Triangulation, p.35
Triangulation, page 35
part #2 of Borealis Investigations Series
Digging his heels into the footwell, twisting, his whole body rising from the tension as though he were being drawn on the rack, Shaw let out another contorted scream and punched the door. The force of the blow ran up his arm, and he shouted again.
Then he was done. For real, this time, he promised himself. No more acting out. No more tantrums. North had given Shaw a chance to express himself. Actually, he had given him two chances. And both times, instead of telling the man he had loved for the last eight years how he felt, Shaw had pushed North away. Physically.
The rationalizations glowed with feverish heat when they came. It was better this way. Better that North would never have to know how broken Shaw was. Better that North would never have to realize that Shaw could never have a real relationship, better that North would never have to shoulder the burden of all Shaw’s trauma. Better that they remain friends, locked in that perfectly safe distance where Shaw could see North, hear him, talk to him, spend their days together, but never touch him, never hold him, never have him the way he wanted to have him. This would be better in the long run.
Shaw had his phone in his hand before he realized what he was doing. He saw a string of missed messages from Jadon, the other man’s worry threaded through each text with escalating intensity. Shaw sent a quick reply: We need to break up.
Almost immediately, his phone buzzed with a call from Jadon. Shaw dismissed it. Wiping at his eyes, which stung now with a flood of tears, Shaw stared at the phone. Another call from Jadon came in. Shaw dismissed it. Another. He dismissed this one too. Then the texts began, his phone vibrating under his fingers as Jadon sent message after message.
Shaw couldn’t even read the texts. His vision blurred with tears no matter how quickly he blinked. He didn’t think he wanted to read the texts; he was afraid that Jadon was furious at him, tearing him apart in a series of vicious messages. Or, worse, he was afraid Jadon was fighting for him.
The thought went through Shaw like a cold front; it blew off the storm of self-pity and left Shaw shaking and clear eyed and dazzled with the sudden brilliance of realization.
Why hadn’t he ever fought for North?
Because the truth about Shaw—he had learned this about himself over the last few months—was that he was a fighter. Inside himself, something vicious and feral lived. It had shown itself the night that Shaw beat Tucker with the golf club. It had emerged when Shaw fought off the Slasher and lived to tell about it. That feral thing inside Shaw had driven him out into the hallway to face a deranged Matty Fennmore. To protect North.
Shaw had fought for North before. Shaw was a fighter. And he wasn’t going to let North go without a fight.
Shaw was texting before he had time to reconsider it. Just a short message to North. A few simple words. I’m sorry. Can we please talk?
A message came back almost immediately. Meet me here. And then an address followed.
It was somewhere in Soulard. Shaw started the car and drove.
Chapter 36
NORTH PAUSED AT THE THRESHOLD of Adrienne Martin’s, already realizing he’d been duped. The French restaurant, named after the owner, was consistently ranked among the best places to eat in the city. It was outrageously expensive, and on more than one occasion, North and Tucker had gotten into pitched battles about whether or not they could afford to eat there as regularly as Tucker liked. North shook his head; he should have guessed from the pin and the location in Soulard. He should have known Tuck would try one last power play.
When he shouldered the door open behind him and turned to go, though, Tuck’s voice reached him. “North, hold on. Just give me a minute, ok?”
Tuck was crossing the room toward him. The bruises on his face—bruises that North had given him—were purple today, green at the edges, but otherwise Tucker looked hot as hell: tight gray trousers without a belt, a perfectly tailored white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a loosely knotted crimson tie. North had given him that tie. Tuck looked like what he was: the full package of money and breeding and good looks. The bruises just made it hotter.
“You look like you’ve had a rough day. Sit down. Eat something.” Tuck patted the air with both hands. “On me, I promise. I owe you that much.”
North plucked at his t-shirt. “Not exactly up to the dress code.”
“I, uh—” Under the bruises, Tuck blushed. “I made sure it’d just be us. Nobody’s going to care.”
