“No worries.” Nick swung over the gate and bent to look. “What does it look like?”
“A regular one. Silver. I should’ve put it on my keychain.” He kicked a clump of grass aside.
Nick paused to scratch Luger’s ruff as the dog leaned against his leg, tail waving. “Key for what?”
“The big barn.” Brian tried to sound casual. “There’s been a bit of vandalism going around. Doc— Zander said we should start locking the buildings at night.”
“Makes sense. It sucks that there are punks everywhere.” Nick bent and reached under a milkweed. “This it?”
“Yes!” Brian took the key with relief. “Hey, can you pull up that milkweed and toss it over the fence? They’re poison to the goats.”
“Sure.” Nick tugged the plant up and winged it over the wire. “You’re learning farm stuff, huh?”
“Yeah. It’s cool.” He stuffed the key in his pocket. “Thanks.” Nick was standing right beside him, rumpled and grinning in the low North Carolina sunshine, and he had to reach out and grab him and wrap him in tight. Nick hugged him back, arms snug across his back, his smaller body fitting perfectly in Brian’s hold. Brian swayed side to side and buried his face in the faintly sweat-scented curve of Nick’s neck. “You’re here. You’re here. You’re here.” He knew it sounded stupid and couldn’t care. Tears prickled his eyes.
Nick chuckled, soft and low. “Wait till we’re at the motel tonight and you’ll find out how here I am.”
Brian sniffled and let go. “Which motel? Not that last one?” The previous visit, Nick had stayed at a local moldy dump that had nothing good about it except a private room with a door that locked. Which, yeah, had been amazingly good, but the bed had been musty and hard.
“No, we found a better place. Out by the highway. We stopped to leave the truck there and make sure we had rooms.”
“Oh. That’s why you were late. Two separate rooms?”
Nick gave him a shove. “Of course, two rooms. Charlie might be up for a three-way, but I’m not.”
Charlie said, “I like three-ways. But I’ve a feeling when the two of you get going, Colby Keller could walk in and start stripping, and you wouldn’t even notice. I don’t play third fiddle.”
Brian ducked to hide his flush. “Well, I’m glad you’re here. Better than Colby Keller.” Charlie laughed. “Not like that! I mean, you’re a friend. A good friend.” He couldn’t help asking, “Are you sure you want to stay here? There’s not much to do. And share a place with Lori?” He didn’t actually want Charlie to leave. He wanted Nick to have all the good things, including his best friend, after Brian uprooted his life like this. But he had a hard time putting Charlie and Lori together.
“Sure. We’ll see how it goes,” Charlie said easily.
“Lori’s going to be really grateful. Even if she doesn’t seem like it.” Lori sometimes took a favor like it was something you owed her.
“I’m not doing it for Lori. That’s your and Nick’s nephew she’s got cooking, and I love kids. Back on the job, Nick and I both saw too many kids with a single parent, no home, and a shit-poor start in life. This one’s gonna do better.”
Nephew. Brian refused to think about the baby. As long as it was still inside Lori, he could pretend it wasn’t his problem. “Damon will be grateful too,” he offered.
“Yeah, Damon.” Charlie rubbed his chin. “Too much to hope he’ll stay gone, I guess.”
“He might.” But he probably wouldn’t.
Nick said, “You already did Damon a favor, Charlie. A huge one. He owes you bigtime.”
Charlie grinned. “And I’m sure he hates that. You know what showed up in the mail back home with my name on it? An envelope with more than enough cash to cover both our plane tickets and the rental car. No return address, no note.”
Nick snorted. “Son of a bitch. Wait, the rental car was on my card.”
“Finders keepers, losers weepers.”
Nick shook his head. “Cold, man. I’m broke.”
“Talk to Damon, bro. Maybe he’d make you a loan.” Charlie laughed as he dodged Nick’s elbow.
“Don’t ever want to see the bas— guy again.” Nick threw Brian a quick look. “I’m hoping this will be our place to settle down to some peace and quiet. If Damon does show up, that’s a bad sign.”
They all exchanged glances, and Brian looked down at his feet. The bad stuff’s over. It has to be over. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that the violence they’d tried to blow up and drown and hide from might still follow them.
Nick must’ve been thinking along the same lines, because he said, “Should’ve left you behind, Charles. I should’ve gone fully underground, switched trucks, changed my name, gone dark on the way to Brian.”
“Why didn’t you?” Charlie seemed more curious than anything.
“I wanted to have it all— Brian, and you, and my illusions of still being on the right side of the law. I’m too fucking trusting. Trusting Petrosian to control the cops, trusting Damon to keep an eye on the crooks. Hoping the FBI doesn’t have enough interest in Damon to really look for Brian. It’s like a house of cards with a dozen reasons to fall.”
“Once you go dark-side and start using a fake ID, it’s hard to ever come back clean.” Charlie shrugged. “We’re here now. Let’s give it a shot. I was spinning my wheels on the West coast. I’m looking forward to being somewhere Mom can’t hover over me night and day.” He slapped Nick’s arm lightly. “Come on, Nicko, you’re making your boyfriend sad.”
Brian swallowed the bitterness at the back of his throat and tried to grin, but Nick hugged him hard enough to puff the breath out of him and said, “Sorry. He’s right. And I am so, so fucking glad to be here.”
Brian clung back just as tightly, which led to another long, hot kiss, until Charlie coughed. “There is someplace between sad and ready to blow your wad, y’know?”
Brian broke away, sure his face was red again. “We should head on up to the house. Yasmin’s making dinner.”
“Hop in. We’ll give you and the mutt a ride,” Nick said.
“Pull through the gate first.”
He latched the gate behind them, commanded Luger to jump into the back seat, and got in beside him. Nick met his gaze in the rearview as he put the car in gear. “You don’t lock that gate?”
“Uh, no.” It was out of sight of the house. It’d be a real pain to have to do that.
“How bad has the vandalism been?”
“Just stuff damaged.” He shrugged a shoulder. “I’d have told you if it was worse than that. A few places around here.”
“Like…?”
This wasn’t what he wanted to talk about right now, but it was probably good for Nick and Charlie to know. “I guess in the last couple of weeks, three of the big horse farms had expensive stuff wrecked. Fancy saddles one place, video cameras in a barn, and some hot-walker contraption at another. A dairy farm had their milk machine clogged up with Gorilla glue. Stuff like that.”