Now, when would he tell Ramsey who he really was or, even more accurately, who he had been? It had taken him all night just to get up the courage to get around to it. Now he’d have to start all over again. “Hello.”
“Trevor, are you okay?”
“Travis?”
“Since when don’t you recognize your twin’s voice?”
“It’s just that you sound…” Zara didn’t know how Travis usually sounded on the phone so he reached. “Upset.”
“I am upset. I had a, uh…I had a feeling that something was wrong.”
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And why did Zara have a feeling Trevor’s brother had been about to say he’d had a premonition? Would it have been anymore farfetched than what he had been about to confess to Ramsey? “Wrong with me?”
“Did you go to the club tonight?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Haven’t you had enough of that place by now, especially after what happened?”
“I…I had some business to take care of.”
“Business?”
Zara had the uncanny feeling that Travis knew what business he was talking about and it made him wonder about that feeling of being followed he’d had earlier when he went to Zack and Quincy’s. “Yeah, business.”
“Are you staying clean?”
“You want to speak to my sponsor about that? He’s right here.”
“Did I interrupt something again?”
Zara sighed. He didn’t want to give Travis the impression that his call or his concerns were unwelcome. He was growing fond of Travis, thought of him like a younger brother. That was another reason he didn’t look forward to telling
Travis
who he was—he didn’t want to tell Trevor’s brother that Trevor was dead.
“Look, I’m sorry. I’ll let you guys get back to what you were doing. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“You don’t need to apologize for calling me, Travis.”
“I know how you are and I don’t want to cramp your style.”
Zara heard the taunt in Travis’ voice and grinned. He got the idea that Trevor had given his brother a hard time about violating his privacy in the past, but liked that it didn’t seem to deter Travis’ overprotective tendencies.
He thought of his own brother Zack’s same qualities and was suddenly torn by loyalty and fraternal affection. “Why don’t we get together Monday?”
“After work?”
“Yeah. Swing by my way for a few…” He’d been about to say beers when he realized someone who was staying clean and sober wouldn’t indulge, not even socially. Zara had to remind himself that Trevor had a problem even if he didn’t.
“I’ll bring the soda. You order some pizza.”
“Deal.”
68
Gracie C. McKeever
They said their good-byes and Zara hung up feeling a little lighter until he looked in Ramsey’s eyes and saw the questions there. “What?”
“What happened when you were eighteen?”
“Where did that just come from?”
“In the hospital, when Travis said you hadn’t been clean and sober since you were eighteen. I’ve been wondering what happened back then.”
So had Zara but unfortunately he didn’t have the option to ask Trevor what was the deal with his past. Before Ramsey had clarified what he meant, Zara thought he’d been alluding to Zara-the-woman’s past when her parents talked about her like she wasn’t in the room, discussing her lack of prospects for viable employment after graduation since she had no real marketable skills except looking pretty and knowing how to have a good time. More than once her father had threatened to cut the purse strings if she didn’t straighten up and fly right. Her version of straightening up was graduating college by the skin of her teeth. It had been enough to buy her some time to figure out what she wanted to do while her ideas and desires went through enough phases over the next several years to make her loved ones’ heads spin.
Now, Zara-the-man seemed to be in the same predicament, no prospects and no future aside from what Trevor had forged with
his
skills, skills with which Zara was almost totally unfamiliar. As much as he told himself he had to do it, he was not looking forward to going in to work Monday and faking his way through a day at
Marlowe Industries
being Trevor Carmichael, IT Specialist.
“If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to but I figure this is what couples who date do and I wanted to get a head start on the idle dinner chatter.”
Zara didn’t think anything involving Ramsey would be idle. He was too intense, too diligent and sharp a customer not to give any matter his full attention. At least this had been Zara’s experience so far.
He put his arms around Ramsey again, liked the feel of all that smooth skin and muscle in his grasp, the sensation of another’s heart beating next to his, strong and vital. He couldn’t remember too many times in his past when he had felt so secure and cared about. Even when Ramsey bound him and spanked him he never felt endangered and Zara knew it was because he trusted Ramsey with his physical as well as his emotional well-being.
