a lot of nights. Maybe even all of them.”

Against his hands he felt something hot and wet. Then he felt the slickness of Taylor’s cheek.

“I’d fight for that,” he said softly. “I’d fight for all the nights like this. It’s worth fighting for.”

Brandon gave a tired laugh powered by pure joy. “I knew you would,” he said, happy in his bones. “It’s the best of who you are.”

Taylor grunted and wiped his cheek on Brandon’s hand again.

Brandon closed his eyes, comforted by Taylor’s warmth, by his quiet acceptance, by the buzzing in his body after what they’d just done.

This was a good place. They needed to come to this place again.