Whatever the Cost (19 page)

“I am,” Jacen says, not knowing if it’s a lie or not, but fully aware that it might seem like he is allowing himself to be manipulated again. There’s a prolonged moment in which Jacen can sense Yasha’s unease but he has no idea how to counter it.

“Where are you going? Can you tell me?”

“I’ll call you when we get there. It’ll be from another number. But I’d like to see you in a few days, if you can manage it. They don’t know our history—that we’re... good friends—so they shouldn’t think to watch you, but you’d have to be careful just in case. It’ll help me not freak out so much if I know you’re still a part of my life.”

Yasha doesn’t have a response at first. Jacen listens to him breathing, holding the phone closely to his ear. “Be careful,” Yasha urges somewhat desperately. “Please. I’ll help in whatever way I can. Just let me know what I can do.”

“Thanks,” Jacen sighs. “I mean it. Thank you.”

“Call as soon as you can.”

“I will.”

There’s a surreal moment for Jacen when he pulls into the driveway and sees Liam waiting on the front stoop, his thumbs hooked in the belt loops of his form-hugging jeans. Dressed in cowboy boots and an earthy-hued button down, he looks completely ready for his date with Tucker, instead of prepared to abscond with Jacen. It’s like their talk never happened, that Jacen daydreamed the whole thing out of a pitifully desperate delusion designed to comfort him in his turmoil over the past few bad jobs.

That’s why they don’t talk about it. Jacen swallows his hurt pride and wordlessly loads the boxes, full of their possessions, into the new truck with Liam, packing them in tightly and then covering it all with a tarp, using bungee cords to secure it in place.

It’s quarter after eleven in the morning when Jacen arrives with the new truck, and eleven thirty five when they have everything ready to go at last. There hasn’t been a call or email from Dice, and because they are cutting it so close to Liam’s scheduled job, it is silently agreed between them to do what seems necessary, if not desired.

Liam gets into his old truck. Jacen gets behind the wheel of the new truck.

Jacen marvels that at that very moment, as they drive together across town to a hotel they have both frequented hundreds of times, professions of love warming their hearts and the dull, not unwelcome ache left in their bodies from their lovemaking the previous night, Liam has completely prepared himself, bodily and mentally, to fuck another man. And it seems just as impossible that Jacen is driving with him to the place, and will sit there, in the truck bought with ten thousand dollars cash from his private accounts, transferred by Liam not hours ago to give them a fresh start together, while the man he loves has sex with someone else.

It’s not supposed to go like this
, he tells himself.
It’s supposed to be better than this.

They park at the hotel at five of noon. Liam gets out of his truck and locks it. He stands there beside it for a second, debating something, his face unreadable to Jacen until Liam turns and makes right for him. The driver’s side window is rolled down, a breeze blowing Jacen’s dark hair back as Liam steps up to him. Faced forward, his hands clenched around the steering wheel, Jacen hides his hurt as best he can, but he can’t meet Liam’s eyes.

Liam exhales sharply and takes Jacen’s face in his hands, turning it gently toward him. Kissing him softly, Liam hisses. “I’ll be right back. I’m sorry. I love you.”

It’s the first time he’s ever said it outright, and that he said it there, like this, is a poisoned arrow through Jacen’s heart.

Jacen doesn’t say a word, just closes his eyes and lets himself be kissed, because that’s his job—to comply and be moved, be touched, be conquered. Liam’s lips briefly touch Jacen’s forehead and then he’s going. He’s gone.

The message on Liam’s phone tells him to go to room 402. He takes the elevator up to the fourth floor and follows the signs to the correct door.

He stands there, at door 402, until his watch tells him that it’s five past, unable to knock. All he can see, clouding out everything else, is Jacen’s anguished, resigned betrayal, written in the sad quirk of his lips, the furrows in his brow. Behind that, darkly, he sees Timothy’s feelings of betrayal, the desperation in him every time Liam left to walk the streets, alone, with the bills piling up and no other perceived choice.

Knuckles rap upon the hotel door and though they are Liam’s, they feel disconnected from his arm. His feet anchor themselves to the hallway floor, prohibiting his retreat, but then the door opens and it’s too late.

“Tucker,” Liam says, lips curling in a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes—the only part of him still drowning in the guilt and horror of it all.

“William, hey. It’s good to see you,” Tucker grins. That same sweet awkwardness that initially captivated Liam is still there, like all of the wicked temptations from his past beckoning to him as Tucker fidgets in the opened doorway, but though Tucker was the one stumbling over his doubt and lack of self-confidence the first time they met, it is now Liam that begs without speaking for salvation. “Come in.”

“Yeah,” Liam says, glancing down the hall to the exit as his feet carry him inside. It all begins to unfold in his head as Tucker closes the door behind him. They will undress. Tucker’s lips will drag over Liam’s skin, touching him, using him in defiance of the man currently seated just outside the building—Jacen is Liam’s future where Timothy was the past, part of Liam’s previous life as a boy called Avery and here he is, somewhere in the middle, doing the unthinkable.

How could you? Don’t you love me? Why would you do this to me? To us?

The ghostly echo of a voice sounds like Timothy, accusing him still, ten years later, but Liam’s mind is filled with Jacen. It’s happening again, he realizes—turning like a circle. Gathering his character around him like a shroud, burying Liam like he buried Avery so long ago, he tries to be neither of them, only a nameless cowboy, looking for a fuck. It used to feel good and incredibly freeing to deny Avery and be an Other, a creation of his imagination. The baggage would fall away. The heartbreak, the sadness, it melted under the heat of strangers’ desire for his body, the proof that there were still people alive and aroused and vital in the world; men who, in that moment, wanted only that temporary facet of Avery Williams’ soul. It would grant him release from any and all troubles clouding his heart, and make life, for those few, precious minutes, seem bearable.

