Outcome (Aftermath #2) (10 page)

*

Chase was losing his
fucking
mind.

Disappearing into the cabin, he located the tape he'd bought and tried fruitlessly to clear his head. He passed Remy on the way out again and clenched his jaw at the frustrating combination of fury and desire unfurling inside of him. The physical outlet Austin had suggested couldn’t have arrived at a better time.

"Get over here," he snapped irritably, reaching the punching bag. Raindrops started to hit the ground, and he could hear thunder in the distance. If he got lucky, the incoming storm would cleanse Chase the way it cleansed the air. As it was now, the heavy charge threatened to suffocate him.

He side-eyed Remy, noticing the vulnerability had reappeared in his features. The kid was a walking roller coaster of emotions. With shoulders bunched up tight, arms folded, eyes downcast, and frown knitting together his brows, he was probably working up his internal defenses.

"Here. Tape up your knuckles." Chase tossed the roll of tape to Remy, who picked it up off the ground. "Who're you pissed at?"

Remy's frown morphed into a scowl. "What?"

"Who are you pissed at?" Chase repeated patiently—somewhat, anyway. "We're always mad at someone, Remy." He placed his hands on the bag and looked up at the blackening sky between the branches and leaves. There were no trees in the circular clearing in front of the cabin, but they'd get soaked in no time even here at the edge of the forest. His gaze slid to Remy again. "Whoever it is, pretend this is him. Or her."

Remy snorted. "You're joking. That’s the nonsense you see in movies."

"Yeah, because Hollywood invented this kind of therapy," Chase drawled.

That remark seemed to annoy Remy, and he stepped forward as he angrily taped his knuckles. "You know, I fucking hate it when you make me look like an idiot."

Chase lifted a brow. "A comment that wasn’t packed with sarcasm? I'm impressed." He threw in a thumbs-up for effect, which Remy seethed at. Chase chuckled. "Maybe I got it wrong. Are you the only one allowed to speak Sarcasm?"

Remy flipped him off and positioned himself on the other side of the punching bag. "Whatever. Can I pretend this thing is you now?"

"If you're mad at me, sure. Go for it." Chase shrugged and took a couple steps to the side. By now, the rain was coming down heavier, and he felt his T-shirt sticking to his skin. "What have I done to piss you off?"

It was Remy's turn to shrug, and he gave the bag a half-assed fist that barely rattled the chain above them. "You're supposed to hate me." He glared and punched harder, mostly—Chase suspected—to get the bag to move. "Fuck." With a scowl directed at the sky, he wiped raindrops from his forehead and ran a hand through his messy hair. "Can't we go back inside? This blows."

Nah. They hadn't even scratched the surface. "Do you want me to hate you?" Chase began to circle Remy and the punching bag. Measured steps. Eyes trained on Remy's face.

"Fuck what I want." Remy chuckled humorlessly and delivered another punch. This one had a little more force to it, and bitterness seeped into his eyes. "I didn’t want to screw up my life, but it happened anyway. I didn’t
want
my mom to kill herself, yet…" He pulled the trigger of an imaginary gun to his temple. "So yeah, it's not really about what I want."

Chase narrowed his eyes, remembering what Remy had written in one of those letters. He hadn't been close with his mom…something about an addiction to prescription drugs…but Chase didn’t know she'd died.

"She shot herself?" He glanced at Remy carefully, guessing it was a sore subject. Judging by the next blow Remy gave the punching bag, Chase was right. The whole chain trembled above, a few leaves falling to the wet ground.

"Yeah." Remy gritted his teeth, then punched again and again and again. "I was the one who found her. It was last year, in the beginning of one of our 'on' periods." He rolled his eyes, though indifference was the last thing Chase would see there. Plenty of pain instead. "Sometimes we were close, but then she'd meet a new guy… Nothing original." A grunt slipped through his lips with the next punch, and then he paused to catch his breath and lean his forehead against the bag. "She'd recently been ditched, which obviously sucked for her, because she only dated suppliers." His jaw ticked. "It'd been over a year since we'd talked regularly, so I was pretty stoked. I needed her—even though I knew it wasn’t going to last. But whatever."

Last year…
Minna had told Chase that Remy had tried therapy, but he'd given up and shut down—
about a year ago
. Feeling alone and trapped, maybe even looking for a way out, Remy had sought out his mom, needing her, only to find her dead…?

No wonder Remy had checked out.

"Don’t pity me." Remy's warning hung in the air until a hard punch to the bag was accompanied by a loud crack of thunder.

Chase looked up, more rain falling down, and he closed his eyes for a beat to feel the drops spattering over his face. "I'm not." He pushed back his damp hair and nodded at the punching bag. "Keep going. Are you angry at your mother?"

"Not anymore. Now I kind of envy her."

