Cole McGinnis 05 - Down and Dirty (18 page)

“Not going to happen with you and me,” Ichiro cut in. “Just saying.”

“I figured that. I keep them locked up tight. You won’t even see them.” Bobby crossed his chest with his index finger. “Mark worked in a shithole. I felt better knowing he at least could handle himself. There are a lot of crazies out there, and some of them would think because he was a doctor, he’d be carrying drugs or something. So… a gun.”

“Scary crazy,” Ichi muttered. “So it was what? Over ten years later, and then he calls you to say what? Sorry?”

“He wanted me to… I don’t know what he wanted. The note he left was… a bit crazy. He wasn’t a happy person inside, Sunshine. And you know I’m not one of those tree-huggers who’s going to say we need to sit around the campfire and talk about our feelings, but… he was
sick
inside.”

The blood was old by the time he walked in. The message from Mark was several hours old by the time he’d gotten around to hearing it, and by the time he’d broken in through the fragile door to the address Mark’d left him, his ex-lover was a feast of maggots and gore.

“Did he blame you for something?” Ichiro shook his head. “He couldn’t have. You didn’t do shit to him. He’s the one who fucked with your life.”

“
I
was the one who fucked with my life,” Bobby corrected gently. “He just pushed me out into the open with it. And still, I fucking hid who I was. Everyone thought I was some asshole prick who slept around on Marsha—but giving me high fives for having a piece of ass on the side. No one knew the piece of ass had a dick on it. Would have been different, then.”

“Did his note tell you why he… killed himself?”

“He was tired. The note was… rambling. Talked a lot about how he tried to fuck me out of his brain but couldn’t. Like he hated loving me. Didn’t want to love me. Hell, I don’t think he even knew what that meant, but I’d been… a normal he’d pissed away.” Bobby spread his fingers, working out a cramp in his hands. “I think he was done hiding too, but he couldn’t see a way out. I think Mark
liked
the secrets. He gossiped and hid things. It was… just a part of who he was. Thing is, he
hated
being gay. Even as he was sucking some guy’s dick, he hated it. I wanted him to have a life with me, and he looked at it like it was a prison sentence.

“Biggest fear I had before I walked through that door was someone on the force finding out I was gay,” he whispered, his heart pounding. “When I walked out of that place, my biggest fear was that someday, that was going to be me in there.”

“So you handed your badge in? Why not stay? You liked being a cop.”

“I liked being the cop I was. I needed… space? Time?” He struggled to recall why quitting the force had been a good idea at the time, but then the sense of relief when he’d clocked out for the final time hit him. “I own a couple of businesses—JoJo’s does well, and there’s a few sandwich shops that pretty much run themselves. I’ve got a pension and money my folks left me. It’s enough for me to take care of my Uncle James and the building—the loft’s paid for. And if Cole keeps getting me shot up, I’ll be able to claim disability soon. I like being… my own man. Having the time to do things I want. No regrets on that.”

Ichiro sighed and leaned back into the couch, tapping his fingers on his thighs. “So that’s why Mike thinks you’re a shitty guy? Because some asshole killed himself?”

“He thinks I’m a shitty guy because I have a zero track record of being a good boyfriend,” Bobby pointed out, then grinned at Ichi’s derisive snort. “He’s not wrong, Sunshine. I suck at it, but I’m willing to try.”

“All I can ask. Hell, that’s all I want.” Ichi looked like he was about to say more when his phone buzzed a path across the table. Snatching it up before it fell off, he frowned. “Sure,
now
my brother’s ready to get out of jail. Scarlet says we have about fifteen to twenty minutes. Jae’s going to go outside and smoke, so we can go meet him there.”

“So then, what do you want to do? Here. Us.” His stomach twisted up, reminding Bobby he’d only filled his gut with coffee and regret over the past twelve hours, and it was coming back to haunt him. “Now’s a good time to walk away, Ichi. Before it goes any deeper between us.”