The nameless cowboy steps up to Tucker, hooking a finger behind the man’s belt and drawing him near.

“What’s wrong?” Tucker asks softly.

“Nothing’s wrong.” Liam’s palm rubs over Tucker’s chest, feeling his heartbeat thumping. He tries to push the rest away, to focus only on that connection, but the hope, of all things, is what damns him. When it was Timothy Avery was denying, he was overcoming death and suffering. Now, as Liam, he’s trying to deny Jacen, who is the promise of a future, and freedom, and he can’t manage it. He can’t kill hope when it’s barely bloomed.

A gentle hand touches Liam’s face, which is painted with sorrow. Closing his eyes against the kindness, Liam flounders. Then Tucker does the one thing that Liam doesn’t know how to fight against or work with, and wraps him in a hug, holding on and trying to soothe. There is no other choice, Liam grabs on, hugs back and exhales heavily.

“I’m sorry,” he says, not thinking, just reacting without a filter or knowing what rules to play by. All is chaos. “I met someone. He’s outside, right now and as soon as I leave this hotel we’re going to go start a new life and god, why the hell am I telling you this? What’s wrong with me?” He pulls back sharply, searching Tucker’s face, really seeing him for the first time since the door opened, and the unfamiliar, soft concern in his eyes. Liam looks down at him, the long hair fallen around Tucker’s shoulders, the crisp lines of his tailored shirt. It’s the mental image of Tucker ironing his clothes in preparation for William’s arrival that breaks through some of the fog. “What do you want?” he blurts, desperation making him shameless. “Anything, anything you want, just name it. I’ll do
anything
if you’ll forget what I just said. Please?”

Tucker is looking at him strangely. That eager, nervous happiness lifts away, and some of what his female groupies must see colors his expression instead. With regret and a sadness of his own, Tucker nods slightly. “I like you, you know. Been thinkin’ about you, more than I should. It would’ve been fun.”

His hand drops away from where it was resting against the side of Liam’s face. Tucker takes a backward step. “I’ll wait three hours or so before calling in that you were a no-show. That should give you some time to play with.”

“What?” Liam blurts stupidly.

“Go on. Be in love. It looks good on you.”

Liam is unable to believe it, even as Tucker folds his arms, closing off, and waits for him to understand and leave.

“We could still...” Liam tries to offer.

“No. We couldn’t. I wouldn’t feel right about it. It’s okay. Really. Go on, now.”

Liam stares at Tucker, but for a long moment his feet won’t move. It’s only when he quickly closes the gap between them and places a soft, tender kiss to Tucker’s lips, before hissing an urgent, “Thank you,” against them that the spell breaks. Tucker kisses him back after a pause, and it feels like goodbye.

Twenty minutes after he disappeared into the hotel lobby, Liam emerges from it, running.

He runs to Jacen’s truck,
their
truck, with everything that matters nestled safely in it.

Breathless and fevered, Liam rasps as he yanks open the passenger side door, “I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it.”

Jacen sighs heavily, his lips forming the words to a whispered prayer of thanks.

“Gimme your phone. Quick. We’ve gotta get the hell out of here. Now.”

Liam takes both phones, puts them on the pavement just behind the front driver’s side wheel of the truck. Standing back, Liam watches as Jacen leans out the window slightly to see as he backs the truck over them, crushing them. The brittle snapping and crunch of the plastic is immensely satisfying.

With a bright, happy smile, Liam jumps into his seat and they take off, laughing.

Flying down the road as fast as they legally can, at least until they’re past the city limits and on more open, less patrolled roads, they hold on and keep hoping, praying that they make it, that they can just go.

An hour later, they are still driving, the road receding behind them, just as new ones keep opening up before them. It’s like a miracle.

“We did it.”

“Not yet. Don’t jinx it.”

Jacen smiles and bites anxiously at his thumbnail.

“We really can do this, can’t we? We’re doing it.”

“Yeah,” Liam agrees.

“I’m glad. I’m so glad, Lee. And thank you, for not going through with it. I know it makes it scarier for you to not have that cushion of time.”

“I know,” Liam murmurs. “I don’t know what I was thinking, to do that to you. Can we just forget about it?”

“Yeah,” Jacen nods.

A few minutes later, something in the glove compartment starts to ring.

Liam’s eyes go wide as sudden panic surges through him.

“Oh! I forgot.” Jacen pulls over and fumbles out two new phones, finding the one that’s ringing. It’s the green one—Liam’s. He hands it over. “It’s for you.”

Dumbstruck, Liam says, “Who would be calling me on a phone I’ve never seen before?”

“When I bought them this morning, I sent the number to your friend, er, brother. Dice. Just in case.”

Liam blinks. “You are awesome.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty awesome,” Jacen grins as Liam answers on the fifth ring and puts it on speakerphone.

Hesitantly, he asks, “Dice?”

“Pigeon?” the husky voice on the other end of the line counters. Jacen gives Liam an amused, curious glance but Liam doesn’t catch it.

“Oh my god, no one’s called me that in
years
, dude,” Liam grins.

“Yeah, right back at’cha,” he laughs richly. “I usually just go by Clay now. Or Officer Martinez for the civilians.”

“You’re a cop! No way,” Liam says, shocked. “That’s ironic.”

Clay laughs again, “Yeah, yeah. I’m a long way from the stupid kid I used to be, that’s for sure. How are you, man? What is it you go by now, if it’s not Pidge.”