Page 18 of Too Many Beds

It wasn’t easy for someone like Jasper to shed his innocence. Not like me. I wasn’t sure I’d ever had any innocence in the first place.

“How do you do it, Lee?” Jasper asked quietly, his leg still for the first time.

I plucked the cigarette from my lips and tapped a long column of ash into the ashtray. “How do I do what?”

Jasper wrapped his long, willowy arms around himself and looked away, his glasses still speckled with rainwater. A dark curl hung at the center of his forehead, and I had the strangest urge to smooth it back for him. “Live with yourself after. Move on.”

“It gets easier,” I told him, “if you do it enough.”

“And if I don’t want to?” He lifted his head, looking at me through his rain-streaked glasses. “I don’t want to do it again, Lee. I know that makes me a coward, but?—”

“That don’t make you anything.” I stabbed the half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray and reached across the space to grab him by the head. “Maybe you killed a man, Jasper, but that don’t make you a killer.”

“Yes, it does. Doesn’t it?”

“You can’t think of it like that. You gotta look at it from the outside. Think of all the other little sins you’ve committed in your life. Realize you don’t define yourself by that shit either. How many times have you been in a little fender bender or fucked somebody else’s woman on the down low?”

The blush spread up to his ears and down his neck as he squirmed in place even more. “I never been with no women like that.”

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered and wiped a hand over my face. “Are you telling me you’re a fucking virgin?”

“I never said that. Just that I never been with nowomen.” The way he looked up at me, all vulnerable and shit, threatened to melt the wall of ice I’d built up around my heart.

Fucking hell, what was I supposed to do with the bombshell he’d just dropped in my lap? I’d suspected, but fuck. It was one of those things people like us just didn’t talk about. If Remy Fortier found out…

But we didn’t have to report to Boss Fortier anymore.

We were free of him, free to say and do whatever we wanted.

The realization hit me hard, and I had to grip the edge of the bed to keep from swaying in place.

I reached for my cigarettes with shaky hands and lit another, muttering, “Jesus Christ,” again.

“I’m sorry, Lee,” Jasper blurted. “I know I should’ve fucking told you. Or told somebody, but I was scared. Everybody said that Boss Fortier didn’t let queers into the organization. Plus, with the way everybody talked about Avi and Laurent all disapproving like, I didn’t want people to talk like that about me. And anyway, I figured it didn’t fucking matter since the only person I was ever even interested in was y—” He cut himself off, slapping both hands over his mouth.

Jasper the Mouth, indeed. He just couldn’t shut up.

He stared at me, eyes wide with terror, and I hated that. Hated that he was scared of me when normally I liked that. That was the best part about killing, the moment when they looked up at me like I was a god. I decided if they lived or died. Me. Not some bearded asshole in the clouds. Lee fucking Ducaux.

But I didn’t like that look on Jasper’s face. It didn’t belong there.

I sighed, exhaling smoke in a funnel. “Jasper, I don’t care.”

He blinked his watery eyes. “You don’t?”

“Why should I? Look, the way I see it, life’s fucking short and the world’s a dumpster fire. I mean, look at me. I kill people,Jasper. What right have I got to judge anybody for anything?” I tapped my cigarette over the ashtray. “Besides, who hasn’t dabbled a little, huh? I mean, the whole no queers thing is a joke. Half the guys in the organization are messing around on the down low with each other, even the ones with wives and girlfriends waiting at home. Boss Fortier himself has…” I looked up and bit off the last part of it. “Well, let’s just say some of the people crying about it the loudest have the most to hide. But it doesn’t matter now anyway, does it? We’re not in the family anymore. We’re free men.”

“Free men,” he repeated as if it were as novel a concept to him as it was to me.

“That’s right. All we’ve got to do is make it through the border, and we’ll be home free once we get to Canada.”

“And then what?” he asked.

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what happens once we get to Canada, Lee?” He scooted to the edge of the bed.

I looked away and shrugged. “Suppose we’ll go our separate ways then.”

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