Page 2 of Compulsion

“What?”

“Making everything a joke, like you’re hiding from anything serious. We’re your friends, remember? We know you from way back, we know you’re a good bloke. You don’t have to keep excusing everything you do. And there’s nothing to be scared of here.”

My mouth was suddenly dry. “I’m not scared. Look, Jack, I’m not keen on getting heavy at the moment. Let’s just go out for the meal, right?”

Louis’s voice floated up from the bottom of my stairs. “Has anyone seen my black jacket? With the silver buttons?”

Jack smiled, but I knew it was an expression of his fondness for Louis rather than a response to anything I said.

Impulsively, I reached over and took Jack’s arm. “I meant it, you know. About being grateful. You’re the best.”

He nodded, his smile for me now. “It’s nothing. Really, it is. We like having you here. We want you to be happy, Max.”

Louis came running up the stairs to stand behind Jack. “Ready, gentlemen? Let’s get going. I want to be there early enough to get a table by the dance floor for when the club music starts.” He leaned up and nuzzled at Jack’s ear, slid a hand around Jack’s waist, and fondled the front of his trousers.

“We haven’t even got out the front door yet,” I grumbled. “If you’re going to jump each other in my doorway, at least move to the side so I can go on ahead and get my food.”

Louis smirked. “We all go together. I don’t trust you not to slide away straight after the pizza.”

“Just an hour or so, you said. I’ll be sociable, I promise you. But then I get a taxi back, okay?”

Louis caught my arm as I wriggled past him. We’d all been laughing, but now he sounded serious too. Seemed they’d launched some kind of pincer attack on me tonight. “Max, we want you to be with us tonight. You don’t have enough fun. You always used to.”

I bit back the instinctively sharp reply. It’d be unfair when it was nothing to do with them. “I’m fine. Honestly. I thought you were the one wanted to get going?”

He grinned, and we made our way down the stairs and out of the flat together. It was a pleasant walk into Brighton and only a mile or so into the town center. My attic room looked out over the road—a steep incline down to the promenade—and on weekend nights, there was plenty of bustle from visitors to the guesthouses up the street. It had been especially busy over the May bank holiday weekend just passed. During the week was a quieter time, with the distant whine of workday traffic passing along the sea front and the occasional bark from a neighbor’s dog. I loved the area—I grew up in foster homes in Hove and Rottingdean. The smell of the sea was in my blood.

Jack and Louis linked arms, and we started the walk down toward the clubs and bars. We’d only get a taxi back if we didn’t feel up to walking at the end of the evening, exactly as we’d always done all through our teenage years. Tonight the sea air was salty and slightly damp, the low breeze tickling the ends of my hair on my shoulders. The weather had been largely rain free for the last week or so, with that pale mistiness over the sun that kept the evenings cooler. The horizon was lit by an early evening rose-gold glow, and the sea was settling into low tide. I could hear waves lapping the stones of the beach and the sharp cries of seagulls swooping down to forage. It had been a busy Saturday for tourists, and there were always plenty of pickings. Eventually the birds would become nothing more than familiar silhouettes against the indigo night sky, their cries dying down until morning.

Louis and Jack spoke in low voices, Louis laughing now and then when Jack obviously teased him. They weren’t excluding me, but the pavement was too narrow for three to walk abreast, and I fell back a few steps quite naturally. My heart was beating too fast and I was stupidly nervous. What the hell was all that about? It was only a club, after all, and I’d been in plenty of them over the years. Yeah, my memories prodded me. You certainly did that.

But now things were different. I wanted control over my life, and that was how things had to be. It wasn’t an option to go back to those days, was it? To that wild, excessive lifestyle—that limbo time between first growing up and finally getting smart. I paused on the pavement for just one second, wondering whether I’d get away with turning back tonight. I knew I wouldn’t.

Maybe, like Jack said, I was scared. But there was no way I could tell my best friends why.

Chapter Two

GOD, but it was hot in the club! And dark, and loud, and everyone looked pale and virtually prepubescent under the neon lights. I refused to believe I was getting too old for gay clubs at twenty-three—I was just out of practice. Louis had bustled us through the pizza restaurant at top speed, but it meant we arrived at Compulsion in time to snatch one of the small tables close to the bar and in full view of the dance floor. Up until midnight, the music was loud enough to enjoy but low enough to chat. Then the lights started flashing, the music was pumped up to full volume, and Louis was itching to get up and dance. One only half-apologetic glance at Jack and then he left us alone at the table. It wasn’t time for his set yet, but he danced for the pleasure of it. He always had. Plenty of eyes followed him into the middle of the wooden dance floor; he was a graceful sway of pale, whipping hair and sexy clothing. We weren’t the only ones fascinated by his sensual gyrations, uplifted by the smile of concentrated joy on his flushing face.

