TWENTY-FOUR

 

 

Justin didn’t seem mad at him. Sitting by the older man’s side, Justin’s small hand warm and snug in his own, Ken took a deep breath and allowed himself to think that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t going to end up losing everything here.

After all, Justin had reached for Ken, while Ken had been too paralyzed with indecision to know if he should go for it or not. In the darkness, Ken snuck little looks over at Justin and saw from the gleam of the older man’s eyes that Justin was looking right back at him.

“There she is!”

Lance and Jamie were whispering excitedly to each other, and Ken tore his gaze away from Justin to look at the stage, instead. There she was, indeed, with the rest of her dance class, and Jade had never looked so happy in her entire life.

The performance wasn’t long, maybe three minutes, and the rest of the classes had to go, too. It was probably about three hours long, in total, but for once in his restless, overly energetic life, Ken had no problem at all staying still.

Honestly, even without sitting there in the dark and holding hands with Justin, it would have been worth it, just to see Jade perform. She had some real talent and genuine love, and when Ken took a second from staring at Justin to glance briefly over at Aaron, he saw that even he looked impressed. Well, as much as he ever did.

By the end of the show, Ken’s fingers were sweaty and a bit sore from remaining in the same position too long, and his ass was numb from sitting, but when he rose to his feet and clapped for all of the performers, he was completely sincere about it.

A lot of it had to do with Jade herself, of course, who had been mesmerizing, and who, in a very real way, had stolen Ken’s heart just as much as her father had. But more of it had to do with Justin himself, with the way that Ken’s heart seemed to soar and swoop with every little touch, every small glance.

Justin captivated him, gave him everything that he had ever wanted, plus more than he hadn’t even known he did. As they all filed out, in the main reception hall of the building, Ken reached over almost tentatively and took Justin’s hand, and Justin let him have it.

 

* * *

 

 

“Oh my God, I knew it! I knew I saw them. It’s the Lost Boys!”

Okay, so maybe on one level it hadn’t been the smartest thing ever to go into a group of kids from the ages of three up to eighteen and not expect to be recognized. Not that Ken minded, and Jamie and Lance were divas and soaked it up, but the real question was, why was Aaron here at all?

And, of course, Aaron being the most reserved, he was the one who was swarmed the most, asked for autographs, greeted, smiled at with varying levels of shyness. Ken caught his eye and grinned, amused by the whole thing, and only got back a glare of annoyance from the other man.

Oh well. Ken would just stay amused, and as soon as he could, he slipped back just to watch. Jade was in her element, and just like that, Ken was sure that her popularity would skyrocket. She had already had a ton of friends, and was pretty much the opposite of her quiet father that way, though so similar to him in so many others.

As he stood and watched, Justin approached him, and there was a strange mixture of determination and trepidation in his footsteps. He stopped beside Ken, gazing up at him, then following his eyes over to where Jade stood, basking in the warm glow of being the most popular girl there.

“I have to talk to you.”

The words spilled from Ken’s lips without him really meaning for them to, but he didn’t just hear them from his own mouth. He also heard them from Justin, both of them having said the same thing at the same time.

They both paused, waiting for the other to say something, and then the tension between them was a little relieved by the laughter that sprung up between them. Funny, Ken never would have thought that Justin had much of a sense of humor at all, but it seemed that he could see the funny side of this, at least.

“Okay, I’ll go first,” Ken decided. Sneaking a little look at the group of people around his friends, he shot the envious Aaron a little wave, then drew Justin a little bit apart from everyone else.

“You were framed. That’s why you lost your job,” Ken spoke quietly, not that he thought anyone was listening, but it was probably better not to let all of this become public knowledge. “Lester fired you to try to hide something.”

Justin sighed softly, crossing his arms over his chest and giving a little bit of a nod.

“Yeah, I sort of figured, but I couldn’t figure out what. Or why he was targeting me,” Justin told him, and Ken shifted even closer. His motives were pure, for once, he was just trying to keep this conversation secret, but he was pleased by the little shiver of delight he saw from Justin when Ken’s lips just barely grazed the sweet shell of his ear.

