Undue Influence Read online

  “You must be exhausted.” Jesus, what an evening.

  “Yeah, I think I was going on pure adrenaline for a while there, and now I’m crashing.” His stomach rumbled audibly, and he laughed. “I don’t know how I can be hungry after that amazing meal.”

  “Well, since dinner, you’ve only jumped in a lake to save someone’s life, overseen an emergency, and walked for an hour and fifteen minutes.” Adam started to get up, but Freddy held up a hand. “Stay there. Let me bring you something.” He turned to the small refrigerator. “You mind?”

  “Nope, but you’re not going to find much in there. Unlike you, I’m not much of a cook.”

  Hmm. He was right. There were some condiments, a few bottles of beer, a single apple, and… “Cheese. Do you have bread? I make a pretty mean grilled cheese.”

  “In the breadbox on the counter. But you don’t have to—”

  “Shh.” He did have to, was the thing. He might still half hate Adam, but damn, he could never stand to see him suffer. “I’m starving, too.” That was true. And he hadn’t even jumped in a lake.

  In keeping with the vintage theme, Adam had a midcentury enamel breadbox. Freddy extracted some good-looking bread that appeared to be from the local bakery and sliced the cheddar from the fridge as well as the apple. “It’s kind of fun cooking in here.”

  “I suppose you’re used to huge kitchens.”

  “Restaurant kitchens are actually pretty small, especially if you consider how much food is moving through them.”

  “But on your show—”

  Freddy turned. Adam was doing the blushing-while-looking-at-the-floor thing. Damn, the idea that Adam had watched that stupid show. That he remembered stuff from it. But he didn’t want Adam to be embarrassed so he just said, dismissively, “That was reality TV, not reality.”

  “So that kitchen on the episode where you went to that barbecue place in Memphis was not representative?”

  Damn, he had watched. It would have taken Freddy a while to remember that barbecue place was in Memphis, but his ego loved that Adam had. He bit back a grin as he plopped some butter into a pan he’d put on the small single burner in the little kitchen. “Nope. That was a freakishly large kitchen. My place in New York has a much smaller kitchen. Though that’s partly reflective of the cost of real estate in Manhattan.”

  “I was surprised to see you on TV. We all were.”

  “I did that show to get Ben off my back. Since pretty much the moment we left this town, he got nostalgic for it. When the house he now owns came on the market, he became obsessed with it, but he needed a quick infusion of cash to be able to buy it.”

  “So you sold your soul to the TV devil so Ben could come home?”

  Freddy chuckled. “Pretty much. We’d been interviewed a bunch on a local network in New York, and eventually became a regular segment on the local morning show. We sort of developed this shtick—although it wasn’t a shtick, it was pretty much just us—whereby he was always enthusiastic and optimistic about everything and I was the cranky asshole.” He shrugged. “It worked, so they dialed it up for the show. We only did the one show ourselves, but we still have the production company—we develop other shows, which is where the money really comes from on an ongoing basis. I mean the restaurant does fine, too, but…”

  Was it weird to be talking about money with Adam, who’d just lost his home?

  “How come you called the restaurant Captain’s if it’s both yours and Ben’s?”

  People were always asking him that. “No reason, really, other than that the menu is seafood-heavy, and the designer we hired wanted to do a retro, seafood-shack sort of aesthetic. So Captain’s seemed kind of cute.”

  “And you were happy to have Ben’s name be on it and not yours.”

  People were always asking him that, too, like they couldn’t believe an asshole like Freddy would be okay with that decision. Honestly, he hadn’t given it any thought. He figured he and Ben knew food, but that they should take the advice of the experts on the rest of it—as much as he wished it could be all about the food, that other shit mattered in the restaurant business.

  Adam wasn’t asking it as a question, though. It had been a sentence, one he followed with a nod, like he was confirming to himself his interpretation of the situation. It stung a little, because it reminded him how Adam had always seen him in a truer way than everyone else had, and how buoying it had been to be seen like that.

  But this was not a productive train of thought. They needed to talk about something else.

  “Hang on. Are you putting mayo on those grilled cheeses?” Adam curled his lip, and Freddy tried not to find it adorable even as he was grateful for the change of subject that had arrived just as he’d wished for it.