Taking in the empty restaurant, the rows of candlelit tables, the dark beams overhead where, normally, the sound of conversation and laughter rose and drifted like helium, North grimaced. “You rented out the whole fucking restaurant? Jesus, Tuck, this is typical. We can’t afford a new car for me, but you can rent out the whole fucking restaurant when you want to put on a show.”
A flicker of anger showed in Tuck’s expression, and then he smoothed it away. He ran a hand down his shirt, emphasizing the taut lines of his frame, the perfect craftsmanship of shirt and trousers to put him on display. “I know. I know. I’m an asshole. But I didn’t pay for this. I . . . I asked my dad, actually.”
“You asked your dad?”
“I told him you were thinking about leaving. He’s obsessed with you, you know, and he told me I better do whatever I can to keep you.” Tuck tried for a smile. “He doesn’t know exactly how big of an asshole I can be.”
“Tuck, you’ve got the wrong idea. This is wrong; I should go.”
“Please, Mick—” Tuck started again. “Please, North. Just hear me out. Eat some good food. And then you can go. You need to hear what I’m going to say, and you’ve got to eat sometime.”
North wavered; Tuck reached out to take his hand, and North angled his body away. Changing his movement into a gesture of surrender, Tuck smiled and backed toward a table set for two. “Ok, ok. Message received. I won’t try anything.”
“You always think you’re so fucking smooth,” North said, but he followed Tucker toward the table.
“You make me feel that way. You make me feel like I could do anything.”
“Like beat the shit out of me?” North said as he dropped into the chair opposite Tuck.
Tuck raised a hand, probing at the bruises on his face; the gesture looked unconscious. He opened his mouth to say something, and then he shook his head and fell silent.
A waiter appeared as though conjured, and they ordered drinks. North checked his phone. It wasn’t quite nine-thirty. “Half an hour.”
“They’ll barely be getting the food started.”
“Half an hour.”
Tuck looked like he wanted to argue, but he swallowed and said, “We’d better order.”
So they ordered. North got some sort of beef—he barely read the description. Tucker ordered escargot and tapenade and pâté, salads for each of them, and duck for himself. Pushing back his chair, North excused himself to go to the bathroom; he was halfway there when he reversed course.
Tucker was holding out North’s phone when North came back. “Forget something?”
After a quick glance to make sure Tucker hadn’t been reading a message—no missed notifications, so that was good—North returned to the bathroom, washed up, and studied himself in the mirror. The guy in the glass was such a stupid fuck. But he was lonely, too. And this felt easy. And maybe it would be better. So he went back to the table.
At first, things were awkward. Then the second glass of red came, something expensive that Tucker ordered by name. It was the kind of thing that had drawn North to Tucker in the first place: the easy confidence. How Tucker handled everything, but especially things of class and wealth. The things that had made North so ashamed of himself when he had started at Chouteau and realized how truly out of his depth he was. Then the third glass. By the third glass, it was easy to laugh about the antics of people from Tuck’s work. It was easy to eat the delicious food as it came, course after course. It was easy to lean back in the chair, relax, let the alcohol wrap everything in gauze so that all the sharp things in North’s life were easier and safer to touch. North caught himself listening to Tuck’s bull. He caught himself smiling, then leaning in, then laughing. He saw it all happen like he was watching from orbit.
“Are you going to get together with Shaw now?” Tuck said, the smile dying from his face, the words puncturing the atmosphere and sucking the air out of the room.
“That’s none of your business,” North said.
“I’m not asking to be a dick. I’m asking because . . . well, there’s something you should know.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“It’s important.”
“You lied to me, Tuck. Freshman year, I asked you to find out if Shaw was interested in going on a date with me. That was my mistake; I should have had the balls to do it myself. But you lied to me.”
Tucker nodded.
“Why? That’s what I want to know. You didn’t even like me back then. You just did it to be an asshole, is that it?”
The mask slipped; for the first time that night, the old Tucker emerged, peering out at North through slitted eyes. “You think I didn’t like you? Jesus. You’re still so fucking blind it makes me want to scream. I was into you freshman year. Fuck, every gay boy and half the straight ones at Chouteau were into you. You just couldn’t see it because you had your little twinkie puppy tagging along at your side.”
