Joe pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “I feel this has to be asked,” he said, a grim tiredness to his voice. “Did you have something to do with the accident?”
She laughed—a startled squawk of humor—and shook her head. “No. God, no.” She tightened her fingers over Joe’s hand. “But it was what I wanted. My husband,a baby, and if this poor woman had to die to get me that… I was okay with it. I couldn’t be that person. I couldn’t take her baby. That’s all I know.”
“Who was she?” Joe asked.
Abigail shook her head. “I don’t know. I never wanted to know. She was bad enough as an idea without being given a name and a face.” She took her glasses off again and wiped the soft skin under her eyes with her knuckles.Tears filled the creases in her skin. “There was a man Harry had hired around that time. Afterwards. An ex-police officer or something. He might know. I’m sorry, but that’s all I can give you.”
It wasn’t much. Cal gingerly put his hand on Joe’s knee, uncertain of how welcome it would be. Joe didn’t slap his hand away, but then, he didn’t seem to have noticed at all. After a moment of awkwardsilence, Abigail glanced over at the still-in-swing party. She nodded briefly and raised her hand in an a-minute-please gesture.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she nudged the chair back to stand up. “I have to go. Tell your father I… I hope he’s well.”
She gave Joe a last, desperate look and then walked quickly away. Her heels clicked against the floor with each step. Cal squeezed Joe’s knee, butJoe still didn’t react. He sat and stared down into his coffee, his hands white-knuckled where they clutched the cup.
“You know, in hindsight,” Cal said as he looked at the untouched puffs of fried sugar and dough on the table, “I should have gotten something that didn’t ooze.”
It didn’t get a laugh, but Joe snorted and relaxed his fingers. He pushed the cup away. “I think this was more of ashortbread conversation really.”
“You okay?”
“Not the conversation I expected,” Joe said. He stared at Abigail’s chair for a second and then abruptly stood up. “But I got the answers I wanted, so we should celebrate, right? What’s the hottest gay club in town? The place to be seen?”
That wasn’t exactly Cal’s scene. He’d dropped off a couple of soap stars at a club a few weeks back, to screamsand camera flashes from the crowd.
“Kiss, Kiss,” he said as he stood up. Joe gave him a look and he grinned sheepishly. “That’s the name. It’s five minutes down the road.”
Joe grabbed the lapel of Cal’s jacket and pulled him forward into a quick, rough kiss that made—from the clatter behind them—the barista drop her tongs in surprise. After a second, Joe leaned his forehead against Cal’s, hisbreath warm against Cal’s mouth.
“Let’s go somewhere I can show you off, then,” he said. “Somewhere I don’t have to think.”
Somewhere, Cal thought wryly, Joe’s lying dad could be scandalized by his son’s bad choices in men. It stung a little, somewhere he didn’t think hehada soft spot, but he supposed if anyone had earned the right to spite his dad, it was Joe.
THE CLUBwas packed,bodies pressed against each other from one side of the raw industrial space to the other. Music pulsed from the speakers, loud enough to rattle the exposed pipes on the ceiling, and hips and shoulders bumped and pressed as people moved to it.
Cal steadied himself against the tide that tried to push him one way or another. The air smelled like sweat and booze. Joe pressed against him, one handunder his silk shirt, his mouth hot against Cal’s neck, and his muscles tight as wires under his skin. Cal could feel the tension under his fingers as he cupped the back of Joe’s neck.
The beer that dangled from his fingers had done nothing to loosen him up, and every time someone bumped into or pressed in around them, it made Joe flinch.
The song faded out on a skirl of electronica and freneticmovement as the dancers slowed down and broke up. A girl, all glitter and hair, laughed and stretched her arms to the ceiling. Her underarms were fuzzy with pink hair.
Cal grabbed Joe’s shirt in both hands and pulled him off the dance floor. They stumbled around the corner of the bar, their reflection caught in the stress of polished and shaped steel, and into the narrow hall that led to theVIP area. It was strung off tonight, a heavy velvet rope pulled across and a chalkboard No Entry sign slung from it.
Cal pushed Joe up against the stripped-down chipped concrete and old-plaster wall. He slanted a hard kiss over Joe’s mouth, the taste of beer and salt ripe against his tongue. Joe hooked his fingers into Cal’s waistband and yanked him closer.
“You’re not having a good time,” Calsaid as he lifted his head. The flicker of the lights in the club cast long blue shadows over the wall.
Joe smirked darkly and arched his hips up off the wall. His cock pushed against Cal’s thigh, hard and insistent. “You sure about that?”
“This?” Cal snaked a hand over Joe’s hip and cupped a handful of ass. He pulled him forward and ground their hips together. Pleasure ached in his thighs andshot, hot and electric, along his taint to the tight pucker of his ass. “Yeah. That out there? Not so much. If you want a headline on TMZ, I can grope your ass on the way out.”
Joe growled under his breath and cupped the side of Cal’s face. He tucked his thumb under Cal’s chin to push his head back and spread his fingers along his cheekbone.
“This isn’t about Harry,” he said roughly. “You’rethe one thing in my life that’s not about him. Asshole.”
Cal twisted his head around to plant a wet-tongued kiss against Joe’s palm. “Sure,” he drawled against the wet patch. “That’s why you wanted everyone to see us?”
“I wanted people to know you were with me, that I knew what this was.” Joe slid his hand down Cal’s neck and traced the lines of ink with his fingertips. “And that I’d be theonly one who got to see it tonight.”
A shiver sparked under Joe’s fingers and ran down Cal’s spine to his tailbone. There was a sweet bloom of warmth in his chest that he didn’t trust. It was easier not to get hurt when you didn’t care. Last time he’d cared, it had been Van, and look how that turned out.
