Authors: Katie Allen
“I know,” Trevor bit off. “I told you I’d send it, okay?”
The silence was icy as the truck ate up several miles of county highway. Trevor sighed. “Sorry. I
would
like to check my e-mail on your laptop—thanks.”
With an uncomfortable shrug, Pete shifted in the seat. “I’ll just leave the computer set up. You can use it anytime.”
“Thanks,” Trevor said again.
Pete snorted a laugh.
“What?” The belligerence was back in Trevor’s voice.
“It’s just you sound so pissed off about being polite,” Pete told him.
“I am! It sucks.” Although he was still scowling, Pete could tell Trevor was having a hard time holding his cranky expression.
32
Hide Out
Changing another laugh into a cough, Pete faced straight ahead, staring at the nonexistent oncoming traffic.
“Better get that cough looked at,” Trevor told him. “Sounds like you might be coming down with a case of asshole syndrome.”
Pete laughed out loud at that. “It’s chronic,” he said, with a quick glance at Trevor. He was happy to see the other man was smiling. “Nothing they can do.”
“Too bad,” Trevor grunted as they pulled into the driveway and parked.
“Let’s go in the kitchen door,” Pete suggested. “We won’t lose a leg to the porch crocodiles that way.”
Giving an affirmative shrug, Trevor grabbed two handfuls of loaded bags. “Looks like it might rain. Why aren’t you parking inside?” He jerked his head toward the detached garage that sat at the end of the driveway at the back edge of the property. Pete made a face. “Because I’d rather risk hail than having that heap collapse on top of my truck.”
“Thought you said this place was structurally sound,” Trevor mocked, after leaving the bags on the back porch and coming back for more.
“The house is,” Pete corrected. “The garage is not. We’ll check it out to see if there’s anything to salvage in there. It’ll work to store supplies until we take it down.”
Trevor studied it, his head to the side. “Wouldn’t take much. Looks like it’d go down if someone even leaned on it.”
“Pretty much.” Pete pulled a stack of lumber from the back of the pickup and carried it to what was left of the front porch. Thunder rumbled in the distance and they both picked up the pace, emptying the truck in record time. Everything was put away and they were setting up a folding table in the kitchen when the rain started to pour.
“How’s the roof?” Trevor glanced upward.
“We’ll find out, won’t we?”
With a snort, Trevor yanked open the table legs and locked them. “Ready?”
“Ready.” They flipped it right-side-up.
“Easiest furniture assembly I’ve ever done,” Pete said with satisfaction. “Want to take a break?”
“Sure.”
They grabbed their newly purchased camp chairs and two of the beers they’d just stored in the fridge and headed for the front porch. Treading carefully, Pete tested the boards on the far side of the hole and pronounced them sound. Despite that reassurance, Trevor lowered himself very gingerly into his chair. Popping open the beers with the bottle opener on his pocketknife, Pete offered one to Trevor.
“Thanks.” Taking a drink, Trevor winced. “Warm.”
33
Katie Allen
“Well, if you don’t want it…” Pete reached toward him.
Twisting so Pete couldn’t reach his beer, Trevor shook his head. “Hands off. Warm or not, this beer’s mine. I’ve earned it.”
“Doing what?” Pete asked, taking a drink from his own bottle. “Shit, that
is
warm, isn’t it?”
“Doing a disgusting amount of shopping,” Trevor told him. With a groan, Pete settled deeper into his chair and took another drink. The second sip tasted better than the first. “It
was
a shit-load of shopping, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Trevor shifted his chair closer so he could prop his feet up on the railing.
“Know what we need out here?”
“What?”
“Porch swing.”
Pete smiled. “Definitely.”
They sat in comfortable silence and drank their beers, watching the rain spatter the muddy spots in the lawn. As lightning split the sky, Pete glanced at Trevor’s profile. Something warmed his chest but it wasn’t the anxiety-tinged heat of desire. It was just…comfortable. Taking another drink of lukewarm beer on the rotting porch of his new home, Pete realized what he was feeling. It was contentment.
* * * * *
“Pete.”
The whisper brought him out of sleep instantly. His hand closed around the grip of his gun. Flipping the unzipped sleeping bag off his body, he rose to a crouch.
“Pete!” The whisper now had a tinge of fear as Trevor’s almost-naked form materialized from the shadows. “Don’t shoot me, dumbass!”