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Just not your secrets.
Zara swallowed, had no idea what to say to Ramsey’s question. He tried to put himself
inside the mind of a gay man, a little easier now that he was one, remembered Zack’s experiences with their parents when he had come out. They hadn’t been nearly as disapproving and appalled as Quincy told Zara his mother had been, but they certainly hadn’t been pleased. “My parents weren’t happy when I came out,” Zara blurted.
“I don’t think I’ve met a parent yet that’s been happy when their kid comes out.”
“Maybe not happy, but at least accepting.”
“And yours weren’t?”
He thought how Trevor’s parents hadn’t come to the hospital when he’d been near death, how they hadn’t even called since he’d been home and suddenly he knew. “No they weren’t accepting at all. They were pretty damned angry actually.”
“What did they do? Disown you?”
The concept had always baffled Zara. As flawed and critical as his parents sometimes had been, they hadn’t been bad. He knew for certain they would have come to the hospital to see him had he been ill. Actually, his mother would have sat vigil until he was released. She had when Zara-the-girl broke her leg falling out of a tree as a teen after her mother had expressly told her not to go climbing. But Zara had gone, and her mother had come to her injured side. Zack must have gotten his overprotective genes from her. Zara smiled at the thought and sent up a silent apology to his parents before saying, “Yeah, they did.”
Ramsey cursed, returned Zara’s hug, squeezing tight as if he could protect him from his past, protect him from Trevor’s. “We’re a pair,” he murmured.
“Your parents disowned you too?”
“My father didn’t stick around long enough to
own
me. And my mother, let’s just say she had some substance abuse problems of her own, that and a particularly self-destructive addiction to men.”
“Oh.” Zara didn’t know what else to say, his own parents looking better and better by the minute. “Is she okay now?”
“She’s okay.”
70
Gracie C. McKeever
Zara waited for more, but rather than talk about his mother, Ramsey flipped the script and asked, “So, what was up with your brother?”
“He had a, uh, feeling that something was wrong and wanted to make sure I was okay.”
“He gets those a lot doesn’t he?”
Speaking from his own knowledge as a twin having an uncanny bond with Zack, Zara said, “Yeah, I guess so.”
“That’s good. Between the two of us, we should be able to keep you safe and sound.”
Zara sank into Ramsey’s hug with a moan of satisfaction, but wondered what, besides alcohol and drugs Ramsey and Travis were keeping Trevor safe and sound from.
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Travis hung up the phone slightly mollified but still with an unrelenting feeling of danger and dread hanging over him.
Okay, so Halloween was just a week away, but he wasn’t normally the superstitious type, and he had never had so many premonitions about his brother in so short a period of time.
Despite their growing apart over the last few years, he still got inklings and vague notions when something wasn’t going right in his brother’s life. It was these inklings and notions that made him pick up a phone at random times of a day or a week and just give Trevor a call. Trevor would scoff at Travis’ sixth sense but somewhere during the conversation would eventually fess up to some trouble in his life. It was one of these rare moments when Trevor had hinted at a dilemma he had at work. He wouldn’t go into more specifics than to say there was some older perv and power freak at his job who wanted to get cozy and Trevor responded with a polite but firm, if also stock reply of “I don’t mix business with pleasure.” When Travis suggested Trevor had grounds for sexual harassment, Trevor assured him it didn’t need to go that far, that he could handle the situation himself.
But what if he couldn’t handle it? What if this perv and power freak was more of a threat than Trevor surmised?
Travis wondered now who it was and how much of a freak Trevor meant. He was sure his idea of freak and his brother’s were two different animals. And he didn’t for a minute believe just because Trevor said he could handle him that the guy had backed off and didn’t still represent a threat to Trevor’s well-being. Aside from being notorious for compartmentalizing his life, Trevor had a habit of downplaying serious situations, making something dangerous seem completely acceptable and normal when it was anything but.
