Telling himself that was
not
hurt he saw in Evan’s eyes, Josh pulled the door open wider and stepped back. “I threw them somewhere in the bedroom. It could take me a few minutes to find them. You might as well come inside.” It wasn’t his most gracious offer of hospitality, and it made him feel like cold shit to see the hopeful smile stretching Evan’s lips.
Josh turned and nearly sprinted to the bedroom, needing to get away from Evan before he said something mean to Justin’s partner…Well, one of Justin’s partners.
Or maybe Josh
wouldn’t
say something mean. Maybe he’d say something
nice
, or at least apologetic, and then he wouldn’t have a clue how to behave around Evan ever again.
He found the keys under his bedspread—he wasn’t even going to try to figure that one out—
then turned and let loose a startled squeak. Slapping a hand over his racing heart—and of course it was the hand he held the keys in, which didn’t feel good at all—Josh glared at Evan.
“Did you
have
to sneak up on me?!”
“It’s not like I tiptoed in here,” Evan said, “and I’m a good six feet away from you.”
Well, yeah, he was, but after having experienced that creepy sensation of being
watched for most of the day, Josh was just a little jumpy. He held the keys out to Evan and tried not to glare at the man. Evan reached out and grabbed Josh’s hand before he realised WHAT MATTERS MOST
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what Evan was doing. Josh reflexively tried to jerk his hand free only to find it held firmly in Evan’s grip. Josh stopped trying not to give Evan an evil glare and blasted him with a furious look. “Let. Go.”
After a few tense seconds, Evan let Josh’s hand go, plucking the keys from his grasp as he did so. When Evan didn’t do anything other than stand there holding the keys and staring at him, Josh propped his hands on his hips and did his best to look down his nose at a man almost a foot taller than him.
Evan cocked a hip and twirled the keyring around his index finger, looking for all the world like he intended to stand there blocking the doorway for eternity. “Josh, don’t you think it’s time you let it go?”
Josh had thought that very thing, but hearing it from Evan’s mouth made Josh want to stomp his feet and shout a denial. He opened his mouth to speak only to be cut off when Evan started babbling again. “I mean, you’re an adult now, would you want to fuck a minor, especially one around—”
“Stop it,” Josh bit out as his stomach clenched and rolled. He could see Evan’s point, but still.
“Josh, come on,” Evan pleaded, taking a step closer. “You know you wouldn’t because it’s wrong. So why do you hate me—”
Josh didn’t want to discuss this, not now, not later, and definitely not with Evan.
Evan took another small step closer as he frowned. “And if you hate me so much, why would you encourage Annabelle to have a relationship that I was involved in?”
“Because it was what she wanted!” Josh almost added,
and what my brother wanted,
but that sounded hateful even in his imagination. “Now, can you fix the car?” Because Josh could not deal with this shit on top of the day he’d had.
Evan narrowed his eyes at Josh and nodded, then pointed at him. “Fine. But you
aren’t getting out of having this conversation with me in the very near future. I’ve had it with you blaming me for doing the right god damned thing.” Evan punctuated his words with a sharp nod, then turned and left the bedroom.
Josh breathed a sigh of relief at the temporary reprieve. Evan seemed determined to have a chat with him very soon, but Josh would do whatever he could to avoid that, at least until he was ready to discuss it.
If
he was ever ready to discuss it. Maybe he should man up and apologise just to avoid the whole upcoming talk.
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No one said he had to be sincere with the apology.
“You’re such a bitch,” Josh muttered to himself as he peered out the tiny window to watch Evan working on his car. He was stuck in the same juvenile cycle of guilt breeding anger, not at the offending party, either, but rather at the one person who’d stepped in and done what was right, though Josh still hated to admit it—Geez, he hoped
that
was from habit.
But, God, an apology would have to cover years of being a shit, and how big of an apology would
that
have to be?
Stowing the question for now, Josh turned away from the window. A sharp pain shot up his right side, spearing from his ribs up to his shoulder blade. Josh hissed and rubbed at his tense muscles. Another round of yoga would do him a world of good, but it would have to wait. He wouldn’t be able to concentrate enough to meditate or work the stress from his body, not when he knew he was going to have to eat a big serving of crow very soon.
