Chapter 1
There were over three thousand species of snakes in the world, and whilst most of them fell in with the reptile family, I was convinced that Blake Owen had earned his very own category among them.
With eyes as deep and enchanting as a forest’s undergrowth, and a magnetic smile that charmed the pants off of the unsuspecting, people often mistook his beauty for sweetness.
I was not one of those people. Not any more. Not when the potent burn of his poison still lingered in my bloodstream from the last time I had been careless enough to let my guard slip around him.
I’d embraced him as a brother and in return, he’d fucked mine. I’d been there for him, looked out and defended him since we had been knee-high to fucking grasshoppers, and he’d repayed me by seducing my baby brother the second I’d left town.
I had loved him. Now, I fucking hated him.
Which was why I couldn’t understand why it had to be him. There were thousands of people in this shitty, tired old town, and among them were a lot of folk I still considered friends. Relinquished from the role as my best friend, or as a friend at all . . . I really couldn’t understand why it had to be him. Why out of everyone, it had to have been his doorstep.
The small hours of the morning had been breached, midnight having come and passed, and the compact, downtown apartment seemed almost sinister when exposed to the eerie stillness that came with three a.m. Shadows prowled the walls, battled by to the outskirts of the room by the bright illumination that spilt from the shaded corner lamp, and the rain pelted against the wall with such a tinkering force that it appeared to be trying to recreate Beethoven’s forgotten symphonie.
The line where the lamp’s glow seemed to end and darkness reared up to meet it fell against where Blake was sitting, bathing his form in a conflicting battle. His bare feet were braced on the tips of his toes, the left bouncing slightly, and a frown had consumed his face.
Silence ate away at the air between us. He’d listened to my half-crazed, barely sober rambling without interruption, but he seemed to have taken that to the extreme. Heart drilling against my chest, thump-a-dump-dumping so damn hard that the thing felt seconds away from tearing free, I’d never wanted to hear him speak so much as I did now. No. I needed him to speak. I needed him to say something. Anything.
It was a struggle to see how anything he had to say could possibly help but that logic was lost beneath the rising waves of nausea that rode through me like a three dollar hooker. Squeezing my eyes shut, forcing a shaky breath, I swallowed hard. Tried to clear the fogginess that had clamped down on my thoughts, that chased away at logic like a big bad wolf to a herd of frightened sheep. It didn’t work. It only seemed to highlight the bitch of a headache that had taken up residency at the base of my skull.
“So,” Blake said, fracturing the stillness. His shoulders fell into a haunch as he leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. He blinked a few times, eyes still glazed from his disturbed slumber, before he shook his head. “Let me get this straight: you’re not?”
“Fuck you,” I snapped. Hot. Burning. The anger hit hard and fast, gathering in the center of my chest, swelling until the pressure felt suffocating. “I’m not gay.”
“Don’t wake him, Eyes,” Blake said softly, frowning. His eyes darted behind me, lingering there. I didn’t have to turn to know where he was looking-- I think I would have puked if I turned. “He’s got work in the morning.”
Oz. He was talking about Oz. My sweet, innocent baby brother. The one he’d stolen and defiled. The one who he’d as good as turned against me. They lived together now. Had done for a good few months. He had made it almost impossible to see my brother without seeing him.
Did I mention that I fucking hated him? Which once again brought me right back down to the million-dollar question: why was I here? Why had I been so sure that he was the only person I could talk to?
“Fuck you,” I jeered again. The words slurred slightly. Had the sickly tang of my own vomit rebounding through my mouth. “I’ll wake him up right now if I want to.”
There was a childish part of me that wanted to follow through with that threat. To scream or shout until I woke him up, but I didn’t. It would have pissed Blake off, which would have been a win, but I cared about Oz. Everything else aside, he was my brother. Besides, the last thing I wanted was for him to get an earful of this conversation.
“Enough, Isaac,” Blake warned. His eyes hardened. Tone came out clipped. Shifting in the chair, hands rubbing against his bare arms, he scowled. “You’ve turned up at my place in the middle of the night to tell me that you’ve slept with another guy. Now, that doesn’t necessarily make you gay, but I’m not sure it makes you straight, either.”
“I’m not gay,” I growled again. Quieter. It didn’t seem to echo the way it had before. Leaning back into the couch, hissing through clenched teeth as the urge to throw up again teased the pit of my stomach, my nails bit into the leather-coated armrest. I think I was cold. I was shaking, but there was too much noise inside my head, too many disoriented thoughts to know which was the cause.
I’d taken my coat and shoes off at the door, but it didn’t do much good for the rest of me. Cold beads of water leaked from my hair, occasionally dripping down my face or sliding down my spine, and a small puddle had formed on the floor beneath the hem of my jeans.
