Bad Things (51 page)

“Don’t,” Carson whispered, trying to soothe, trying to undo alarming Xavier and provoking him to defend himself so determinedly. “You don’t need to close up like that. I’m not going to ask you about us.”

Xavier kept meeting his gaze, but his own was still guarded.

“I wanted to ask you something about Elena. About what happened to you when she was assaulted.”

Xavier sighed. “That’s what you want to talk about? Now?”

It felt like he was being reproached for ruining their last moments together, but Carson barely cared.

“
There’s something…I feel like I need to understand.”

“
All right.” He said it patiently, kindly, as if it had something mysterious to do with Carson’s ability to let go, to accept their separation. As if it had almost nothing to do with him.

“
Please, Xavi. I won’t ask you any more favors, after this.”

Slightly mocking grin, and for the first time, Carson could see what a heavy piece of armor it was. Petting Carson’s hair, almost patronizingly Xavier said, “I already said yes, Carson.”

“Then be how you were until two minutes ago. Be naked.”

The mocking grin actually got worse. Then, in a single second, right before Carson’s eyes, Xavier’s face became that utterly inscrutable blank. And then, slowly this time, little by little, the mask disintegrated, and Carson felt like he was looking through Xavier’s dark eyes, straight into the core of him. Like looking into the beautiful face of love and fear, incarnate.

Carson could hardly breathe. “Elena was eighteen.”

Xavier barely nodded.

“How old were you?”

“
Twenty-three.”

“
You’re five years older than her.”

Another slight nod. “Almost six.”

“Were you close back then? Like you are now?”

“
Yeah. Very. We were always close. Ever since our mom died. I was eleven. Our dad was never very fatherly, so once it was just the three of us, I was sort of a substitute parent.”

“
Is that why you stayed? After your dad beat you up when he found out you were gay?”

A quiet, dark laugh. “Yeah. And she’s never forgiven herself.”

“For what?”

“
For being the anchor that chained me to that
puta cabron
. Even though I never blamed her, obviously.”

“
So, for thirteen years, you basically raised Elena. And then, the first year she’s out of your house, not under your protection, she gets horribly hurt.”

“
You don’t have to keep dancing around it,” Xavier said. “Three men raped her.”

“
You didn’t stop them.”

“
Do you think I haven’t confronted my guilt about it?” He sounded calm. Rational. But his eyes were almost impossible to look at, they were so full of pain. “I’ve accused myself. Told myself I let them rape my baby sister. And I’ve exonerated myself. I know I can’t protect her. No one can keep another person safe. Not without stealing their life.”

“
Is that how you feel about her trying to kill herself, too? That there was nothing you could have done to prevent that?”

Eyes going opaque again, as visibly as if he’s just closed the iron visor of a helmet.

God, it felt cruel, hurting him like that. Carson thought about the white T-shirt. How hard Xavier had made him cry. How he’d sat there and deliberately broken his heart. How that moment when he’d shattered had been the moment when he’d started to feel really free.

“
She’s the only person you’ve ever really loved. And you almost lost her. How?”

“
You know how.”

“
That’s cowardly, Xavi.”

The hardness to his eyes melted in a flare of anger. But the anger didn’t last. Visor up. Weapons down. Xavi naked to his gaze.

“I let her fool me.”

“
How?”

“
She pretended to be fine. Like what they’d done hadn’t really hurt her. And I wanted to believe it, I wanted her to be okay, so I let myself buy her act. It wasn’t even a very good act. But she went back to college, up in Santa Barbara, so I didn’t see her much. Just emailed a lot, and talked to her on the phone a couple times a week.

“
And then they called, and said she was in a coma. I went up there, and the doctors weren’t even very sure she would wake up. I spent four days thinking maybe I’d lost her, that I’d let my sweet Lenita slip away from me.”

He wasn’t crying, but Carson didn’t need to see tears to see how real that pain still was, still there with him, a constant, barely contained, barely concealed under a delicate membrane perpetually in danger of rupturing.

And there, maybe, was the key to why Xavier was the closest thing to a telepath Carson had ever known. He’d read his sister badly, and she’d almost died. Every day since then, he’d relentlessly trained himself to see the truth behind people’s feigned bravery, their fake smiles, their lies and bravado.

And right next to that accidental discovery, the big truth Carson had been digging for. The one he’d been afraid of.

It was weird, unkind, even, but he had to, even though Xavier was sitting there with his fucking guts exposed. He got out of the bed and started getting dressed, everything inside him crumbling to pieces. Hands shaking so hard, he could barely get his shirt turned right-side-out, hardly get his fly done up.

“
So?” He’d never heard Xavier sound hurt, but he did, now. “That satisfied your curiosity?”

He couldn’t answer. He didn’t dare make a sound.

Xavier got up and pulled on a pair of clean briefs he fished out of a drawer.

“
Jesus, Carson. We had a beautiful night. A perfect fucking night. Don’t spoil it now. Even though you’re angry at me. This is hard for me, too.”

He was turned away, because he knew if he looked at Xavier, he was going to lose it. When he felt Xavier’s hand on his shoulder, he flinched away.

