A Shadow of Wings (9 page)

“Well, then,” Dylan said with a smirky grin, “you seem pretty fucking miserable already. What’s a little more?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look at you. You slink around like a whipped puppy with its tail between its legs. For someone who can fight, it’s like you got no fight in you. That’s no way to live.”

“It’s the way I have to. You don’t understand. There’s no way you could.” When he tried to walk away, Dylan grabbed his arm tight.

“Then explain it to me.” His fingers were like a vise. “Because it pisses me off to see you so beat down. Being sheltered is one thing. Being confined like a fucking animal is another.”

“I’m not an animal.” But the chain seemed to tighten around his throat, and he hooked his fingers around it.

“What is that thing, anyhow?” Dylan pushed his hand away. “What’s this, some kind of gimp collar?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Did Tash put this on you?”

“No, the brothers did,” he answered without thinking.

“There’s more of them? You got other brothers?”

“Not like that.” He’d said too much. His heart beat like a wild bird. He didn’t belong here, shouldn’t have come. “I have to go.”

“Why’s there no clasp?”

He stared at the floor, realized his feet hadn’t obeyed his command to move toward the door. “What?”

“On that chain. I was looking at it last night while you slept. It’s one continuous piece. No ends.” Dylan pulled down the neckline of Cam’s T-shirt. His fingers felt cool on Cam’s skin. “I never seen nothing like it.” He touched the gold collar, and a shiver flushed over Cam’s entire body.

Dylan rolled the charmed collar between his fingers, his knuckles brushing against the pulse pounding at the base of Cam’s throat. “Why’d they put this on you?”

“I can’t say.”

“Can I take it off?” His fingers tightened around it, testing.

“You must never.” Cam jerked away, eyes nearly meeting Dylan’s before he remembered and dropped them. “You must never,” he said more evenly.

“Why not?” Dylan approached again, backing him against the wall, trapping him with his voice, that voice that calmed savage beasts. He lifted a hand and stroked it over Cam’s chest, settled the palm over his racing heart. “What’s got you so scared, huh? You’re safe here.”

To Cam’s horror, a great ball of emotion rose up to choke him. He swallowed it down and knotted his fists by his side. The desperation with which he wanted this connection with Dylan rocked him to his core. It was unnatural, what he was feeling. Sinful. “You saw what happened to your neighbor. That’s nothing. Nothing compared to…what I can do.”

“I told you”—Dylan continued his gentle stroking, moving closer still—“I’m not afraid of you.”

“You should be,” Cam whispered just as Dylan kissed him. Soft, soft lips, light and undemanding. Then again, openmouthed, tongue touching Cam’s lower lip. Cam shivered, every ounce of his being focused on that light, damp pressure.

Just as he started to lean into it, hands sliding around Dylan’s hips, Dylan drew back. “Let’s eat. First,” he said, and with a sly smile, took Cam by the hand and gently led him like a lamb to the mattress.

Dylan lit a candle in a jar and set it off to one side while Cam tried to get comfortable on the air mattress. He blew out the match. In the yellow glow, Cam looked supremely uneasy, eyes darting beneath the hank of dark hair that fell over his forehead, his fingers lacing and unlacing. Probably if he could have gotten up and started pacing, he would have. The gold collar gleamed. Without a word, Dylan went to get plastic-ware for them and a couple of leftover microwave dishes he’d saved from the times he’d gotten frozen dinners. He pulled open the minifridge. “I got beer and water. Pick your poison.”

“Beer. Please.” That soft, lilting voice wavered with uncertainty. Dylan liked it. He planned to keep Cam off balance all night, tipping, teetering until he fell right into Dylan’s arms. He knew he’d nearly lost him a minute ago. Cam had been ready to run. This issue would need to be approached delicately, sidelong, with quiet steps and whispered words to convince Cam to stay. Dylan wanted more of those trembling kisses and fingers clutching at him as if Dylan was Cam’s lifeline. He needed to understand what had Cam so freaked. Okay, so maybe Dr. M was right and Dylan had a hell of a rescuer streak. So what?

He took the caps off the bottles of two Bud Lights and brought them over to the mattress. “It’s all right, baby. It really is. Your brother doesn’t know where I live, and if you’re worried about old Jose, trust me, even if he called the cops, they wouldn’t show. Only thing that would bring them down to this neighborhood would be a murder.”

“Are there many of those?”

