Chapter 5

Shaking your ass down Broadway

Walking tight down the ole street line

Got a wink for the boys

Nasty smile that’s just fine

Boy you’ve got some balls

Teasing cock as you go by

Better get some man to love you

Before you lose that sexy shine

—Hustle and Wink

FOREST’S PLACE was a shit hole. No other way to put it. What should have been written off as a small crack in a wall barely large enough for a Cockney caterpillar and his wife to squat under was being passed off as a suitable place for a young man to live in.

God, it pissed Connor off, because the man seemed very content to live in the cramped squalor, even when there wasn’t enough room for Forest to turn around in without banging his elbows against the studio’s four walls.

The diner, sadly, was under renovation, and Connor refused to send Forest off without something in his belly. Too many hours passed since Connor first got out of his Hummer to get a cup of coffee, and the bean burritos they’d choked down were a faint memory for their aching stomachs. While there was something to be said about the outside staircase being steep enough to satisfy a leg day at the gym, the rest of it had little to cheer about.

Other than the long-legged blond currently trying to unearth a skillet Connor could use to make pancakes.

Connor unloaded the groceries they’d grabbed onto the kitchenette’s small counter. Behind him, Forest rattled about in the cabinets. Having already liberated a serviceable spatula, he’d gotten a list of kitchenware to hunt for so Connor could cook for him.

What Connor really wanted to do was tear the whole damned apartment down and start over, because he couldn’t even breathe in the tight space—or imagine Forest living in pretty much a refrigerator box with window cutouts.

“How long have you lived here?” Connor frowned at the pair of car jacks he’d just found holding the sink up. Cranked up as much as they could go, the jacks were placed diagonally under the counter, wedging an assortment of bricks and wood scraps up against the metal sink’s bowl.

“Since I was thirteen? Kinda? Frank lived in the RV, but I lived up here. We’d eat together mostly.” Forest’s voice echoed in the depths of the cabinet. “This used to be a storeroom. Well, it kind of still is. The rest of the second floor is for the coffee shop’s stuff and where we store a lot of the Sound’s equipment if we’re not using it. The shower kicks ass, though. Good pressure. Not so much in the kitchen, though.”

That didn’t surprise Connor one bit. Judging by the grit and impressions into the wood, he guessed the jacks weren’t a recent development. Someone—probably Forest—used strip silicon to seal the gap between the sink and kitchen counter, the press-in tape glaringly white against the counter’s brown-speckled avocado tiles.

Other than Forest’s gold-streaked hair, it was the brightest spot of color in the whole place.

No, Connor revised his opinion. That dubious achievement probably belonged to the vividly stained red-and-black drum kit dominating most of the living space. The drums’ golden bands gleamed, even in the soft light coming from the kitchen’s overhead lights, and their tops showed definite signs of wear. A plastic milk crate stood on its end, open side up, and inside it, several empty coffee cans sprouted a bristled hedgerow of drumsticks.

It was the only new thing in the apartment by far, and probably shook the place when Forest really got going on it.

The walls were a unique putty yellow a cream paint only gained with age and constant cigarette smoke. Since Forest didn’t smell like he was a three-pack-a-day addict, the wall color was probably a legacy left to him by his adopted father—and based on the depth of the stain, a daily visitation of tobacco farmers intent on smoking their entire crop.

The walls were mostly bare, although at one point, there’d been posters or paintings—their absence now beige scatters of pale on the sickly yellow walls. Two battered doors led off to a bathroom and a closet—and from what Connor could see, while the tub and toilet sparkled as much as they could, there was only so much bleach and scrubbing powder could do when a sledgehammer should be used instead.

And the less said about the institutional short-loop blue carpet or the studio’s drab mauve curtains, the better.

A sagging queen-sized futon was almost an afterthought, a tangle of bedsheets and pillows holding the promise of Forest’s scent if Connor could only somehow casually stroll over to them and put them to his face.