“Fuck,” Pete muttered, lowering his gun and standing up straight. His heart was still beating at warp speed. “Not too smart to call the guy pointing a gun at you a dumbass.”
“So sorry I insulted you when you were holding a
gun
on me,” Trevor threw back sarcastically, still in a whisper.
Pete glanced at his watch. It was just past midnight. “What’s wrong?”
“I think I saw someone in the tree outside my window.”
The words had hardly left Trevor’s mouth and Pete had slipped by him into the hall. The almost-full moon and the streetlights outside glowed through the uncovered windows. Before they’d gone to bed, they’d thought about putting up the blinds they’d bought, but both of them had been so tired Pete was pretty sure they would’ve ended up with crooked blinds and Trevor screwed to the wall.
Easing into Trevor’s room, Pete stayed low as he headed toward the window. He flattened his body against the wall by the window frame and snatched a fast look 34
Hide Out
around it. When he identified which tree it was, he ducked back into the hall again, moving fast.
Pete headed down the stairs, through the kitchen and out the back door, easing the door shut behind him. The air brushed against his chest and he realized he was just in his underwear. He immediately dismissed the thought, focusing on the tree next to Trevor’s window. There was enough light from the moon and peripheral streetlights to make a flashlight unnecessary, which was good. A bobbing light would’ve given Pete away as he crept across the yard toward the tree.
At the base, he peered up but didn’t see anyone. He circled around, looking from all angles, but the tree was unoccupied. Shifting his attention to the ground, Pete saw his own bare footprints, plus a shoe print in the rain-fresh mud. Crouching to examine the print, Pete saw it was smaller than a full-sized man’s print, so it was either a juvenile or a really small adult. He expanded his search, circling outward beneath the tree until he found two more prints, these pointing away from the tree. They were parallel to each other, deeper than the first print. Looking up, Pete saw a thick branch only about eight feet above the ground. If this kid had known Trevor had spotted him, he could’ve swung down to this branch and hit the ground running. He peered higher into the tree. There were a couple branches extending toward Trevor’s window, close enough for someone sitting up there to see inside his bedroom.
After he took a final glance around, Pete headed back inside. He paused in the kitchen long enough to wipe his feet down with a wet paper towel and then went upstairs.
“Trevor,” he said as he reached the hallway.
“In here,” Trevor’s voice came from Pete’s room, so he pushed open the door. Trevor was standing in the middle of the room, still in just his black boxer-briefs, arms crossed tightly over his chest.
“Think it was a kid,” Pete told him, “judging by the size of the shoe print.”
Trevor nodded.
“I’ll trim some of those branches closest to your window tomorrow. For tonight, though, you’d better stay in the other bedroom.”
“Could…um,” Trevor started, dropping his gaze. “Would you mind if I stayed in here? With you?”
Pete’s heart stuttered even as he told himself not to be stupid about this. “’Course,”
he said, as casually as he could manage. “Might be a good idea anyway, in case the peeping neighbor finds another way to see in. We’re supposed to be playing a couple, after all.”
“I’ll grab my stuff.” Trevor returned just seconds later with his sleeping bag and the air mattress they’d picked up at the store. The more Pete had looked at the wooden 35
Katie Allen
floors as he was making refinishing plans, the harder they’d looked. He’d noticed the mattresses in a camping display and had dropped two into their overflowing cart. Trevor placed the inflated mattress next to Pete’s and covered it with the sleeping bag, tossing his pillow down toward the top. Although he raised an eyebrow at Trevor’s positioning of the makeshift bed, so close to his own, Pete just settled into his own sleeping bag without saying a word. He placed his gun to the side of his pillow away from Trevor.
“Did you get a good look at him?” Pete asked.
“No,” Trevor’s voice sounded very close. “I’d cracked my window before I went to bed, so some noise woke me up. When I looked out the window, I saw a shape moving in the tree. I think he was still climbing, since he was moving around pretty close to the trunk. He was just a dark form though. Didn’t look too big.” He hesitated. “I…ah, freaked a little. I slammed the window and locked it and then came in here.”
“No, it was good to get the window closed and locked,” Pete assured him. “It was most likely just a kid who wanted to get a glimpse of the new queer neighbors. That’ll give us something to do at the barbeque. We can check out shoe treads on all the kids.”