Louis Barrington came from a family that had rarely been out of the headlines in one place or another. His mother was a few degrees of separation from European aristocracy but had married into modern money. I remembered how Louis’s dad—a big name in London city finance—had single-handedly sponsored a new games hall at our school. Louis was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps: he certainly had the brains for it and the drive. But there’d been an awkward couple of years in his midteens when he came out to them, and then when they’d become more or less reconciled to that, he announced he wanted a career in entertainment instead. And he stood his ground until they agreed to a drama studies degree in Sussex rather than the anticipated Oxbridge route. He inherited a small income from his grandparents when he turned twenty-one, but as far as I knew, he never called on his parents for anything else. When we were at Uni together, he supplemented his money with dancing gigs and joined one of those agencies for theatrical extras. I didn’t watch much TV, but I was sure I saw his face in more than a couple of crowd scenes.

Louis was no shrinking violet—he’d always stood out from the crowd, and since he got older and bolder, I could see that he reveled in it. He was gorgeous and bloody vain, but he was determined too. If anyone made it to the top in his chosen occupation, Louis would. Jack told me that every weekend, a small core of fans followed Louis from club to club, wherever he could find a dance booking. Compulsion had been closed for a couple of months in the New Year for refurbishment, but Louis had been on the VIP list ever since the reopening, and it looked like he’d work his usual magic here as well.

“He looks good, eh?” I tried not to bawl into Jack’s ear, though I’d forgotten how difficult it was to be heard in places like this. Jack smelled of some exotic cologne Louis had given him for his last birthday. I bet myself he didn’t wear it Monday to Friday at the science lab, but I didn’t tease him about it.

He didn’t turn to look at me, but I saw his smile as he gazed at Louis. “Damn good. If he does well in the guest spot, they’re talking about a regular booking. He’d love that.” His smile broadened. Louis was laughing at something one of his many friends had said to him as they passed. We couldn’t hear him from where we were, but there was no mistaking the happy way he threw his head back, his eyes glistening in the lights. “Damn good,” Jack repeated, his voice too quiet for me to catch more than a whisper.

I smiled too. Jack Wallis had been one of the steadier guys in my group at school, a bit of a geek and always serious. We laughed tolerantly when he told us he’d be a forensic scientist one day; he was fascinated by the crime series on TV and wanted to be one of those who helped the police. Now who was laughing, when he had a good job and was doing exactly what he planned? And one of the youngest consultants at the company too. All we knew then was that he was the complete opposite to the extrovert Louis. I don’t think we were even sure he was gay, or at least we didn’t discuss it with him. Unlike Louis, who was out, proud, and loud, Jack kept that kind of thing to himself. I don’t think any of us saw it coming until we found the two of them wrapped around each other at a friend’s party, tongues virtually fused in each other’s mouths. It was the summer just after we all left school, and they’d been together ever since, all through college. Jack had gone to a Uni in Kent, but he always kept his home base in Brighton, returning every weekend to be with Louis. Eventually they moved into their own flat, and now they were living a grown-up life. Unlike some others I could mention.

I shifted awkwardly in my seat and Jack turned to face me. He stared at me in his direct way. “You know I was only joking earlier, don’t you?”

The vibration from the music deck throbbed through the floor, warming my belly. “Yeah, of course.” I felt uneasy but managed to grin back. By now we were more than halfway to lipreading over the thudding beat. My chair was knocked by a group of people struggling past the tables to get a drink. I wondered whether to do the same myself: I’d only drunk water with the earlier meal.

“I wasn’t lying,” Jack said. “You do look great tonight. I can’t believe you’re not hit on all the time. And you need it. You need something apart from work and our company.”

Many a true word spoken in jest, I thought. I knew he meant well; both of them did. They just didn’t know what I’d been through—and what I wanted to leave behind. They thought everyone wanted to be like them. “A soul mate like yours?”

Jack may have flushed; I couldn’t really tell in the reflected lights from the bar. “If you don’t feel comfortable here, don’t let us keep you—”