Here for You (6 page)

“What the fuck?” Marc’s voice thundered. “Where’s Brendan?”

Tomas put a hand on Marc’s shoulder.

“We should try the hospital,” Ian said, his tone cool.

He was good under pressure, Cole thought. Not the type you’d want around on normal days—he was a lawyer, after all—but somebody to count on in a crisis.

“Oh God,” Tomas said.

Fear crackled between all of them. Cole ran the tip of his tongue over his dry lips. He looked at his housemates. He met Marc’s concerned hazel eyes and then Tomas’s dark ones.

What if Brendan had been in an accident? What if he wasn’t wearing that new bike helmet Cole had bought him for his birthday? What if some car had struck him and left him on the side of the road? Drivers in Florida were notoriously bad.

Cole’s throat jammed with fear. He couldn’t speak. He looked away from his housemates and over to Ian, who was staring back at him grimly.

“Marc, you and Tomas go to Ocean Vista General, and Cole and I will drive over to Ocean West. One of them might have admitted Brendan.”

Ian didn’t wait for an answer but gave Cole a little shove toward his car. Cole yanked his arm away from Ian and glared at him. Ian merely raised his eyebrows, and Cole flushed. He was right: it wasn’t the time to object to Ian’s high-handedness.

Marc and Tomas looked too dazed to argue with Ian.

“I’ll call all Brendan’s friends that I can think of,” Tomas said.

“That’s a lot of people,” Marc said softly. “I’ll call too.”

“And we should call the cops. In case somebody hurt him or a car hit him.” Ian gave voice to what they all feared.

“Fucking cops. They won’t do anything,” Marc declared. “This is the home of Trayvon Martin. Brendan’s poor, and he’s gay. That’s not a high priority for them either. The law around here likes you wealthy and quote-unquote normal. Maybe some asshole having a liquid lunch got into his car and the fucking system is corrupt—”

“Jesus, Marc,” Cole cut him off. “Can’t you for once stop it? Shut up! None of that matters to me right now. Not one fucking bit! We should only be thinking about Brendan and where he might be.”

Marc flushed hotly, bowing his head.

“Look, we’re all emotional right now,” Tomas said. “It’s just so out of character for Brendan to be late or not come home for lunch. But maybe we are overreacting, right? Maybe we need to all calm down. I’m sure we will find him and some explanation.”

As Marc turned away, Tomas whispered to Cole, “He loves Brendan too. He just has a long nasty history with cops. Starting with his own dad.”

“Yeah,” Cole said, unsurprised. “But sometime he needs to get over whatever happened.”

Tomas smiled bleakly. “I live in hope.”

Cole got into Ian’s car. Following him, Ian held on to the steering wheel for a second. “We’ll find him. I promise.”

Cole quickly glanced his way. Ian’s face looked carved from stone.

“Yeah, we will,” Cole replied. He took a deep breath.

T
HE
HOSPITAL
was a dead end. No Brendan, no John Does that day, and every minute they didn’t know where Brendan was, was too important to waste.

“It’s good he’s not here. It means he’s probably fine.”

“Cole—”

“Don’t say anything. He’s fine. I believe that. I’d know if…. He’s fine.”

“Okay,” Ian agreed quietly.

A young male nurse passed them. His hair was artfully tousled, his scrubs tight. Normally, Cole would smile, ask him about his job. Now he turned away and glanced at his phone.

“Marc and Tomas had no luck either. Dammit.”

“We should contact Brendan’s family. I know it’s a long shot, but—”

“
We’re
his family,” Cole growled at Ian. He sucked in a breath of the cold artificial hospital air. “We take care of each other.”

Ian didn’t answer. Cole knew it was a reasonable thought. Although Brendan rarely spoke to his folks after all the crap they’d put him through, he was their only child and they lived not too far away. Cole couldn’t see any reason for Brendan to have contacted them, though, and they had no real information to share with his parents.

Cole thought of the last time Brendan had gone home, two years ago at Christmas. He’d come back exhausted, his eyes bloodshot and teary, and had shut himself away in his room. No, fuck them. Cole wasn’t contacting anybody.

“We should drive over to where River works. He might know what’s going on, and maybe he’s seen Brendan.”

