A voice in the background from Carter’s end interrupted his answer. Reed strained to hear but couldn’t make out the words, only that the voice was high and light. Was that his child? The boy named Jacks from the text? He could tell Carter had placed a hand over the phone to shield the sound. Unashamed of the eavesdropping attempt, Reed strained to listen but could only make out garbled noise. Obviously Carter didn’t want him to hear whoever it was.
“I have to go.”
“But—”
The phone went dead, and Reed was left staring at the inanimate object in his shaking hands. Goddamn it. Before he could stop himself he threw the phone to the ground, watching it bounce around on the floor. Instead of picking it up, he kicked it across the bar, getting a vicious kind of satisfaction in watching the screen fracture. He bent down, and without even looking to see the extent of the damage, shoved the phone in his pocket and turned to a stunned Vernon, who stood several feet away from him.
Reed sat in the front seat on a roller coaster of unrestrained emotions, incapable of holding back or holding on. If he didn’t leave the bar right now, he’d splinter apart and end up lying in pieces on a dirty barroom floor. A pathetic Humpty Dumpty.
“I can’t—I gotta…” His breaths came in sharp gasps and sweat poured down his face. Indiscriminate sound rushed in his ears, all the laughter and chatter in the bar melding together to form white noise. He caught sight of Vernon’s shocked face, and before he lost it altogether, he squeezed his eyes shut.
“I gotta go. I’m not feeling well.”
“Sure, kid. You want me to call your dad?”
Oh, God, that’s all I need.Reed hunched his shoulders, wishing he could crawl into his skin, pull the world over his head, and remain buried like a fossil. “No, I’ll be all right.” He finally drew in enough air to steady his breathing and halt the shaking.
He slanted a look up at Vernon and gave a feeble smile he hoped would satisfy the man and wipe the worried look from his face. At twenty-seven years old he shouldn’t feel like a broken child, but that’s how it was sometimes. His illness was the master puppeteer and he merely the disjointed marionette who flopped up and down while anxiety played on the strings of his life.
“See?” Reed straightened up to his full height and forced his trembling lips to smile. “I’m fine.” The fact that his disease could consume him like this still, after all the years of treatment and medication, tormented him. So many times over the years he believed he was finally getting a handle on it—and even though Dr. Childs told him he wasn’t going to outgrow his anxiety and ADHD and he should stop fighting it—understand its effect on his mind and body, and work through it, a part of him still secretly hoped one day to wake up cleansed and new. Reborn as someone else. Someone normal.
“You don’t look fine. You’re all sweaty and pale, and a minute ago I thought you were gonna heave all over my bar.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” He grabbed his jacket from Clay, the other bartender, who’d gone to the office to get it for him. “Thanks, man.”
“No problem. Go home and get some rest, dude. You look like shit.”
Without answering or waiting for Vernon to say anything further, Reed left the bar, kept his head down, and walked briskly to the subway entrance. Lucky for him the train was entering the station as he swiped his MetroCard, and he also managed to snag a seat in a corner. All things that, had he been in the right frame of mind, as a native New Yorker would’ve put him in a good mood. Instead, he huddled up against the wall of the subway car and wondered if he had enough courage to do the smart thing and call it quits with Carter.
Chapter Ten
‡
On one ofthose longed for spring days, when you knew you were finally out of the clutches of the long, cold winter, but crisp coolness still bit through the morning air, Carter’s already thinly stretched nerves teetered on the breaking point. For over a week Jacks had been having night terrors again, and last night had been one of the worst yet. He’d cried late into the night that he was being good and to please not send him away. It broke Carter’s heart to fucking pieces, thinking his little brother still didn’t feel safe after everything he’d tried to do.
Carter stayed up with him, holding his shaking body, reassuring him that they’d always be together and nothing and no one would ever come between them. Ever. Only reverting to their routine of three years earlier when Jacks had first come to live with him and Carter singing him lullabies had settled him down to sleep.
Once Jacks stayed asleep, and for the rest of the week, Carter had made up a makeshift bed on the floor to stay with him and watch over him while he slept. He’d catch a quick catnap but nowhere near a full night’s rest. Although he’d rarely had a peaceful night of sleep, this arrangement began to wear on his nerves, and he longed for his time with Reed in their private haven.
