Twin Ties 2: Twin Affairs (2 page)

“Alek? Hey! Your boy is gone. He went running out the back door like he was freaked.”

Alek stopped what he was doing and looked up at Jason. The six-foot-seven bartender who doubled as a bouncer had just been in the bathroom. He was leaning through the hinged kitchen door, half in, half out.

The words sank in, slowly. At the grill, the tongs dropped from Alek’s hand, clattering to the dirty floor.

Alek ran to the exit, only stopping at the last minute to grab a shotgun from where it was tucked out of sight for emergencies.

He called back over his shoulder, “Hey! Come on! Jase?”

“Yeah,” Jason said, jogging over.

When they got to the back door, pushed it open, and sprinted outside, they saw instantly they were too late. It was bedlam. Meryl, a fifty-something biker and a regular at the bar, had his sawed-off leveled at a gang of guys gathered by the building’s rear entrance. With the yellowish glow from the streetlamp above casting weird shadows over the darkened lot, shapes were distorted, bleeding together.

Men started to scatter once they saw Alek and Jason, yelling, “Come on! Let’s get out of here!”

“Oh, no you don’t!” Meryl shouted. He whistled through his teeth to get the attention of the other bikers who were still gathered around the bikes parked on the other side of the building. When a few of them arrived at a sprint, they took off with Meryl after the gang.

That was when Alek finally saw what they’d been gathered around, only understanding right before sickening, mind-numbing horror obliterated all reason.

Stricken and shaking, he finally dropped his gaze, having been so reluctant to look down.

“
Evan!
No! No God, No!”

Alek didn’t think, he just ran. He fell to the pavement, scraping his knees and shins. His fingers skittered through the air above Evan, afraid to touch him due to all of the blood masking his form. Alek barely, carefully, made contact, laying his hand on Evan’s arm, too afraid to do more than that. Then, he saw the source of the bleeding, soaking Evan’s blue shirt blackish-red, and pressed the heel of his hand against the wound.

“Call 911!”

“Already on it!” Jason yelled with a phone to his ear before he resumed giving their address to the person on the other end of the line.

Only a single sob escaped Alek before he pushed the terror down below his determination and anger. Holding Evan’s hand gingerly, pressing on the gushing slice just below Evan’s ribcage with the other, Alek tried not to overanalyze the injuries and focus.

“Help is coming, baby,” he said, his voice sounding to him uneven and muffled by endless, internal screaming.
This can’t be happening. It can’t. Not to Evan. Not like this. It’s wrong. There’s been a mistake
. “Hold on, please hold on. I’m right here. It’s Alek. I’ve got you. Help is coming.”

Evan’s face was a mess, his nose askew and clearly broken. His eyes were swelling shut, his white teeth stained red. Gagging on, then spitting up blood, it spilled over his chin as Evan groaned. It seemed like he’d almost regained consciousness, but Alek wasn’t sure.

“…We have two males here, badly injured. One looks like he was beaten and is unconscious. There’s not much blood on him except for some he spit up. He’s breathing, though. The other has a stab wound to the stomach. There’s a four inch blade lying next to him. His face is bloody and swollen and there may be more injuries. I don’t know… Alek! They say three minutes, okay?! The ambulance is three minutes out! Is he breathing? He has a pulse, right?”

“Shit. Shit. Evan…. Oh god,
Evan
….” Alek saw the rise and fall of Evan’s chest, and yelled back, “Yeah! He’s breathing!”

“Good! Don’t move him! Is he conscious? They want you to try to stem the bleeding by putting pressure—”

“
I know! DON’T YOU THINK I KNOW?!
No, he’s not awake. He’s not—
Fuck
!!”

Alek hissed through his teeth. The fear reached up from deep inside him, clawing at his mind with icy fingers, making it hard to think. For a brief moment, he fell back through time, through weeks of days, and remembered Evan confiding in him, whispering about attempting suicide, of dying for a handful of minutes before he was brought back to life thanks to the determination of a loved one.

Certainty settled on Alek, a terrible notion that Death was angry at being denied Evan and was trying to reclaim him. A thick trickle of blood leaked from the side of Evan’s mouth. Alek leaned in to listen for breath sounds. He felt for a pulse, and it was there, but weak. Too weak.

“He’s losing too much blood! Jase! What do I do?!” He pressed harder at the wound as Evan’s blood flowed between his fingers. Alek prayed, “Don’t leave me. Please don’t go. Hang in there. Hang in there for Brennan. You can’t die on me, okay? You can’t. Evan, I love you so much… please hold on.
Please
.”

Minutes later, Evan was surrounded by EMTs and being loaded onto a gurney. There was an oxygen mask covering his face and he was wearing a pulse monitor. Efforts were being made to keep him from losing more blood and Alek hovered, dazed, and unable to let Evan slip away from his sight.