“Right.” Ian ran a hand through his hair, mussing the top. His hair was short, but the color was rich like summer wheat streaked with shades of blond. Seeing the normally unflappable Ian ruining his hair frightened Cole because it meant whatever had happened to Brendan was real.

“You okay?” Ian’s eyes narrowed on him like two blue targets.

“Fine. Let’s go.” Even though Ian wasn’t a criminal attorney, Cole nevertheless felt cross-examined. He didn’t want anybody to know how afraid he felt for Brendan.

They drove in silence. Brendan was all right. It was not like him to skip work, but it was possible that he did, right? They were blowing this whole thing way out of proportion. If it were Cole, everybody would assume he’d simply forgotten something. Brendan might be having a weird day and explain it to them soon enough.

“Fuck.” Cole whispered the curse like a prayer. He stared mindlessly out the car.

R
IVER
CAME
out of the garage to the front office, grease on his left cheek and under his nails, a scowl on his face, and his eyes full of question. He didn’t say anything. Despite slowly bonding with the other guys at the house, River was not one to talk first.

“Have you seen Brendan?” Cole asked.

River shook his head.

“When’s the last time you saw him or spoke to him?”

“This morning, early.” River took out a rag and wiped his hands. “Why?”

“He never came back from lunch,” Cole explained. “We’re getting worried about him.”

River stared at them. He appeared at a loss for words. Then he went over to his manager and spoke in a low voice, maybe a handful of words, and grabbed his motorcycle gear. “I’m coming.”

But it didn’t make sense for all of them to look in the same place, so River drove one way on his motorcycle while Ian and Cole drove another.

“Where are we looking, exactly?”

“Anywhere. Everywhere.”

Cole bit the outside of his lip. “How could Brendan have vanished like this? How? It’s not like him.”

“Has he been seeing anybody lately?”

“Brendan?”

“Yes.” Ian shot him an impatient look. “Does he like anybody these days? Has he been dating a new guy? A few of our clients really took to him. Who knows? He hadn’t said a word to me about that, but we mostly discuss work. We need to consider everything.”

Cole wanted to laugh and then sob. Brendan might as well have worn a big fat sign over his heart saying “Reserved for Ian,” and the stuck-up jerk didn’t even know?

I
AN
NOTICED
that Cole stared at him, locking eyes. Up until then Cole’s eyes had darted all around, searching for Brendan, and he could barely sit still.

“Brendan wasn’t seeing anybody.” Cole’s tone held a derision Ian didn’t understand. “He’s not a player like me.”

Ian said nothing to that, but his grip tightened on the wheel.

Brendan, with an odd mix of admiration and disapproval in his voice, had often told Ian about Cole’s various boys and how he never went with the same guy twice.

“He’s lonely, though,” Brendan had always added.

Ian didn’t party or play. He worked. Since Sam left him, he had done nothing but work. For years he’d dedicated himself to building up his law practice, day in and day out.

Then
it
happened, the day that set all his feelings about Cole into motion. Brendan had invited him to his house for a party, begging and pleading for Ian to come until he’d reluctantly agreed. Ian had walked in, his hands in his pockets, wondering why he was even there when he loathed small talk and felt nothing but awkward at parties, then he’d spotted Cole for the first time. He immediately reacted—or at least his body did. He couldn’t take his eyes off Cole that night.

Cole, though, never looked back. Why would he? Ian was older by several years and much more conservative than the wild boys at those parties, who smoked dope all night or drank heavily and then danced naked around the yard, preening for the crowd, flashing their perfect abs and asses, snapping selfies of their physiques for Instagram. To be fair, Cole never did that, although he enjoyed the show. He’d generously smiled, one side of his mouth hitching up in a way Ian found adorable.

Ian had no clue what had come over him. It was like a thunderbolt. He wasn’t the type to get swept up in passion. His ex-partner Sam had made that clear often enough. And yet… when Brendan had dragged Ian over to introduce them and Cole’s gray eyes had met his, his wide, expressive mouth curving into a smile, Ian’s heart had sped up and he had to quickly turn away.

Cole was too young for him, too unfocused, too… something. Case closed.

Except Ian’s heart refused to obey his brain for once. Those few times he saw Cole, Ian couldn’t resist a little push or two at him, and Cole had reacted with a glowering look or a quick run out the door. He’d reacted so fiercely to it, in fact, that it gave Ian hope.