“Carson. Please.”

“
Just give me a fucking second, all right?” Tears weren’t falling, but he knew his voice had given away that he was falling apart.

Xavier’s voice was quiet. “All right.”

When he finally had half a hope he’d pulled himself together, he said, “God. I’m so angry at myself.”

“
Why?”

“
You’re too afraid to let yourself love anyone.”

Xavier grinned.

“Really?” Carson challenged. “You’re laughing at my diagnosis?”

“
I’m not afraid of being hurt.”

“
I didn’t say you were.”

“
No? What is it you think I’m so scared of, then?”

“
Failing me.”

Every trace of that bemused grin, gone.

“You’re scared, you’re fucking terrified of failing me. If I hadn’t been such a coward, if I’d come out, if I’d come into this on anything close to equal footing, with a roster of lovers and heartbreak under my belt, it would be different. Maybe you and I would have had a chance.”

“
That wouldn’t have changed anything.”

“
Really, Xavi? I have the awful feeling that it’s because in love, I’m a child. Because, in this thing we have, you’ve been raising me, teaching me, taking care of me. I’m too much like her.”

“
Like who? Elena?” For once in his life, Xavier looked confused. Completely fucking lost.

“
You feel responsible for me.”

A dim glimmer of comprehension.

“And you can’t handle it. Or you won’t handle it. Your terror that you’ll fail me, the way you think you failed her.”

Carson didn’t care anymore about being embarrassed because he was so obviously heartbroken. He looked full on into Xavier’s eyes.

“And you will, Xavi. And I’ll fail you. One way or another. Eventually. In small ways. Maybe even in big ways. And we’ll lose each other. We have to. Even couples who love each other until the ends of their lives lose each other. But I’ll do my best to care for you, until you’re not mine to care for. And I know you would, too. That I’ll thrive beyond my most desperately hopeful fantasies, the way you’d care for me, if you could be that brave. That vulnerable.”

Xavier was already looking at him like his heart was tearing to shreds. But he had to say it.

“And Xavi.”

Xavier pulled himself up from the abyss of fear and doubt he was sinking into, and honed back in on him.

“If you end what we have...”

Xavier stiffened, like he was bracing himself. “What, Carson?”

“You’re failing me, failing both of us, here and now.”

For a few seconds, Carson actually thought maybe it was going to work and Xavier was giving in to him. But it would have been too easy, Carson chastised himself later, like some kind of dark and depraved romantic comedy, if Xavier had conceded everything then and there, thrown Carson a self-mocking grin, and dragged him back to bed. But life doesn’t play out in a neat and tidy ninety minute story arc.

Xavier said he needed time to sit with what Carson had said, and sent Carson away.

In some twisted way, that agony, having a little hope, but being terrified Xavier would ultimately refuse to change his mind, was worse torture than when he’d left before, sure that he’d lost Xavier forever. Every single time Carson let himself imagine getting a text, getting a call, seeing Xavier waiting by his door or—the most romantic fantasy of all, in spite of or because it was a little creepy—Xavier already waiting in his living room or bedroom when he came through the door, the euphoria provoked by his indulgent daydream ended in a brutal avalanche of doubt, fear and depression that got worse, day after day.

It didn’t matter if he’d been right or whether or not his argument held together. It took more than sixty seconds to talk someone out of a phobia that had taken root ten years earlier in the wake of a trauma as awful as what Xavier had been through with Elena. And he doubted he’d ever get a chance to make the argument again.

Every time his phone rang, he clawed it out of his pocket or off whatever table or cushion he’d left it on, trying to will Xavier’s name onto the display. But it was always someone else. One of his very few and badly neglected friends from old jobs and photography classes. His agent, asking if he was available to do a shoot on this or that date. Once it was Aidan, just calling to check in and chat. Once it was Dario, inviting him over for dinner for three.

This time, six days after his last night with Xavier, it was an unknown number.

“Hello,” a youthful-sounding woman said. “Is this Carson Miller?”

“
Yes,” he admitted skeptically.

“
This is Camellia at Second Skin Tattoo.”

Carson’s heart stopped beating.

“Hello? Are you still there?”

“
Yes.” He hoped she’d heard him.

“
I’m calling to confirm your appointment tomorrow at nine p.m.”

It took him a minute, but he finally got it. “Tomorrow. Nine p.m. I’ll be there.”

It was after hours, so he thought the door might be locked. But it was open, even though the lights in the narrow reception area and the first couple alcoves were off, and there was only the dim evening light faintly illuminating the walls and tables.

Xavier’s low voice emanated from the rear of the shop. “Come to the back.”

When Carson stepped into his alcove, Xavier met his eyes and gave him an irresistible, slightly wicked grin. But it was totally incongruous with his weighty gaze.

Carson was dying to kiss him. To feel his arms wrapped tight around him. But when he stepped toward him, Xavier gestured for him to stop.

Oh, fuck. Fuck. He’d assumed. The tattoo shop. He’d invited him, hadn’t he? And that meant he’d changed his mind, didn’t it? Or not?