The idea of wanting that scared Connor in places he didn’t even know he had—and since he made his living going through doors where hell waited for him, he thought he’d found every single place he could stash fear.

Connor needed something to draw him away from the unfamiliar stirrings in him. Seizing on the obvious to distract himself, Connor commented on the red-black elephant sitting in the room. “That’s a lot of drums you’ve got there.”

“What?” There was the distinct sound of someone hitting their head on the cabinet, then Forest swearing in what sounded like Italian. He emerged from his hunt rubbing his forehead and clutching a small Teflon skillet. “My drums? Yeah, it’s a double kit—Yamaha PHX. Best thing I’ve played on. Great tone. Really loud, but I can buffer it down if I want. I’ve got another set like it downstairs in the….” He trailed off, setting the pan down on the small bar counter separating the kitchenette from the rest of the apartment. “And I’m talking about shit you’ve got no clue about.”

“Not a single damned idea, but still, it’s good to hear you talk about it.” Connor nodded to the tall barstools set against the wall. “Pull one of those up here. You can talk to me while I cook.”

“If it isn’t music, there isn’t a lot I can talk about,” Forest said, setting a stool down. Hooking his foot over a rung, Forest balanced himself on the seat and leaned on his elbows to watch Connor break eggs into a large Tupperware bowl. Forest stared at Connor from across the counter and picked chocolate chips out of the bag Connor bought to make pancakes with, popping them one by one into his mouth.

“Tell me about Frank.” Connor tossed a handful of shells into an empty grocery bag. “I know he was your foster dad for a bit, then adopted you. You were his only foster kid. Seemed kind of weird—a single guy adopting a thirteen-year-old kid.”

“Cheap labor. Kind of like getting a mail-order bride ’cept he found me in the Dumpster outside.” Forest studied Connor intently, then said, “I’m guessing you ran me through the system, so you figure, considering what I got arrested for, Frank was fucking me or something? He wasn’t. He was weird and maybe not really a dad, but he was better than what I had.”

“Your juvie record is sealed—” Connor began to protest, but Forest cut him off, his brown eyes alive with a fire Connor’d not seen in him before.

“Dude, you’re a cop. Of course you’re going to run me, and Frank too. Juvie records are open for review unless there’s a formal request to seal them—and you usually need cause for that. They’re so fucking wide open, they make Cartman’s mom look like a damned nun.”

“I didn’t look.” Connor hated the hard skepticism Forest had on his face. “I could have broken it open, yeah, I admit that, but you don’t need that kind of betrayal. Anything you did in the past—if it’s something you need to share with someone, it should be on your own time, by your own choice. Any truth—past or present—should be yours to share. No one should take that choice from you. So, anything you want to say?”

“Is that why you’re here? Because you think there’s shit on me, and you’re trying to scrape it off?” Forest cocked his head, his face nearly hidden behind a shock of blond hair. “’Cause we’re not friends. Hell, I don’t even know what we are. You come by almost every fucking day now, but we don’t talk or anything. And it’s not like you want a piece of ass—or at least my ass.”

There was a battle going on inside of Forest. Connor could see it being waged right on the man’s handsome face. The tension in his body ran down his shoulders and into his hands. Connor watched it spread, seizing up Forest’s long limbs and finally into his face, where a tincture of fear tightened his mouth. Something—everything—was holding the young man back. It wasn’t the same as the skepticism Connor often saw in Miki’s eyes. No, this was different, a deep-seated trepidation born of something dark in Forest’s past.

Connor ached for the man in front of him because he could see the damaged little boy cowering inside of Forest. Frank might have pulled Forest out of the deep icy waters he’d been drowning in, but Frank did next to nothing to chase away the cold burrowed into Forest’s soul. Its desolation resonated, creating ripples of unease most would shy away from.

He was going to give Forest that chance to warm up inside—because if it helped alleviate the bewildering heat growing in himself, Connor was all in. He just hoped he didn’t lose himself in the process.

