Cut and Run 09 Crash & Burn (27 page)

“No, it won’t.” Zane had kept his hand in Ty’s as Ty drove, clutching it as if he never intended to let go. Ty was ambidextrous, so he supposed he could afford to lose that arm if it meant never ever going through this kind of pain again, thinking Zane was gone.

They’d managed to disengage by the time they’d reached the boat, of course. They were given the VIP cabin, and frankly Ty would have taken it by force anyway. He saw the shotgun spray in the door to Nick’s cabin as they passed, but Zane didn’t even bat an eye at it, so Ty followed him without pausing to examine it. When they got to the VIP cabin, Zane tossed himself face-first onto the bed without a word.

Ty stood at the door, though, looking at the ruined casing and the splintered wood and frowning. “Did Liam keep Nick locked up in here?”

“No, that was me,” Zane answered, his voice muffled by the covers. He was smearing greasepaint all over the quilt, but Ty supposed the
Fiddler
was beyond caring about its façade. It had so many holes in it now Ty really did wonder if it would keep floating.

“Poor
Fiddler
,” Ty murmured, running his hand along its hull and patting it as if in consolation. He heard a thump behind him and turned to look down the corridor. A shadow moved in the main cabin, as if someone had come down the stairs just fast enough for Ty to miss them. With so many people on board, though, Ty wasn’t exactly expecting privacy. He patted the
Fiddler
’s hull again, heading toward the bed.

Zane grunted, but didn’t comment.

Ty tossed his coat at the bed, stretching out sore muscles and wincing when he found a few scrapes and bruises he hadn’t noticed earning. Zane had pretty much beat the shit out of him.

“It’s entirely possible I’m too old for this shit,” he said, and Zane nodded. Ty snorted and stared at him for a few long seconds.

Zane finally pushed himself up and started trying to get out of his gear. He seemed to be having trouble with the Velcro and the straps, so Ty helped him out of his flak jacket. He let his fingers linger against Zane’s muscles.

Zane rewarded him with a smile, albeit a weary one. “You okay?”

Ty shrugged, nodding.

“Have you forgiven him?”

Ty’s breath caught, and he glanced around the cabin, looking for Nick through the open door again. The rift in their friendship pulled at him just as viscerally as the scars on the
Fiddler
’s walls. Then Ty noticed the white noise of running water coming from down the corridor. His nerves tumbled when he thought about going in there.

“You need to. For your sake and his.” Zane patted Ty’s cheek and shrugged out of his shirt.

Ty lowered his head and shook it, hooking his fingers in Zane’s belt loops. “I’m not letting you out of my sight right now.”

“I need to shower to get this stuff off me,” Zane argued. Ty sighed as he searched Zane’s eyes. He wondered which Sidewinder had put the camo paint on Zane’s face, and if there was photographic evidence he could see later. Zane smiled, even though the expression was mostly marred by the greasepaint. “You need to talk to him, I need to clean up. I’ll be right here when you’re done.”

Ty could take a hint that loud. He grudgingly headed out, leaving Zane to take his shower. But when he stepped into the main cabin and peered through the door of the head, he stopped short, watching as Nick hung his head over the sink and splashed his face with water over and over. He apparently hadn’t heard Ty’s quiet approach with the water on.

A towel was slung over Nick’s bare shoulder, and he was trying to rub the greasepaint off his face with the tips of his fingers, but it wasn’t working very well. He’d only gotten about half of it off. His actions were slow and deliberate, his eyes never rising to meet his reflection in the mirror. He finally gave up and straightened. The crisscrossed scars on his back stretched across tense muscles, the large Celtic cross flexing like severed wings against his shoulder blades.

He wet the towel, then scrubbed at his face. It was a routine Ty was well familiar with. How many times had he and Nick stood side by side at a mirror, wiping off the greasepaint in a heavy silence? Or more often, wiping themselves clean as Kelly bitched at them from the doorway to let him stitch them up.

Nick cut the faucet off and looked up. His eyes met Ty’s in the mirror, and he froze. “Hey.”

“Missed a spot,” Ty said with a small smile.

