He continued. “She wouldn’t let me in, though. I guess having a bastard for a husband was better than having a gay son. She had a bag packed for me. Some clothes and a pocket knife I’d gotten on my last birthday. Even then I figured she wanted me prepared in case I thought about ending my life.” He huffed out a laugh, unsure when he’d become the kind of guy who laughed when he felt pain.
“God, that’s awful.” Kevin’s voice conveyed the compassion even more.
Walter got up from the table and went to lean against the fridge facing Kevin, keeping the width of the kitchen between them. “The worst part? All I wanted was my dog. He was all I cared about taking with me. But by the time my mom had gotten home and reinforced I was kicked out, old stepdad of the year had already taken him to the county animal shelter. I slept on a park bench, and the next morning I went to the shelter as soon as they opened. Since I was a minor, they wouldn’t let me have him. I couldn’t adopt him or show proof he was mine. They were one of those places that puts the dogs down if they’re not claimed or adopted in seventy-two hours. I sat outside the place for three days, trying to convince people to pick him. The cops kept chasing me away, but I was…” A lump formed in his throat. He forced the rest out. “I had to try to save him.”
When he didn’t say more, Kevin asked, “What happened?”
“Three days after I was kicked out, he was put to sleep and I was headed out of town.”
“Shit. I’m sorry. Is that how you ended up with your dad?”
“My mom had slipped a piece of paper in the bag of clothes. An address with two words written above it.
Your father’s
. I didn’t even know him. I had no memory of him. He hadn’t been to see me since we’d moved away when I was two.”
“She sent you to live with a stranger?”
Walter shook his head, unsure if he was answering Kevin’s question or fighting off the emotion he never let himself feel over that part of his life. “I found out later my dad had spent years and a lot of money trying to find me, but my mom had gone off the grid, determined to keep him away from us. They never had a relationship. I was the result of a one-night stand. I guess she thought having a cop hanging around and being a dad to me would interfere with her recreational drug use. I am grateful to her, though.”
“For what?”
“Those two words she’d written on that piece of paper saved my life. I probably would’ve ended up on the streets.” Like Seth Fisher.
Kevin came forward and wrapped his arms around Walter’s neck. He held him. “That might be the saddest story I’ve ever heard.”
Walter returned the embrace. “Something tells me you’ve got mine beat.”
Kevin didn’t take the bait. He moved back to lean against the counter.
Walter would give him time. “I’ve never told anyone about all that before.” He made eye contact with Kevin. “Anyone.”
“You’re not much of a sharer. You prefer to listen.”
Walter laughed. “Right.” He grew serious again. “Just couldn’t make myself talk about it. It was in the past. Not something to live with every day.”
“It’s not that easy to push the past aside.”
“You’re right about that. Pretending it didn’t matter was all a lie anyway. One I’ve been telling myself all these years. The truth? I can’t stand to think about how I fucked up.”
“You? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I never called the cops on my stepdad.”
“You were a kid. You were worried about where you’d sleep that night.”
“Yeah. But regret is a powerful thing.” He paused for Kevin to consider that. “You can trust me, you know.”
“I do.”
“You’re a good reporter. You have sharp instincts. You need to trust those.”
“What do you mean?”
Walter crossed the space between them. He put his hands on the countertop on each side of Kevin and leaned in. “What do you want to do? Right now? What are your instincts telling you to do?”
Kevin said nothing.
“Tell me what happened to your brother.”
Kevin searched Walter’s face. “I want to.”
Walter moved back against the fridge again.
When Kevin finally said more, his voice was low but growing stronger with each word. “It was the best night of my life up until I saw my brother. I finally felt like myself. Finally felt alive.”
“The first night you were with a man?”
Kevin nodded. “Since then, I never let myself think about it. Not really. I just decided to…”
“Pretend you weren’t gay.”
“Yeah.” He pinched his lower lip between his teeth, then released it. “It was at a bar, a local college place that had theme nights. Thursdays were for gay men.” He paused, then spoke faster with his next words. “Jeff was attacked outside. Some assholes came at him, beat him up pretty good, and when they shoved him to the ground, his head slammed against the curb.” Kevin’s body grew visibly tight with tension and grief. “He died a half hour after we got to the hospital. He never even woke up. The police said it looked like two men. Maybe more. A mugging gone wrong, but they never found out who did it.”