“Enough. There’re a few gangs around here. Cops can’t keep a lid on ’em.” He shrugged and sat cross-legged across from him on the air mattress, which whistled under his weight. “Much as I don’t like Jose, him and that shotgun keep us safer.” He took a drink of his beer and watched Cam roll his bottle between his palms, his gaze focused on the candle in the jar. Gently, Dylan reached out and rubbed his fingers across Cam’s knee. 

Cam startled a little, then visibly relaxed under the soft pressure. Dylan spread his palm over Cam’s thigh, stroking, watching his face, where a dozen conflicting emotions roiled. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

Cam closed his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

He didn’t know what he wanted. That was the real message. Suddenly, Dylan didn’t care if they ate either. Nothing intrigued him more than this shy, complicated kid sitting across from him. But he knew if he rushed things, he might scare Cam off, so instead of doing what his dick demanded, he leaned back and opened the Chinese food bag.

“Can you get the plates? There—” He nodded toward where he’d left the old microwave-dinner dishes, and Cam picked them up. Dylan served out the rice and lo mein. The delicious odor filled the air, and his mouth watered. His little girlfriend-wannabe at the restaurant had charged him only five bucks for the whole thing. The meal came with two sets of plastic chopsticks, and Cam amazed him by taking a pair out of the cellophane and digging into his noodles like a pro.

“Whoa, Jet Li, you know how to use those things?” Dylan went for the fork, then changed his mind and unwrapped the other set of chopsticks.

“These cheap ones are a little slippery, but yeah. We lived in Thailand for almost a year. I got pretty good.”

“Can you catch a fly?”

“What?”

“Like in that movie.
The Karate Kid
. Ever seen it?”

When Cam shook his head, Dylan clicked his chopsticks together. “This boy is learning karate, and his teacher makes him catch a fly in midair with these things.” He stabbed at the rice. “At least I think it was that movie.”

“I haven’t seen many movies,” Cam said, his tone so wistful Dylan might have said he’d been to some wonderful exotic resort. “Not in the theater, anyhow. There’s never enough time.”

“No? What do you do, anyhow, with that brother of yours?” 

Cam shrugged, chewing. “We travel, like I said. We train. We study.”

“Is he like you?” Dylan ventured around a mouthful of food. “With the eyes?”

Cam’s gaze lowered even farther, if that were possible, and his shoulders hunched. That question hit a nerve. Dylan didn’t think he’d answer, and then Cam nodded.

“Runs in the family?” 

Cam took a long drink of his beer and swallowed. Then he nodded again. Cat got his tongue, apparently.

Dylan chewed his bottom lip before asking his next question. “Does he wear a gold collar too?”

Cam set down his plate. “Please don’t ask me these questions.”

Dylan put a hand on his leg before he could leap up, which it looked like he was about to do. “Hey. It’s all right. I’ll stop digging. It’s just… I want to know you.”

“There’s nothing to know,” he said shortly, not with anger but with obvious tension, then sipped at his beer again. 

“Okay, man, it’s cool. We all got our issues, believe me.” He slid his hand away once he felt Cam settle again. He picked up his plastic fork, abandoning the chopsticks. “So, you told me a little about you. Now I’ll answer a question. Go ahead, shoot, whatever you want to know.”

Cam perked up. “How long have you been away from your family? How’d you end up here?”

“That’s two questions, but whatever. I ain’t told this story to nobody else for a long time.” Not since he’d had to swallow his pride and go into a homeless shelter for the first time. His blood still ran to ice when he remembered that night, one in what had become a long chain of bad nights. 

“Go on,” Cam said, gesturing with his chopsticks. “Unless you don’t want to tell me. You don’t have to, but…I want to know about you too.”

Nearly every other person in Dylan’s life had taken his words and his heart and thrown them back at him, twisted and broken. Hell, for all he knew, Cam would do the same, but then, it wasn’t likely they’d be in each other’s lives long enough to draw that kind of blood. “You know how I asked you if maybe your brother didn’t know you’re gay?”

Cam nodded, chewing but clearly hanging on Dylan’s every word.

Between bites, Dylan said, “I asked because that’s how it was for me and my family. I hid it for a long time. I always knew, but my parents divorced when I was six, and I figured my mom had enough on her mind, trying to keep a roof over our heads. I thought she’d probably be okay with it, but then she met this guy I called Marvelous Marvin.” He took a swig of his beer, for courage as well as to dampen his tightening throat. This wasn’t easy shit to talk about.