Nick turned his head from side to side to find the remaining paint. Ty moved closer and took the towel from him, holding it up to ask for permission. Nick turned to him and cleared his throat uncomfortably. Ty ran the towel over his nose and cheeks, forcing Nick to squeeze his eyes shut as he removed the remnants of the paint.

“Every time, man,” Ty said, smiling sadly.

“Thanks.” Nick took the towel from him, folding it even though it was sopping wet and covered in paint that would likely never come clean. He seemed to force himself to meet Ty’s eyes, steeling himself for whatever he thought Ty had come in here for.

“I see you got more holes in your boat,” Ty finally said.

Nick nodded, trying to remain stoic. But Ty could tell he was barely holding himself together. “It still floats,” he managed.

Ty found himself smiling gently.

“I should have come to you,” Nick blurted.

Ty winced and shook his head. “How could you have?”

Nick’s brow creased and he cocked his head, his shoulders tensing.

“I made it impossible for you to come to me with this. You tried to warn me about him ten years ago, and I didn’t listen. Your gut never let us down all those years, and I still didn’t hear you when you tried to tell me.”

“Tyler.”

“No. You earned that from me. You earned my trust when you said something didn’t feel right. And I didn’t listen when you tried to bank it.”

Nick averted his gaze, pressing his lips tight. Ty couldn’t tell if he was upset or relieved.

“It wasn’t about you,” Ty continued. “It was because I didn’t want to hear you. And I didn’t want to hear you this time, either.”

Nick opened his mouth like he was going to speak, but he closed it again without making a sound. He met Ty’s eyes, wincing like he was looking at something too bright.

“Anyone but Richard Burns, and . . . I would have listened to you,” Ty said. “Anyone but him.”

Nick nodded and swallowed hard, not even trying to speak now.

“Maybe you should have come to me, man, I don’t know. But we would have wound up right here no matter what path we took to get here.” Ty ran his teeth across his lip to keep from saying more, and chewed on the inside of his cheek as he waited for Nick to say something. Anything.

“I don’t like the path I took,” Nick admitted.

Ty had to concentrate on the signet ring on his finger. The one Nick wore was different than his, but they meant the same thing: semper fi. Ty swallowed around the lump in his throat. “Neither do I.”

They stood in awkward silence for a few more seconds, and then Nick moved past Ty, into the cabin again.

But Ty wasn’t done. He couldn’t let it hang like that. He followed Nick, and after sparing a moment to think about it, he practically tackled Nick from behind to hug him.

Nick stumbled, grunting as Ty’s body hit him, then looked over his shoulder like he wasn’t sure what Ty was doing. Ty just held on to him, resting his cheek against the back of Nick’s shoulder, locking his wrists so Nick couldn’t get away.

Nick reached up hesitantly and patted Ty’s hands.

Ty distantly registered Zane and Kelly watching them from the corridor, and Digger and Owen contorting themselves in the stairwell so they could see. He didn’t care, though.

Nick was trembling under Ty’s embrace, his breathing ragged. He laughed weakly. “What are you doing, Beaumont?”

“Something I should have done a long time ago,” Ty whispered, so only Nick could hear him. “Forcing you to love me again.”

Nick snorted and lowered his head. Ty could just make out the barest of smiles.

“I can live with Richard Burns being a monster,” Ty said. “I can even live with knowing he used me, and God knows how many innocent men I killed.” Ty sniffed, squeezing his eyes shut as Nick began trying to disentangle himself.

Ty let him go, and Nick turned to face him.

“But the last year?” Ty said, choking on the words. He swallowed past it and pushed on. “Thinking you didn’t trust me, thinking I’d lost you? I don’t want to live in that world. I don’t want to live that life. I can’t.”

Nick was visibly fighting back tears, his nostrils flaring, his lips trembling and his jaw tight. His eyes were still on Ty’s, though, filled with sadness and hope.

“I love you, brother,” Ty whispered, and when he tried to take a breath to say the next words, his lungs failed him. His throat tightened, and what he’d intended came out an unintelligible huff. He gripped Nick again and pulled him into a proper hug instead, resting his chin on Nick’s shoulder.

“I love you too, Tyler,” Nick managed to say. “God, I’m sorry.”

