Page 62 of Fire
“No, no it’s not. It’s aterribleidea.” Roger had heard worse ideas in his time—a couple of them from another Hawthorne he could name—but those had been when the idiot in question had been too drunk to stand, maudlin, unlikely to remember his resolve in the morning. Jake was drunk, but not that drunk. The eyes that stared back at him were wild, but lucid.
“Jake,” Tobias choked out, and had to clear his throat. He sat heavily and tried to speak again, but took a swallow of his beer instead. It was maybe his third sip all weekend. Roger saw his throat work. “Jake, listen to Roger. That’s a really bad idea.”
Jake reached over and cupped Tobias’s cheek in his hand, turned Tobias’s face to his. “And why shouldn’t I just listen to you?” he asked softly. “Why should I have to listen to Roger and not to you, Tobias? Why aren’t you as ready to kill those sons of bitches as I am?”
“No.”Tobias pulled away, hauling himself to his feet.“You are not using me as an excuse for a suicide mission. I’m not going to let you.” Jake opened his mouth, but Tobias cut him off with increasing heat and a sharp cut of his hand. “What do you want, Jake?You want me to get angry because of what happened to me six years ago? Here’s what I’m not going to do: I’m not throwing my life, and yours, away because of something that isover.”
Jake took him by the arm. Tobias stopped, but Roger could see the tension in his shoulders. Paired with another expression, the kid could have been bracing himself for a blow, but with the scowl on Tobias’s face, he looked ready to give one.
“They hurt you,” Jake said. “It kills me that they hurt you, and yeah, maybe I should get the fuck over myself, but it eats at me, Tobias. But that’s not the worst. I could fucking move on if it really was over, if we could just walk away and never give a flying fuck about any of those assholes again. But you know what, we can’t, because they’re still doing it. Look at that Miller asshole. Look at what they got away with last year, straight-up murdering kids. Shit floats, and they could still hurt you any day, and I can’t just sit by, knowing that the bastards who did all that fucked-up shit to you because it was fucking fun or let them get their rocks off—those fucks arestill out there.”
“Do you really think shooting them in the head is going to make that stop?” Tobias snarled. “Like it will make everything better? It won’t. You’d have to... you’d have to murder the whole damn ASC to put everyone in the ground who is a threat to me, and thatwon’t solveanything.What happened to me is exactly the same as it was a week ago. The only difference now is that you’ve seen the gritty details. Going on some misguided vendetta won’t stop me from being triggered in a fucking grocery store if it’s a bad day, won’t stop some people from seeing a f-freak when they look at me and want to put me down. You’ve already saved me in every damn way you can, and now all you have left to do isdeal with it.”Tobias pushed Jake in the chest with an open hand, hard enough to make him step back. “Don’t throw your life away over me.”
* * *
Probably it was the alcohol.It made Jake feel better to blame the alcohol for the way anger, confusion, and frustration boiled through and came out without a fucking filter. When Tobias talked aboutthrowing your life away, there was only one thing gone that Jake had ever cared about. And he had stopped hoping years ago to get his dad back and have Tobias in his life too. It had ripped Jake apart, but he knew he couldn’t build anything with Tobias with his father’s old rage and obsession getting in the way.
But none of that was what came out of his mouth.
“I’ve already given up every fucking thing that mattered for you,” Jake snapped. “My life is already fucking gone.”
Tobias’s expression went blank, in the way it had in too many of those damned tapes—the fucking tapes where Tobias didn’t cry, didn’t even struggle, because Jake could see hopelessness and resignation, acceptance, the not-even-despair in every line of his body.
* * *
Tobias haddifficulty drawing breath to speak. “I didn’t think you’d... You never seemed to...” He swallowed. It hurt going down, like that last sip of beer had burned his throat raw. He gathered his strength, pulling up anger with it because he didn’t have much else left. The idea, theconfirmation, that even some part of Jake regretted them dragged up old, groveling, panicky instincts that threatened to send him to the floor to beg.
He gritted his teeth and rubbed at his forehead, trying to ground himself. “This is a fucking bad moment to admit that you care about being seen as a freakfucker.” Tobias downed the rest of the beer in his hand in one hard chug and threw the bottle hard into the garbage can, where it shattered. He felt close to breaking too.
