THREE

 

 

Trapped.

Because today isn’t going badly enough. No, he also needed to be completely trapped in a tiny, dark, enclosed space. If not for Ken being there, Justin might have just started screaming. As it was, he just let out a muffled little groan, his eyes straining to see through the utter darkness.

“Hey, are you okay?” Ken asked and then the pressure of his body was gone. Instead, Justin felt hands on his shoulders, helping him up, and he couldn’t even help—even through the fear—but notice just how easily Ken hefted him up. How strong the young man was.

It figured. He finally got to touch Ken, and this was the reason why. Justin closed his eyes—which made no difference to the light level at all—and breathed in slowly, deeply. He had to calm down, to pull his racing thoughts back, or he was going to end up losing it in here.

“Yeah.” And Justin was, he told himself. He was fine. He just wasn’t great with small, enclosed, dark spaces. Who was? He would be okay, as long as he could just keep breathing, only someone seemed to have come in under the cover of darkness and stolen all of the oxygen. But if that was the case, why was Ken apparently fine?

There was movement in the elevator, a hint of a musky, deeply masculine scent that he knew came from Ken. He’d been around for enough rehearsals that he knew the scent of Ken’s sweat, clean and sexy as hell. Just like every damn thing about the brat.

Ken settled down beside him, and Justin turned his head, trying to see where the man was. Pointless, of course. All Justin saw was blackness, thick and complete, but he could certainly feel Ken.

“We should …” Justin’s voice came out thin and reedy, and he stopped to clear his throat and thanked God that Ken seemed to be generally pretty oblivious to the things which seemed so obvious to Justin. “We should try to find the button. Don’t elevators have a button for if stuff like this happens?”

“Oh, yeah,” Ken said, as though surprised by the thought. Justin felt the beginnings of a fond little smile touch his lips, and he welcomed it. It was better than thinking about being trapped high up in the air in a tiny, nearly airless little box. Ken was clueless, and damn him if it wasn’t adorable.

Ken’s presence was gone then, and Justin let his head roll back against the mirrored wall, which felt deliciously cool against the heat of his skin. This wasn’t so bad, really. Just imagine that he was home in bed, late at night. Only even the dark of night wasn’t this thick, this complete.

It felt like a blanket, draped over his face, cutting off even more of his air. Dimly, he heard Ken speaking with someone, apparently having found the button and pressed it.

Ten minutes. That’s how long they were going to be trapped in here, according to the disembodied, pleasant female voice, who obviously had no real idea what that meant to Justin. Ten minutes in here. Justin raised his hands to his face, and it was only then that he realized that he was still clutching his cell phone.

Silently, he pressed on an icon, and his phone was turned into a flashlight, cutting a swath through the darkness before finally banishing it completely. The sight of the elevator walls once more surrounded him, and they didn’t seem to push in on him quite as much with the light shining on them.

“So, why were you so late?” Ken asked, and Justin could have hugged him for it. Would have, maybe, if he’d been a different person. As it was, these feelings that Justin had for Ken would have only made that awkward, but that didn’t change that Justin was grateful.

Talking was the answer. Talking would make the time pass quicker, and distract him from his own thoughts, which were taking a distinct turn for the morbid.

“I just got caught up in stuff that I had to do before I came in,” Justin spoke slowly, looking down at his own hands, cradling the smooth black plastic of his phone with the light shining out from it as a beacon to show Justin where sanity was. Or at least the general neighborhood. It felt good to speak, to interact, but that didn’t mean that he was going to tell him about Jade.

What could a gorgeous, young man like Ken possibly understand about Jade? The secret wasn’t complete, and Justin knew that a few people knew about her, but Ken wasn’t one of them, and it was probably better to keep it that way. So far, he’d managed to keep Jade out of the limelight, and he had no intention of thrusting her into it.

Ken nodded, and Justin took the chance to let himself look, really look, at Ken once more. If only he wasn’t so damn beautiful. If only he wasn’t exactly Justin’s type, in men, at least, tall and broad and strong. And Ken was strong, and with all of that energy, too, which had to be a lot of fun in bed …

“What about you?” Justin asked abruptly. Maybe he didn’t usually speak much, but speaking, in this case, was better than fantasizing about something that was just never going to happen. Which shouldn’t happen, Justin knew, even if Ken were interested, which, of course, he wasn’t.

“Oh.” Ken rolled his eyes and gave a wry little smirk. “It’s kind of complicated.”

If Justin had said such a thing, it would have been a clear signal to whoever he was talking to that they just needed to stop asking questions. Ken, though, seemed to work a little bit differently.

“My mom called while I was working out. See, Luna, my big sister, she’s getting married in three weeks. Which is sort of a pain in the ass, because I’m supposed to bring a date only she wants to set me up with a girl.”

Justin’s eyes widened as he looked over at Ken. He had never heard anything about him being anything but attracted to men, and Justin would have been willing to lay odds on the athletic young man being as gay as a Maypole.

“Right. And you don’t want to bring a girl because …” Justin probed a little, because this was, by far, the most intimate conversation that he’d ever had with this man, and he couldn’t help but be intrigued. It wasn’t going to do anything to help Justin’s sad little crush, but he couldn’t resist.

“Um, because of the whole girl thing.” Ken wrinkled up his nose, and then rushed on. “I mean, I have no problem with women, it’s just that I don’t really want to date them. You know?”

Justin nodded, smirking a little. Well, that was confirmation, anyway.

