Chapter 1
Cal
Cal could never be sure whether or not he got himself arrested on purpose. Or that when he was encouraged to start hacking at Preston’s insistence, he not only realized the risks involved but also that he might have seen it as a ticket out of a relationship that was slowly, bit by bit, killing him.
It was hard to figure out how he finally realized it. How he had been able to see his way past Preston’s charms, his encouragement, his generosity, all the way down to his snake oil salesman soul.
Cal had been in a relationship with Preston for around four years. In that time, Preston had taken over, controlling Cal’s every move, almost his every emotion. Preston lashed out when things didn’t go his way or when he might sense that Cal was even on the verge of objecting. Or leaving.
Cal had tried to leave once. Had packed his rolling suitcase that Preston had bought for him and had started a conversation about them taking a break and that Cal was going to a hotel. That he needed a few days by himself and could Preston just?—
That conversation ended badly and Cal still wasn’t sure that his head banging into the bedroom wall hadn’t resulted in a skullfracture. Well, the headaches had gone away eventually, and leaving had never been something Cal attempted again.
Until the hacking idea.
Cal had graduated college with a degree in programming, and quickly found work as a Tier One IT tech. Each day, he took calls from all the Aunt Ednas west of the Mississippi who’d managed to click on the wrong link in an email they’d received from a nice man in Nigeria who needed help. Or the French professor who had millions they wanted to send to them.
It didn’t matter what, when, where, or who. Cal was there to rescue them all. He felt good about the work. It gave him purpose.
He worked mostly alone in a remote office, which he shared with three or four other techs, who came and went on an unpredictable, rotating basis.
Preston would come by the office, even though he wasn’t supposed to. He would look over Cal’s shoulder at the screen. At the codes Cal would enter to reset Aunt Edna’s internet security app. At how Cal actually had remote access to dozens of home computers every day using RemoteMeIn, his tech company’s preferred remote access software.
“These idiots have banking information on their desktops,” Preston observed one time. “Passwords and stuff.”
He’d been standing behind Cal in the darkened office. Cal had just been about to reach for the bag of Bugles and the half-drunk quart of Coke on the desk beside him when Preston put both hands on Cal’s shoulders.
The warm massage quickly turned into a painful squeeze. Which meant that Preston wanted Cal to pay attention to him and that right quick.
Cal froze. Winced, and tried to hide it.
But Preston saw, cuffed him hard across the head, and said, “You’re so sensitive!” Then he added, “You could take some ofthat information and go into their accounts. Skim just a little bit. The rich ones would never know.” With a dirty laugh, he said, “All those old people and their millions? They’d deserve it. You’d be like Robin Hood.”
After that, Preston was a bit too interested in Cal’s work, and had a bit too much to say about how Cal could get rich, so rich, so easily, if he’d just bend the rules a bit and give Preston his RemoteMeIn credentials. Cal said no.
Then had come the conversation about Cal’s tuition debt. A debt which Preston had promised to pay when he’d invited Cal to come live with him after college. If Cal would just take some money from rich folks who would never miss it, that debt would be paid off. Again, Cal said no, but Preston wouldn’t let it go.
The two of them had met in college, in a dull class about web development, something Cal already knew but which was required.
Preston had been on the verge of graduating at the end of the semester and maybe something about Cal had attracted him, because after that, they were inseparable. Preston had his own apartment, a job as a web designer lined up, and said that Cal should come live with him while he finished his last four semesters.
Preston would pay for everything! Preston would help him with his student loans! Preston was in love with him!
All of this had been very hard to resist because while Cal loved Coke and Bugles and Pop Tarts, he had a hankering for hot meals that he wasn’t getting in the student cafeteria because the food there sucked. He’d been young enough, and all alone. His family, down to his last sibling, had disowned him because he was gay. He craved friends but didn’t know how to make them.
Preston was a good cook, an amazing one, really, and his encouragement to Cal was a constant source of what had felt like love and acceptance.
Cal had been young, and it had taken him a while to figure out the truth of it. That Preston didn’t love Cal as much as Preston loved Preston. That Preston’s needs came first. That the headache Cal had from getting his head bashed into a wall was nothing to be worried about.
What do you need a ride to Urgent Care for? Don’t I give you enough attention? Take some Tylenol. Jeeze.
After another of these types of encounters, he’d been lying in bed in a darkened room with a bag of frozen peas on his head, melting pea juice sliding coyly down his forearm. He’d been waiting for Preston to come home to cook dinner when he realized he might be like that frog in a pot of water who didn’t know it was slowly being heated up all around him.
He didn’t even like frogs, but there in the darkness, beneath the low throb of headache as he squinted his eyes against the slice of light coming through the mostly closed blinds, came the realization that if he didn’t get out soon, he would never get out.
He wasn’t stupid. But hehadbeen oblivious, and it was as his headaches began to lessen that he began to pay attention. Starting with how Preston cooked what Preston wanted to eat, and to hell with Cal’s requests for steak and eggs.Screw that, Preston would say.Anyone can make that.
And how when Preston wanted to have sex, they would have sex. And that it was to Preston’s taste. Rough and fast, with not enough lube, leaving Cal aching and sore, searching for cream to put up his ass so it would just stop hurting. Searching for the arnica cream for the bruises on his neck and hips, and just how many tubes had he gone through in the last year?
