Unfortunate Son (22 page)

There had never been a question of who would ride to the hospital with her. Evan had given his father one hard look, and Charles Day had backed away toward his own car.

Evan didn’t know where his father ended up after that. He tried to tell himself he didn’t care, but he looked around anyway. A few dozen feet down the hall, he could see the edge of the waiting room, mostly deserted at midafternoon. His father sat in the first row of seats, looking like a washrag that had been wrung out and tossed, crumpled, into a corner.

Despite everything, Evan felt a stab of empathy. He knew his mother’s fall had been an accident, a stupid accident, but the image of his father’s hand striking his mother would not leave his mind. He couldn’t forgive and forget, not yet. Maybe not ever.

“Mr. Day?”

Evan focused on the young woman who stood holding the curtain open. He didn’t know if she was a doctor, a nurse, or some random person off the street, and at that moment, he couldn’t care less. “Is she okay?” he asked, taking a step closer. He felt someone else step up next to him, probably his father, but he didn’t shift his focus.

“The bleeding stopped, but she’s in and out of consciousness. We’re having a portable X-ray brought over, but you can see her for a minute if you want.”

His father took a step forward, and Evan almost reached out to stop him on pure instinct, but he managed to hold back. Yes, he was still pissed as hell, but the fact was that this was his wife in the hospital, and Evan couldn’t actually stop him from seeing her.

Instead, he followed behind. The young woman, apparently a nurse, warned them not to touch her or jostle the bed, since they were still concerned about a possible neck injury.

His mother looked tiny in the bed, her skin pale even against the stark white sheets. A stabilizer had been wrapped around her neck, an IV inserted into her arm, and a clip-on monitor attached to her finger. Machines beeped, and the noises of the ER drifted in, but the sounds faded as Evan watch his father bend close, careful not to touch, even as Evan could see him straining to hold himself back.

More of his anger drained away. He still didn’t know why they’d hidden the money from him, and he couldn’t
think
about forgiveness for that until he knew
why
, dammit. But he knew his parents loved each other, even if he wasn’t so sure how they felt about him. He couldn’t hold that against them, could he?

I sure as hell can
, he thought.

Something bubbled up inside him, a well of emotion so tangled and dark he couldn’t sort it out. Anger, resentment, and frustration swirled together into a blackness he couldn’t fight. Didn’t know if he wanted to fight.

His skin crawled, and he had to get out of there
right that second
or the top of his head was going to blow right off his body.

He spun on his heel and fled.

H
EAVY
METAL
blasted from the speakers in Evan’s car as he drove. He didn’t know how long he’d been in the car, and he didn’t really give a shit. Hours, at least, since darkness had fallen, a huge full moon hanging in shades of orange over the treetops. But Evan knew the highways and back roads around Atlanta well after spending most of his life in the city, so he just kept driving.

He’d just taken a left at a T intersection to head back toward the interstate, and the music searing his ears had switched from AC/DC to Black Sabbath, when his phone ringing cut through the noise. Glancing down, he saw a number he didn’t recognize and almost ignored it before he thought that it could be the hospital. He stabbed the button on his steering wheel to answer, cutting Ozzy off in midscream.

“Hello?”

“Is this Trevor?” The voice was unfamiliar, but the name he used showed clearly it wasn’t about his mother, either.

“Yeah. Who’s this?” Trevor slowed down, looking for a place to pull over in case he needed to write down information.

“Sorry, this is Billy Hart,” the man said. “I run a new website called Extreme-X, and I’m in a bind. I had a model for a shoot tomorrow flake out on me, and I need someone to fill in for him. It’ll be some pretty heavy BDSM, and you’d be the sub. Standard rates, with some bonuses for extras. You up for it?”

“Sure.” Evan didn’t let himself second-guess. Residual energy and adrenaline still thrummed through him, and he needed to burn it off somehow. Getting flogged and fucked for pay should do the trick. “Can you text me the info? I’m in the car.”

“No problem. You have recent test results?”

“Yeah. I just did a shoot yesterday.” God, that seemed like years ago.

“Perfect. We’re starting around noon. I’ll shoot you a text with all the info in a few. Thanks, man.”

“No problem.” Evan ended the call and music blasted out at him. He hit the volume button to bring down the level. He still felt wired, but the anger had ebbed to a more manageable level. He needed to do something to burn through the leftover adrenaline.

A predatory smile crossed his face, and he hit the gas, heading back toward the city. He knew exactly where to go.

T
REVOR
STALKED
into Panther like the eponymous animal. Need vibrated through him, driving him to the bar for a double whiskey, which he shot back like water. He scanned the gyrating dance floor, looking for likely prey, and zeroed in on the one.

He pushed away the empty glass, warmth spreading through his veins, and walked over to where the young man danced, alone in the crowd. Sliding one hand around his target’s hip to settle on one asscheek, Trevor pulled him in close and began to move.

The other man didn’t even look surprised at Trevor’s aggressive approach. He melted against Trevor’s body, hands gliding up Trevor’s arms to grasp his biceps, hips shifting right into the rhythm Trevor set. Dark eyes flashed up in clear invitation. The hair across the young man’s forehead was plastered down with sweat, and the smell of his cologne and skin filled Trevor’s senses.

They danced until the song changed, until no air remained between them. The smaller man laid his tongue at the base of Trevor’s neck and licked up to his mouth. “Wanna get out of here?” he breathed against Trevor’s lips, and Trevor didn’t hesitate.

