Page 97 of The Evening Wolves

The corner of Emery’s mouth slanted up, but he didn’t say anything. He took John-Henry’s face in his hands. He looked at him, and the seconds ticked past, but the frozen sunset of his eyes never wavered, never changed. He just looked. Tears prickled in John-Henry’s eyes, and he wanted to turn his head, but Emery’s fingers bit into his jawbone, holding him in place. He kept looking. It was like everything was being stripped away: the day’s tragedies, the horrors of the last week and month, the strain and stress and despair. But more than that. He lost his armor piece by piece—the smile that, at one point in his life, had made him everyone’s friend; the years he had spent as the town’s golden boy, incapable of doing wrong; the clothes and fast car and big house. He was starting to tremble, and he tried to rear back, but Emery didn’t let go. He felt naked—not just his body, but his mind or his soul or whatever you wanted to call it. They did this to prisoners, he thought. At the jail. The humiliation of being stripped of everything that made you a person. The dehumanization of having the trappings of civilization stripped away, of having another body invade yours, as you were reduced to meat.

“I love you,” Emery whispered, and he laid the stress of the sentence on the final word. You. “I love you, John. I love you.”

He released John-Henry, and John-Henry shifted his weight back in automatic retreat. But he managed to stop there, and he held himself stiffly, still trembling, as Emery eased the ball cap off his head. Emery scrubbed fingers through John-Henry’s hair, smiling. Then he took hold of the jacket, and he paused, asking the question with his eyes. The trembling was coming harder now, but John-Henry managed a nod. Emery slid the jacket off his shoulders, pushed it down his arms, and tossed it to the side of the bed. The air in the room was cold against John-Henry’s bare skin, and goose bumps broke out across his chest.

Emery was looking at him again, and John-Henry started to fold his arms, an automatic move to cover himself, the last line of defense. He remembered the jail. The harsh lights overhead. The vulnerability of being totally exposed.

And then he remembered the locker room. The heat from the shower still riding in his muscles, turning his skin pink where it wasn’t dark from the sun. He remembered standing there, exposed to Emery’s view, the way the boy had drunk him up with a desire that, decades later, John-Henry still found intoxicating. And now here he was, all these years later, with the man. Exposed again. Everything that had been his, everything that had made him John-Henry, taken away.

Naked. And, once again, being seen by Emery Hazard.

The goose bumps spread. His head felt packed with clouds, insulating him from the grief and pain he’d felt over the last few days. For a moment—for a few precious moments—he was here, safe, with someone who loved him. Someone who had seen him at his worst and at his best. Someone who loved him in spite of those things or because of them or both. He was getting hard again, trying to take deep breaths as his body demanded oxygen, urging him to breathe faster. To be seen. To be loved. To be known. That was one of the oldest euphemisms in the English language. To know someone. To have carnal knowledge. Only it wasn’t a euphemism, John-Henry thought, dizzy as he scooted forward, his dick lengthening. This was it, or at least, it could be. Sex could be a lot of things. It could be casual. It could be fun. It could be demeaning and alienating. And it could be this: another way to know someone, and, in knowing them, to acknowledge them as human beings, to affirm their worth, to take a moment of ultimate vulnerability and use it as an expression of love.

He leaned down to kiss Emery.

“Well, hello,” Emery murmured, his thumb rubbing the head of John-Henry’s dick.

John-Henry laughed and whispered, “Shut up.”

22

John-Henry must have slept because he woke to that strange clarity that sometimes came in the middle of the night. The clock said it was barely eleven. Ambient light drizzled through the blinds, streaking the room with gray. In bed next to him, Emery’s breathing threatened to turn into a snore.

For a while, John-Henry lay there, enjoying the lingering glow of their lovemaking, his body loose and relaxed and reminding him, with a pleasant kind of discomfort, of what they’d been up to. Sleep seemed far away, but that was ok; his body’s wakefulness seemed appropriate. And so he listened to the sounds of the old house, to Emery sleeping, to his body. He felt the kind of relief he used to feel after sobering up—a kind of lucidity that, in its stark contrast to the fogginess of the latest bender, told him how lost he’d been. Back when he’d been drinking, it had been a recrimination, yet another reason he’d promised himself he was done with beer and, more importantly, tequila. But now it was simply a marker. He could look back on the last few days and see that he’d been dysregulated, out of control. And now he was back in control. Or, at least, getting back there.

But after a while, he got out of bed. In the dark, he stepped on the letterman’s jacket first. He picked it up. Then the ball cap. He picked that up too. Then his foot came down on something crinkly, and when he picked it up, he remembered the newspaper his father had brought to the hospital. It seemed like years ago. He laid the jacket and cap on the chair to be hung up later, dressed, and let himself out of the bedroom. Colt’s room was dark of course, and at the far end of the hall, so was Evie’s—she was still with Cora until things blew over. The guest room, which was normally the office, was dark as well. He wondered if Jem and Tean and the other guys were hanging out; a few months ago, they’d all been suffering a sleepless night, and it had turned into a strangely wonderful hour that had, in ways John-Henry couldn’t put into words, cemented his love for those other men. Because ultimately, that’s what it was, although he knew Emery would roll his eyes at it. What they’d been through together. What they’d shared. It was strange that, when everything else in his life seemed to be falling apart, he could see so clearly who he loved, could feel that love most powerfully. Or maybe not so strange, not really.

The blue-gray flicker of the television told him someone was still in the living room, and when he got to the bottom of the stairs, he saw that they had extra houseguests. North and Shaw were curled up on the sofa, North playing with Shaw’s hair while he watched a spaghetti western—John-Henry thought it was For a Few Dollars More. Jem was in the armchair, one leg hanging over the side as he read a Goosebumps book—this one was One Day at Horrorland. Tean sat with his back against the chair, reading something on his laptop.

North noticed him first and whooped. The other men startled to various degrees, and while they were still recovering, North tried to sit up from under Shaw. “Where’s my air horn? Where’s my phone? Jem, pay the fuck up!”

“No,” Jem said. “No!”

Shaw took one look at John-Henry and started giggling. Tean glanced up and then immediately turned his attention—with what seemed like an undue amount of earnestness—to his laptop.

“I don’t even want to know,” John-Henry said as he continued into the kitchen.

“Pay up, motherfucker,” North said.

“Are you kidding me?” Jem said. “He’s got bedhead. Big deal. He was tired. He fell asleep.”

“He looks like he got well and truly fucked. Pay the fuck up.”

“You said he wasn’t going to be able to walk!”

“Did you see him shuffling his ancient ass through here? Jesus Christ, he looked like Theo.”

“Because he got his ass handed to him last night, remember? He probably doesn’t even feel like a man anymore. How’s he going to get a boner after a bunch of dudes trashed him in front of his man?”

“Uh, Jem,” Tean said, “you might be making your point a little too well.”

“Thanks, babe.”

“No, I meant—”

“It doesn’t matter if he got his ass handed to him,” North said. “He’s a sex addict. It’s a disease; he can’t help himself. Did you see him when they went upstairs? You could have steered a frigate with that woody.”

“Steered a—Tean, babe, settle the bet.”

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