"Riley didn’t want to leave earlier," Austin sighed, explaining why he was late. "Took a while to convince her."
Cam nodded with a dip of his chin, having heard countless stories of Austin's little girl. He'd even met Riley himself, but it had been a short moment with too many family members in a small space. Cam didn’t like small spaces. Never had. And he liked them even less now.
"She doesn’t look like you," he stated for no reason at all. He was still trying to simmer down from before, and maybe insignificant bullshit would help. "Just the hair." He remembered light brown hair that matched Austin's, but that was about it. Or maybe her eyes, too? Fuck it. He wasn’t sure.
Austin didn’t reply to that. "Are you taking your meds?"
Cam rolled his eyes and grabbed a beer. "Who are you—my fucking father? Yeah, I'm taking my meds. Christ." He was lying. He hated his meds.
Austin sighed again.
Still feeling agitated and antsy, Cam chugged down his first beer quickly and then leaned back in his chair, reminding himself that Austin was here now. Nothing had gone wrong. It was just Riley who'd been reluctant to leave her dad.
It sucked that they lived in completely different parts of the city. On opposite sides, even.
"So…big birthday tomorrow." Austin went for conversation again.
"Not really." Cam closed his eyes and breathed calmly. "Thirty or forty would've been big. Or even thirty-five. Not thirty-four."
If anyone had a big birthday coming up, it was Austin. In December, he'd turn forty. Cam remembered that from one of the times he'd had an anxiety attack in that metal cage. Austin had calmed his ass down with useless trivia about accounting, childhood stories, and some other personal crap that made Cam focus on something other than his hyperventilating.
After a moment, he opened his eyes and lolled his head to the side, facing Austin, who was silently watching him. With Austin around, Cam was both relaxed and distressed. There was something about Austin's presence that Cam had grown to want more of, yet there was something else that left him dissatisfied. Almost as if he'd been teased mercilessly and then been left hanging.
It irritated Cam. A lot. And he refused to delve deeper into it, 'cause he knew where it would lead.
"You have weird fucking eyes," he muttered with a frown. Depending on how the light hit Austin, they could be brown, green, and even bluish. Weird. Now they were a mix between green and gold, but then again, the umbrella was yellow. Sighing, Cam closed his eyes again and tapped the pad of his thumb to his fingertips. Index finger, middle finger, ring finger, fuckin' pinky. Repeat.
"Are you all right?" Austin asked quietly.
"Yeah. And I should be asking you that." Cam's reply was mumbled as he finally reached a higher state of calm. His breathing slowed and his eyelids felt heavier. "Have you been sleepin' any?"
"Not much," Austin admitted, and Cam could hear the exhaustion in his tone.
"The shrink gave you sleeping pills, didn’t she?"
"Yep. But I don’t like them."
Cam could relate. He didn’t like them, either. They made him loopy, which in turn made him feel less in control of himself. Control was fucking important. Vital. It was something he'd struggled with since he was born, but he'd never been so robbed of it than during those five months in a humid, basement hell.
*
Austin wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he figured he'd been at Cam's house for quite a while when he noticed that Cam had fallen asleep in the deck chair.
Much like himself, Cam suffered from nightmares and flashbacks, so Austin thought about waking him. He studied the younger man, who had lost weight, too. They were still both fairly muscular, though Cam was a bit slighter with his narrow hips, but it was clear several pounds of fat and muscle had been lost.
Cam's pale body was decorated both intentionally and not. Along his ribcage, inked vines tangled in barbed wire and song lyrics snaked up to his shoulder. From there, countless tattoos covered his right arm. An angel from behind with black wings, a skeleton he recognized as a famous rock band's mascot, more lyrics, a vintage car, a few darkly colored puzzle pieces, names, dates, an old-fashioned microphone, a pair of drumsticks forming an "X," a snowflake, and two words that had stuck with Austin from the moment he'd spotted them. Along the old-fashioned microphone's cord that lingered down between several other tattoos, the words "wired differently" had been inked on a loop. Over and over, those two words followed the mic's cord.
The good memories from their months in that cell could probably be counted on one hand. The time Cam told Austin the stories behind his tattoos was one of them. Now, his mind voluntarily drifted there.