Okay, so maybe his motives weren’t entirely pure.

“He thought you saw something. You remember that day you and I got trapped in the elevator?” Ken looked into Justin’s eyes and saw the flicker of heat in them, and he knew that he did. “When we walked into the office, he thought you saw something on his computer.”

“What?” Justin murmured, and his voice had dropped down a bit, just one of the many subtle little signs that his body was giving off that he was aroused. It was easy to think that Justin didn’t show anything at all, but he did if one was willing to pay attention. And, as it turned out, Ken was.

“He was stealing, babe,” Ken said, and the words still made him angry. “That’s the reason that the band was doing so badly because he was funneling a lot of our profits into his own bank account. If he hadn’t been caught, I think he would have tried to arrange it so that people thought it had been you.”

Justin shook his head, but there was less anger on his face than Ken would have expected. Then again, since neither of them was having any luck pulling away from the other, maybe that was to be expected.

“Well holy shit,” Justin murmured, and Ken nodded. It had been quite the revelation for him, but honestly, he hadn’t even been that surprised. There had so clearly been something up with Lester.

“He’s been fired. That was going to happen either way, you know? But I think Lara is going to charge him, too. Our boss, the big boss. She seemed pretty pissed off. He might go to jail.” Which was sad for Lester, he supposed, but then the guy had done it to himself.

“So what’s going to happen now?” Justin asked, and Ken smiled a bit, settling down onto a bench and looking hopefully up at Justin until the smaller man sat down, too. Carefully, Ken slid an arm around Justin’s shoulders, and Justin, by some miracle, didn’t pull away.

“I guess we’ll get a new manager. Hopefully someone who is a little bit less of a dick.” Ken shrugged and then grinned at Justin, who was glaring at him. Yes, Ken knew very well what Justin had meant, and he had deliberately avoided the question, but he had some mercy now. “I imagine, when the smoke clears, Lara is going to need to make a phone call to very humbly ask you back.”

Ken intended to make that happen, anyway, and he knew that the rest of the band, even Aaron, was on board with that.

Justin let out a soft breath, not quite a sigh, just a release of tension, and he rested his head on Ken’s shoulder, and somehow it didn’t matter that they were in such a public place. Anyway, no one was paying the slightest bit of attention to either of them.

“Is it my turn now?” Justin asked, and there was even less tension in his voice. Hopefully, what he’d just told Justin would clear some stuff up for the older man, and it certainly did seem like it had.

“No. I have one more thing to say,” Ken informed him and then held up his cell phone. “I want to call Luna. I want to tell her to make space for you and Jade at her wedding. She’ll bitch about it, but she’ll do it.”

He hadn’t quite meant to ask that way, but that was just how he was. Words tumbled over themselves, rushing from his mouth in a torrent, something that he could barely control at best.

“Is it too late?” Ken asked, and he pulled Justin closer against him and gazed down into his eyes. “Or will you come to my sister’s wedding with me? My family is crazy, but I really want them to get to know you …”

Justin’s body flexed a little, and he straightened up, and it turned out there was a way to stop the flow of words which so easily slipped from Ken’s lips. Justin had the hang of it, stealing them with his own mouth, tongue slipping sweetly, if all too briefly, into Ken’s mouth.

When the kiss was over, Ken was panting, but he was silent, and he just looked at Justin, waiting for his response.

“It’s not too late. We’d love to come,” he said, and that was all that either of them had time to say before they were kissing again. There were probably still more things to say, things to work out between them, but the most important ones seemed to be out of the way.

Or were they? Ken pulled away again, looking down at Justin, suddenly nervous.

“Wait, you needed to talk to me, too,” he remembered, and Justin grinned at him, one of those real, sincere, all too rare grins that lit up his whole face and seemed to sparkle even in the depths of his stormy eyes.

“Yeah,” Justin murmured, reaching up to touch Ken’s face, his fingers grazing lightly over his stubble to the softness of his lips. “I just wanted to tell you that I love you.”

And when it came down to it, Ken thought, that pretty much said it all. They fell into each other’s arms, and it was like the separation between them had never happened at all.