TWENTY

 

Aaron was gone when Brad woke up, which wasn’t that much of a surprise. The night before, he had seemed utterly fixated only on sex, not on any sort of communication. Besides, Brad had slept in more than he usually did, far more, and he had forgotten to set the alarm. When he looked at his phone, he saw that it was already almost eleven in the morning. When had the last time been that he had stayed in bed that long? He literally couldn’t remember.

The plane left at twelve, and that was a bit of a relief. Brad didn’t have time to think about anything, only to rush around like a chicken with his head cut off, furiously throwing things into his bag and then running out the door to get to the plane on time.

He made it, though only just. But he wasn’t late, and that was something. The Lost Boys were just boarding the plane when Brad drove up, and he smiled a little bit when he saw the flash of sun on crimson hair and knew very well that it was Aaron.

The previous night, it had seemed like Brad didn’t mean much other than sex to Aaron, but there could be no doubt that Aaron meant something to Brad. Far too much already. Brad wouldn’t push it, but neither would he apologize for it.

Maybe he should back off, though. When he got onto the plane, he saw Aaron had headphones in, listening to music, and on top of that he was reading a book. He couldn’t have been any more clear if he’d put up a glowing neon DO NOT DISTURB sign all in capital letters above his head, and Brad settled down to wait.

And wait. And wait. For the whole trip, Aaron didn’t so much as look over at Brad. He didn’t glance his way even once. Even when they landed in Canada, Aaron was the first one off of the plane, and he didn’t so much as glance back.

“What’s up with him?” Ken asked, and Brad shook his head. He would have given anything to be able to answer that question, even just for himself, but he couldn’t.

Or could he? Was that the real problem, that he knew very well what had happened? That Aaron had said goodbye the night before? He also couldn’t help but notice that Lance and Jamie both shot him a curious look. Ken might be clueless, but those two weren’t, and they might be wrapped up in each other a lot of the time, but neither of them were stupid.

It didn’t matter anymore. Let them know. Let them tell everyone. Brad could honestly tell them that he and Aaron weren’t together, he was pretty sure of that. He could demand the truth from Aaron, and maybe he even would, but part of him had the sense that it was already over.

 

* * *

 

That mindset lasted until after the show, sold out, of course, as all of their shows had been. And Brad was backstage, as he always was, and never, not even for a moment, did Aaron’s lovely eyes find his. Never did they exchange a word, or even so much as a glance.

The world was a cold, lonely place. Only that wasn’t true. The world was the same that it had always been, and it was Brad who had changed. Brad who had foolishly let himself feel things for someone who could never feel things for him back.

“I guess you’re probably going back to sleep now, right, Aaron?” Ken asked, though his voice and his eyes, still had hope in them as he gazed at Aaron. Brad held his breath, not wanting to risk missing Aaron’s answer, even as he sort of kicked himself for being so pathetic and eager.

“No,” Aaron said, and Brad’s shoulders slumped as he turned away so that he didn’t have to look at Aaron not looking at him anymore. “I’ll come out if you guys are going.”

What else could Brad have expected? Still without looking back, not wanting to feel mocked by the sincere joy that he knew that Aaron’s bandmates would feel when he felt a fair bit like he’d just been slugged in the stomach by a giant.

Alone, he went back to his hotel room, and alone, he placed his briefcase precisely in the exact center of the table. Alone, like he had always been like it seemed like he always would be, and it wasn’t self-pity. It was nothing more or less than a fact.

With a soft sigh, he opened his briefcase, for no other reason than to look at the contracts that he knew would be inside of it. To remind himself that, no matter what the deal was with his personal life, he was still Aaron’s boss, and he needed to get an answer out of him …

There was only one contract there.

Brad knew that the other contract had been there just twenty-four hours before. He knew because, once a day, he had fallen into the habit of opening up his briefcase and looking at them, mostly to remind himself of what he was supposed to be doing, and hadn’t been.

So he knew what the contracts looked like, and he knew that one of them was missing. Something was wrong, terribly, horribly wrong, and his fingers shook just the tiniest bit as he reached for the papers, neatly stapled together, moving the contract out of the way just in case things had somehow shifted, just in case he was wrong.

But he wasn’t. He wasn’t wrong at all. And he knew which contract was missing, too. The one he held wasn’t very many pages, so what had happened to the long contract, the one that he had, foolishly, perhaps, been holding out hope that Aaron would someday sign?

