Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [14]
Jason looked at me. “You’re not seriously thinking about saying yes to this, are you?”
“Are you seriously thinking it’s a good idea?”
He grinned. “Probably a really bad one, but watching you and my father go head-to-head might be worth it.”
“He’s dying, I would think you’d want me to be nice to him.”
“Be nice to him if he’s nice to you, but don’t let him push you around. He’s a bully.”
“You really don’t like him, do you?”
Jason shook his head. “No.”
“Did he abuse you physically?” Nathaniel asked.
Jason looked at him, with a strange, almost empty expression on his face. “He was always hurting me ‘by accident,’ trying to toughen me up. He’d try to teach me a sport and I’d come home bruised and bloody. He broke my arm finally trying to teach me football, and Mom wouldn’t let him take me out by ourselves again. He was always careful that it wasn’t abuse. Nothing you could call him on, but he was always too rough, too harsh for my age, my size. I started therapy in my teens because the school counselor encouraged it. Therapy taught me that my dad was abusing me. He wanted to hurt me.”
I touched his face. “Jason, I’m sorry.”
His face was very solemn. “Me, too.”
“You don’t want to go home by yourself, do you?” Nathaniel asked.
“No. I’d ask you to go with me, but if I show up with you it’ll just confirm what my dad and most of the town thinks.” He grinned suddenly. “Well, anyone who didn’t have a teenage girl about my age. The fathers hated me.”
“I would think that your being promiscuous with the girls would make your dad happy,” I said.
“You’d think, but he seemed to hate me for that, too.”
“If someone wants to hate you, you can’t stop them,” Nathaniel said.
Jason nodded. “Yeah, my dad has hated me for as long as I can remember.”
“You’re my best friend; if you want me to go with you for moral support, I’ll go,” Nathaniel said.
Jason smiled, then shook his head. “Nothing personal, Nathaniel, but you are not going to help me convince my dad I’m straight.”
“Nathaniel’s straight,” I said.
“But he doesn’t look like my dad’s idea of a straight guy. And it’s all about appearances with him.”
I took a deep breath, let it out. “How long would you need to be there?”
“I don’t know, a couple of days at least.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’ll go, if you want me to.”
Jason looked at me, startled. “You’re joking, right?”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
“No,” he said, and he sat up, kneeling in the bed. The sheet was behind him, so he was very not clothed. Even though we’d just finished having sex, I found myself fighting to give him eye contact. Sometimes my hang-ups puzzle even me. “This is like the biggest favor ever.”
“You would owe me for the rest of your life, that’s true.”
A look passed over his face that I couldn’t read. He looked down at me with so much emotion in his eyes that it was uncomfortable to see. I fought to look into those eyes.
“You’d really do this for me? Something this stupid and this sitcom? You’d really do it?”
I finally had to look away from the intensity of his eyes. “Yes, Jason, I’d really do it.”
“You realize we’ll have to fly.”
“Shit,” I said, “you will like owe me extra for getting me on a plane.”
“But you’ll still do it, even though you’re terrified of flying?”
I crossed my arms underneath my breasts and sulked, but said, “I said I’d do it, didn’t I? How long is the flight?”
He bounced down beside me, and the look of joy on his face made it all seem far less stupid. “I know you don’t love me the way you love Nathaniel or anyone else. But you really do care for me, don’t you?”
I looked into that face. A face that had been my friend for years and more than just a friend for about a year. I said the only thing I could say: “Yes.”
6
WE CALLED JEAN-CLAUDE while it was still night, so we could tell him what his pomme de sang, Jason, and his human servant, me, had planned. I thought he might tell