At least Ian had been smart enough to keep his feelings private, and he’d never told Brendan how attracted to Cole he was. Ian and Sam’s long relationship had been a functional, practical one. Fucking Sam had been enjoyable. Sam had been athletic in bed and attentive, but theirs had never been an emotional union. The last years before Sam left him had been more about companionship.

“I want more,” Sam told him, the day he’d packed. Ian hadn’t understood. He’d argued heatedly. He’d made his case for continuing their relationship. Sam hadn’t met somebody else then, so he had no reason to leave what they had. But Sam left anyhow.

Ian’s desire for Cole was anything but practical. He’d lie awake nights, and it would consume him. He wondered what Cole looked like naked, what his cock looked like, what it would be like to kiss him. Every time he’d gotten near Cole, the chemistry crackled through him, and Ian wanted to strip off Cole’s clothes and screw him into oblivion. His brain would temporarily turn off, go blank, and that bothered him most of all—he always thought things through.

Forget it, he’d lecture himself, Cole was too young. They had nothing in common. Not like with Sam, where they were both educated and from similar backgrounds.

God, I am a fucking snob.
Ian hated that side of himself. The side his parents had trained to dutifully judge people by their bank accounts and pedigree. He often wondered if being gay had saved him from totally becoming his parents. His parents were older; they’d had Ian later in life than his older siblings—“a little surprise.” He often felt like an afterthought. He didn’t fit in other ways either. He was too rambunctious for them as a young boy, and they soon taught him to curb his behavior, until being orderly became a fixed part of Ian’s world. But they couldn’t curb his sexuality, which disturbed them, so they mostly ignored it. As long as he wasn’t heterosexual, Ian was not as accepted as his older brother and sister—a piece of him remained an outsider with only his aunt Iris for comfort. It was partly the reason Ian took a chance hiring Brendan, somebody with a questionable background and little experience, which his parents would have been suspicious of, but Ian found refreshing.

Ian went back to focusing on what he did well—work. In his office, he was cool and competent. Controlled. There was no chaos of emotions there. It was Ian doing what Ian did best: solving cases and handling litigation, with Brendan loyal at his side.

Brendan.
Ian never regretted hiring Brendan. He was sweet, the all-American kid, always smiling—though that made Brendan sound a bit vacant, and he wasn’t. He was sharp, good at his law classes, good with the clients. Brendan was too young and had too many years to go yet, but Ian imagined offering him a partnership in his firm someday, when he’d matured a little and had some real law experience. Ian recalled hinting at this future with Brendan after a particularly grueling case, saying, “I can see us together, doing this for a long time.”

“What?” Brendan went still, blinking and then stammering, “Y-you and me?” He’d been eating an English muffin and almost spit it out.

“You’ll be a fantastic lawyer soon enough,” Ian answered. “I’d be stupid to let you go.”

“Oh.” Brendan had fallen silent, and Ian had become uncomfortable. Maybe Brendan didn’t desire becoming his law partner one day and didn’t want to hurt his feelings? They dropped the topic, and Ian never brought it up again, although he still hoped it would be true one day. Brendan had moped about the office that entire week, so unlike him, until finally his dark mood went away and he was his sunny self again. Ian was relieved and a bit confused, and he left the subject of Brendan’s future alone.

Ian continued to enjoy Brendan’s company at work. He was also a diligent worker, sometimes arriving early or staying late. Ian would bring in bagels and coffee for breakfast, Brendan usually went home for lunch, and they often worked right through dinner. Brendan would pass the bar on the first try soon, of that Ian had no doubt. He’d be there to help, of course, if Brendan needed it. That was understood, and Ian enjoyed mentoring him. Ian, in the past, had done litigation for big firms. He didn’t mind division of property cases, but he was happier concentrating on his own firm and his specialty in family law. Brendan was equally passionate about these cases, but unlike Ian, Brendan had more trouble leaving the work at the office, especially the grimmer cases. He was still so green, and Ian figured his objectivity would come with more maturity. There had been one in particular, a custody battle, which made Brendan furious, where the little girl was marked up and her mother kept calling her in sick to school. Ian had managed to get the girl away from her abusive mother, into the care of her grandmother, and they’d celebrated at his office.