  “I am. Secret ingredient.”

  “Sounds pretty disgusting to me.”

  “Just you wait.” He plopped the first sandwich, the outside slathered with mayo, in the bubbling butter.

  Ten minutes later, his efforts were rewarded when Adam bit into his sandwich and said, through a mouthful, “This is amazing.”

  Freddy smirked and tried his own. It was good. This was what he liked about cooking, the way you could take simple ingredients and make them into something more than the sum of their parts. You could subvert expectations. It had been a long time since he’d made something as simple as a grilled cheese, though. He’d kind of missed it. Maybe they should put one on the fall menu at Captain’s. He had no doubt that sophisticated New Yorkers would embrace it in a high-low sort of way, but something didn’t sit right about serving grilled cheese in an ironic way. It was too easy—it felt cynical, almost. Though when had he had ever worried about being overly cynical?

  “I never would have thought of putting apple slices in a grilled cheese,” Adam said after his first bite.

  “Standard grilled cheese hack. So is the mayo. It makes the bread get all perfectly golden and crispy on the outside.”

  “Nothing about this tastes standard.” Adam took another bite. “This would be so good with my dad’s pinot. Hang on.” He moved to get up. Freddy wanted to insist that he not, wanted to offer to bring him the wine—or anything he wanted, really—but he checked himself. That wasn’t his role anymore.

  Soon, Adam was back with a bottle and two stemless glasses. “I think maybe the fruitiness of the apple will be good with this.”

  Adam splashed some of the ruby liquid into Freddy’s glass, and Freddy took a sip. “I think you’re right.” It was a good pairing.

  They drank and ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Adam said, “This is the last bottle.”

  “What do you mean the last bottle?”

  “The last time we harvested grapes at Kellynch was the year my dad died. The pinot was the best wine from that year, and this is the last bottle.”

  Freddy physically pushed his glass away. “Shit, man. You should be saving it.”

  “For what, though? I’m not exactly a social butterfly.”

  “I don’t know. You should at least, like, go outside and lay on the ground and look at the stars and toast your dad while you drink it.”

  “I don’t need to go outside for that.” Adam got up, switched off the kitchen light, and walked over to the bed. Amazingly, it was a king-size. It fully filled the nook it was tucked into, was flush against three walls. So he had to back up into it—sit down and sort of scoot backward. He patted the mattress next to him.

  Uh, what?

  As if he could read Freddy’s mind, Adam chuckled. “Just come here. I want to show you something.”

  Freddy could suddenly think of a lot of things he would enjoy seeing in Adam’s bed, but he was pretty sure those weren’t the things Adam was planning to show him. Warily, he obeyed, mimicking Adam’s action in backing himself into the nook. It was insanely cozy, to be tucked into a contained space like this. There were walls on both sides, and the back of the space, where the headboard would have been, was a series of windows.

  Adam p
ointed at the ceiling.

  “Oh!” It was studded with stars. Like those glow-in-the-dark ones you see in kids’ rooms, except somehow less childish. Instead of greenish dots, the stars were white, and blurry around the edges. There were also some planets, and a swath of overlapping stars approximating the milky way. “This is amazing.” It almost took his breath away.

  This was the thing about Adam. He had this secret…heart. On the surface of things, he was reserved, practical, even unremarkable. But underneath that, he was quietly devoted to beauty. Real beauty, though, not the superficial kind. The kind that could lodge a lump in your throat that took a really long time to go away.

  Adam twisted around and opened one of the windows. “You were right about Kellynch. When I slept with the windows open there, I could hear all the sounds of the forest. Here, it’s more muted.”

  Freddy cocked an ear. There were crickets, and a breeze—which weren’t nothing. He didn’t get those in the city. But he understood what Adam was saying. “It must have been almost like sleeping outside.”

  “Yep. Almost being the key word, though. Both my sisters are always telling me that I should just actually sleep outside.”

  “Oh, no. Do they know you?” Despite being a nature freak, Adam had always liked his creature comforts. It was no accident this was an insanely fluffy king-size bed.

  But, then, did Freddy know Adam? He used to—he’d thought. But he hadn’t really, had he?