Deciding a shower would have to do for now, Josh went into his bedroom and dug
out the oldest, softest pair of sweats he had. He pulled out his favourite T-shirt too, the image so faded from washings that he could barely make out Layne Staley’s fine-boned features and long, curly blond hair. Josh had the biggest crush on the grunge singer when he was a kid, then the man had OD’d and Josh experienced his first lesson in idolizing someone—they weren’t what you made them out to be in your mind. The second lesson followed
immediately after—it hurt like a bitch to find out the first lesson, especially in such an irreversible manner. Josh had been more circumspect about his crushes and fantasies ever since.
Mostly. He turned the shower on and stripped quickly, his mind rolling back to the last night he’d been at the Xxchange, when he’d assaulted—albeit with good reason—the man he suspected was Annabelle and Rory’s half-brother.
Nick.
The jerk had played Josh, making him think Nick was interested in him, hooked him like a stupid hungry trout, then started trying to get Josh to talk about Annabelle and Rory. Josh had become suspicious, little alarms going off in his head that something wasn’t quite right, and the questions, along with the way Nick had been manhandling Josh had pushed Josh to react with more violence than he’d thought himself capable of.
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Later, after Annabelle and Rory had been informed that Ian Calhoun, their father, had died. The siblings had been more upset about it than Josh thought the mean old bastard deserved, considering he’d cut them out of his will. Rory’s partner Chance had filled Annabelle and Josh in on the rest of it, which was basically that Ian Calhoun had another son, one older than either of them, and he’d left the Mossy Glenn ranch to this mysterious man.
Those same alarm bells that had sounded in Josh’s head at The Xxchange when he’d been realising that something was off with Nick had started ringing again. It’d taken Josh a while, but he gradually came to believe the man he’d kneed in the balls and left in a gasping, shuddering heap on the club floor was almost certainly the son who’d inherited the Mossy Glenn. It was the only thing that made any sense, at least to him.
As for why Nick hadn’t just approached his half-siblings, Josh wondered about that, just like he wondered why, while he’d told Annabelle about the encounter, he’d left off the bit about Nick wanting information on her and Rory. And his suspicion that Nick was Rory and Annabelle’s half-brother. Whether it was guilt for the way he’d nutted the man, or something else that he didn’t really want to examine, Josh had kept his mouth shut about Nick. That probably wasn’t the smartest way to handle the whole situation, but that’s what he’d done and now he had to stick with it.
Josh stepped in the shower and rolled the idea around in his head, or tried to. Of course, any thought of Nick tended to have his dick springing to attention, and this time was no different. As much as Josh longed to bring himself off, he couldn’t, not when Evan might be waiting when he came out. That would just be too weird. It was different when Josh was a horny kid who couldn’t keep his hand off his dick any time he got the chance. Now he was a horny adult and somehow he just knew Evan would know what he’d done in the shower.
Josh looked down at his swollen cock and gave it a couple of loving strokes. “Soon, I promise, if you’re up to it.”
He finished his shower, giving his dick time to behave, then cut the water off before grabbing a towel and swiping at the moisture on his skin. The sound of the apartment door opening and closing was easy to hear through the thin walls, and Josh steeled himself for the coming confrontation. He had no doubt Evan had meant what he’d said, and Josh agreed.
This crap between them had gone on long enough. Now if he could just convince his inner insane teenager of that fact…
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Once dressed in his comfort clothes, Josh stepped out of the bathroom and wasn’t the least bit surprised to find Evan standing only a few feet away, his arms crossed over his chest and one eyebrow cocked expectantly.
Josh knew that look. It was the one Evan had given him every time he’d screwed up as a kid. The ‘you’re in for a lecture and you’ll damn well shut up and listen’ look. Josh hated that look, and hated even more the effect it had on him. It made him want to hang his head and shuffle over to the couch as he muttered an apology. Josh raised his chin up and forced his shoulders back. He wasn’t a kid anymore, and it was well past the time he started acted like the man he wanted to be.
Instead of walking to the couch to await his punishment, Josh headed towards the tiny table in the kitchen. “You coming?” He didn’t wait for Evan’s answer, instead pulling out a wobbly chair and sitting, careful not to sprawl or convey any belligerence in his posture.
Evan was soon seated across from him. Josh locked gazes with the other man. “Thank you for fixing my car.” There, that sounded mature and non-confrontational.