Travis gave a short laugh. “That won’t make our new neighbors think we’re strange at
all
.”
With a yawn, Pete said, “We’ll just have to be stealthy about it.”
Silence covered the dim room until there was only their breathing. As tired as he was, Pete had figured he’d drop right to sleep but he was wide awake. He told himself it was adrenaline from the search of the yard that was making his heart race. It definitely wasn’t because Trevor’s body was within reach.
“I thought,” Trevor’s voice made him jerk in surprise, “it could be one of my father’s guys.”
“It wasn’t.” Pete turned his head toward Trevor. “Not unless your dad started hiring kids as junior thugs.”
“That was my first thought, I mean,” Trevor clarified. “I know it wasn’t now but I can’t seem to calm down.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Pete admitted. “Too much excitement for this time of night. I’m fuck-all tired too.”
“No shit.” It was Trevor’s turn to yawn.
“All right, so talk,” Pete ordered.
“What?”
Shifting onto his side, Pete told him, “If you can’t sleep, then talk. Tell me something. Put me to sleep.”
“Like what?”
“Like anything.” Pete tucked his arm beneath his head. “Tell me why your dad wants to kill you.”
36
Hide Out
Trevor gave a choke of laughter. “Nice fucking bedtime story that’ll be.”
“It’ll be like a ghost story told around the campfire,” Pete said. “Here, I’ll start. Once upon a time…” He trailed off expectantly.
Trevor was quiet long enough that Pete figured he wasn’t going to say anything but then a heavy sigh drifted across the small gap between their beds.
“Fine,” Trevor conceded, sounding deeply martyred. “Might as well. Can’t sleep anyway.”
Although he smiled, Pete didn’t say anything. He just waited for Trevor to talk.
“Growing up, I always got along with my dad okay,” he started, talking slowly.
“My mom died when I was eight, so it was just the two of us for a while. Then he married Stacy, and then Mia, and then Denise, and then Belle.”
“Not all at once, hopefully.”
“’Course not,” Trevor scoffed. “There were divorces in between. I think bigamy is the only crime he
hasn’t
committed.”
Pete grunted a laugh.
“In high school, I played football and dated girls, was crowned Jack of Hearts—the Homecoming Queen of guys—all of that shit. I basically tried to be the all-American kid,” Trevor went on.
“Tried to be?” Pete repeated. “Sounds like you pretty much
were
the all-American kid.”
“Yeah, well, that all went to shit in college.”
When he paused, Pete prompted, “So what happened?”
Trevor was quiet.
“Trev? What happened in college?”
“I got a boyfriend.”
After a stunned second, Pete sat bolt upright. “You
are
gay!” he crowed. “I knew it!”
Staring up at him, Trevor didn’t say a word. The dim shadows of the room cut shapes in his face, hiding his eyes and sharpening the angles of his jaw and cheek. His silence made Pete ashamed of his excited outburst and he lowered himself down to his side.
“Sorry,” Pete apologized. “It was just that I was going to ask you when we were in the truck but then I convinced myself you were just a good actor and were just really getting into your role.”
“So what’s
your
plan now?” Trevor asked, his voice tight. Pete shook his head, confused. “What d’you mean?”
“Now that you know. Will I get a different babysitter?”
Pete laughed, he couldn’t help it. “Hardly.”
37
Katie Allen
Even with the low illumination, Pete could see Trevor narrowing his eyes. “What’s that mean?”
“I’m…” Pete trailed off as he realized actually saying it was harder than he expected, even after Trevor had just come out to him. “It means I’m, um, I’m g-gay too.”
The word “gay” almost stuck in his throat, almost reduced him to his ten-year-old, tongue-tied past self.
Trevor’s face hadn’t changed. If anything, his expression was cooler than before Pete’s admission. “Are you fucking with me?” Trevor bit out.
“No,” Pete said baldly, holding Trevor’s gaze. “Not that I wouldn’t like to.” Pete swallowed. That last part had just sort of slipped out. His words hung between them. Pete didn’t dare move, as if a single blink would convince Trevor he was lying, that he was messing with his head just to be an asshole. Pete knew this fear, had felt it many times, that knowledge that exposing your secret self to someone often led to cruel laughter and a fist to the gut.