“You think it was more than a mugging?”
“It was. The police thought it was local kids. Townies who resented the college kids and wanted to hassle him. But we’d lived there all our lives, and Jeff was still in high school. Anybody local would’ve recognized his varsity jacket. It wasn’t about where he was from. It was about where he’d been. Inside the bar.”
“A gay bashing?”
“Yeah. The only people who didn’t get that were the cops. The papers made a big deal about it because he died outside the bar, bringing up other attacks on gay teens.”
It was all coming together. Kevin’s hatred of bars and clubs, his fear of coming out, why he became a reporter, why he didn’t trust cops. But something was still missing.
“Your brother wasn’t gay, was he?”
“No.”
“He was there with you?”
“He came there to find me. We shared a car, and I had the keys in my jacket pocket. I thought I had left them at the house for him, but I guess I forgot. He had a date, a dance at school, so before he got ready to go, he walked to the bar to get the keys from me.”
“He knew where to find you?”
“Yeah. He kept bugging me to go out with his girlfriend’s older sister, so I told him what I’d been feeling about guys.” Kevin shrugged. “He was my best friend. I couldn’t keep it from him. But he was the only one who knew. After he died, I went to the local paper and told them to stop printing that he was gay. He wouldn’t have had a problem with people thinking that about him, but it was a lie. It wasn’t who he was. Getting the papers to print the truth was the only thing I could do for him. I couldn’t find who killed him. I couldn’t go back and undo what I’d done.”
“You did nothing wrong.”
Kevin’s head shot up. “He wouldn’t have been there if it weren’t for me.”
“It was not your fault.”
Kevin didn’t say anything.
Walter moved in close and touched his arm, a slow slide of his hand from elbow to shoulder. “All that guilt made it easier for you to ignore your desires for men. It’s why you’ve been determined to find out what’s going on at the Haven.” Walter waited until Kevin looked up. “Tell me the rest. You were with a guy when your brother was attacked?”
Chapter Sixteen
Kevin shrugged off Walter’s touch. He had to do something, anything, or he’d fly apart, and there’d be tears and memories he never wanted to relive. The ride in the ambulance. The blood covering both his hands and Jeff’s
Lord of the Rings
T-shirt. The long minutes Kevin had knelt on the cold, wet pavement begging his little brother not to die.
He wanted to forget this entire conversation.
He seized Walter by the back of the neck and forced their mouths together. He tried to make it the best damn kiss he’d ever given anyone, tried to keep them focused on the contact of their mouths, not on Walter’s words.
Someone had other ideas. With a firm hand Walter encouraged him back a step.
“Don’t.” Kevin grabbed for him again. “I don’t want to talk anymore. I want you to fuck me. Been waiting so long for it.”
Walter leaned forward and rested his forehead on Kevin’s. “You have no idea how much I want that, but not now. Not like this.”
“You don’t want me? Fine.” Kevin pulled away and headed for the kitchen doorway, tripping over Walter’s foot on his way by, catching himself before he fell to the floor and made an even bigger ass of himself. He stormed out of the kitchen and stopped in the middle of the living room. He heard Walter enter behind him.
If Kevin had learned anything about Walter, it was that he’d never let this go.
It was raining outside now. The splatter of raindrops on the window in the living room and the streaks left in their wake mesmerized Kevin. He didn’t want to give up on those raindrops, didn’t want to force the words out. Eventually Walter would get him to say it, though. And maybe a part of him wouldn’t be sorry.
“You want to know what happened? My first night in a gay bar, my first night letting myself explore what I’d been feeling for years, the first time I had a cock in my mouth, and someone bashes my brother’s skull in. Because of me. Because I was so focused on getting some dick I’d forgotten to leave him the damn car keys.” He spun around to face Walter. “Is that what you wanted to hear? How I was giving head for the first time in my life while I got my brother killed?”
“You didn’t get him killed.”