I wanted to go home. I wanted to be at home. But fuck . . . how the fuck had tonight gone like it had?
“You were drunk,” Blake said softly, his expression softening. “We all make dumb descsions when we’re drunk, so if you want to put it off as a one-off, lapse in judgement, do it. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that. But if you ended up in bed with another man, and were sober enough to be aware of what you were doing, then there stands a chance that maybe the smallest part of you wanted it to happen.”
I tried to find the words to disagree. To find the words to put the destructive rage into context, but nothing came out. It was hard to find a solid argument when my ass ached in ways that it never had before and my pride and dignity had slinked off into the sewers on the way here.
“I was drunk,” I managed at last. “It didn’t mean anything.”
Nothing at all. Not even close. And while Blake’s words bugged me, knowing that he was right and I had been somewhat aware and active in the choices I had made . . . it had been nothing more than the Grey Goose taking control.
“Okay.” Blake nodded. His hair, as dark as coal, flopped with the movement, the unruly strands springing into his face. “I’m not judging you, Isaac, so how about you reign in the attitude?”
It was only once he waved a hand towards me that I realised I was half out of my seat, hands balled into fists. It didn’t last long. Exhaustion claimed me as its bitch, and my legs, the rubber puppets that they were, buckled. My ass hit the cushion once more. The urge to puke had to be fought back again.
“How about you tell me again?” Blake said. “Slowly, this time. Calmer? I know this might feel scary, trust me, I’ve been there, but you know I’m here for you, Eyes.”
For a moment, we seemed to step into the past. His face was blurry, or maybe my eyes were fucked, but enough of him was distinguishable to make out his features. The high-set draw to his cheeks. The firmness to his jaw. The kindness to his smile.
For a moment, just for a split second, all the bad blood between us vanished. It became a simpler time. A happier time, back when I had his back and he had mine. Back before he’d decided sticking his dick in my younger brother was a good idea. And that reminder was all I needed for that silly illusion to shatter.
“It was Micah’s birthday,” I said, repeating my earlier words. “And - ” Frowning, grasping my head, I blew out a sharp breath. The order seemed muddled, dancing around too much that I was struggling to place the sequence. “And we were all at his place.”
It had been his twentieth. He’d wanted it to be a night to remember. I couldn’t remember where the booze had come from - it was too early in the night. There had been a load of us. His basement had been converted into a games room and we’d spent the early evening doing shots.
I don’t remember leaving. I don’t remember why I left. Maybe the booze ran out. Maybe Jordan had pissed me off again. That part was dark. The bar, however, was something I did remember. Walking home. Evening had passed. Night had come. Rain. Empty streets.
Why did I go in?
“I went home,” I continued, swallowing the saliva that kept building. “No, I was going home. Pete stopped me. Pete . . . he was outside having a smoke. Called me in. Said he’d buy me a drink.”
“Pete?” Blake echoed. “Charlie’s older brother?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. Regretted it. Had to suck back three sharp breaths as agony split through the inside of my head.
“But he wasn’t who you ended up going home with?”
No. Not Pete. Another dark spot in my memory; I had no fucking clue what happened to Pete. One minute I was talking to him, the next, I was taking a glass out of a random guy’s hand.
“No.”
“Did you get their name? Know them? Anything like that?”
Unfortunately, yes.
If I hadn’t, I could have chalked the whole night up to an illusion. Convinced myself that none of it was real. But it had all been far too lucid. What was the word Blake had used? Aware? I’d been too aware.
And that knowledge fucking killed me.
“Deacon Baxter.”
He chewed on that a second before his eyes widened. “The freak? The guy’s whose car we egged?”
Grimacing, I confirmed.
Baxter ran a voodoo shop on the far side of town. Okay, well maybe it wasn’t a voodoo shop. I had no idea what it was. They sold herbal remedies, good luck charms, and offered readings and other nonsense like that. It wasn’t voodoo, but it still wasn’t normal.
And our younger selves had found the concept even stranger. Two years ago, bored senseless and with nothing but time and childish humour to get us through the day, Blake and I, back when we’d been inseparable, had turned the guy’s car into an omelette. He’d caught us in the act. Gave us one hell of an earful for our efforts.
We’d dubbed him as ‘the freak’ ever since.
“Damn.” He blew out a low whistle. “I mean, the guys handsome, I’ll give you that, Isaac, but fuck. Isn’t he much older than us?”
“Twenty six.” So much certainty went into the answer that despite not remembering asking, I was convinced it was a fact. “Seven years isnt too bad, right?”
