Whatever the Cost (18 page)

Jacen sits up too, pulling the covers with him in a sad attempt at modesty. “So that’s why Spencer’s not a big deal to me, okay? I’ve had worse, and at least with him it’s not personal. He doesn’t care about me; it’s all selfish and physical. That’s why Patrick’s not so scary either. I’m bigger than him. I can defend myself if I have to. And I didn’t want your pity, Liam, or have to face this shit again. It was done. It was buried.

“I’d like you to leave,” Jacen says quietly.

Closing his eyes, Jacen takes a shaky breath. There is no sign of Liam getting off the bed. No footsteps receding out into the hall. On the contrary, the bed shifts, as Liam comes closer.

“
Please
leave,” Jacen prays.

Liam swings a leg over Jacen’s lap, settling down on it, winding his legs behind Jacen’s back, pulling Jacen’s arms open and wrapping him in a close, intimate embrace.

“I’m never leaving you,” Liam promises. “This wasn’t your fault. None of it.”

“I’m disgusting.”

“You’re beautiful.”

“You can’t fix me.”

“I want to try to heal you.”

“You don’t really love me.”

“I do. And I’ll prove it.”

Jacen sighs. Liam is warm breath and a solid weight, anchoring him, soothing him.

“I’m running away again, aren’t I?”

“Yes. One last time. It’ll be okay. We’ll do it together.”

Jacen wants to believe it. He wants that with all of his heart. But his faith in others, in the world, and God died long ago in the hands of an evil, very sick man. There is no other choice though, than to give in to Liam. Jacen has said so himself, and very recently, that he can’t do this anymore. His life is one that he hates and it does not fit who he is any longer. There is nothing in it for him other than Liam, so where Liam goes, Jacen is helpless but to follow.

As tired as Jacen is, he will not be getting any sleep that night. The day had started out just like any other, with him submitting to Patrick, his client, and his changeable whims; but it led, somehow, to Jacen making and professing love to Liam. With crickets chirping outside the window, standing in the upstairs office of their house with Liam seated at the desk as he pours over numbers and contracts, Jacen nurses his cup of espresso and tries to stay focused.

“This is insane,” he murmurs. The entirety of what they need to accomplish in the next eighteen hours is mind boggling.

“We can always leave after my job,” Liam tells him.

“No.”

“It’s just the cowboy. He’s not going to get weird with me, and I might even be able to convince him to receive this time instead of me. It’d buy us another... nine hours... before your appointment with Bruce, to get out of town.”

“No.”

“Jacen, we need to be reasonable,” Liam sighs. “I’m supposed to be there at noon. That gives us roughly six hours of daylight to get everything done and get far enough away to elude these bastards.”

“If you get to make rules about who I have sex with, then I want the same privilege,” Jacen argues quietly. “I don’t want him touching you. Even if he is nice.”

Reactions flit over Liam’s face. He knows that Jacen’s rationale is logical, that Liam shouldn’t expect to dish it out without getting some right back. And there’s no way in hell that he’s backing down on his stance on Jacen taking any more jobs. It’s just that no one, not even Timothy, ever got to tell Liam what to do with his own body when it came to this, the way he has always made his living.

“This shouldn’t be too much to ask, Lee,” Jacen tells him gently.

It’s a matter of principle, maintaining control of his own life, more than wanting to fuck other people. Though there is a small voice at the back of Liam’s mind reminding him how much he had been hoping for and looking forward to another job with Tucker. If Liam was to date one of his clients, excluding Jacen of course, Tucker would be the one. Liam liked him a lot.

But he
loves
Jacen.

“We’ll give it a shot,” Liam relents. “Okay? And try to get out of here by noon. But if it doesn’t happen, then....” Liam leaves it hanging there, but the anxiousness in Jacen’s face moves him to add, “I’d be doing it for us. Hell, I’ve been doing this for a decade, since I was nineteen. One more time won’t kill me.”

“One time is all it takes,” Jacen counters, thinking of Timothy, but not able to actually throw his tragic fate directly in Liam’s face. “If we’re saying we’re done with this, I want to be done. Both of us. For good.”

Trying to steer the conversation in another direction, Liam says, “I don’t want to argue with you. Let’s go over this again. I moved all of my money to one of my private accounts that isn’t connected to The Company, and set everything in motion to close the others tomorrow, the next business day. I set up a new account for you in your legal name, with new account numbers. It’s all there. It won’t all transfer until the morning, when the banks open. And we need to pack. I don’t know about you but I don’t have that much I need to take. Do we have boxes?”

“Yeah. There should be enough. There’s a bunch stashed in the attic from when I moved in. I do kind of have a lot to pack, all the kitchen stuff, the cookware. I’m taking that with me.”

“We can buy new kitchen stuff,” Liam tells him.

“I know. But it’s mine. I don’t have a lot that’s mine. If I have to drop everything and go, I’m at least taking what I can.”

“Fine. Okay. What else. How about transportation?”

“We can’t take either of our trucks,” Jacen says. “Even if we got new plates somehow, we don’t know if they’re tracking them in other ways. They told us they had security measures in place considering we went on jobs in our own vehicles. It’s fully possible they planted something on them and it’d take too long to check them thoroughly and make sure they’re totally clean. We have to leave them.”

Liam sighs, knowing he’s right.

