Sidecar (21 page)

“Come on, Joe,” he said softly. “I’m glad we came, but we’re done now.”

Joe leaned over and dropped a kiss on his hair, and it felt personal. Casey leaned into him for some more strength, and because he could.

“Yeah, no problem.” But he wasn’t moving.

Casey looked up and saw that Joe was giving Vivian and Grandma Spencer a measured look.

“He’s mine after this. You want to talk to him, you talk to me first. You want to see him, you’ll have to see me. He was a class act, showing up here today. You don’t deserve that sort of class.” He turned away then, Casey tucked under his arm, and paused to look back over his shoulder. “And for the record? Kicking him out might have been the best thing you ever did for him.”

Then Joe steered him toward their little car in the parking lot by the chapel. Casey clung to his waist and shivered and wished desperately for their house, and their dogs, and a warm blanket and a chance to talk, and a little bit of peace.

Big Love

~Joe

J
OE
was shaking, he was so angry. He and Casey had spent six years feeling out how to do the right thing, and there they were, doing the right thing, and that bitch had
slapped
him!
Slapped
Joe’s Casey. And Joe, with his size and intimidation, hadn’t done anything about it.

They’d stopped for gas on the way into town, which was good because it meant Joe had nothing to do but drive after he sat in the car and roared out of the cemetery. He zigzagged out of town on sheer instinct. They had been in the car for about twenty minutes when Casey actually said something.

“Joe?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Those people hurt you. I… I didn’t bring you there for those people to hurt you, you know?”

Casey sighed and shifted and leaned back against the seat rest, closing his eyes a little. “It’s not your fault I was born,” he said, a little bit of humor in his voice.

Joe’s mouth quirked up. “Yeah, but I sure am glad I know you now.”

The kid shifted in his seat, and Joe felt a hand on his knee. “I’m glad you know me now too. The grown-up me, mostly. More grown-up than six months ago, anyway.”

Joe winced. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I never apologized. You showed up, gave me shit news, took care of me—I never apologized. I acted badly—really, really badly. I… I guess I knew Robbie wasn’t really who I wanted. I mean, it’s always been you. As far as I know, it always will be. But I wanted you to… I don’t know, give me a reason to say no. To tell him no. That’s why I got impatient and crawled into your bed. It was… it was stupid. I was stupid. And the things I said….” Casey trailed off, and Joe, confident that they were going to be in fourth gear for a while and he wouldn’t have to shift, grabbed his hand.

Casey turned his palm up and squeezed his fingers.

“Maybe,” Joe said gruffly, “all I needed was a little bit of time. You think of that?”

“I hoped,” Casey whispered. “But these last six months, when I couldn’t even see you, it really fucking hurt to hope.”

Joe felt a smile start at the corners of his mouth and spread. He took a careful look at Casey, who was looking at Joe’s face with hungry eyes and a pucker between his dark brows.

“Don’t let it hurt anymore, okay? Hope shouldn’t hurt.”

Another glance, and he saw the slow smile on Casey’s high-cheekboned face. It was a slash of the lips, really, and then a curve. Casey had a lean mouth, and that full-out, shining smile made the grooves in his cheeks pop out. “I won’t. How long am I going to have to hope? A time line would make it hurt even less.”

Joe felt the blush burning up from his stomach. At odd times over the last six months, he’d relived that kiss. At first it had felt dirty, shameful, to think that he’d let himself be taken advantage of that way, and then he’d felt worse, because dammit, Casey was so much younger than he was. But Casey had turned twenty-one in the time between, and Joe was wondering how long he’d have to wait before that didn’t matter anymore. Did he say twenty-five? Joe’s parents had had two kids by the time they were twenty-five, and they still, as far as Joe knew, looked at each other with secret smiles when they thought no one was looking. Did he make Casey date other people until he was thirty? God, Joe would be forty-two—and as much as Casey would think four years was forever, nine years seemed like forever to Joe.

Casey’s hand was warming up in Joe’s grip, and he suddenly pulled it away and squeezed Joe’s thigh. Joe gasped and his skin tingled in his thighs, in his groin, and he risked another look at Casey and thought that even with the longer rock-star hair and the lean mouth, he looked beautiful, and he looked grown. If Joe hadn’t known him when he was sixteen, he wouldn’t see any of the boy in him now.