T
HE
OTHER
man, who told Trevor his name was Cooper—not that Trevor cared—lived in a tiny studio two blocks from the club, in an area populated by preppy young gay men. Cooper’s bed took up most of the open floor space, which made things easy when they stumbled through the door wrapped around each other. Cooper barely paused long enough to lock up behind them and pull a strip of condoms and a bottle of lube out of the bedside table. Clothes flew in all directions, and they came together again in the middle of the mattress, skin to naked skin.

It wasn’t often that Trevor felt the need to dominate. He switched between top and bottom readily, but rarely did he just want to hold someone down and fuck the hell out of him. Tonight was one of those nights.

He’d picked well. Cooper rubbed up against him like a cat, following Trevor’s lead, eager and pliant. Trevor sucked at his mouth, wrapping one hand around both their dicks and stroking hard and fast, needing it
now
, dammit.

Cooper pulled away just before Trevor did, twisting sinuously to turn over onto his stomach. Trevor leaned back and watched, lust gripping him at the view, Cooper’s ass turned up and his back arched, his face pressed flat against the mattress.

“Fuck me,” Cooper groaned, and Trevor didn’t hesitate. A scant few minutes of prep later, he was driving in deep, fucking into the man beneath him with all the pent-up energy in his body. Cooper took it all, groaning and cursing, writhing and thrusting back, matching Trevor’s rhythm, stroking his own dick so Trevor didn’t have to spare a thought or a hand. Need drove him on, the smell of sex and the sound of skin slapping together ramping up his lust until there was room for nothing else.

When he came, everything left his body at once. All the anger, the confusion, the pain he’d channeled into lust drained away, leaving him shaking and shaken. He hardly noticed Cooper finding his own release. The other man had been nothing more than a prop. Not that it mattered, since it seemed Cooper had done the same with him. A more polite version of “go away now” followed the sex, and Trevor was back on the street less than an hour after they’d met.

He walked back to retrieve his car, mind blank, soul empty.

J
UST
BEFORE
noon the next morning, Trevor pulled into the lot outside the shoot location, fueled on nothing but coffee, nicotine, and adrenaline. He hadn’t even tried to sleep, and with only a handful of hours the night before, he was running low on reserves. Pausing to stub out his sixth cigarette in the past twelve hours, he pulled himself out of the car, venti quad-shot Americano in one hand and his duffel in the other.

The studio sat in a warehouse district a few miles from Trevor’s place. He’d been to the neighborhood before—a nearby set of buildings held a popular gay dance club and a shop that sold everything from the most basic sex toys to leather harnesses. Trevor thought this building might have had a club in it years ago, too, though he’d never been there himself.

He followed the directions he’d been texted around the side of the building, to the door with a 303 over it. He rang the bell and waited to be let inside, deliberately not bothering to take deep breaths to calm the inevitable nerves that came before every shoot. This time, he needed to hold on to that rush, the energy running through him, if he wanted to get through the shoot and get out of here.

Noises on the other side of the door must have been locks disengaging, because a couple of seconds later, the door opened and Trevor found himself looking at a short, muscular man with a bit of a pot belly and a full, bushy beard.

“Glad you made it, man!” The man’s overly loud voice and, at closer look, the brightness of his eyes made Trevor wonder what he’d spiked his morning coffee with. “C’mon in. I’m Billy. Emmett is over there finishing the setup with Griffen. He’s your scene partner. Oh yeah, you got your test results?”

Jesus
. Trevor hoped whatever had Billy running on fast-forward wasn’t being brewed up in a back room somewhere. “Yeah, it’s in my bag,” he said, following Billy over to the side of the room, where a long folding table sat against one wall with a laptop and some random gear on one end and an oversized black duffel on the other. Trevor set his own bag down in between and dug out the paperwork showing his STI status, but by the time he turned to hand it to Billy, the man was over by the wall, chittering away at the two taller men working next to a St. Andrew’s cross.

Trevor ignored them and took a minute to look around the space. Standard fare for a kinky shoot—industrial and barren. One of the reflective umbrellas looked like it might collapse at any moment, but that wasn’t his problem, as long as it wasn’t anywhere near him at the time. Another long table against the other wall held a camera, a case of bottled water, and a beat-up cardboard box full of folders, which Trevor assumed must be the required paperwork for the shoot.

Fuck
. He hadn’t expected high-end glamour, but he’d seen worse only once, with a studio that shut down a month after his shoot. At least the check had cleared. Maybe he should insist on payment in cash this time. He didn’t know if he’d trust a check from these guys.

“Okay!” Billy came skittering back over. “Emmett’s got everything ready to go. So here’s the setup. Griffen is gonna drag you in on a leash—acting, y’know, not literally.” Trevor managed not to roll his eyes. “And he’s gonna strip you, strap you to the cross, flog you some, and then fuck you. Can you come hands-free?”

Trevor lifted an eyebrow. “Probably not today.” Only a handful of times total, counting the shoot with Adam, and he doubted seriously he’d get far enough into anything these guys pulled to manage it.

Billy pouted. Literally. “Okay. Um, then Griffen will probably jerk you off after he’s done. That work?”

Trevor nodded. “Sounds fine.” Not a whole lot of
fun
, but that’s why this was a job.

“Be right back.” Billy disappeared through a door in the side wall, closing it firmly behind him, and Trevor tried not to think about what he might be popping or snorting or shooting in there.

“Trevor?”