“When the dealerships open I’ll go buy a new truck. Cash. We’ll load the bed with our stuff and take that,” Jacen says. “And where are we going?”

“One of the guys I used to live with, another foster brother; I, um, used to be in email contact with him, but that was years ago. I can put out a message to him, see if he gets back to me. Last I heard he was up near San Luis Obispo. That’s where I’d go, and it’s still close enough to Yasha that, theoretically, you could meet up for visits if you wanted to. I know it’s important to you to stay in contact with him. But I’d rather have some sort of connection and not just go out there blind.”

“So, we go north to San Luis Obispo. Get a room somewhere for a few days while we decide what to do, where to settle down?”

“Yeah,” Liam nods.

“This is insane.”

“Yeah,” Liam agrees. “You got a better plan?”

“Nope,” Jacen admits with widened eyes dancing with caffeine-generated energy. “What’s your friend’s name?”

“Dice.”

“
Dice
?”

“Yeah. Well, his real name’s Clay Martinez, but his deal used to be that he’d hustle people with table games. So... Dice.”

“We’re ditching our whole lives and putting our faith in someone named Dice that you haven’t even spoken to in years?”

“He’s my brother. I trust him completely. And you’re putting your faith in
Yasha
, so....”

“Touché.”

“It’s gonna be fine, Jace. You’ll see.” The words seem convincing enough, but the dark, sunken look to Liam’s eyes, the strain in his face, his posture, the fear... it portends differently. “We should start packing our stuff and clean house. Time’s running out.”

Jacen nods, hands cupped around the warm ceramic mug, his body throbbing from being with Liam, reminding him keenly how very much things have changed already.

It takes them all night to scour the house, gathering every scrap or shred of important or personal information, every possession, every token, every single thing that they can’t bear to leave. Jacen’s apron from Liam, his spices, pots and pans, knives and cookbooks, it all gets packed away, along with their magnets and the collection of post-it notes from Jacen that Liam has saved in a little stack with a purple paperclip holding them together—previously tucked away in a drawer by the sink, but now safely stowed in one of their boxes. The big things, like furniture, linens, towels, electronics, lamps, are all deemed replaceable and stay.

They both stuff their suitcases with clothes but most of their abundant wardrobes do not come with them. Their more outlandish costumes and footwear, used solely for pleasing their clients, are not wanted or needed. Most of what Liam decides to pack is a collection of clothing, toiletries and mementos. The biggest items he packs are his leather jacket and the handmade quilt given to him one Christmas when he was five by a grandmotherly lady he was in the care of at the time, and who passed away shortly after.

The dawn creeps up on them. Jacen throws together a bizarre yet elaborate breakfast from some of the more decadent ingredients in their fridge, just to use it all up. Then he leaves to buy a new truck.

Liam wanders through the house that is owned by The Company, to whom they pay rent. He gathers everything that they’ve packed near the side door, to be loaded in the new truck once Jacen gets back. He tries to let himself believe that this is truly the last morning he will ever be in that place, or be whom he currently is. Overnight, he will shed his skin and be reborn as something he cannot yet fathom. For all of his determination to get himself and Jacen away from there, and to safety, it scares Liam most of all to anticipate what life will be like when he does not have his familiar routine and duties to hide behind.

Out of his whole life, there was only a small portion of it, a gathering of mere months, in which he was nothing but himself, Liam, living only for what he wanted. He’s not sure he knows how to be that person any longer. How will he be able to make Jacen happy, to be a whole person and take care of him, when Liam doesn’t even know who he is when he looks in the mirror? And even if he figures it out, how can he dare give his heart away to someone to be broken for the second time? Is there even enough of his heart left to give? Is all he is an act? When it’s all stripped away, what remains?

It’s too late,
the ghost of Timothy whispers to him.
You know that. Don’t lie to yourself. You couldn’t leave him now any more than you could leave me when you found out why I was getting so sick, so fast. You were scared then, too. It didn’t change anything.

“What if I’m not enough? He deserves better than me,” Liam voices into the empty air.

All he wants is you.

“You don’t know that. You’re not even real; you’re a voice in my head.”

A few hours later, and a few miles away, Jacen is being handed the keys to a slightly used blue Chevy pickup. On the way back to the house with it, he calls Yasha.

“Hey,” he says tiredly when Yasha picks up. “I’m leaving town. Today. Now. Liam and I are going, together.”

After a pause, Yasha says quietly and with audible confusion, “Okay. This is sudden.”

“It has to be. Neither of us wants the other to have to do this anymore, and we both have jobs booked today, so we’re getting out before anyone knows we’re going.”

“This is a mutual desire to change careers, or...?”

“He said last night that he wanted to sleep together before we had to do it for the job, and he convinced me to trust him enough to go through with it. And it was intense. Turns out there were some feelings there on his part. More than I expected. He got really protective of me. But look, it’s kind of a long story. He oversaw me with one of my rougher clients and it spooked him. And,” Jacen takes a deep breath and admits, “we talked. About our pasts. How we got into the business.”

“You told him?” There is noticeable shock in Yasha’s voice.

“Yeah. So now he thinks he has to save me from my life.”

“You disagree?”

Jacen considers this. “No. I don’t. I just see it more like finally having a reason to move on.”

“And Liam doesn’t?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you want to do this, right? You’re doing this because it’s time and because you’re ready? Not just because Liam is telling you to do it and convincing you that things will be worse if you don’t do what he says?”