“Eight.” He sighed. “Did you do your time?”
“Yes.”
“Rehab, making amends?” he asked.
“As much as humanly possible.” It wasn"t like I could bring the boy back. If I could have, even if it cost me my life, I would have. But that was pretty easy to say since I wouldn"t have to actually do it, and so it fell into the “talk is cheap” category.
Sometimes I didn"t even trust myself enough to believe it.
“You"ll never have a clean slate, Jordan,” he told me honestly. “You"ll have to answer to your creator. And if you screw up like that again, especially in this town, I won"t hesitate to hunt you down and make you pay.”
“I understand, sir.”
“But if you"ve made your way back and continue to do what"s right? Then I"ll be glad to call you my friend.” He held out his hand for me to shake, and I almost lost it, until I saw Izzie peeking out from behind the entranceway door and realized she"d set this moment up for me. Was I that predictable?
“Thank you.” I cleared my throat. “Thank you, sir.”
“Andy,” he told me, grabbing his workout towel and heading for the treadmills.
Andy
. I said the name in my head as he moved away. He reminded me of Bill, back home. Cooper"s brother-in-law. He once told me police officers see the worst that life has to offer, but that among the people he could count as his friends, they were often the most determined that things could be better. I felt more relaxed as I slipped back in among my girls.
My Red Hat ladies were all over the news that Ken Ashton was purchasing a house in Santo Ignacio. Apparently news traveled as fast here as it did in any small town. They cheerfully filled me in on the house"s former occupants and were already making plans for a grand housewarming party for him. I floated with them from Physical Therapy
75
machine to machine as they enveloped me in their aging-lady chatter and made me feel like a well-loved pet.
Sally, my outspoken bowl-haired lady, took me aside. “You know,” she said. “We know most of the young ladies here in town, or their mothers. We"d be happy to organize a little something…” She looked at me expectantly.
For some reason, I found this way more difficult than telling Officer Andy I"d killed someone. My gut clenched, and I had a moment of terrible indecision. “I—” Ann came up from behind. “You"re embarrassing the boy.”
“I am almost thirty,” I pointed out.
“So a little party? To introduce you around?” Sally persisted.
I sighed. “It"s probably better that I introduce myself around at Nacho"s Bar,” I said, waiting for the fallout. “After ten.”
“Oh.” Sally frowned. “I see.”
“I"m sorry,” I said, stupidly wishing her frown would go away and we could return to the easy banter we"d been enjoying.
“Why should you be sorry? I"ll just plan a different kind of party.”
Oh, jeez
. “Um,” I hedged, and for an awful minute I pictured Sally and her bowl cut answering the door with an enormous vat of Crisco and an ice-cream scoop.
“Well.” She brightened. “When you find a place, we"ll just throw a housewarming party for you too.”
“He"s moving in with me,” a low voice rumbled from behind me. I turned to see Ken slowly working his way to the therapy room. Was it my imagination, or did he look tired and out of sorts?
Sally"s eyebrows disappeared right up into her hair.
“I haven"t said yes yet,” I told her.
“No point in saying no.” Ken turned as he opened the door. “Resistance is futile.” He slammed the door shut behind him, hard.
A guy doesn"t shout “what the fuck?” in a crowd of ladies old enough to be his mother. Not if he was raised by
my
mom, the woman who dragged me to the River Falls Methodist Church every Sunday, spit-sticking my cowlicks down and thumbing the lipstick she got on my face off after kissing me, while I stood there dying of embarrassment by inches. Not if he was a gentleman, anyway, so I held it in.
“What the
fuck
was that?” Sally muttered.
* * * * *
An hour later, Izzie motioned me back to the therapy room. “He"s ready for you, hon,” she said as she walked past me. I opened the door and found Ken on the massage table, on his side facing the far wall. This time he seemed to just be wearing his boxers.
76
Z. A. Maxfield
A stack of fluffy towels lay on a table beside the door, so I picked one up and went to him.
I started by picking up the pump-top container of body lotion. “Did you like the aroma of the lotion I used last time?”
“Yes,” he said, still facing away.