“No, I wouldn’t say we’re friends,” he admitted. “But I don’t know why not. I don’t even know why I’m here. How’s that for sharing. I don’t know why I’m by for coffee—I don’t live around here, but it’s not that bad a drive from work. I can’t tell you why I need to see you, to make sure you’re okay. Sometimes I think I’m crazy for coming by, but if I don’t, it bugs me—gets under my skin like bugs eating me alive. So there you go. My share.”

“Fuck, so it’s like you’re my stalker, but you don’t know why?” Forest’s mouth quirked into a half grin. “That’s weird. Really fucking weird.”

“Told you, no idea why.” Connor tried to shrug it off, but the unease lingered.

His life’d been simple—uncomplicated even. For as long as he could remember, he’d known what he wanted to be, who he’d wanted to be. Hell, he even had an example of that man in his father. Being a cop was as natural to Connor as having black hair or blue eyes. He just didn’t think about it. His life plan’d been all laid out: college, police academy, a house, then wife and kids.

He’d been on track—until he’d wrapped his arms around the man sitting across the counter from him, and suddenly, Connor found himself floundering in a snarl of suffocating dreams. Now all he wanted was something he couldn’t grasp. The knowledge of it hovered just out of his sight, like a ghost slipping in and out of a haunted mirror, visible only out of the corner of his eye but gone when he looked straight at it.

“I suck at it. I get nervous and then shit pours out of my mouth.” Forest shook his head.

“Anything. No judging,” Connor promised.

The tired in Forest’s body broke through, and he sagged. Spreading his hands on the counter, he stretched out his arms and worked his shoulders back and forth as if trying to loosen some of the tightness in his body. “I’m not good with people.”

“You seem pretty good with me. And with Jules,” Connor pointed out softly.

“You kidding? People scare the shit out of me. I mean, I try to hide it, but hell, it’s always right there. Jules—the guys who come to the Sound for gigs—hell, I don’t even want to think about how much you freak me the fuck out.” Forest pointed to a cabinet behind Connor. “There’s some Jack in there. Can you hand me the bottle?”

“How old are you again?” Connor teased as he retrieved the whiskey. It sloshed about, a third of it already gone.

“Dude, I’m twenty-three, and I went through puberty around musicians. You think this is going to be the first drink I’ve ever had?” Forest took the bottle and opened it, setting its cap down on the counter. “Want some? There’s glasses behind you.”

“No, I’ve got to drive.” He pointedly looked at the futon behind Forest. “I don’t think that’s big enough to hold us both.”

Forest took a healthy mouthful of whiskey, swallowing it as Connor slid bacon strips into a skillet. The meat sizzled a bit, and Connor turned down the gas until the flame was low so the bacon wouldn’t burn.

A few minutes and a couple of mouthfuls later, Forest began to talk.

“I fucking never know what to say. Like now, what do I tell you? Do I tell you that, yeah, I fucked guys for money when I was a kid, and Frank took me in because he’d gotten a wild hair up his ass one night to save the world?” Forest’s words were mingled with a heavy dose of disgust. “Or do I talk to you about how fucking hard it is to hear someone else talk about how great their family is, and I have no idea what to say about mine? Frank was my dad because he wanted to be. Sure, he wasn’t like the greatest, but I knew I had someplace to crash and food to eat whenever I wanted something. More than I had before. Shit, my mom didn’t even show up for any of the hearings when Frank asked to adopt me.

“And some asshole—some fucking asshole killed Frank, and for what? No one knows. And why someone shot the Amp up to shit? ’Cause between that and Frank, I’m beginning to think I should just burn the whole fucking place to the ground and run away. That’s all I’ve got to talk about. There’s nothing else I can do. Shit, I don’t even know where to start.”

“Do you know what you want to do?” Connor poked at the bacon with a plastic spatula, checking if the strips were ready to be flipped. “I mean, life-wise. You happy with owning a coffee shop and a music studio?”

