Page 57 of Blown

Maybe Jake’s only real problem was the way he’d been treated in the past. Rafe had no idea what sort of damage coming from a hostile family could cause someone like him and Jake. He’d always had the support of the entire, extended Hawthorne clan to get him through life’s ups and downs. Jake had never had that. He wasn’t ready to shrug Jake’s lying off and pretend it didn’t matter, but he could see himself working with Jake to get the help he needed and to make a happier life for himself.

As fast as the trip to Paris was, it still felt as though it took forever. Somehow, in the middle of the tension that still surrounded them, Jake managed to fall asleep as darkness settled in and the train zoomed through the night. He rested his head on Rafe’s shoulder, though how he could actually sleep in that position was beyond Rafe, and snored lightly a time or two.

By the time the train pulled into Paris Nord, Rafe just wanted to get everything over with so he and Jake could go home and figure out what they were going to do with the rest of their lives.

“Mum gave me the address of Hélène’s studio,” he said as they joined the long queue for taxis outside the station. “It’s along the Rue de Charenton, a little further south than here. It shouldn’t take too long to get there.”

Half an hour later, those felt like famous last words to Rafe. Paris traffic was horrific, and Hélène’s hot shop happened to be in a fashionable area near some of the more touristy parts of the city.

“Of course she would set herself up somewhere flashy and central,” Jake said as the two of them approached the old building on its quaint and quirky street.

Rafe’s uncertainty about what they were doing grew as he shivered at the dark, unfriendly feeling of the building. The windows were blacked out, and there was no light coming from the other side of the cracks in the paint.

“I wonder if we have the wrong address,” he said as he walked right up to the building and cupped his hands to the glass so that he could look through one of the chips in the paint.

Jake did the same, and a moment later, he hummed. “I can’t see anything. Either she’s got things blocking the windows besides black paint or your mum has the wrong address.”

Rafe pulled back, shaking his head but still staring at the blank window. “Mum is clever. She knows how to get things that most people don’t have access to. This as to be Hélène’s studio, she’s just not here.”

Jake peeked sideways at him. Rafe felt the careful uncertainty in his expression. He wasn’t going to question Rafe or his mum, but it was clear he wasn’t confident.

“Why don’t we try coming back tomorrow,” he said resting a hand on Rafe’s arm. “It’s clear that whatever this is, the building isn’t abandoned. But it’s late, and even Hélène wouldn’t stay up working when she could be getting dinner and finding a place to stay?” Jake’s eyebrows went up with his implied question.

Rafe blew out a breath and stepped back from the building. “I just want this whole thing over and done with as quickly as possible so we can move on,” he said, hitching the backpack containing his clothes and toiletries for their trip higher over his shoulder.

“Me, too,” Jake said, smiling at him and gesturing for him to walk back down the street. “Come on. I think I saw a hotel down this way before we got dropped off.”

There were several hotels in the area, but Rafe turned up his nose at the first few, not because he didn’t like the look of them, but because he needed to walk off his anxiety before he would be anywhere near ready to go to bed. Even then, he was sure he’d never get to sleep.

“There’s too much at stake,” he told Jake as they sat at one of the outdoor tables at a Moroccan restaurant they’d stumbled across and decided to patronize for a long-overdue supper. Then again, it was Paris, eating supper after ten wasn’t all that unusual. “I can’t help but feel like our entire careers are in Hélène’s hands at the moment, and that’s not a safe place for them to be.”

“What sort of career are we talking about here?” Jake asked as he finished off the last of his zaalouk with a large piece of pita. “Is your heart set on being as big a name in the glass world as Hélène or the rest of them?”

Rafe blinked and stared at his mostly finished plate of couscous. That was the point, wasn’t it? To work hard and make a name for himself so that museums and galleries around the world got into bidding wars to purchase his pieces?

“I want to make my family proud,” he said, raising his eyes to Jake’s.

Jake laughed lightly and finished the last of his pita. “You already make them proud,” he said after swallowing. “That’s clearer to me than anything else. Your whole family is proud of you. All of the Hawthornes are proud of each other, which is way more than I could ever say about my family. And you all tell each other all the time.”

It was true. Rafe knew just how lucky he was.

“You could leave the art world entirely and go to work in some London office and your family would still be proud of you,” Jake went on. He paused, then laughed. “That’s totally the other way around from how things usually are. Usually familiesare proud of their kids working in offices and they cringe if they leave a steady job like that to become a professional artist. This isn’t exactly the most stable career choice.”

“But you chose it,” Rafe said. “Why? Why not work in an office or as a computer programmer or something?”

Jake grinned. “I can’t be contained like that, baby,” he said, raising his mostly empty beer glass to salute Rafe. “You know I’d lose my mind if I was confined to an office or a cube every day for my entire life. Personally, I don’t think humans were ever meant to sit at a desk all day, every day. We were meant to work with our hands or out in a field. We were meant to talk and laugh and sing while we plant the fields or head off into battle.”

“Dad says the same thing all the time,” Rafe said, finishing off his beer as well.

They put their glasses down at the same time, then stared at each other across the dim light cast by electric lamps all around the front of the restaurant. It was getting late even for Paris, and the restaurant’s staff was already packing away tables and sending them stern looks. Rafe couldn’t bring himself to look away from Jake, though. As frustrating and unpredictable as Jake was, he’d become Rafe’s light in the darkness, whether sitting at a restaurant in Paris or gazing out at the view on Box Hill.

“Do you want to find a hotel?” he asked, his voice low with suggestion as warmth and need began to seep through him.

Jake grinned, catching his meaning. “Yes,” he said, firm and decisive.

The two of them stood, and without any care for what the people around them might think, they joined hands as they walked down the street to the nearest hotel.

They couldn’t check in fast enough. It was probably the overstimulation of chasing Hélène, not to mention the beer from supper, but Rafe felt restless and eager to have Jake under himagain. That one time before his not-really-a-date with Steve was so long ago, and it hadn’t nearly been enough.

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