“It"s got a eucalyptus smell to it.” I put a generous amount in the palm of one hand, and I placed my other hand on his shoulder. “If you could just lie on your back?” He rolled back but threw his arm over his face. “I don"t know how you can be so nice to me after what I did last night.” He looked over his hand at me. “Unless you were also just being
nice
to me then.”
I pulled his arm from his face and began, as I always do, working shoulders and pecs. “You know that"s not the case.”
“I"m sorry, Jordan. I"m so damned sorry.” He caught my hand midstroke on his chest. “I panicked.”
“I know that, Ken,” I told him. “Relax now. We"ll talk later.” In minutes I had him heaving a generous sigh. I was relearning his body, lengthening and stretching muscles that were tight from working out and anxiety.
The song playing on Izzie"s music system, heard only distantly from this quiet room, was one I remembered from years before, a song that always made me feel a little hopeful, a little restless. It made me think of cold winter nights and finding the warmth of a lover"s body between the sheets. I"d once told Cooper that I missed our younger days when we thought we were immortal. I"d used the words “when we were high school fucking gods.”
Looking back, I couldn"t imagine how I didn"t see that for the insanity it was.
Here, I was laying my hands on a man who needed me to help him use his body; here, where I had the power to give him relief and pleasure, whatever form that might take;
here
, I was a god.
I leaned over and brushed my lips to his, the barest touch. It wasn"t right to do it, not while I was working, but I felt his body relax into the table then, as he shuddered through another sigh.
“I don"t know why I panicked.”
“Shh,” I told him again. “This is your time to just feel. We"ll talk, I promise.” I wasn"t really sure if I wanted to keep that promise. I"d had an endless night, during which I remembered my long-standing rule never to get involved with people who weren"t out. Sure, Ken presented a major temptation. His fine ballplayer"s body was right there for me to see even if I was trying to forget. But he was a client, and more importantly, in a transitional place in his life.
How could I have ever been so stupid?
As long as I didn"t think of him as anything more than a man who was experimenting with me because I represented safety for him, I would be fine.
Sure I would.
Physical Therapy
77
Like it or not, this time when I was massaging his hands, running my thumbs over the callused pads at the base of each finger, I was imagining licking and sucking each one. When I worked the muscles in his thighs and calves, I was envisioning slipping between them and pulling his legs around my waist. It was a kind of torture, really, as I imagined taking each delicate toe into my mouth.
Despite my less-than-wholesome thoughts, the entire time I worked I took my cue from the spiritual massage set, also envisioning healing, wrapping it around him like a warm white light. He was silent as I worked the large muscles in his back, but once again I felt his body shake with sobs.
“Why is this happening to me?” he asked, in a voice muffled by the arms he"d locked around his head.
“I don"t know,” I said. “Maybe you need it.”
“I can"t live like this,” he murmured. “I can"t be bursting into tears all the time.”
“Does it happen all the time? Or just when I"m working your muscles?”
“Just here.”
“Think of it as spiritual rust then. Once we grind it off, it"ll be gone. Like the Tin Man in
The Wizard of Oz
.”
He gave a wet chuckle at that.
When I was finished, I went to get him a bottle of water. He seemed weak; when I brought it in, he was still just lying there.
I handed him the water as he swung his legs over the side of the table. I braced it, still afraid that given his size he was at the limit of what it could hold without wobbling or tipping over. Maybe if business was good enough, I"d be able to put in one of those big heated tables they use in spas.
“Was Izzie tough on you today?”
“In more ways than one,” he said. “Izzie"s powers of observation are legendary.
She asked me why my aura looked fucked and yours looked fucked over.”
Only in St. Nacho’s.
“Oh well, at least you won"t have to set her straight. Those Red Hat ladies are innocent-looking enough, but they"ve already threatened to introduce me to „nice girls."”
“What did you tell them?”
“Just before
you
announced I was moving in with you? I told them I would probably do better at Nacho"s Bar.”
“Well, that"s that then.”
“What?”
“Trina"s the president of the local chapter of PFLAG. I"m out. My mom will hear about this before she leaves the office today.” Ken reached for his shirt and began slipping it on, buttoning it while still sitting on the table. He looked ill.