72
Gracie C. McKeever
Travis remembered one visit to his brother’s apartment when he had found Trevor’s back raw and red as if he had just suffered a recent beating with a whip or belt. Travis learned the marks were the result of a beating Trevor had taken from his then boyfriend. Prepared to drag Trevor to the nearest precinct to press charges, he was brought up short when his brother said the beating had been consensual, and that he’d asked for the discipline.
“I don’t understand you sometimes, Trev.”
“It’s not your job to understand me, Travis. Just…just accept and love me like a brother’s supposed to do…”
Travis swallowed at the memory of Trevor’s comment, the resigned look on his face haunting Travis to this day. His brother had seemed so old and knowing, so defeated and weary with only a quarter of his life lived that Travis found it hard to believe he’d only been twenty-one at the time.
What was he supposed to say to the veiled indictment? That he loved Trevor no matter what? He’d always thought he’d made this clear enough through his actions but maybe their parents’ unwavering disgust with Trevor’s choices overshadowed any efforts Travis made to ensure fraternal ties. He did, after all, fraternize with the enemy on a daily basis. Why should Trevor trust him, especially now when Trevor wasn’t Trevor at all? And yet, hadn’t there been a moment, right in the middle of their conversation when Travis and his brother connected, as if the person inside Trevor’s body knew Trevor’s pain, understood Travis’ quandary, and tried to bridge the gap.
Whoever
it was inside his brother’s body now, Travis liked him, or her, and didn’t want anything to happen to this person any more than he wanted something to happen to Trevor.
That Trevor was with Ramsey gave Travis some comfort. He knew Trevor was safe, at least for now. But Ramsey wouldn’t be with him when he went to work and Travis had bad vibes about the old perv bothering Trevor at the job.
Were he and the big blond in Travis’ visions one in the same?
* * * *
Zara had been trying to get into Trevor’s computer since he’d arrived bright and early at eight that morning hoping to avoid any co-workers who would wonder why he was having such a hard time with his own computer.
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As luck would have it he managed to find Trevor’s office without much problem, surprised the guy had a little corner spot of his own and not a cubicle. But this was where his luck ended, and Zara didn’t know how much longer he could fake doing Trevor’s job when he didn’t know exactly what it entailed. IT Specialist was just a job title to him.
So far, no one had come in to check on him or call him for any assistance with their computers, which Zara considered a miracle. He remembered his brief stint as a telemarketer and the regular calls for support that went out to the IT people.
Zara minimized his Solitaire game when he felt someone standing on the threshold of his door. He glanced up with a feeling of dread coursing through him until he recognized the tall blond he’d danced with the night before last at
Zara’s
. “Vale! What are you doing here?”
“I see your little…medical condition really did a job on your memory, huh.”
Zara frowned then remembered Vale’s last name was Marlowe. He berated himself for not making the obvious connection to him and the company Trevor worked for. And now that he thought about it, Vale had to be pretty high up on the food chain at
Marlowe Industries
or related to someone high up unless the last name was just a coincidence.
He sighed and rubbed his eyes with his forefinger and thumb, wondering how he was going to get out of this before he decided to play the sympathy card. Vale seemed to be in his corner from the night before, not as creepy and hard up as some of Trevor’s other friends that Zara had danced with. “I’m still not up to snuff after the other night.”
“I thought as much, which is why I came by. I wanted to see how you were doing post-incident and ask if you care to join me for lunch, my treat, of course.”
Zara appreciated that the man was polite enough not to mention that what happened to him Friday night hadn’t stopped him from going to the club again and dancing the night away Saturday night.
He glanced at the clock in the corner of his computer. It was just barely eleven-thirty. “Isn’t it a little early for lunch?”
Vale crossed the threshold with a big gleaming smile and plunked down on Trevor’s desk. “What good are the perks of management and ownership if I can’t use them when I need and want to?”