“I suspect maybe he wasn’t so marvelous,” Cam said. 

“You could say that. They met in church. He convinced her to marry him. Well, hell, he had a nice house, a good job. He could give her everything we’d been struggling for since my dad left us. I can’t blame her.” Or at least he didn’t want to blame her, not his mom. The weight of that betrayal still rode his shoulders, though.

“You don’t have to tell me more,” Cam murmured. He’d slid closer to Dylan while he talked. In the dim glow of the votive in the jar, his eyes looked luminous, unearthly. Dylan just wanted to fall into them and forget everything. Instead, he focused on his lo mein. 

“Nah, it’s okay. I want to.” Cam covered Dylan’s hand with his own. The gesture moved Dylan to go on. “Marvin brainwashed her. My mom had always been a fighter. She laughed a lot, joked around. After a couple of years with Marvin, it was like she was walking on eggshells all the time. 

“I think…I’m sure she knew about me. She used to drag me to church with her, and I started hooking up with the pastor’s kid. We were the same age, sixteen, both horny as hell. I guess he was my first real boyfriend. We’d go up to the empty choir loft during the service and make out. My poor ma, she thought I was doing the youth group. Instead, I was doing Josh Myers.” He couldn’t help a wry snort. Cam looked a bit horrified, and Dylan swallowed. “Anyhow, I’m sure she had plenty of sleepless nights worrying about what would happen if Marvin found out. And of course, he did.”

“How?”

“I told him. One night, he just totally pissed me off, and I told him I’d been blowing his precious pastor’s kid.” He sucked in a breath and let it out, feeling his heart thudding at the memory of what had transpired that night. “Like most every other day, I was mouthing off to him. I couldn’t help it. I hated the guy. He was so fucking self-righteous, always going on about how children should be forced to pray in school and how anyone who didn’t believe like he did should be kicked out of America. And of course, he had a special hatred for fags. His word, not mine.” 

Dylan turned his hand over to lace his fingers through Cam’s. “Anyhow, we used to fight all the time over that shit while my mother slinked around, afraid to say anything. Finally, one night, I couldn’t stop myself. I told him what I’d been doing. Said I was proud of it too, and then I told him I’d been sucking Josh Myers’s dick in church. Oh man, that was the wrong thing to say to old Marvin.”

“What happened?” Cam tightened his fingers around Dylan’s.

“He threw me out. He threw
everything
out, right into a pile on the lawn, all my stuff. He said I was dead to him and my mother, that I should go and never come back.”

“But your mother…”

“She was crying and all, but she stood there and watched while I turned and walked away with nothing but the clothes on my back.” 

“Dylan…” 

“After that, I lived wherever I could. With friends, until their parents found out and they kicked me out too. I had to dodge the cops since I was underage for that first year, but there was no way in fuck I was going back to that house or into a foster home. My father lives in Canada, and he never even answered my calls or letters. I spent that winter in a tent in the woods. Finally, I hooked up with this one guy. I was seventeen, and he was twenty-eight. I met him in a park. He picked me up.” He would have done anything at that point. The hunger had been almost unbearable, the fear of being alone even worse. “Fortunately for me, he wasn’t as bad as he could’ve been. He gave me a place to stay, food. Only knocked me around a little.”

That strange dimming of the light happened again, shading the flickering candle. It was the weirdest thing. This time, instead of blinking, Dylan let his eyes stare out at nothing in particular, as if he was trying to pick out a faint star in the night sky. A chill of awareness tripped down his spine when he realized the phantom shape wasn’t his imagination. Something swept around them like a gauzy shadow, not even substantial enough to move the air. He knew it came from Cam. It had to. First the eyes, now this. But what was it? 

“I’m so sorry, Dylan. You don’t have to tell me anymore if it’s too painful.”

He reached over and brushed his fingers through Cam’s thick, soft hair. When Dylan looked at him like this, Cam seemed normal enough. Fucking freaky. “You don’t want to hear no more?”

“No. It’s just…hard to. When I think of someone hurting you…” A muscle ticked in Cam’s jaw, and once again, that shadow moved around them. Dropping his gaze to his plate, Dylan observed from the corners of his eyes. Fucking Christ on a cracker. He struggled not to jump and give himself away. Shadow shapes waved behind Cam’s back, slowly forward, slowly back. If he tried to see them directly, they disappeared, but he could detect them obliquely, from the edges of his vision.