Somehow, the hotel suite he and Reed shared for their weekends had become more comfortable than his own home. On Saturdays the maid, blushing a hot pink and looking everywhere but at them, had to kick them out of the suite to make up the bed and clean the rooms. As if they needed to hold on to the memories of their weekend together to get them through the rest of the month, their final lovemaking on Sundays turned greedy and more physical. Often the mattress lay tipped off the bedframe to one side, the sheets strewn about, and the air had that unmistakable scent ofsomeone got well fucked in here.Their mutual desperation to hold on to each minute and every piece of one another transferred into furious, desperate sex, and Carter relished each bruise and mark Reed left upon his body with his lovemaking.
With Jacks clingy, and having little time for anything other than his care, Carter found himself tempted to call Reed, to talk to the only person who didn’t know Carter the businessman or Carter the caretaker, but simply Carter the man. On several occasions he even pulled up Reed’s number and stared at the screen but in the end decided against it, not willing to lead him on. After that unexpected text from Reed, Carter suspected Reed might have developed feelings for him; not love, because how could Reed love him? He didn’t know Carter, only the man Carter allowed him to see. The real Carter was nothing but ugliness; a fake and a fraud.
If your own mother didn’t want you, why would anyone else? And so Carter remained behind that impenetrable wall of aloofness, content in his make-believe image of strength and mystery. But in those early, silent hours, alone with nothing but the truth mocking him, Carter could confess he wanted nothing more sometimes than to be held, or told he was wanted…needed…loved.
That’s when the devil, who resided permanently on his shoulder, would poke at him and laugh, calling Carter a stupid romantic fool. He wouldn’t recognize love if it kicked him in the balls, and most likely it would end up being almost as painful. There was no point in wishing for love anyway; he’d gotten through his life so far without it, and except for Jacks, he’d never allowed himself to love anyone. Life was about fighting through the day and getting it done. Rinse and repeat.
But Reed upended him. Reed, with his gorgeous face and that mouth Carter could explore for hours, reveling in his plush lips and honey-sweet tongue. All the sweetness disappeared, however, once they were alone and in bed. The hesitancy and jitteriness Carter spied sometimes in Reed vanished, leaving behind a man who took control and gave Carter the most intense sexual experiences of his life. Like himself, Reed was a study in contrast, only Reed’s face was an open book, somewhat like Jackson’s. He couldn’t hide his emotions—they were right there, shining from his eyes.
His fingers skimmed over the surface of the phone screen, tracing pictures of the two of them. First a silly selfie shot Reed took with Carter’s phone as they skated around the ice rink, then one he took the last time they were together of Reed while he slept, his hands tucked under the pillow and one long, naked leg exposed. The warmth of his fiery kisses remained fresh in Carter’s mind, as if he’d left him only that morning. Carter turned in his makeshift bed, the white emptiness next to him stretching out in a barren expanse of loneliness.
Rather than call Reed and break his own rules, Carter remained content to stare at his phone, awash in remembrances of their nights together, knowing all too clearly their time together was running short. This was the longest he’d ever spent with one man, and he waited for the time when they’d grow tired of each other’s company. Reed texting him to talk that one time seemed to be an excuse to get closer. Soon there’d be demands on Carter’s time he wouldn’t be able to fulfill because of his responsibility to Jackson.
Strangely enough, Reed had never brought up the text Carter had sent him by mistake, but Carter suspected it sat somewhere in Reed’s mind, ticking like a time bomb waiting to explode. Reed was too smart and sensitive to forget something like that, but Carter wasn’t about to reveal Jacks’s identity to anyone, not even to Reed who’d managed to somehow infiltrate the impenetrable wall between his personal and home life. He buried his head in the pillows and willed himself to get a few hours of sleep.
In the morning, by the time Helen showed up to take Jacks to school, Carter had recovered from his nighttime maudlin reminiscing, his armor of invincibility firmly back in place. Jackson and his night terrors were what mattered, not stupid, silly dreams of Reed and himself playing house.
Helen’s expertise with special-needs children proved invaluable as he navigated these unfamiliar waters of prepubescent behavior and childhood friendship dynamics. The moment she walked through the front door he asked her about Jacks’s newest string of nightmares, not even waiting for her to remove her jacket or talk about the weather.