Kevin looked to the apartment door. He wanted to walk out. He didn’t want to see the pity on Walter’s face anymore. Didn’t want to see Walter’s view of him changing.
“It was not your fault.” Walter moved toward him. “You saw him after it happened?”
Kevin nodded. “I was in the back parking lot in the guy’s truck when I heard the sirens. He didn’t want me to quit blowing him, but I had this horrible feeling something was wrong.”
“And after? You didn’t talk to anyone about it?”
“No.” He met Walter’s gaze. “Apparently I’ve never met anyone as stubborn as you.”
Walter smirked, then stilled the expression as he took another step forward. “You have to stop punishing yourself.”
Kevin sucked in a deep breath. “I’m trying.” He shook his head. “My parents never talk about that night, about why Jeff and I were at that bar. They never asked me if Jeff was gay. Never asked if I was. I couldn’t tell them he’d been there because of me. After the funeral, the girl my brother wanted to fix me up with kept coming by the house. It was easier to pretend again, to go back.” Kevin lifted his head and found the pity gone from Walter’s face, or maybe it had never been there. “She and I became friends. It was easier—uncomplicated to keep seeing her.”
“Sondra?”
“Yeah. I didn’t think I could ever be with another man.” He laughed. A wild, crazy sound he couldn’t stop. “God, that was not the right move. For me. Or her. I was so messed up I ended up stealing years from her life.”
Walter came to him. “She must have forgiven you. You’re still friends.”
“I haven’t told her about me. That I’m gay. I haven’t told anyone.” Kevin turned away and went to the window, focused on the streetlights below, on the rain-soaked pavement, on the car tires plowing through the puddles. He didn’t want to feel like this anymore. Lost. Afraid. Guilty.
Walter came up behind him. He wrapped his arms around Kevin’s waist. “You told me.”
Kevin let out another surge of laughter, his body releasing some of the tension. He settled back against Walter like that first night at the club, only this time he had no hesitation, no fear. “Do you count?”
“Probably not about this.”
“Sondra might know. I had been pulling away from her for a long time. When she came to talk to me about getting back together, I think she was really trying to get me to say it. But before I walked into the Haven, I’m not sure I was ready.”
“You were ready before you walked into the club.”
He let out a long sigh. “Yeah, I was. I just didn’t want to know I was.”
Walter slowly swept a hand over Kevin’s chest and kissed the side of his head. “Just start with one person. Tell one person you’re gay.”
“I did. You.”
“Thought we established I don’t count.”
Kevin clasped the arms Walter had folded across him. “You count. You definitely count. I know I have to tell people, tell my parents, Sondra, but…I just need more time.”
“You’ll know when you’re ready.”
Kevin leaned into Walter more, that simple embrace connecting them in a way words and sex never could. He loved that touch, that it wasn’t leading toward anything more. It felt like the first real embrace in his entire adult life.
He closed his eyes and sank into the moment. When he opened them again, a man stared back at him through the rain-soaked window. “Shit.” Kevin took a step back, sending Walter stumbling with him.
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s someone out there. He’s watching us.”
Walter stepped around him. “Where?”
“There. By the streetlight.”
“Son of a bitch.” Walter had the apartment door open and was out into the hall in a flash.
“Walter.” Kevin sped after him down the stairwell. “Wait.” He almost caught up to him right as Walter dashed out the building’s front door onto the sidewalk. Kevin followed him out. The glare of headlights blinded him. A car was headed right for them. No, right for Walter, but he was looking in the other direction.
“Move.” Kevin lunged forward, throwing his weight at him. They toppled over, Kevin on top of Walter, as the car jumped the curb beside them, just missing running them down before it sped off.
Kevin pulled back. “Are you okay?”
“Get the plate number.”
The car weaved in and out of traffic. Kevin stood. He couldn’t catch anything but the taillights.
Walter jumped to his feet beside him. “Goddamn it, my car keys are upstairs. Did you get a good look at the driver?”
“No.” Kevin was breathing heavily. They both were. “Shit. I didn’t think to look. All I could think about was getting you out of the way.”
Walter seized him and tugged him to his chest. He huffed out a breath that blew through the top of Kevin’s hair. “Are you okay?”