Yup. Because age was the issue, right? Not the fact that the junk that dangled between his legs was the same kind that was between my own?
“Oh.” He shook his head. “No. I dunno why. Was thinking a lot older than that. It - it was - ” He trailed off.
Every time I blinked, his image would distort. Sometimes he’d seem nearer. Others further away. Other times just a mess of pixels. The same question from earlier came back to haunt me: Why Blake?
There were a lot of answers to that question; I had no idea what the answer was.
Maybe because he was gay. Or because I knew he wouldn’t freak out the way my friends would have.
Or maybe, the snide voice in the back of my head injected, it’s because he’s your best friend and you knew he wouldn’t judge you?
That voice got stomped into submission real fucking quick.
“He didn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to, right?” Blake checked eventually. “I know you said you were both drunk, but you agreed, right?”
Like a car hitting a brick wall at sixty miles an hour, the impact of his words was jarring. Had my every attempt to deny the reality of the situation disintegrating.
He hadn’t. There were a lot of fuzzy moments, but I recalled agreeing to it. Pushing, even. I hadn’t thought I’d drunk that much, but clearly I had because there was no fucking way I’d have acted the way I had sober. No damn way.
“The sex wasn’t the worst part, B,” I whispered. The spinning had started up again. Dizziness had kicked back in.
“What was?”
I didn’t remember what we talked about at the bar. Didn’t remember leaving and going back to his place. I remembered being at his place. Remember . . . the thing we did. But there was more.
There was more . . . and even though I was drunker than I thought . . . was it drunk enough to justify?
“You know you can tell me anything, Isaac.” Soft. Gentle. All the things I knew the backstabbing, brother-shagging bastard wasn’t.
So why did I feel like I could tell him?
“He had me call him Daddy,” I blurted out. Silence followed. I watched a broad variety of emotions take turns dominating his expression before it closed off, schooling itself.
“Come again?”
Heat rose to my cheeks. Had my eyes dropping to the floor. Anger had taken a backseat, but it was still there, vibrating through my system like a live wire. That anger, it was as familiar to me as my own face in the mirror; it never truly left me.
“We were - he wanted me to call him Daddy.” I couldn’t remember how that had come up. Had it been before the sex? After the sex? During?
Fuuuuck! I was never drinking again!
“And did you?”
Tears pricked my eyes. Had my throat closing up. “I think I did,” I whispered at last. “What’s he done to me? He’s turned me into a fucking freak like him.”
Because screwing another guy wasn’t enough. We had to add freaky shit? The freak was adequately named, it seemed. But if that was the case, where did that leave me?
Rising from the chair like smoke, Blake winced, stretched so hard that the bones in his back popped, before shaking his head. He’d grown over the summer. He used to be shorter than me, but now we stood at the same six foot one. But he was broader. The outdoor work had paid off and his shoulders were twice the size they had once been, arching off into a solid set, and his body had toned up. His shadow grew, getting bigger and bigger until it stood as tall and proud as a king’s.
“You’re not a freak, Eyes.” He closed the distance between us. Placed a hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off.
“Don’t touch me,” I sneered.
He gritted his teeth but removed his hand. Slid to the other side of the couch. “You’re not a freak,” he repeated. “And maybe he isn’t, either. You’re both old enough to make your own choices. I mean, it sounded like you were both too drunk to make any choices, but shit happens. I mean, it could be worse. I’d rather be with somebody who had a Daddy kink than an armpit fetish.”
“An armpit fetish? Da’ fuck is that?”
“It’s exactly what it sounds like - woah! Eyes, I swear to god, don’t you puke on my floor.”
Too. Late.
Bursting free in streams of hot nastiness, any attempt of making it to the bathroom was in vain. A moan escaped my lips. Hands and knees smacked against the hardwood.
“Guess you’re staying here for the night,” Blake sighed. “Try and get up and go to the bathroom. I’ll get you some clothes. Suppose I’ll have to clean that up, too.”
“I need to go home, B,” I choked out, spitting, trying to rid myself of the vile taste. “I need a shower. I need to get the feel of him off me.”
For a moment, I was back out on the streets. Confused. Lost. Disoriented. I’d woken up in the freaks bed, his arms around me and a whole lot of regret birthing. I’d bolted. Ran like Hell itself was on my ass. It hadn’t mattered that it was raining or I had no idea where I was. I had just needed to get away.
“Shower here. Your mom would kill me if I let you go out at this time in this state. Oz too.”
I wasn’t drunk now. That had passed, for the most part. Drunk was easy. It was sobering up that was the bitch. It was the hangover kicking in whilst still awake. It was the transition between being clueless to ′oh fuck’.
Instead of answering, I puked again.