“Maybe wait until we get home,” Joe said breathily and shivered, the unfamiliar fabric of his best suit chafing the creases of his arms and his thighs.

Casey grunted and squeezed his thigh some more. Joe shuddered, six months of pent-up frustration, of yearning, suddenly assaulting his skin. He started looking for a turnoff so he could go get a soda and go to the bathroom and maybe get away from the steamy closeness inside this tiny car.

“I’m done with hoping,” Casey said tightly. “I want
now
!”

Casey had large hands for such a slight body, and right now the one on Joe’s leg spanned from a few inches above his knee, where his thumb rested, to the aching tip of Joe’s sudden erection, where his small finger twitched. Joe shifted, not sure if he wanted the contact or wanted to move away from the contact. It didn’t matter—it was a small car, and that tiny brush against the fabric
near
his erection was enough to make him gasp.

He reached down and grabbed Casey’s hand, moved it back to his knee, and tried to catch his breath. He scowled and focused on the road. He didn’t want to accidentally take the I-580 turnoff that led to San Francisco—it was notoriously hard to spot. A sign for a filling station at the next exit popped up, and Joe snatched his hand back so he could jerk the wheel to the right and make the exit. He couldn’t even look at Casey as he was negotiating the turn, and when he pulled up at an ampm and parked in the little secluded spot on the side, he muttered, “Thirsty,” and then tried to get out of the car.

Casey didn’t let him.

“Wait,” he said, his voice a little desperate. “Wait!”

Joe stopped and looked at him, trying to put his customary smile on his face, the one that said he was patient and everything was okay.

Casey knew that smile, and he wasn’t buying it. His eyes were narrowed and his mouth was compressed in a scowl.

“What?” Joe asked, his smile slipping even as he spoke.

“Make me hope,” Casey begged. “I can wait—I’m not sixteen anymore—but make me hope.”

Joe closed his eyes, feeling totally vulnerable, but there had never, ever been a time when he could refuse to make Casey happy.

He didn’t kiss by halves. He seized Casey’s small face in his big hands and shoved his fingers through that straight sandy-blond hair, and liked the texture so much he did it again. Casey’s narrow, streetwise eyes grew wide and shiny and his flat mouth puffed up because his teeth worried it in anticipation. Then Joe framed his face, holding him just so, tilted his head, and lowered his mouth with force and decision.

Casey groaned and opened his mouth at the first touch of lips, and Joe took command. He liked kissing that was hard, with lots of tongue, and he started by tasting the inside of Casey’s mouth and
forcing
his tongue to engage. Casey got the hang of it in a moment and brought his own hand up to the nape of Joe’s neck, digging his fingers into Joe’s neat braid and hanging on for dear life.

Ahhh… kissing Casey this way was
glorious
. He kissed back hard, rapacious, demanding more and more and harder. Their teeth clashed for a moment, and Joe pulled back so he could kiss the groove of Casey’s cheek and then the sharp angle of his jaw below his ear. He pulled a pierced earlobe into his mouth and toyed with the stud there, suckling the soft flesh until Casey’s hand tightened in his hair and he whimpered. Joe let go of it reluctantly and then breathed softly into Casey’s ear, close enough that he knew his mustache would tickle and his breath would sound like the roar of the wind.

“Is this hopeful enough?”

Casey pulled back and glowered at him. “More!” he demanded, and Joe took his mouth—swollen now, open, ready—and answered him.

Casey groaned, and Joe clenched both hands in his hair and held him still. The space of the little Escort was small, the black interior humid, and the rain outside wasn’t doing anything to cool their overheated bodies in the unfamiliar wool clothes. Casey’s hand, cool and trembling, was an urgent relief as it snuck under Joe’s suit jacket and smoothed across his stomach. Joe sucked it in, self-conscious about the slight softness there in spite of the heavy muscle on his ribs and his chest, but Casey made a purring sound as he slid his hand between the buttons of Joe’s shirt and under his T-shirt and kneaded the tender, slightly furry skin he found.

For a moment, Joe was torn. For a moment, Joe wanted to keep kissing as badly as he wanted to pull back, button his shirt, mask his vulnerability. Then Casey made that sound again, that wonderful, purring sex sound, and Joe swallowed it with another hard, tenderizing kiss.

He moved one of his hands to Casey’s back and scrunched the stiff white shirt in his hand, pulling at it until he found the soft, sleek skin right above his belt. He spanned his hand across it, then delved into the backside of Casey’s slacks, warming himself on the softer skin there.