“So why not bring a guy? Would your sister mind?” Justin asked, tilting his head as he looked into Ken’s earnest face. He tried not to notice the sweet, lush curve of his lower lip or the way his eyes seemed to shine and almost even to glow in the light of Justin’s phone.

Ken shifted again, moving to sit beside Justin. His presence was more than welcome, more than it should be, and Justin looked over at him and tried not to like the way that Ken’s strong, toned arm was so close to Justin’s shoulder that if Justin just moved a tiny bit, they would be touching.

“Luna? Nah. She was pretty cool about it when I came out,” Ken chattered on, thankfully pretty oblivious to Justin’s torment. “My mom would freak out, but maybe that’s not a bad thing, you know? She’s gonna have to accept that I’m gay sometime …”

Justin shook his head, amazed. And this was why he wasn’t exactly heartbroken that his mom wasn’t in the picture, that he really had no family to speak of, outside of Jade. No one to judge him for his sexuality, no one that he even had to try to explain it to.

“Hey, I know!” Ken spoke as if to himself like he had actually forgotten that Justin was there at all. “I can bring Aaron. I’ve been trying to think of something I could invite him out to …”

Justin had been enjoying the conversation and the way that sexual desire glimmered through his body, just barely tantalizing him. He hadn’t done anything to encourage it, but being so close to someone as beautiful as Ken, someone that Justin, well, had a pretty huge thing for, actually, it just sort of naturally brought erotic feelings up. Not that he would do anything about it, but it had been a long time since he’d been intimate with anyone and part of him had craved it.

But with those few words, Ken threw a bucket of ice water right over his head, so it seemed. Only this ice water didn’t just roll down off of him. It seeped into his body through his skin, centered on his heart, and made him feel frozen from the inside out.

“You want to bring Aaron to your sister’s wedding?”

Justin didn’t even try to hide the disbelief in his voice. He wasn’t even close to as oblivious as Ken was. He watched, and he had seen how Ken had reacted with first Darien, and then Lance. Both of them had chosen someone else, and Justin would think that that would be enough to teach anyone a lesson.

“What?” Ken asked, his tone defiant, his eyes shimmering with annoyance. For once, though, Justin was immune to his charms, or at least he almost was. He shook his head, knowing that he really shouldn’t get into this with him. Ken was some guy that he knew, not his friend, but Justin found that this was one opinion that he couldn’t just choke back.

“What? You know what,” Justin told him bluntly. “Aaron? Really? Lance and Darien weren’t enough for you?”

Even though Justin didn’t say the words that he could have, he saw Ken recoil back as though he’d been slapped, and he knew that they got through anyway. Well, Justin had probably gone a little bit overboard with that one, he had to admit. He’d been a little cruel, a little too blunt.

See, this was why he didn’t talk. It really didn’t tend to go very well when he did.

Still, Ken had had his little heart broken twice already. A blind man could see that, just as they could see that Aaron was not available. Oh, as far as Justin knew, the guy wasn’t dating anyone, but that didn’t mean that he was open to being pursued. He wasn’t sure that he had ever seen anyone who was less interested in that sort of thing.

Aaron was a loner, and Justin understood that. Someone would come along and touch Aaron’s cold heart, Justin figured, sooner or later. But Ken wasn’t that person. Justin had observed closely, and he had never seen even the faintest sign of interest from Aaron to Ken, or to anyone.

“Dude, what the hell?” Ken asked, hurt but rallying, and Justin sighed and shook his head. He had gone way too far, and he had known, even as he said the words, that he was. But then again, didn’t someone have to be honest with Ken?

“Look, it’s none of my business,” Justin admitted, and he met Ken’s eyes. The younger man had risen up onto his knees, and he loomed over Justin, and against all sanity, all willpower, all Justin wanted to do suddenly was pull the guy down and kiss him until all thoughts of Aaron, or anyone else, went right out of that pretty head.

So who was really the idiot? Ken, or Justin? Ken was caught up in Aaron, and that couldn’t go well, but it wasn’t like Justin’s stupid crush on Ken was going to wind up any better. The difference was, Justin knew it, but Ken didn’t seem to.

“Damn straight, it’s none of your business,” Ken fumed, and they looked at each other, really looked, once more. Just like when Ken had been on top of him—before the elevator had broken down—their eyes locked and held and Justin felt it once more.

He really was delusional, if he thought that Ken could look at him like that. Like he wanted him. Like it was possible for anything to happen with this. If he let himself think it, he would get his heart every bit as broken as Ken likely would with Aaron.

But still, he looked, and Ken looked back, and Justin could swear that he could almost see the anger visibly leaving Ken’s beautiful eyes. They were so close. So very close, in this small space, and Justin clenched his hands around his phone to stop himself from doing something stupid.

What would Ken do, if Justin suddenly reached for him, took his firm, solid, muscular body into his arms? Would Ken laugh, push him away? Or would he lower his head and let his lips find Justin’s?

And then Ken was moving. By some miracle, he was shifting down, settling onto the floor more solidly, and then inclining his head. The distance between them closed, and oh God, Ken was getting closer to him, but surely he was just adjusting his position?

“Hey, any survivors?”

The voice that called down was cheerful and pleasant, but at that moment, Justin could have cheerfully strangled them. For a moment, just a split second, he’d let himself feel hope, but he should have known better.

“Yeah! We’re in here,” Ken called back enthusiastically, and whatever moment there had been between them was gone. Justin knew that he had probably imagined it, anyway, but for just a second, he could have sworn that Ken had been about to kiss him.