“Don’t own them yet. Probate. Lawyers need to see if anyone’s going to crawl out of the woodwork and want keys to my kingdom.” Forest snorted, waving the now half-empty bottle about. He stared at Connor for a long moment, long enough to make Connor wonder if he had something on his face. “You know what I want? I want someone like you. Someone like you to love me, but—hold up, you’ve got a squillion brothers. Any of them like you but gay?”

“Two, but the one that’s like me is—married. Very married, even if he doesn’t realize it yet, and to a musician, actually.” Connor didn’t want to mention Miki, or Damien for that matter. It would bring the conversation out of the tight intimate something they’d started, and he wasn’t ready to fall out of its odd warmth. “The other gay one is—well, so not much like me. I don’t think he’d be what you were looking for.”

“So, shit. I’m out of luck, then.” Forest rested his chin on the bottle, looking forlornly at Connor through his bangs. “Too bad I just can’t have you. Make things a hell of a lot easier, but Gay Rule number one, don’t fall in love with a straight boy. Only shitty things can come of it.”

“Yeah—no, you can’t have me.” The bacon popped, and a speck of hot oil seared the back of Connor’s hand, pulling his attention away from Forest’s whiskey-dappled lips. “Tell you what. You shouldn’t be drinking alone. Pass me the bottle there, Forest, and damn wherever I might end up sleeping tonight.”

IT WAS torture. Torture plain and simple. Forest couldn’t think of any other word for it. He’d been hungry before, so hungry his stomach felt like it was wrapped around his spine and twisting into a knot. He’d been beaten so badly he couldn’t breathe or see any more, his eyes swollen so shut he couldn’t even cry out of them, and every shuddering inhale he took was another stab of pain down his entire body.

None of that compared to the insane anguish of having Connor Morgan sitting next to him eating pancakes and bacon while asking about how Forest got into drumming.

If there was a God, He’d have struck Forest down dead in between a mouthful of buttery eggs and the piece of sourdough bread they’d had to crisp in the oven because Forest’s toaster somehow grew legs and walked away.

“God, the toaster.” He froze, a forkful of eggs poised at his open mouth. “It wasn’t my toaster, was it? The RV—”

“It wasn’t your toaster,” Connor reassured him. “There was a candle lit. A couple of them, I think. That’s what took the propane buildup out.”

He should have felt relieved, but a sliver of panic lodged itself into his brain, leeching its poison into Forest’s thoughts. “Then why the fuck did someone call you guys in to raid the place? They could have gotten you all killed.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of been something we’ve all been wondering.” The cop took a sip from his glass, its whiskey-soaked ice cubes clinking against one another as he set it back down. His startling blue eyes pinned Forest in place. “You sure you wanna be talking about this?”

If the man’s mouth, face, and hands weren’t enough to drive him crazy, the Irish in his voice was going to do Forest in. His dick seemed primed to the man’s rolling accent, so Forest took another long swig from his glass and sucked in an ice cube to chew on. His cock ignored the cool rush of crunchy ice on Forest’s teeth and proceeded to do its own happy jig when Connor continued to speak after Forest nodded.

“Your da was already gone when we went in. There’s that. So either someone wanted us to find his body, or they wanted to take us out with him.” Connor studied his plate for a moment, picking through a mound of fried potatoes until he found a caramelized onion chunk. With the stabbed onion on his fork, he bit into it, chewing as he spoke. “You already talked to the inspector—the first one—not my sister, right? She told you all of this.”

“Kind of,” he said, shrugging. “Mostly she talked about how he was trafficking meth. Frank didn’t do that kind of shit. Sure, he got stoned off pot, but that’s about it. Shit, he hated taking aspirin because it was made of chemicals. He had to be convinced not to smuggle in raw milk for the coffee shop.”

“You miss him, huh?” The cop’s attention flicked back to Forest, and the tingle of attraction fired up again, trailing down Forest’s belly. “Was he a good da to you?”

