Declination by Gregory Ashe

Author:Gregory Ashe [Ashe, Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodgkin and Blount
Published: 2019-10-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

SHAW FELT BETTER after the sex. He felt better after the water. He felt better, too, after the pizza that North ordered and which they ate in bed, with North’s arm around Shaw’s waist and Shaw dripping reddish swirls of oil onto North’s shoulder and then licking them off while North played the martyr. Shaw felt better in just about every way, except the one that mattered. Once again, Shaw had screwed everything up between them, and North had been the one to fix it all. And just once, Shaw wanted to be the one who could make things right.

If he had just done what Dr. Farr said.

But Dr. Farr was wrong. And North was wrong. They both thought this issue was about trust, they both thought it was about something Shaw and North needed to work on together. And that wasn’t it at all.

After the pizza, North pulled on the fishnet tank top and the jean cutoffs with Plug It! bedazzled across the butt.

“You look like Jane Seymour.”

North rolled his eyes. “Where did you find this getup anyway?”

“Just stuff I had in the closet.”

One of North’s eyebrows crept up; his hands stilled as he was working the cutoff’s fly.

“I mean,” Shaw said, his face heating, “I just—they were just some things I—”

“What else do you have in the closet?”

“Nothing.”

Slowly, deliberately, North finished buttoning the fly. “I guess we’ll have to see about that.” He looked up at Shaw. “You know payback is a bitch, right?”

“I don’t really think you need to pay me back. I was just helping you out.”

“That’s what I meant. I’m going to help you, baby. Really help you.”

“Is that what you tell all the boys who pick you up on South Grand?”

North’s eyes narrowed to slits.

Shaw shrugged.

“It’s too late to check out where Jadon was shot,” North said. “Let’s go in the morning.”

“First thing,” Shaw said.

“I’ll pick you up.” North bent down for a kiss.

When the kiss broke and North tried to stand, Shaw hooked the fishnet.

“Baby,” North said. “You’re all tangled.”

“I know.”

North stopped trying to stand; he just hunched there, making a noise low in his throat, like something had just clicked.

“You’ve got to ask me.”

“Will you please stay over?”

“Yeah,” he said with a soft smile. “Of course. I’m going to run home and pick up a few things, though.”

So North left. And while he was gone, Shaw went to the hall closet and shifted aside a stack of bedding on the top shelf and checked the Ryo and Akira costumes. He poked at the bag next to the costumes, satisfied by the metallic jingle that came from inside. And then he moved the bedding back. He showered. When he went back to the bedroom, he found a kilt lying on the floor, and that seemed easier than anything else, so he tugged it on. Then he went to work putting everything back in place.

Shaw had just finished putting fresh sheets on the bed when North’s heavy tread came up the stairs. He

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