Page 60 of The Wounded Warrior

“They say he got real drunk and inappropriate. Naked inappropriate, and Doug and his cronies had to stop him, forcibly. The real rumor is that he got drunk and naked with the group, let them do things to him, take pictures and everything.”

Luke sat back in his chair. “Ouch.” He could see that, though. Rory might have been drugged or he might have been having food poisoning, but Luke was living proof that the man had trouble with controlled substances. If he’d gotten high as a kite there was no telling what he might have done.

“He was young—just out of college and home, so eighteen? But it was nasty. They got what was coming to them, though. All but Doug Harris are dead, in jail, or bankrupt now.”

Well, well. Rory did have a finely tuned sense of revenge. “I hope dead of natural causes.”

“Cancer. Prostate.” Momma sounded pretty damn pleased with that fact too. Someone had been evil, then. He felt totally out of step again, because he imagined Matty would know who all the players were if Momma named them, and he only knew Doug Harris’s name because of Rory and Matt.

Although really, Matt was in the closet and not the most social man alive. He wasn’t sure Matty knew Kurt Cobain was dead yet. He wasn’t totally sure Matt knew who Kurt Cobainwas.

He grinned. Luke, on the other hand, knew all the words toLet It Go, knew which housewives lived in which city, and had friends who could do whole routines of Beyoncé choreography.

He guessed he was the hip twin.

“Well, Rory’s a good guy, Momma. He’s not a drunk. He’s not loose. He’s just very open.”

“I heard he was drunk as a lord at that awards dinner.” Concern shadowed his eyes. “I know Matt has changed his tune about Rory, too, but I worry. That’s all.”

“I know.” He worried, too, but more that Rory would figure out how not together Luke was and just move on. Still, fatalism would only get him so far, so he was gonna go with hope instead. “I’m not sure he was drunk, Momma. He thinks he was drugged.”

“Oh my God!” Momma put the rolling pin down, her eyes wide. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. I put it down to food poisoning to begin with, but with what I’ve learned about him and his fight againstHarris, maybe someone was messing with him.” A spur of anger rose in his chest.

“That’s…well, it’s criminal is what it is!”

“Yes, ma’am.” Luke decided then and there that while he was looking into the grants and funding and such, he would go ahead and look into who might have been able to get to Rory at that party.

“That’s not right. That’s not right at all. Why didn’t you invite him to lunch?”

“Well, we wanted to talk to Preacher first. I’ll ask him to go to lunch with us next week.”

“I’d like that. I met him, but what I remember is thinking how hard it must have been, to go to high school so young.”

“He was young for school?” His eyebrows rose almost to his hairline. “How young?”

“Honestly, son, you need to find more things out about your lovers before you start sleeping with them. He was twelve when he started high school.”

“Holy guacamole.” He had a whole list of exclamations that were not obscene to use with Momma. “That makes me feel a little dumb.”

“You weren’t in high school together. You probably never met him.”

“No, no I never knew him.” He shrugged. He couldn’t let the fact that Rory was wickedly smart scare him off. He had to hold his own.

Obviously Rory had found something about Luke he liked. A lot. And it wasn’t the hot monkey sex. Oh, they were fooling around plenty but neither of them were up to acrobatics. They talked a lot. Hell, Rory’d Skyped him at night when they didn’t have time to get together.

Rory liked talking to him, liked listening to him. They had fun.

They also kissed a lot. Made weird food. Rory had thiscrazy gourmet kitchen with all sorts of bizarre one-use-only appliances. A crepe maker. Anarepapress. Luke hadn’t even known what anarepawas.

Now he knew and he wanted them, daily. With pulled pork and pickled onions and cotija cheese.

“What are you thinking about, son?”

“Arepas.Do you know what those are?” He finished up the carrots for her coleslaw.

“No. Share?”

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