Chase didn’t believe that for a second. "You're full of shit, but I'll let it go for now, pretty boy—"

"Cut that shit out!" Remy abandoned the bag and stalked over to Chase, shoving him backward. "Call me that again, I fucking dare you!"

Instantly prepared, Chase flinched forward and glared back at the little shit. "Pick your battle, Remy," he growled. "You can lash out at me all you want, but I'm not your goddamn enemy." Grabbing Remy by the shoulders, Chase forced him to turn around. "You wanna hit something? Hit this, for Christ's sake." Remy cursed at him and tried to turn again, but Chase gripped his neck and leaned close, furious as hell. "Last warning. Hit the punching bag 'cause, unlike me, it won't hit back."

Remy slowed his movements, and Chase regretted his wording the instant Remy looked back at him, his eyes sparking up with pure satisfaction and challenge.

Before Chase could even take that shit back, Remy shoulder-checked him and sent his fist flying, connecting it with Chase's jaw.

Chapter 12

In the pouring rain, Chase found himself dodging punches instead of fighting back. Something stopped him from swinging at Remy. No matter how much his jaw ached from Remy's fist.

"Come on!" Remy's voice was as strained as every muscle in his body. Flushed with anger, soaked from the storm, and livid for shit that had nothing to do with Chase—directly—Remy came at him over and over.

When he planted his hands against Chase’s chest and tried to shove him, Chase retaliated by pushing back so Remy ended up on the muddy ground.

"That’s all you got, sweetheart?" Chase chuckled, a bit outta breath, and rubbed his scruffy jaw. "You're only humiliating yourself."

"Go fuck yourself." Remy got off the ground, mud and water causing his T-shirt to cling to his lean torso. But lean didn’t mean lanky. Remy's abs were cut underneath that shirt, and Chase cursed himself for getting distracted. "You're no different from all the other rednecks in Bakersfield." Remy sneered as he ripped off the tape from his knuckles. "All you need is conservatism and a good fight with a fag, and you'll go yee-haw."

That crap only amused Chase. It wasn’t the first time Remy had taken digs at the people from Bakersfield, and like the other occasions, it was without valid reason and definitely the wrong moment.

Did Remy
want
to be hated for being gay?

Idiot.

"Someone needs to get off his high horse." Chase shook his head. "Where are you even from?"

Remy could act all high and mighty, but he didn’t strike Chase as a
preppy
guy.

"Oildale," Remy muttered defiantly.

At that, Chase barked out a laugh, and he laughed
hard
. For the first time in a long, long time. 'Cause…Oildale. Remy was a damn 08'er. Christ. The area used to be worse, but it was still a fucking dump. Home of meth labs and reasons to use condoms.

Chase had no room to talk, having grown up near Cottonwood Road, but he wasn’t the one talking smack about their hometown, either.

"You crack me up, kid." He snorted and turned to walk back inside. The thunder was almost directly above them now, and the rain was coming down so hard it was difficult to hear anything other than the storm—

Remy's grip on his bicep halted his step, and he looked over his shoulder to see Remy glaring at him.

"We're not done here!" Remy put all his weight into the shove and sent them both to the ground. Chase, caught off guard, hissed at the pain in his tailbone, then grunted when Remy sat on his stomach and dug his fingernails into Chase's chest. "Come on, you fucking coward! Fight back!"

Chase's vision went blurry, his stomach churning as Remy's words triggered a flashback from three years ago.

"It kills you, doesn’t it?" Ben smiled gleefully through the hatch in the steel door. "It kills you that you can't fight back. But, you see, queers aren't supposed to fight, Remy. It could mess up your hair or ruin your makeup." His cackle echoed in the cage, making Chase sick with revulsion. "Just sit tight and let me do the work. Because you're fucking useless."

With an internal roar, Chase rammed his knee against the man's spine, then rolled them over and tried to choke the motherfucker who had kidnapped him. In the back of his mind, he registered the feeling of mud and heavy rain, and it went against everything he'd grown used to: the smell of mildew and vomit, the sense of hopelessness and grief, endless suffering and guilt. Dank, humid air.

Someone yelled his name, but it sounded off—far away and muffled.

*

Remy coughed and spluttered, struggling against Chase's hold on his neck. The sheer terror that gripped Remy was unlike anything he'd ever felt, and it only increased when he saw Chase's gaze. Those deep blue eyes swirled with murderous rage and heart-wrenching despair, but they were unfocused.

He's not seeing me.

"Chase," Remy choked out. Raindrops splattered on his face, in his eyes, and he continued to fight. As his airway was cut off completely, he finally managed to loosen a few of Chase's fingers, and he sucked in a sharp breath before he mustered all his strength and clocked Chase in the jaw. Same side as last time.

Chase froze for several seconds. His eyes remained unseeing, but then they widened in horror, and he wrenched away from Remy.

