Page 42 of Blown

Jake leaned back and rubbed his face, suddenly so exhausted he could barely think. It wasn’t the exhaustion of just one night either. He’d been running on this hamster wheel for most of his adult life and he didn’t know how to get off. At the moment, he was pretty sure he’d reached the point in the viral video where the hamster tripped and went spinning around the wheel, held on by nothing but centripetal force, right before being thrown off into the woodchips.

“I have a problem, okay?” he told Nally, not opening his eyes. “I’m a compulsive liar. I haven’t had an official diagnosis?—”

“A psychiatric evaluation, maybe?” Nally asked bitterly.

Jake opened his eyes and glanced at him. “I have a problem and I haven’t known how to get help for it.”

“Does Rafe know?” Nally snuck another look at him.

“Yes,” Jake said, feeling glad that he could say something that might redeem him a fraction in Rafe’s brother’s eyes. He liked Nally, liked the entire Hawthorne family, which he still couldn’t believe, and he hated the sick feeling in his gut that he’d let them down. “We’ve talked about it before. It probably comes from my need to please people and not have them call me a perverted faggot who’s going to hell, like everyone, including my parents, did all through my childhood.”

Nally’s tight body eased a little, and what Jake could see of his expression in the dark of the road showed a little sympathy.

“Whatever started it doesn’t matter,” Jake went on. “I’m trying to break the pattern. I like Rafe. I really like him. I think I’m falling in love with him.”

Nally snapped a quick, wide-eyed look at Jake.

“I don’t want things to go on like this,” Jake said. “Yes, I fucked things up royally, but I want to change, I want to be a better man. For him.”

Nally clenched his jaw as he made a turn onto the highway that would take them the last stretch home. “I want to believe you,” he said, “but that sounds like a line from a Hollywood movie. How do I know you’re not just lying to me and telling me what you think I want to hear so that I think you’re the good guy again?”

Jake winced. “I know I haven’t earned your trust,” he said. “If I had it in the first place, I know that’s broken now and that I have to earn it back.”

“Right in one,” Nally grumbled.

“I don’t know how to do that other than to keep moving forward with things,” Jake went on. “I’m falling for Rafe. I still want to marry him, and yes, that’s still for selfish reasons. But I want to make it worth his while in any way I can. And I?—”

He stopped, shocked by the words that had been about to come out of his mouth. He hadn’t known how he felt until just that moment, and he wasn’t sure he trusted those feelings one bit.

“I like your family,” he went on, speaking slower and really listening to himself. “I’ve never had any sense of family the way it’s supposed to be until meeting the Hawthornes. I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve never had to consider anyone outside of myself and the very few people I trust. I don’t want to let any of you down.”

Silence filled the car as they drove on. They were far enough from London proper that the highway was sparsely traveled. It was just the two of them and the occasional pair of headlights going in the other direction. The darkness was disorienting enough that Jake felt suspended in the moment.

“I want to believe you,” Nally said at last, calmer but still firm, “but I have to protect my family, too.”

“I know,” Jake said quietly. “And I’m glad you feel that way. I want them protected, even if that means protecting them from me.”

Nally nodded in reply, but that was the end of the conversation. Neither of them said anything else as they finished the drive to Hawthorne House.

The majestic, old building looked as ancient as its bones as they approached it near two in the morning. During the day, the modernizing renovations were more prominent, but at night, in the shadows of the wee hours, the black silhouette brought the age of the house to the fore.

“Hawthorne House isn’t haunted, is it?” Jake asked as they got out of the car and headed to the family door.

“It’s definitely haunted,” Nally said, marching ahead of him.

“Have you ever thought of bringing in a ghost hunter?” Jake asked, following him.

Nally didn’t answer. He unlocked the family entrance, which Jake had never known to be locked before, but which made sense in the middle of the night, and didn’t look back at him as he headed down the hall to his flat.

Jake sighed and rubbed his face, then headed in the opposite direction, toward his flat. He was at the end of the hall with the stairs, and after hesitating near his door for a moment, he changed his mind and headed upstairs, then down the hall to Rafe’s flat. He didn’t want the whole thing hanging over the two of them for a second longer than it needed to. He’d screwed up, and he wanted to make it better immediately.

He reached Rafe’s door and knocked quietly.

Nothing happened.

He knocked a little louder, then glanced up and down the hall, worried about waking the other family members. When Rafe didn’t answer his door, Jake tried the handle.

Of course, it was locked. Of course.

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