With trembling, bloody fingers it took him three tries to get to Luka’s name in his phone’s contact list. He almost dropped the blood-slick phone when it started to ring.

“Maybe it’s food poisoning,” Luka suggested. He rubbed Brennan’s back, both of them seated on the edge of the couch, but Brennan was doubled over, clutching his side, just under his ribcage.

Call Alek. Call him,
instinct whispered to Luka.

He instantly banished the thought. There was no logical reason to call Alek. Not for a stomachache.

Call him anyway.

Again, Luka shrugged off the bizarre inclination.

The stomachache had come on suddenly. A few minutes earlier, Brennan had been feeling absolutely fine. He’d been laughing and in a great mood, excited they’d have the house to themselves for some uninterrupted quality time. Then, out of nowhere, something had come over him. His good mood died and he kept insisting something was wrong. Part of Luka was secretly disappointed this new development might put a damper on their evening, ruining a night he’d been looking forward to also, but if Brennan was sick, helping him feel better was the most important thing.

As Brennan groaned, growing quickly paler, he argued, “We ate the same things for dinner, though. And lunch.” Unsure what to do—whether to raid the mostly barren medicine cabinet or offer to run to the drug store—Luka fleetingly marveled at how Brennan made him want to act with maturity and responsibility when all of his life Luka had been anything but. All he wanted was to stay by Brennan’s side, doing whatever he could to bring the smile back to his face and help him feel better. Before, with Luka’s previous love interests, he always mentally signed off whenever one of them felt unwell. It never felt like it was his problem to fix. Usually, he was only there for sex anyway, so if sex was off the table, he was out the door. It made him cringe to remember such awful behavior. If he could help it, he’d never go back to being that kind of person.

When Brennan shifted to lie back on the couch, Luka saw his ailing boyfriend’s face more clearly. He was way too pale, his eyes losing focus, pain lacing his expression. Something was definitely wrong. Luka’s whole body went tense as if readying for a fight and his thoughts whirled, searching for an idea, an answer.

What do I do?

Fuck, what do I do?

That’s when Luka’s cell phone started to ring.

“Look, it’s not really a good time, Aleksy, something’s—” Luka said tensely.

“Listen!” Alek snapped. “Evan’s hurt. He was mugged. He was….”

Bile rose in Alek’s throat as he got a better look at Evan’s pallor once he was lifted into the ambulance and the overhead fluorescent lights shined down upon him.

Alek climbed in beside the EMTs, and stared dumbly at the broken form of his lover.

“
Alek!!
Alek, talk to me damn it!” Luka screamed, Alek’s fear feeding his.

“He’s been stabbed. And beaten. And he’s,” Alek said in a hollow voice, “I think he’s dying.”

There was a choked noise, then Luka gruffly asked, “He was stabbed in the stomach, right?”

“How did you—” Alek started to ask.

But Luka cut him off with, “—What hospital? Mercy Gen?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t you let anything happen to him. You hear me, Aleksy?”

Alek’s throat closed up. Hot tears squeezed from his eyes. More scared than he’d ever been in his life, he ended the call and leaned in closer to Evan, listening to the beeping of the monitors attached to him as the ambulance raced down the street.

Luka’s faith that everything would be okay stemmed mainly from the pure, sheer miracle he was even able to get Brennan in one piece over to the hospital. He almost had to deck Brennan just to get him to relinquish the driver’s seat of the truck and settle for hyperventilating and losing his fucking mind in the passenger seat instead. The sudden stomach ache was gone, like the terror created by what they’d heard Alek say about Evan chewed up the pain, digested it and used it as fuel to make itself stronger.

“He’s gonna be fine! He’s tougher than this! You know that. Have faith in him. Bren. Brennan!
Wait!
”

Luka hadn’t even come to a stop and was still rolling up to the emergency entrance of the building when Brennan threw open the passenger-side door and darted from the vehicle, running as fast as he could into the hospital.

Luka pulled over to the curb, clicked on his hazards and bolted after Brennan.

Brennan hadn’t said a word, not one word since the phone call. His reaction had been purely emotional and physical—his mouth a tight line, his skin nearly bloodless and gray, his blue eyes huge and scared. But he wasn’t lacking for energy as he flew into the waiting area where Alek was standing. Alek caught and held on to him as Luka sprinted to join them.

“Hey.
Hey!
” Alek shouted, trying to get Brennan’s attention. “Calm down. Listen. Listen! You wanna know what’s going on, right? He’s being prepped for surgery. They say he has a few broken ribs, a broken nose and other minor injuries. They’re worried about internal damage, but, from the looks of it, the blade doesn’t seem to have punctured any major internal organs; it’s mainly blood loss and patching him back together. They think.”