Roger picked up the remains of the six-pack in front of Jake and moved it out of his reach. “I think you’ve had enough.”
Jake looked at him, panic in his eyes, and Tobias almost felt pleasure at that and seeing the disapproval writ large over Roger’s face. “Goddamnit fucking hell, Toby.” He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “It’s not fucking that. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“No,” Tobias said, straightening. He held himself carefully, as though injured and not sure that the tourniquet would stop the blood loss in time. “No, I think you meant exactly what you said. You’re drunk and you’re angry, but when you’re fucking drunk and fucking angry, that’s when you say things that you mean. That youreallymean.” Tobias laughed, and it had no humor. He couldn’t look at Jake, and his hands were rubbing his arms of their own accord, but he wasn’t cold. “They don’t always come out the way you want them to, but they’re fucking true, Jake.”
“Toby...”
“No, Jake,” Tobias snapped. “I want you to say it again. It’s fine, it’s fucking fine, it makessense, but I don’t want you to lie to me anymore when you tell me it doesn’t matter that you... I can’t have you back down now and then keep lying to me later because that means... Fuck. Just fuck, Jake.” The part of him that wasn’t numb or curling up on itself in pain hated that this was going down in front of Roger. It had been a hard-fought victory for himself over the years to feel like he could look Roger in the eye when acknowledging his relationship with Jake as something okay.Healthy. To believe, in front of this man who had been nothing but good to him, that being with Jake was nothing he should conceal or cringe over—that he didn’t need to beg forgiveness for how thoroughly he’d tainted Jake. Now he felt ready to throw up.
But he focused on Jake and the raw, ugly truth flung between them. “It doesn’t change anything.” Tobias didn’t know where the words came from, but he knew they were true. “You can say you have r-r-regrets, and it doesn’t change a damn thing between us. I’ll still love you and f-fuck you and hunt with you. That won’t change. You have not one fucking thing to be afraid of. But you will tell me the truth, right now, you willfucking say itor... or I’m gone. Because you can have regrets, Jake, but if you lie to me right now, I’ll know that you regret more than... more than what you’ve lost. It’ll beusyou regret.”
“I didn’t mean it that way, Toby.” Jake looked frantic, shaken, and Tobias wanted to believe him, but he couldn’t yet. Jake had encouraged him for years to stand his ground, to speak for himself. He wasn’t going to fucking crumble when the stakes were so high.
“So how did you mean it?” Tobias’s voice was still shaky, angry. “What is it exactly that you gave up for me?”
* * *
Distantly,in the part of his brain that wasn’t cursing his stupidity, Jake was fucking proud that Toby was strong enough to shove him to a metaphorical wall and threaten to leave his ass behind.Most of him was even glad that Roger looked ready to shove him against a physical wall for the stupidity of blaming Tobias inany wayfor how his life had gone.
The rest of him hurt.
Jake took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He couldn’t look at Tobias or Roger if he wanted to get the words out. “I miss Dad,” he said. “Not every day, but sometimes I miss him so much it hurts. And I wouldn’t...” He had to open his eyes then to look at Tobias because Tobias had to believe this, hehad to. “I wouldn’t put you back in that fucking hellhole for even a minute if it meant that I could have him back. I wouldn’t trade you for a second, Tobias. But ithurts,and some days I wish…”I wish Leon Hawthorne wasn’t a crazy bastard willing to kill his own son. I wish that he could have been different, that I could have been someone who could make him proud.“He was my life and he’s gone, and I’d be lying if I said I was dancing two-steps about that, but I know there’s no way that I could have you both in my life.”
Tobias swallowed visibly. “Is that it, Jake? Is that seriously it? You can’t lie to me about this.”
“That’s... that’s what I meant, but there’s more.” Jake paused, his gaze moving over the front of Roger’s house. It had stood just like that in his earliest memories. “You know… well, maybe you not as much, Tobias, but Roger... you know how I grew up. Always on the road because Dad—my father couldn’t let go of Mom, didn’t ever really believe her death was what we were told it was.”
“Yeah,” Roger agreed quietly. “That’s Leon.”