Evan leant back in his chair and narrowed his eyes, as if trying to figure out what game Josh was playing at. “It’s not completely fixed. You need to buy a new tire and have it put on as soon as possible. That crappy little spare won’t hold up for many miles at all. As for the battery, I stopped by the parts store on the way over and picked up a new one, just in case. Good thing I did since your old one was on its last legs.”
“What do I owe you for it?”
“Nothing,” Evan said.
Josh didn’t glare, but it was a near thing. He was trying really hard to act like an adult here. It wasn’t going to be a successful attempt if Evan insisted on treating him like a kid.
“How much?”
Evan looked like he wanted to argue, but Josh kept his gaze steady and his voice firm.
“I’d rather pay you what it cost, but if you won’t tell me, then I’ll just have to guess.”
Evan reached into his shirt pocket without uncrossing his arms and plucked out a receipt. “Here.” He set the slip of paper on the table then took up his defensive position again. Josh’s eyes widened slightly as he realised that was exactly how Evan looked—
defensive, as if he was carrying his own share of guilt. It somehow made it easier for him to begin a conversation that was eight years overdue.
He just hoped he found the right words.
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Josh took a deep breath as he gripped his thighs to keep from fidgeting. He exhaled and felt a little of that long-kept anger slip away. “I don’t blame you for trying to protect me,” he began slowly, trying to fit thoughts into sentences that made sense. “I did at first, because I was a dumb kid who thought he knew everything, but I know up here”—Josh let go of his left thigh and tapped at the side of his head—“that it was wrong for an adult to try to seduce an innocent kid.”
Evan frowned, his confusion increasing by the second. “Then why have you hated me all these years?”
Being an adult sucked sometimes. Josh shifted in his seat, then couldn’t stop himself from slumping just a bit. “Because. Maybe at first I was jealous of the relationship you and Justin had—still have. But when I was fifteen, every time I saw the love you two had for each other, I wanted the same thing so bad. It wasn’t that I didn’t want the two of you to have it, but I wanted it, too. You and Justin met and fell for each other when y’all were barely sixteen. I didn’t see why, at fifteen, I couldn’t find the man I wanted to spend my life with.”
Josh sighed and slumped a little more. “And I wanted a
man
, not a boy, not that there were any gay boys besides me in school. Maybe if there had been, and we’d been attracted to each other, I wouldn’t have been such easy prey for Zach Crane.”
Evan’s confusion morphed into anger at the mention of Zach Crane. “Don’t even say that fucker’s name. I should have broken every bone in his body, and I would have, if he’d…if he’d
touched you!
”
Josh’s bitter laugh surprised him. He hadn’t felt it rising up, wasn’t prepared for the hurt and shame that laced its edges. “Old man Crane would have had you taken out and shot if you broke his son. I thought I loved him, that he was pressuring me to have sex with him because he loved me so much he couldn’t wait until I was older. I was flattered that this handsome adult wanted scrawny little me. I was so stupid.”
The perfect victim, or near victim.
Evan had saved him from that.
“Son of a bitch!” Evan shoved up from his chair and slapped both hands onto the table top. The entire surface vibrated from the dual blows as Evan leant over and glared at Josh. “It wasn’t your fault, Josh! He was a pervert, and if he hadn’t fried his brains on drugs I would hunt him down and kick his ass like I should have years ago!”
“He didn’t touch me, not more than some kissing and groping,” Josh clarified, his stomach quivering as his face heated with a flush. “But he was the boss’s son, and when he WHAT MATTERS MOST
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told me how much he wanted me, how much he’d love me if I would just prove to him that I wanted him the same way, I believed him. I’d only just made up my mind to have sex with him, to show him… But you came in to the store and proceeded to threaten him within an inch of his life.” Josh closed his eyes against the memories of his naïvety. Images of that day eight years ago played behind his closed lids. Evan, storming into the hardware store, pointing at Josh and telling him to get his ass outside and wait in the truck. Josh had been standing as close to Zach as possible given their public location. His cheeks had stung as if he’d been slapped when he ran out to the truck, knowing what he’d just promised to do with the older man was wrong, but angry deep inside at Evan’s interference. “I thought he’d love me if I did what he asked, and I blamed you for denying me that.”