Now it was Casey who pulled back, begging. “God, Joe… now… please?”

Joe pulled back, bumping the steering wheel with his elbow and trying not to throw the car into neutral, because it didn’t always take the clutch. As he pulled back, his knees knocked the keys from the ignition, and Joe took three deep breaths and leaned forward, rested his forehead on the steering wheel, and laughed softly.

Casey groaned comically and thrust his hips up a little like he was seeking relief.

“Kid, I’ll do anything for you, I swear to God I will, but if you make me fuck you in a Ford Escort, I’ll never forgive you.”

Casey started to laugh breathily, and Joe took heart.

“Besides,” he added, “you said you needed hope. Now all you have to hope for is that it’ll be worth the trip back home.”

Casey turned toward him, his eyes still half-hooded, his lips parted and swollen, with razor burn on the fair skin of this neck. “Damn. Damn. I don’t have to guess
that
. I
know
.” He took a deep breath. “Now go get us some coffee, and I’ll hit the head, and then I can drive us home, okay? You need to rest up. I’ve got us some plans.”

T
HEY
were both cranky and achy by the time they got to Foresthill. They’d stopped once for dinner at a fast-food place and stretched out, but by the time Joe, who was driving again, pulled Lynnie’s car down the wide, flat space that doubled as a driveway, he felt like if he didn’t lie down, he’d die.

He unfolded his long, wide body from the car and stretched his fingers to the stars, growling as he did so to help release some of the tension, and he watched as Casey did the same. They’d listened to Tesla and Pearl Jam almost the whole way up—when Casey was still in high school, Joe had taken him to a Night Ranger concert at Cal Expo, and Tesla had blown the snot out of Night Ranger as the opening band. Casey might still have liked Madonna, but Tesla was from their home turf, and it was a sentimental favorite. The result was that in spite of the cranky, achy part of traveling, he was in a good mood, and the tension, the worry of what they were going to be like together, had melted more with every mile.

So, after stretching easy in the moonlight, he reached in and grabbed their coats from the back and threw them over his arm. “I’m going to go put some jeans on and let the dogs out,” he said, stifling a yawn. “I need to move a little before we go inside, okay?”

Casey nodded and turned his face up to the crystalline sky. It was cold and looking like snow up here, but unlike the valley and the flatlands, it wasn’t raining. “Could you bring out a sweatshirt for me?” he asked. His clothes were still back at the duplex, and Joe knew they’d probably be there for a while. Casey had made it very clear that he had to honor his commitment with Alvin, and Joe understood. They would make time. They would date.

But first they’d make love, and Joe would make it everything.

He had a pretty good idea of how many lovers Casey’d had since he’d arrived on Joe’s doorstep, and as unfair as it was, he wanted Casey to forget them
all
. If Casey had been saving the best of himself for Joe, then Joe wasn’t going to make him sorry.

He walked into the house quietly, not wanting to disturb Lynnie, and found her awake on the couch, fully dressed, looking moodily out the window. The dogs clattered up to greet him, Hi’s tail thumping on the walls and floors as he and Rufus vied for the honor of licking him to death, and he patted them on the head before giving them their heart’s desire and letting them out to see Casey.

He looked back at Lynnie and saw that she was standing up and that her three suitcases of clothes were packed up on the floor next to her.

“Lynnie?”

“I’m going to stay with Stacy,” she said quietly. “I’ll be there until I fly to my folks’. You can forward my mail if you want, but I think I called everyone today.”

Joe looked at her unhappily. She was so tiny. He hadn’t told her, but the day after she’d shown up on his doorstep, he’d shown up on Brad’s. Brad had looked worse than Lynnie by the time Joe was done, and he’d worn his newly battered face to jail when Joe had placed an anonymous call to the cops about the five baggies of rock on the coffee table. Lynnie hadn’t done the drugs—she swore up and down that she hadn’t—but her respiration had been elevated and her pupils dilated just from being
around
them. When she’d told Joe a month later that she was pregnant, Joe had thanked God—quite literally—that the baby in her belly wouldn’t be like the too-thin, too-angry children he had been caring for in the NICU lately. He held them every night and closed his eyes and wished that the power of touch, a thing he’d held sacred all his life, didn’t seem to hurt them quite so much.