“Better than what I had before…’cause I didn’t have anyone before,” he said, pushing his half-empty plate away. He’d eaten more in the past half hour than he had in the past two days, and his stomach rebelled at shoving any more into it. “Frank was… kind of like just there. He’d tell me kind of what to do, how to get what I needed. Shit, when he found out I liked the drums, he hooked me up with all kinds of guys to teach me.”

“What about school? No college?” Connor chewed another mouthful and glanced at Forest’s plate. “You going to finish that?”

“Hell, no. You want it?” At Connor’s nod, he pushed the plate farther over.

“Thanks,” Connor said as he scraped Forest’s leftovers onto his plate. “So school?”

“Yeah, school,” Forest snorted. “I went. Kind of. I pulled a GED as soon as I could, then got out. College isn’t something I wanted to hook up into. I could barely go to high school. My head’s too busy. Too much damned noise, you know?”

How could he tell the cop about how he’d sit in class and hear the tap of feet on the floor and get frustrated from the lack of pattern? Even the scrape of markers on a whiteboard shattered his focus, especially when his history teacher bent over to pick up a dropped pen. The man’s ass had been extraordinary, and Forest couldn’t remember how many times he’d prayed for an earthquake to jostle the markers to the floor during a test.

Frank got it—the lack of focus on things Forest couldn’t get to stick in his head—and he’d been understanding when Forest trotted home a report card with a full range of the alphabet. He’d been great at math, aced the two business classes he’d taken, but the rest of it was crap. Even the music classes were a struggle from the moment he walked through the door and found his teacher had a fierce disdain for blues rhythms.

Forest watched in silent amazement as Connor reached for the pan of fried potatoes and helped himself to another two spoonfuls. “Hungry?”

“It’s been a long day,” the man grunted. “There wasn’t any sign of meth in the prelim lab tests, and the only Marshall we could shake out of the grapevine turned out to be a guy who’d been popped for possession a few days before. So either it was a case of mistaken identity or something else. I’m guessing something else because someone went through a hell of a lot of trouble to murder your da and then either hide it or cause some major shit around it. The question is who did it?”

“You said the guy who tipped you guys off is missing. Think he knows?”

“Don’t know,” Connor replied ruefully. “I’d like to tell you we’ll find him, but guys like him crawl back into the sewers like roaches when the lights are on.”

“Yeah, I know how that is,” he mumbled. There’d been a time when he was a roach. Now Forest wasn’t exactly sure where he stood in the sewer food chain, but the light didn’t bother him as much anymore. “This other inspector—the not your sister one—is she even looking?”

“Truthfully, downstairs is a crime scene now too, but it’s Kiki’s. You’re better off with her and Duarte.” Connor pointed to the frying pan in front of him. “Eat some bacon at least. You look like you need a couple of pounds on you.”

“Dude, I’m too full. Not even one thin mint hungry,” he complained back, pulling up his shirt to pat his stomach. “If I’m lucky, the whiskey’ll just go around it and get me drunk.”

He didn’t miss Connor’s glance at his stomach nor the man’s nostrils flaring. Tugging his shirt back down, Forest wondered if Connor thought he was hitting on him. Unable to think of anything to say, he reached for his glass and drained it, letting the whiskey burn through him.

“You can take the futon,” Forest offered, glancing over his shoulder at his living space. “I can move some of the kit to the side. I’ve got a roll of foam and a sleeping bag in the closet. I can crash on that.”

“Nah, I’ll take the floor.” Connor stood up and began to stack the dishes. Forest reached to help, but the man shook him off. “I’ll go wash the dishes, and then we can polish off that whiskey. Maybe I’ll even teach you some Gaelic.”

“But—”

“Let me do this, Forest,” the man rumbled. “Just this once, let someone else help you.”

“What? And get used to that?” He tried to laugh it off and moved to take the plate from Connor’s hand, but the man gently pushed him back onto the barstool.

“Yeah, maybe you should,” Connor murmured. “Maybe it’s time you learned what it’s like to be taken care of.”