“Yeah, you’re not getting rid of me that easy, Dawson,” Ichiro said, standing up. “Only thing you and I are going to do is… well shit, tell Cole. Because I’m not going to sneak around behind his back. Shit, I don’t owe him any explanation and neither do you. We’re adults. You and I—we work on some level, and hell, it either goes well or falls apart, but that’s for us to decide. Not anyone else.”

“Okay,” Bobby agreed, a tingling excitement eating away at his anxiety like a firestorm through dry brush. He’d been holding his breath… hell, his heartbeat, until he was sure Ichiro was crossing over the line with him, and now, with the way clear between them, he was nearly giddy with relief. “Just… let me tell him. I’ve known him longer than you have, and to be honest, I’ve got a way with words. I can break it to him gently. Just wait and see. He won’t even blink.”

Chapter 11

I
T
WAS
a farmers’ market like any collective sprawl of produce, baked goods, and junk hawkers. The Los Angeles sun was out in a halfhearted attempt to bake its victims off the broad stretch of black asphalt and concrete pads. At some point, a building of some sort squatted on the lower block of downtown LA, tucked into Little Tokyo’s armpit, a forgotten cement skin tag grown heavy with neglect. Either fallen to blight or a failed redevelopment, there was little to remind anyone about what once stood stretched out between two uneven parking lots, only its mottled concrete foundation, its surface cracked and speckled with determined clumps of weeds.

Caught in a no-man’s-land of warehouses and a depressed manufacturing market, the lot lay empty most days until the weekend—when the city declared it was open season on wallets and threw the gates open to local farmers, snotty hipsters hoping to fund their vinyl collection by selling off junk, and vendors looking to fleece people with cheap salad spinners and knock-off purses.

The air was filled with voices and the smell of cooking food. A line of food trucks took up residence against the far end of the lot, and the crackle of grilling meat tempted Bobby as his stomach groaned at the idea of adding another bite of food on top of the breakfast they had at a diner near his loft.

A very typical farmer’s market, one Bobby might have strolled through countless times before. With one exception.

This time, he was holding Ichiro’s hand.

And he didn’t feel like letting go.

“Hard to believe this thing with Sheila’s done.” Ichi stopped to look down at a glass case filled with crudely cast silver rings. “It’s weird to imagine Cole’s caught his white whale. That’s the one, right? Moby Dick?”

“Yeah about the whale but fucking God no about that crap you’re holding in your hand. That shit will rot your wrist off.” He snorted in disbelief as Ichi held up a bracelet made up of grinning metallic skulls. “I find it kind of hard to believe your damned brother didn’t get plugged full of holes. Who the fuck but Cole goes to scope out a cheap motel and have OK Corral break out?”

“You guys are the ones who told me that’s how his life is.” Ichiro handed money over for the bracelet without haggling.

“You could have gotten that for at least a couple of bucks less if you’d wanted.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to waste the time.” Ichi squeezed his hand. “Not when I could be walking around with you.”

“Smarmy.” Ichi unmanned him. He flung out small drops of affection, more invasive than any water torture Bobby could imagine.

“What does that mean?” The confusion in his lover’s eyes made Bobby smile. “That’s an old word, huh? Like saimin to ramen.”

“Yeah, I guess. Means… hell, it means smarmy. We’ll look it up when we get home.” His heart jumped at the word, tightening when he realized Ichiro practically had moved in, and he’d welcomed it.

Cleaning out a drawer or two led to actually having another dresser delivered to the loft, identical to the square black one he’d purchased a year ago. His apartment smelled different—looked different—with complex smells coming from the kitchen and the sudden appearance of tattoo machine parts Ichi left on a small drafting table he’d maneuvered up from Bobby’s storage space in the downstairs garage.

They’d been inseparable since Cole’s arrest, living in one another’s pockets in an effortless flow of time and space. The peace he felt inside left Bobby wondering when it was all going to end—and how badly. And whether or not he’d survive it.

Still, Ichi crawled into bed with him every night, and sometimes they even woke up together, the gurgle of the coffeemaker pulling them both out of sleep. They had sex nearly every morning—slow blowjobs and rubbing—and Bobby’s cock was now primed to get hard at the smell of roasted beans, a hazard every time he walked into a coffee shop to get a fix.