78
Z. A. Maxfield
“Which one is Trina again?” I brought his pants to him and found his shoes and socks. I turned the sock balls right-side out.
“Tall, hair cut short in back, fluffy all around her face. Shrewd eyes.” He smoothed his shirt down. His keys and wallet fell out of his pants when he went to put them on, and he cursed. I picked them up while he worked at pulling both legs of his pants up, drawing them free of his feet. He then let himself down off the table to pull them up and zip them. Unobtrusively, I still held the table steady. He slipped his arms into his crutches.
“Trina,” I said. “I could talk to her. Tell her it"s not what she thinks—” He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Thanks, but that"s not necessary. I"ll talk to my family. I…I still need some time, Jordan.”
That seemed absurd to me, if only because during the brief two days I"d known him he"d been pursuing me pretty fucking relentlessly. He"d gotten past my defenses, broken down my resistance, let me fuck him, and then fled like a schoolgirl. I thought at the time that regret was a funny thing. I wasn"t even sure he understood his desire to get away from me, but I thought I"d make it easy, so he didn"t have to gnaw his arm off or anything.
“That"s fine,” I told him, when what I really wanted to say was,
Are you out of your
fucking mind?
He put a hand to my face, letting his crutch dangle from his forearm like big, ugly jewelry. “Thank you.” He thumbed my cheek and pressed his lips to mine, first hitting the corner of my mouth so I thought it was a mistake in aim, but then repeating the gesture symmetrically, one side and then the other, his breath quickening pleasantly against my skin until he reached his target and used his tongue to ask for entry.
Whatever I had resolved to do only seconds before, it wasn"t long before I was winding both my arms around him and allowing him to lift me to my toes. I was afraid to wrap my entire body around his for fear we"d knock the table over and cause a scene.
That didn"t stop me from wanting to get as close as I possibly could to Ken"s hard body. In no time he was taking over, doing what came instinctively, grinding against the junction of my thighs and making me a spectacle in my track pants. When we pulled apart it was a near thing, because I couldn"t tell which one of us stopped, but we stood there panting, tented, leaking, and very much ready to tear each other"s clothing off. Neither one of us said a word, and there was a long damned silence while we waited for our bodies to settle down. Ken took a second bottle of water, this time from his gym bag, and as he drank it, I pictured him swallowing my cum and nearly lost control right then and there.
He left without saying anything. He just shot me an “I"m not through with you” glance and left.
It was for damn sure I"d have liked to know what Izzie had to say about my aura right then.
Physical Therapy
79
Chapter Thirteen
I worked for the rest of the day and then retreated to my hotel room. I"d never given Ken my cell phone number, and I didn"t think anyone else would call, so I shut it off and tossed it on the nightstand with my keys and my wallet. I undressed, slid between the sheets, and reached for the television remote, but about then I became aware of how tired I was, how long the hours were that I"d been working, and how difficult the previous days had been for me. I drifted off in no time in the silence and gloom.
When the hotel phone rang at two in the morning, I dragged myself awake. No one I cared about would call me at two a.m. I lifted my arm up enough to flick the plug out of the back of the handset, stopping its clamor. I was groggy but managed to get myself a glass of water before I fell back into bed and dragged a pillow over my head.
Sometime later, I awoke to a loud and erratic pounding on the door.
Cursing, I lurched up. I was naked, so I hopped into jeans on the way to answer, nearly losing my balance, and reached out a hand keep myself from falling. My momentum made me hit the door with a hard smack.
“What. The. Fuck,” I said when I opened the door to find Ken standing there. He put a hand out as though he thought I"d slam the door in his face, and stuck his head in to look around.
“Are you alone?” he asked. I don"t know what pissed me off more: that he thought I might not be or that he had the nerve to ask. He looked terrible. His eyes were red and his cheeks were darkly stubbled and rough.
“Of course I"m alone. Do you have any idea what time it is?” He turned those red-rimmed eyes on me. “Why didn"t you answer the phone, Jordan?”