Brady let out a humorless laugh. “As am I,” he said, meaning it. “I love the little goombahs too—don’t doubt it. But that brings us back to, oh my God, how much money do youhave? Enough to buy you a fake identity—”
“Several,” Eric conceded.
“And to buy Jai a ‘burner car,’ I guess on the drop of a dime. How much is that?”
“A lot,” Eric told him, with no bitterness and a trace of pride. “I have alotof money, although a lot of that is smart investments and keeping it in different places once those investments pay off. But you’re right,” he said, some of the wiliness seeming to seep out of him. “I got the seed money for those investments in ways you might not approve of.”
“How, Eric?” Brady said, finally done with the glass, he thought with a sweep of light. He picked up a gauze pad and gave it some more passes with the lidocaine cleaner. “I’m done with the vagueness. I’m all in. You and your friends with their ‘questionable skills’ that I ‘might not approve of’ are about to go to extraordinary lengths to bring a terrible crime to light—and toindict an entire corrupt sheriff’s department. You are all takingphenomenalrisks. You know who I am, and you know why I’m doing it. I’ve got… glimmers, I guess, of why they are. Jason and Burton don’t like to let injustice slide. Ernie is so sensitive to the world around him, I think he needs to keep pain from happening any way he can. Same with George and his boss, Amal. Ace—Ace saw something that needed doing, and….” He trailed off, not wanting to state this baldly, but needing to.
“Sonny,” Eric said softly.
“Yeah. Sonny.” Brady stopped scrubbing and started spreading the ointment, using a cotton swab. “He… whatever happened to him, that Ace knows about and the others suspect, it was bad.”
“You know what I do there,” Eric said softly. “Although I didn’t know about Cotton until today. It’s funny—I only saw the beautiful boy. Not to sound dirty, but his porn isoutstanding.”
Brady chuckled, because how could he not? “I’ll take your word for it,” he said, continuing to work. “Now that I’ve met him, watching him have sex on film would feel rude.”
“I had to cancel my membership to his company,” Eric confessed, sounding disgruntled. “I just kept thinking, ‘That kid’s probably Cotton’s friend too,’ and they’re all, you know, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one.”
“Too young for us,” Brady said in agreement.
“Indeed.” Eric sighed, and Brady sensed his regard in the dark. “I… I like a man more my age. Somebody more… circumspect.”
“Less likely to freak out,” Brady said dryly.
“Well, yes,” Eric agreed. “That.” Then he blew out a breath. “But, full disclosure, I need to say somebody I could trust not to slit my throat as I slept. Because… well, it’s been a while since I hung out with that kind of man.”
Brady swallowed and started with the bandages. “Which brings us back to….”
Eric hung his head. “What do you think—”
“Just tell me, Charlie,” Brady said, making the bandage fast. When he was sure the tape would hold, he gave Eric a brief, reassuring pat on the thigh. “Any other hurts before I pack this up?”
“No,” Eric said. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.”
Brady busied himself with cleanup and gave Eric a chance to speak without prompting. He felt like maybe Eric would be more truthful that way.
“My old man was a piece of work,” Eric said after a moment. Brady disposed of the bandages and gauze in a plastic bag and returned to the couch to pack the rest of the box.
“I’m sorry,” Brady said, meaning it. His Uncle Jimmy was the same piece of work, but Brady hadn’t had to live with that asshole. His cousins had, though, and to a one, they had ended up shiftless, hustling, addicted. Children learn the worst things from a parent who teaches with a hard fist.
“It’s not your fault.” Eric blew out a breath. “Jai had it pegged, though. He said that people who end up like me and him get broken somehow. He got broken by Mother Russia and the gangster who picked up his marker when he was a boy, and I got broken playing—” He let out a humorless snort. “—dodge the fist. His words. He’s very poetic.”
“Among other things.” Brady rolled his eyes.
“Yeah. Well, my old man was bad enough—I didn’t need Mother Russia’s help. I thought it was bad that he beat on us—all five of us, six if you count my mom. He was an asshole, and I… well, I planned my escape. I had my arm and a hell of a fastball—but I also had acting. I was good at it. I loved it, in fact. And I had good grades. I was going to go to college and get the fuckout of Southie.” Eric’s affluent, upper-crust accent had slipped as he’d spoken about his father, and Brady—who knew his own flat midwestern twang was like a giant red stripe across his shirt—was grateful. No matter how rough this story, he thought, he could deal with it if Eric was speaking asCharlie, and not the glacial-eyed stranger he’d erected as his stand-in.
“I take it that didn’t happen,” Brady offered. While shorter than Eric—and therefore usually the little spoon in bed—here on the long bench couch, Brady could jam himself into the corner, thrust one leg along the back of the bench, and still have room for Eric to lean against him.
He did that, pulling Eric’s long, heavy body into his arms, leaning his forehead against Eric’s crown.
“This is nice,” Eric said softly. “Is this so you don’t have to look at me when the story gets rough?”
“No,” Brady said, nuzzling his nape. “It’s so I can hold you and hear you, and we can sit together in this empty place.” The breeze coming through the broken window was getting cold, and Eric’s body heat helped keep the chill of the winter desert at bay. Brady had never felt like he and a lover were alone in all the world until this moment, when it was as though the moon could hear their heartbeats and would keep their secret words in the vault of darkness at its back.
“You’re so good.” Eric sighed, turning his head to kiss Brady’s shoulder. “Just… whatever you think about me after this, you gotta know. I think you’re good.”