“We have to tell him. Don’t we?” Ichi murmured. “My stupid brother. The other one already knows, and Mike’s only got so much patience.”

“Not his shit to share. If I found out he wore frilly panties, I’d keep that shit to myself. Not my business.”

“Mike’s not good on secrets in the family—whether they are his or not.” It didn’t need pointing out. In the days since Mike’d tracked Ichi down outside of the police station, he’d given Bobby the evil eye nearly every time they’d seen one another. “Now that Sheila’s in jail, I think we should tell Cole and get him used to the—he’s going to lose his shit, isn’t he? Maybe it’s too soon? Shit, I hate hiding… this. I just want him to know and get it over with.”

“Dude, it’s been… what? How many days?” Bobby peered over his sunglasses at Ichiro. “We’ve got to talk to him. He’ll catch on. He’s not stupid.”

“He ran into a gunfight.”

“The shooting happened after he got a hold of Sheila.”

“Not that one. The one before that. The one I was in.” Ichi sighed. “Dawson, it’s pretty bad when I have to clarify which one of Cole’s gunfights I’m talking about. Think he can go a week without getting shot at? Why doesn’t he ever get knifed? Or maybe just spat at? Hell, I’d settle for someone throwing a cup of hot tea in his face.”

“Nah, he’s too pretty. He’d scar, and that’ll piss Jae off.”

It was like summoning Satan with a handful of glitter and a cup of goat blood. A too familiar bob of black hair popped through the crowd, and Bobby’s face froze into a tight smile. Jae spotted him nearly immediately, and Bobby only had time to shove Ichi between the pavilions, nearly decapitating himself on a clothesline filled with tie-dyed caftans in an attempt to reach Jae first.

He didn’t like the sound of Ichi’s
oomph
or the rattle of pans when he hit, but if there was one thing Bobby did know, it was Jae’s willingness to bare all to his lover, a newly found honesty that, while cementing the bond between him and Cole, put Bobby in a precarious spot.

Especially since they’d not even agreed on
when
they were going to tell Cole they’d hooked up.

Jae’s beauty was breathtaking, nearly ethereal in some ways, with a healthy dose of sin. He couldn’t help comparing Jae to Ichiro, deciding he preferred the inker’s hardscrabble look and cocky, wicked mouth to Jae’s porcelain beauty. Still, he wasn’t hard to look at, and his smile was carefree, with no sign of the troubles he’d been through. Accompanied by his gender-bending best friend, Scarlet, they were a pretty sight for a sunny day, a pair of swans gliding through an ocean of plastic and debris.

“Hey, you two.” He sounded too cheerful, and the grin he plastered on his face was nearly Cheshire in width. Toning it down a bit, Bobby leaned over and kissed Scarlet on the cheek, winking at Jae’s
nuna
when she tousled his hair. “Hello, gorgeous. Does God know you’re taking a day off? And where’d you stash your wings?”

“Oh, you are bad. And look at how long this is! Makes you look younger.” She purred and took another kiss, pushing at Bobby’s chest when he blew a raspberry on her neck. “
Aish
, stop that. You’ll leave a mark, and then
hyung
will have to kill you.”

“He’d make me suffer first,” Bobby teased. He let Jae give him a quick hug, thumping his back and surprised to feel the muscle there. “Doing yoga still? You feel… bigger.”

“Maybe toned?” Jae cocked his head slightly, adjusting his sunglasses. “A little bit of muscle, but I think that’s mostly eating Cole’s cooking for a few months. I had to work off the fat.”

“He does like his bacon, grease, and butter.” There was more rattling of pans, and a woman’s voice cut through the crowd’s noise, a rapid-fire Mexican glut asking someone if he was all right. Bobby raised his voice, hoping to drown out Ichiro’s response if he spoke up. “What are you two doing here?”

“Getting things for the barbeque. You’re coming, right? Cole will want you there. He’s visiting Sheila today. I don’t know what he thinks he’s going to get out of her, but… you know him.” Jae held up a few plastic bags, rattling them playfully. “I was going to do a vegetarian grill, but I think Cole would kill me. We’re stopping to get some steaks on the way home.”