"Oh, God…" Remy closed his eyes and gasped for breath. He was soaked to the bone, lying there on the muddy ground, but he couldn’t give a fuck. Because…Jesus Christ, that had been a close call. While Remy had been busy bitching about his own issues, Chase was clearly in deep shit, too.

This couldn’t go on.

Something had to give, and…maybe his future looked bleak as fuck, but he was willing to take one step in the right direction.
Whatever that may be
. Forcing himself to sit up, he looked over to Chase where he was sitting on the ground, forearms resting on his knees, head hanging low. And instead of being angry for the physical pain Chase had caused or feeling guilty for probably having triggered this—whatever it was that had happened—Remy only wanted to help.

He needed Chase to feel better, and he ached to be part of the recovery.

He scooted closer, not having a clue of what to do, and carefully lifted a hand to Chase's shoulder.

In return, Chase stiffened. "Don’t."

"I'm sorry." Remy had given so many apologies lately that this one had tumbled out automatically. But he didn’t remove his hand. "Was that…I mean…what happened?" Chase shook his head minutely, his lips pressed together in a grim line. He looked like he was about to fall apart, which affected Remy more than he thought was possible. "Does it happen often?" He wondered if it was some kind of panic attack, like the ones he suffered from every now and then.

"No." Chase's reply was barely audible over the thunder. His Adam's apple moved with a hard swallow, and then he tilted his head away from Remy. "Fuckin' flashback," he rasped. "First one in a year. Usually I just have nightmares here and there."

Remy nodded and looked down. "I set it off." A quiet statement. He knew it was true. "What did I say?"

"Doesn’t matter, Remy." Chase sounded drained. "Wash off and head back inside. I'll be there in a bit."

Yeah, no. Remy wasn’t going anywhere. He had a feeling that if he left him here, it would be a lot longer than a "bit" before Chase got off the ground.

"I'm sorry about…" Chase's apology died out with a roar of thunder, but it didn’t matter.

"Come on, man." Remy stood up and nudged his knee against Chase's shoulder. "Let's freeze our asses off under the hose behind the cabin. And let's do it before my mood shifts again."

Chase muttered curses under his breath, but Remy paid no attention. He rounded the first corner of the cabin and pulled his wifebeater over his head. The fabric landed with a splat on the ground as he reached the back. His shoes were next, and then his shorts.

"Hell." Remy eyed the reddening on his legs, tiny cuts and scrapes everywhere. His arms were the same.
That’s what I get for rolling around in the mud like a child
. He released a breath and turned the nozzle to the garden hose, and icy water began trickling out.

He could hear Chase a few feet behind him, so he didn’t turn around. Shrinkage warning or not, the sounds of clothes landing on the ground told Remy it was safest to stay where he was.

Evidently, Chase had other plans. To Remy's frustration, Chase walked up way too close, and the bastard was only wearing a pair of dark gray boxer briefs that hugged his junk so fucking perfectly.

Chase inched even closer, a frown directed at Remy's throat. "I'm sorry—I was outta control."

"You have a valid excuse." Remy quickly ducked to hose off his legs. "I'm fine." What he wouldn’t give for a drink at this moment. He shuddered and clenched his teeth together, standing straight to hold the water above him. The rain was helping, so he didn’t have to suffer for many seconds. "Here." He stepped back and let Chase take over. "I'll go in and…" He trailed off, his eyes following the water that sluiced down Chase's body.
Holy shit
. Chase's nipples tightened under the cold spray, and goose bumps appeared over his defined torso. What Remy wouldn’t give to touch the dark dusting of chest hair and then kiss his way down to the trail of hair between Chase's navel to his—

"You're staring."

Remy wasn’t even embarrassed. He avoided eye contact as he stuck his feet into his wet shoes, but he spoke the truth. "You're sexy as hell. If you don’t wanna be eye-fucked, don't shower in front of a gay man." He shrugged slightly and turned toward the outhouse. After a quick trip, he was more than ready to be indoors.

The day was slowly catching up to him, and he wondered if he'd exhausted himself enough to get at least a few hours of sleep tonight. He hadn't even analyzed his earlier confessions about his mom because he feared it would be too much. Between his mood swings and the effect Chase had on him…Remy was weary and spent, yet itching for what else Chase might have in store for them. Remy wanted more, fucking yearned for it.

It felt like progress in a weird way, but had they really accomplished anything?

Kicking off his shoes outside the front door, he stepped inside the cabin and hurried to the stack of towels that lay in a pile on the floor by the bed's footboard. He dropped his underwear and wrapped one towel around his hips, then ran another over his head.

His stomach rumbled with a reminder that he hadn't eaten since this morning, so while he was still toweling himself dry, he walked over to the kitchenette to find something to eat.

After acting like a complete tool ninety-nine percent of the time he'd spent with Chase, Remy now thought about what food he could put together as a peace offering.

I can be nice. I think.