The papers in his hands fell open, and Brad felt a cold grip, icy fingers on his guts, making him freeze from the inside out.

Aaron’s name was signed at the bottom of the contract. All of a sudden, the mystery of where the longer one had gone didn’t matter much, not in the face of this. Aaron had signed the contract and then left it there for Brad to find.

Until that point, Brad had been more or less content to let Aaron pull away. To take time, if he needed it. He had prepared himself as much as possible for what might happen if Aaron officially ended things, but never could he have imagined a betrayal such as this.

He had his answer, and he hadn’t even meant enough to Aaron for the younger man to talk to him in person. Aaron had slunk away, leaving only this sheaf of papers to tell the story, and all of a sudden, Brad felt the sadness, the gray cloud which had hung heavy over his head ever since he’d realized that Aaron had been pulling away, disappear into nothing.

No. Aaron didn’t get to have this all his way. Brad had been patient, but he deserved answers, and he was going to get them. Aaron didn’t owe him a relationship but damned if he didn’t owe Brad an explanation. The attempt to leave without one was nothing short of utter cowardice.

It wasn’t even like Brad had a lot of doubt about what that answer was going to be, because he didn’t. But regardless, he was going to have it. He was going to make this one last attempt.

If nothing else, it would be closure. That was better than nothing, which was what he had right now. Nothing other than a signed contract that spoke louder than words, if Brad let himself listen.

 

* * *

 

Anger was not an emotion that Brad often allowed himself to give into. Anger made people irrational, act rashly and stupidly, and those were all things that Brad preferred to avoid. But when anger did strike, it burned with a low, white-hot fury, just simmering in the pit of his stomach and bubbling up into his throat.

Because this wasn’t something he was used to, Brad had half thought that time passing would cool that anger before he met with Aaron. As time passed, each second ticking away feeling like a full minute, as he thought of everything that had happened between them, the anger only grew. It grew hotter and hotter, but in a slow burn kind of way, one that didn’t seem to want to burn itself out.

He had been such an idiot. He had let himself pretend that there could be something between himself and someone as amazing, and talented, and withdrawn, and remote, as Aaron was. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that the blame wasn’t entirely on him.

Aaron had said that they were together, way back before they’d left Los Angeles. They had agreed to date, and then Aaron had turned around and acted like that meant nothing. Maybe Brad had been stupid to get his hopes up, but Aaron had been less than honest. Aaron hadn’t even thought enough of him to break up with him to his face.

By the time the door to the suite of rooms opened, Brad was agitated enough to be pacing around, unable to stay still for more than a second or two at a time. He would force himself to still, try to calm his mind by calming his body, but neither of them cooperated. Each time he dropped down into his seat, he found himself back on his feet again, wearing a hole in the expensive, plush carpet as he stalked around the room.

The truth was, in his current state, if Aaron had walked in surrounded by his friends, Brad wouldn’t have changed his behavior once. Hell, Aaron could have been surrounded by all of the paparazzi in the world, or the entire men’s ice hockey team, or the royal family of England, and it wouldn’t have changed anything.

The moment Brad saw Aaron, he was stalking over for him, reaching for him, wrapping his hand around the other man’s slender wrist and pulling him right into Aaron’s bedroom. The fact that Aaron had walked in alone was a nice bonus, maybe, but didn’t, ultimately, make any difference whatsoever.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Brad’s voice came out so softly that Aaron had to lean forward to hear it, and it was trembling, quaking minutely with rage. Brad did make some effort to keep it under control, and he even did, but there was only so much that even his vaunted self-control could do when he was as furious as he was.

“Excuse me? You’re the one who dragged me into my room like some sort of caveman,” Aaron told him, his shoulders straight and tense, his lips set in a tight line as he faced off against Brad. “Who even does something like that?”

“Well,” Brad told him, and his voice started to rise in volume as he looked into Aaron’s eyes and saw nothing but defiance there. No hint of what they had shared once upon a time. Brad had no idea why, or how, but all of that was gone. “I had to make you talk to me somehow.”

That shut Aaron up, and Brad looked at him, stymied. Now that he was here, he found that he didn’t know what to say. He had told himself that he just wanted the truth, but now that he was face to face with Aaron, was that even the truth?