“You were jealous? Come on, Tuck. I know you better than that.”
“Yes. You know me. But you don’t know him.”
“I’ve known him—”
“I know you think you know him. I know you think you . . . you love him,” the words came with a sneer. “But you don’t see the real Shaw. He’s obsessed with you. And he’s insane.”
“All right,” North said, standing and tossing the napkin onto the table. “We’re done.”
“I didn’t fall down the stairs.”
Half-turned toward the door, North hesitated. Then he straightened his shoulders and took a step away from the table.
“Shaw came to our house in Webster Groves. It was the middle of the night. He got one of my golf clubs out of the car, and he beat the shit out of me with it. He broke my ribs. He broke my collarbone. He’s the one that fucked up my shoulder, arm, and leg. Did you know that? Look me in the eye, tell me you knew he did it, and I’ll never bother you again.”
North had come to a stop facing the door. Through the glass, a familiar pair of headlights swung toward the restaurant, and North felt like he was back in orbit again, watching everything from a thousand miles away. In his mind, North saw the bruises all over Tucker’s body after the fall—no, not the fall. After Shaw beat the shit out of him with a five iron or a nine iron or a putter or whatever he’d used. He saw the sling that Tuck had been forced to wear. He saw the broken bottle of whiskey that he’d cleaned up at the bottom of the stairs.
“Jesus Christ, is that him?” Tucker must have stood up because the table rattled, but North didn’t look back. “This is what I’m talking about.”
At first, the headlights cut out Shaw’s silhouette as he came toward the restaurant. Then the lights died, and North blinked, trying to clear his blurry vision. His eyes had gone dry. Or maybe it was something else. The door opened; a bell jingled; Shaw stepped inside. He was wearing a caftan that North had heard him describe more than once as a shade of dusty rose, and underneath it he wore a pair of tight, ripped jeans that had probably been designed and sold under a rapper’s label or something stupid like that. His wooden clogs clicked across the room; a small part of North’s brain, long used to dealing with this kind of shit, was already calculating the blisters.
Shaw made it two steps across the room before he stopped, his hazel eyes going wide. Blood rushed into the sharp triangle of his face; his gaze slipped past North to Tucker, and then North felt Tucker’s hand on his shoulder, possessive. He fought the sudden urge to shake it off; he didn’t know what he was doing anymore.
“North, I—”
“You’re done,” Tucker said. “He knows, you little shit. He knows what you did to me. And you know what? You were wrong. Look at his face. Look at him. He believes me. He knows what you are, the psycho little stalker you’ve always been.”
“Stop,” North said.
“I don’t understand,” Shaw said, his gaze trying to fix on North and again sliding away toward Tucker. “North, you told me to meet you here. Can we talk about this alone?”
North checked his phone; Tucker’s other hand found his arm, settling lightly, with a reassuring grasp. “That was me,” Tucker said. “I’m sorry, North. He texted when you went to the bathroom, and I wrote him back asking him to come. I wanted this to be tonight. I wanted you to know before he could hurt you more.”
“Hurt him?” Shaw took a step forward, and North’s hand rose, palm flat out, stopping Shaw. Shaw shook his head; a long lock of hair hung down the side of his face, glinting with embers in the candlelight. “You’re the one who beat the shit out of him for years. You’re the one who lied to him, cheated on him, took him away.”
“Took him away?” Tucker’s voice had a satisfied edge that grated in North’s ear. “Did you hear that? He’s talking about you like you’re a possession. Like you’re his.”
“He is mine,” Shaw shouted. “You never understood that, Tuck, but he’s mine.”
“Is he right?” North said. “Did you do what he’s saying?”
Shaw finally managed to turn his face toward North, and in that instant, North saw the truth. Then Shaw’s chin dipped, his eyes sliding to the floor.