In the meantime, Cam had no choice. Trapped by sleep, a nightmare pulled him back to the very same cell; only, he wasn’t discussing ink.
*
The fucker, whomever he was, who had kidnapped Cam as he was getting off work three days ago, usually left the faint florescent lights on, but there were times he left his victims in the dark, too. Right now was one of those times. Without windows, there was no sense of time and direction, but the man who'd been thrown into his cage yesterday was sleeping fitfully, so maybe it was night.
Austin, the man had said his name was, was only wearing a pair of sweatpants with a local construction company's logo on them and a T-shirt. So, Cam idly guessed Austin worked in construction, which a couple other guys here did, too. There was also a plumber, a bus driver, a bartender, two without jobs, and one mailman. All males. All between thirty-two and forty-four years of age.
Since Cam had been locked up in here, he had spent his time fighting off anxiety attacks, shouting for help, regulating his motherfucking breathing, and learning the names of the other eight fuckers in here. He'd found out that they were all stuck in small cells two by two—Victor and Chase, Lance and James, Tim and Sean, Pete and Chris. And now Cam and Austin.
They were names he'd remember involuntarily, 'cause it was nothing he gave a flying fuck about at this point. All he cared about was the fact that ten seemingly able-bodied men had gotten themselves kidnapped. And as far as they all knew, only one man was responsible. In other words, shit didn’t look good.
He'd read the papers, of course, so he knew that the first dude had been taken about a week before Cam was kidnapped, too. It was big news in the entire state, and now the number was up to ten kidnappings in less than two weeks.
Cam wished he could say he'd fought for his life when he'd been taken, but that would be a lie. After work, he'd stopped to pick up some food on his way home, and the motherfucker had blindsided him. Maybe it was chloroform; it didn’t matter. Cam had dropped in a few seconds, and before that, the shock had worked against him. He'd already been immobile, making it embarrassingly easy for that son of a bitch.
He hoped his precious Camaro was okay. If anything, Landon would immediately know something was wrong, 'cause Cam would never just leave that baby behind.
The sounds of muffled mumbling and muttering from a few others were cut off abruptly when a heavy door slammed open—a noise that was now so familiar that they all knew who it was.
Each time that door opened, Cam vowed to struggle if he got the opportunity. He promised himself to fight, which wasn’t easy wearing cuffs, but fuck if he was gonna surrender that easily. He had failed when Austin had been thrown in here, because the kidnapper, who hid behind a black mask, had drawn a goddamn gun on him.
"Good morning!" Psycho sounded like he'd been drinking too much whiskey during his days. "Now that I've filled every work position, I suppose it's only fair you know who your employer is."
Stunned silence blanketed the entire basement. Based on the lack of windows and how the men sometimes heard footsteps above them, they'd guessed they were being held in a basement. That was all, though.
The crazy motherfucker continued. "You will refer to me as Sir or Mr. Stone. I am your boss, and I will hand out your schedules shortly."
Across the small cage, Cam heard Austin suck in a breath.
"How about letting us outta hea', you sick son of a bitch?!" a man farther away shouted. He had a thick New York accent, and Cam hadn't heard him speak before.
"Silence!" Psycho boomed out.
Cam was in purgatory when someone woke him up. Disoriented and ready to fight for his life, he flew out of his chair and pounced on the fucker touching his arm. Vision blurry, he gripped Psycho by the throat and they ended up on the floor—
"Cam!"
What the fuck?
The sound of Austin's voice made Cam slow down his movements.
"Jesus Christ, Cam," Austin growled, and with a force Cam couldn’t compete against, he ended up on his back, his shoulder blades digging into the wooden boards of the patio. Shit. Patio. He was back home. Not hell. Not that metal cage. Austin was here. They were safe.
Cam released a choked breath and tried to relax under Austin's body.
Austin noticed and loosened his grip on Cam but didn’t move away. Now Austin wasn’t holding him down to defend himself, but to comfort. He leaned down and cupped Cam's cheek and rested their foreheads together. It was a contact that had worked for them before.