“What are you doing, Aaron?” Brad finally asked, hating the small, almost not there note of vulnerability that he heard. Hadn’t he learned better than to let himself feel that sort of thing? Had he learned nothing? “Why are you doing this?”

“You know about my sister,” Aaron started, and Brad had to briefly close his eyes and step back against the rush of heat, pure and intense, that raced through him. Was Aaron going to do this? Was he really going to blame his sister for something that was entirely his doing?

Brad saw red. He had never actually believed that to be anything more than a figure of speech, but he really did feel like there was a blur of red over his eyes, coating everything in terms of the anger he felt.

“Shut up,” Brad growled, and his voice wasn’t quiet anymore. “Just stop it. Fine, you want to be with your sister, take care of her. That’s fine. And I get why you signed the short-term contract.” Despite all of his best efforts, Brad found himself stepping forward, gazing down right into Aaron’s defiant eyes and tense jaw. “But that doesn’t explain why you walked out on me.”

Aaron didn’t speak. He just stood there, his body tensed as if for a fight, or, more likely, ready to run away. It seemed like that was what Aaron was good at, running, avoiding things, and Brad knew that part of the reason that pissed him off so much was that he was the same way.

“We had something. I thought we did, anyway.” Brad looked at Aaron, his hands gripping into fists at his sides. He wanted to grab the man by his shoulders, shake him, get any sort of reaction out of him, but even in his anger, he knew that that wasn’t appropriate.

“… Brad …” And, for the first time in far too long, there seemed like there was something in Aaron’s eyes. Some sign of life, of emotion. Hesitant, maybe, but it was there, and Brad seized on it more eagerly than he probably should have.

He did grip Aaron’s shoulders, but instead of shaking him, he pulled the slender young man close to him.

“Please don’t leave,” Brad let himself say words that he could never remember having ever said to another human being. It was a horrible risk, and even as he spoke, part of him screamed at him to stop. But he pushed on, because maybe, just maybe, some things were worth taking risks for. “You don’t have to leave. If you want to stay with your sister, take care of her, that’s fine with me.”

He wasn’t begging. Not quite. But it was closer than he ever got. What was that to Aaron, though, who must have people flinging themselves at his feet all of the time? Brad had seen it, and not just in fans, either. Even Ken, who seemed blissfully happy with his boyfriend Justin, had this look in his eyes sometimes when he gazed at Aaron.

And Aaron just stood there, something in his eyes that looked a hell of a lot like pity to Brad. He could take a lot of things, maybe, but pity wasn’t one of them. Better to see outright dislike there than that, and with a soft growl, Brad pulled Aaron close to him and held him tight as he kissed him hard.

Their lips didn’t so much meet as they did collide, almost hard enough to bruise them, but then Aaron had always liked it when things got a little bit rough. Brad had no problem using that, and a strange, savage sort of satisfaction surged through his whole body, as powerful as a drug, or a shot of straight whiskey.

Brad’s hands slid down to grip Aaron’s ass, pulling him closer, as close as he could, making him feel how hard Brad was. And Aaron was just as hard, jutting out to bulge against the front of his pants. Eagerly, not willing to let this go, Brad rutted against his lover, the man who was his, damn it, and he could swear that Aaron knew it, too.

It wasn’t enough. He couldn’t get enough friction, and Aaron felt the same, Brad would be willing to bet, by the desperate little keening noise, a sound of pure need, that spilled from Aaron’s lips into Brad’s mouth. Without hesitation, Brad pressed with the whole weight, all of the strength, of his body, pushing Aaron backward into a wall.

As they went, Aaron’s hand, which was raising up to wrap around Brad, hit the lamp on the bedside table. Aaron’s fingers clipped it, sending it skittering forward onto the varnished wood, but Brad didn’t care. He didn’t even mind the clatter as it fell to the floor because he and Aaron were kissing, and Aaron was giving in to him because Brad’s tongue was pulsing, thrusting, fucking between Aaron’s lips, reminding him of just how good it was with them. Why they should be together.

And maybe he would have had a chance to make his case if the door hadn’t suddenly flung open. Brad glanced up just in time to meet the gazes of some very concerned Lost Boys, Aaron’s bandmates, Aaron’s friends, who had walked in to see far too much and at nearly the worst possible time.