“Please, North. You’ve got to understand. I did it because . . . I don’t know. I was messed up. It was the night Matty attacked me. I couldn’t think straight, and I was hurting. I had just found out what Tuck had been doing; I saw it, that night I went to your house, and all I could think about was the sound of that strap—”
“Shut up.” North’s chest rose and fell; the candle flames blurred and swam. Tuck’s hand massaged gently at his shoulder, and now North did throw him off, breaking away from Tuck’s hold to advance on Shaw. He studied the other man: the fine-boned features, the fierce symmetry of his face, the hazel eyes flooding with tears, the copper patch of hair like a signal fire when Shaw tucked his chin into his shoulder. It would be so easy, North thought. The next step was the right step: to lay his hand on Shaw’s cheek, to tell him it was ok, that he understood, that he would have done the same—and so much worse—if he ever thought someone was hurting Shaw.
But North was overwhelmed. It was all too much, and all too sudden. Not just the knowledge that Shaw had hurt Tucker. All of it: North facing the fact that his own cowardice in asking Tucker to talk to Shaw, in staying with Tucker for so long after the hitting started, had cost North years of his life. Had cost him his dignity, his self-respect. Had cost him time with Shaw. And now, he didn’t deserve Shaw. Not after North had let himself become this person he barely recognized.
His heart was beating fast. His sympathetic nervous system lit up like a carnival midway. He had two options: fight or flight.
North crossed his arms, fingers wrapping around biceps to keep his hands from forming fists, and he studied Shaw a moment longer. Then he shook his head and said, “Who the fuck are you?”
“North, baby,” Tucker said. “You shouldn’t be alone right now. Come home with me. Or let me drive you to a hotel.”
Ignoring him, North pushed past Shaw, checking him hard enough with his shoulder to send the smaller man stumbling into a table. With a small cry, Shaw rocked back, toppling a candle and sending a spray of wax into the air. North hit the door at full speed, crashing out into the night, where the lingering heat licked him like a mutt’s tongue.
Tucker came after, shouting, begging him to stop. But no Shaw. Still no sign of Shaw, not even when North was in the Caravan driving away. No call on the drive back to Lindenwood Park and the blondie brick house on Winona. Nothing from Shaw. Nothing ever again.
Chapter 37
SHAW SAT IN THE darkened living room above the Borealis office. The only light came through the window; the blinds were still raised, the curtains pulled back, and the silver light from the street painted the room with shadows. North had forgotten a black crew sock, and it poked out from under the couch like the devil’s tail, barely visible to Shaw. Staring at the sock, Shaw tried to think about realities. Facts. Unmovable truths—the kind you could stub your toe on.
Truth: He needed to type up the invoices and send them out. Pari was in no condition to work, and Borealis needed money coming in.
Truth: The living room needed sweeping. Shaw dragged his foot across the floor, gathering the tag he had cut from a new pair of chinos, a dust bunny, and a gummy bear that had picked up hair and grit and a dime in its sticky mass.
Truth: The couch springs were poking him in the ass, and that meant it was time for a new couch. Shaw couldn’t imagine anyone enjoying sitting on this thing. He couldn’t imagine anyone sleeping on it—but that just pulled his eyes back to the sock on the floor.
Truth: His heart might have something wrong with it. The thud of blood in Shaw’s ears was too loud. The rhythm seemed off—more of a stutter than a pulse. He’d have to see a doctor. As if anything mattered anymore.
Truth: North would never forgive him.
A knock came at the front door, and Shaw bolted upright on the sofa, ignoring the flash of pain from the spring. North. It had to be North. Shaw would answer the door; he wouldn’t know where to look or what to say or how to stand, but then North would cup the side of his face, bend, kiss him, and it wouldn’t matter anymore. Words wouldn’t matter because words couldn’t come close to this thing that had grown up between them. And then North would step inside, manhandling Shaw with the same casual ease as always, arms looping around Shaw, carrying him up the stairs, over to this sofa, lowering him, his body coming down, so heavy Shaw couldn’t breathe, a delicious blackness stealing over Shaw’s vision, and then—
