Last Man Standing by Augustus Roth

Author:Augustus Roth [Roth, Augustus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mmm, gay suspense, gay fiction, suspense thriller
Publisher: Daniel May
Published: 2022-03-20T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Trevor paid for lunch out of Kel’s pockets, taking them through a drive-thru because Kel still had blood dried in his hair and the shell of his ears. He tried his best to clean up with a pack of wet wipes from Trevor’s glove box. The kid’s living rough came in handy.

The car’s interior cleaned up nice; Kel suspected the detritus from before was either stuffed in the trunk or left for safekeeping with his squatter buddies. It smelled fresh and was even clean of cat hair, like Trevor had taken the time to vacuum it. That must have been difficult with one arm still in a cast — though Kel imagined after everything, that inconvenience barely registered on Trevor’s scale of obstacles.

“Do you want anything?” asked Trevor as they pulled up to the window.

He really didn’t, but he needed to get the taste of bullet out of his mouth.

They parked in the lot of the botanical garden, under the shade of a massive maple tree and ate with the doors open and a breeze rolling through, carrying with it the smell of different flowers and water off the koi pond. Trevor wolfed down his double cheeseburger meal with the speed and efficiency of the chronically food-deprived, while Kel tried to make himself stomach an oversweet pineapple-mango smoothie.

Trevor’s silence didn’t bother him; he knew it would break, and he had plenty to contemplate while he waited on it.

He had six missed messages from Yamato. A few more from the kids. His phone rang again while he worked on the will to listen, and he stared at Yamato’s name on the caller ID, already imagining the lecture. No, it would be more than a lecture. He wasn’t getting off easy for this.

“Are you going to answer that?” asked Trevor, reaching for his second cheeseburger.

“It can wait,” said Kel. Yamato was already going to kill him — well, bad choice of words. Maim him? Either way, another thirty minutes wasn’t going to make it any worse or any better. He did fire off a text — I’m fine, will call you back — knowing that it would only make Yamato madder, then silenced his phone. “You said you needed my help.”

“Does your head hurt?” Trevor asked.

“What?”

“Your head, where he shot you.” Trevor thumbed at his own forehead. “Does it hurt?”

“No.”

Trevor looked bored, borderline disappointed by that answer. “Does it feel weird, being dead?” he asked.

Dead. Was that what he was? That would explain how he had been feeling the last all-of-them years.

“It feels the same as being alive,” he said. “If I ever was.”

Trevor didn’t seem interested in exploring the philosophical implications of Kel’s situation. He finished his second cheeseburger in the amount of time it took Kel to mentally schedule his next panic attack, balled up the wrapper, and overhand tossed it into a trash can several feet away.

“Nice shot,” said Kel, but Trevor disregarded the praise without a flicker of interest.

“You’re like my brother now,” he said. “And the rest of them.

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