Ty gasped as relief swept over him like a cool breeze in the desert they’d once walked through together. “I need you to be my brother again,” he said against Nick’s bare shoulder. “I don’t know how to be me without it.”

Nick’s arms tightened around Ty, his fingers grasping at Ty’s shirt.

Someone behind Ty sniffled. He and Nick laughed weakly, still clinging to each other.

“Fuck all y’all,” Digger finally blurted. “I’m getting in on this.”

A moment later Digger wrapped his arms around Ty and Nick, squishing his face against Ty’s. In mere seconds, the others had joined them, piling into a hug that had been a long time—years—in coming. Ty reached out blindly and found Zane’s shoulder as the man hovered near them, pulling him closer until he was forced to join in.

Nick rested his forehead against Ty’s shoulder, and his entire body seemed to slump in relief. “Thank you,” he said. He repeated it several more times, until it became so soft it blended with the whirring of the yacht’s heating system and faded into the darkness.

Zane couldn’t quite place the relief he felt as he slid under the covers that night, waiting for Ty to finish showering. It was obviously a relief to have Ty next to him again; he wouldn’t have survived another spiral like the one he’d suffered previously. But what he was fixating on tonight was the way he felt lighter, and Ty felt lighter, and the yacht felt lighter. Perhaps it was relief that Ty’s sanity would still be intact by morning, because as much as Zane
was
for Ty, he couldn’t be everything.

Zane was Ty’s anchor, a way to keep him from floating away. But Nick was Ty’s seashore, always in the distance, visible, comforting, and harkening to home. And Zane was relieved Ty could spot the shore again.

The shower turned off, and a few minutes later Ty was crawling into bed next to him. They wrapped around each other without a word. They didn’t need words. Their mouths met, the kisses hot and hard. Zane ground against Ty, hands on his hips, both men demanding and almost violent in their desire to assure themselves they were really there.

Ty threw the covers off them, kicking them down to the bottom of the bed, and then got to his knees, scooting until he was perched on the edge of the bow-shaped bed. Zane sat up to watch Ty in the moonlight that weaved through the portholes.

“Remember the last round bed we tried?” Ty asked, his voice gone low and intimate.

Zane grinned. “Should we just start this on the floor, then?” He was almost shocked when his voice came out in a predatory growl. He got to his knees and crawled closer.

Ty reached for him, sinking his hands into Zane’s hair. “Let’s see.”

Zane dragged him to the side of the bed, until his back was pushed against the curved shelf that encircled the mattress and he was bent against the hull. He kissed him possessively, yanking at Ty’s legs until he’d settled between them. Ty banged his head on the hull, cursing even as he squeezed Zane with his knees.

“God, yes,” Zane growled. He dug his fingers into Ty’s thighs and dragged him into his lap.

He slid one arm behind Ty to keep it out of the way. It was the wrist that still throbbed like he might have broken it during their fight, but he was determined not to let Ty know that. He’d have to figure out how to keep that arm out of play for a few days. His other hand, though, it was just fine. He let it roam over Ty’s naked body. He wanted more kisses, more contact.

Ty hooked his ankles behind Zane’s thighs and clutched at his neck, dragging his blunt fingernails down Zane’s back and over his shoulder blades, setting Zane’s skin on fire. He was either forgetting Zane’s bumps and bruises and tender places, or he didn’t care if Zane burned. In fact, Zane thought that was exactly what Ty wanted him to do. Burn.

Ty sighed against his lips and shifted his hips forward, legs tightening around Zane’s waist, forcing the head of Zane’s leaking cock against his ass.

“I don’t think you can fuck me right here tonight,” Ty said between heated kisses, sounding decidedly upset about it.

Zane put one hand on Ty’s chest and pushed him until he thumped against the hull, getting up on his knees to loom over him. “Why not?” he asked roughly, and leaned in to lick and bite his way across the exposed skin of Ty’s belly. Ty was beaten and bruised from their fight, since he hadn’t been wearing armor when Zane had taken his shots. His body was covered in the sordid tales of his life and the battles he’d fought. The battles he’d fought to get to Zane.