The next time Austin spoke, it was gentler. "Talk to me, Cam. You're a mess." He brushed his thumb over the shadows under Cam's eyes.
"I'm sorry," he muttered in a strangled voice. "Fuck. I don’t—"
I don’t know what's wrong with me
.
Well, he had a guess, but he refused to go there. His shrink had told all of them about PTSD, and Cam didn’t want to add another issue to his already-long list. PTSD was a condition that felt so permanent—the last thing he needed in his life. But it had been like this whenever someone startled him awake, so he knew he needed to address the problem.
At the hospital, it had been his brother. Then, a few days after he'd been released, he'd hooked up with one of the chicks who never stopped calling him. He had fallen asleep at her apartment after a mediocre fuck, and when she'd woken him up, she had been on the receiving end of a fist.
He'd felt beyond shitty. Savannah had been understanding—had even tried to comfort Cam while he took her to the emergency room for her split lip, and she'd offered to drive him to his shrink's office afterward. Cam had passed on the offer, apologized a hundred times, then ended their casual relationship.
He wasn’t gonna take a chance with Kim or Brian, the other two he hooked up with from time to time. He'd ended things with them, too. Kim had cried, reminding Cam of how women could get—
so much for casual fucking
—and Brian had been oddly quiet.
There was also another reason Cam had already planned on never seeing Brian again, and that reason was currently lying on top of him. Being with a guy would cause Cam to think about things other than being friends with Austin, a man he needed in his life.
"Have you spoken to Gale about this?" Austin asked as he slowly removed himself from Cam. They went to the same psychologist—all the surviving guys did. "You should. It could be PTSD."
"Yeah, yeah," Cam grumbled and pulled himself up. Giving Austin a hand, he helped him up, too. "Sorry I attacked." He adjusted the towel on his hips.
"I can take it."
The two men stood before each other, close enough to touch, and maintained eye contact. It made Cam wonder if Austin found their relationship odd. 'Cause closeness was as easy as breathing to them. So was touching. Personal space was usually so fucking important to Cam, but with Austin…
Austin broke the spell, clearing his throat, and plopped down in his chair again. Then he pulled out a bottle of painkillers from a side pocket of his shorts, and Cam gave him a cocked eyebrow.
"Headache," Austin answered. "These glasses are taking some getting used to. Plus, the sun…" He shook his head and sighed. "You know how it is."
"They look good on you," Cam commented before thinking.
Fuck
. He sat his ass back down in the chair and rolled his eyes at himself. "Only thing missing is the suit, Mr. MBA."
Nice save, jackass.
"And you're a dick," Austin said, removing his glasses to rub his eyes.
"You wanna go inside instead?" Cam was already standing up. While he'd had issues adjusting to the sun, too, it wasn’t as bad as the man next to him. "Come on—bet there's a game on or something. You hungry?"
"Not really, but a game sounds good." Austin followed him inside. "So, mind telling me why there's a bed in here?" He waved a hand at the living room.
"My bedroom's fucking tiny," Cam muttered, and it was a lie. His bedroom was just fine, but he still felt like he was locked in. "There's a chair over there if you prefer that. I'm just gonna get some snacks." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. "You want anything other than beer? Coke, water—think there's some decaf iced tea that Jules left, too."
"Coke, thanks." Austin nodded and moved toward the entertainment center while Cam headed to the kitchen. "Jules is your sister-in-law, right?"
"Yeah," Cam called as he opened his fridge, having not gotten over his newfound greed for choosing his own meal. Just
looking
at food felt nice. "Annoying as fuck, but you gotta love her, I guess. They're having twins in a few months." He pulled out some fixings to make a few sandwiches.
His brother Landon was pale with dark features, same gray eyes as Cam, and Jules took after her Mexican mother. She was also fucking tiny, so it was a little amusing to see her walking around with a big bump on her belly. And she wasn’t even close to term yet.
He'd been shocked to see the baby bump on Jules when he'd been reunited with his family after the kidnapping. He knew about the IVF trials, obviously, but not that Landon and Jules had gone through another round in…what, January? Anyway, that shock had quickly morphed into excitement for his brother and sister-in-law.