  “Exactly.” Adam flopped back on his pillows and sighed contentedly. “This mattress cost more than I care to admit.”

  “And what do you do about baths?” That was another thing Freddy remembered about Adam—he loved taking long, hot baths. He didn’t know this firsthand—he’d never been lucky enough back in the day to share a bath with Adam. Just that they used to talk about it when they would emerge from the moonlit lake late at night, shivering. Adam used to tease Freddy that he had to walk back to town while Adam would go inside and get in the bath. But then, being Adam, the joking would turn to fretting as he’d start genuinely worrying over the long, cold, solitary walk ahead of Freddy. He’d press a flower on him and hug him like he never wanted to let go. Freddy’s throat started to ache. Instead of dissipating, that stupid lump was getting bigger.

  “That’s the one big drawback of this place,” Adam said, oblivious to the twinging of Freddy’s heart. “It only has a small shower stall. At Kellynch, I used to take baths in the house, but…”

  And once again, he trailed off, leaving Freddy to complete the sentence with my sister displaced you.

  Freddy didn’t say it out loud, of course. He didn’t know what to say. So he just laid there looking at the ceiling of stars and trying to get a goddamn hold on himself.

  Chapter Ten

  Eight years ago

  Adam never understood why everyone was always talking about how rough and unrefined Freddy was. Freddy paid attention. His regard contained concentration and urgency but also patience and kindness. His ministrations were always perfectly pitched.

  “Oh, my God!” Adam had been trying to be quiet, but it slipped out. They were on the dock, and it was after midnight, but still. There was no precedent for it, but the last thing he needed was for someone in his family to wake up, wander down, and find him buck naked and flat on his back on the dock with Freddy Wentworth’s lips wrapped around his dick. Adam had no doubt that his family would kick him out again if they found out he was carrying on with Freddy Wentworth. And this time, Rusty wouldn’t be there to cushion his landing.

  Freddy popped off and kneeled up. Gilded with moonlight and grinning mischievously, he looked like he’d stepped from the pages of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, like he was enchanted, profoundly unconcerned by the bounds of propriety or the strictures of reality.

  “Shh.” Laughingly, he pressed a hand lightly over Adam’s mouth.

  Nodding, Adam placed both his hands over Freddy’s.

  They stared at each other for a long time, Freddy’s smile gradually disappearing. He looked at Adam like he was seeing him for the first time. Like he wanted to memorize him. But then, suddenly, the grin came back, and he said, “You’ll have to let go of my hand if you want me to finish the job.”

  Adam’s hands came away like Freddy’s was a hot stove.

  Freddy chuckled. “I thought so.”

  And after he had finished the job, and after Adam had reciprocated, they stretched out on the dock, Freddy on his back, Adam in his arms and half draped over his chest, and looked at the stars.

  Freddy played with Adam’s hair and let him ramble about the constellations. And then when he was done, he let Adam straddle him and…examine him. That was the only word for it, really. It was probably weird, but Adam loved this almost as much as their actual lovemaking. He would start by smoothing his hands over Freddy’s chest, and then he would move to his biceps, one at a time, ending on the side with the Celtic tattoo, stroking it and staring at it like it was the first time he was seeing it.

  He always paused at a scar on the side of Freddy’s torso that was angry enough to be seen even in the dim illumination provided by the moon and by their lantern. Freddy’d gotten it running away from a cop, he’d said, when he’d climbed a fence intending to jump down on the other side but instead fell onto a sharp rock.

  Continuing with his carnal inventory, Adam would then slide his fingers over the bump that was the remnant of a nose break that had occurred as part of a schoolyard scuffle, the one piece of Freddy’s face that wasn’t theoretically perfect. Paradoxically, to Adam, that so-called flaw made Freddy even more beautiful.

  Finally, he would twist a wooden ring Freddy wore on his right middle finger. It was a smooth, dark wooden band that he’d made in shop class before he’d quit school, and Adam loved the feel of it under his fingers. Twisting it soothed him, profoundly.

  It was probably a weird ritual, but to Adam it seemed like taking stock, reminding himself anew that this amazing person, with all his adornments and his single imperfection, was his. It didn’t hurt that Freddy seemed to like it, too. He’d close his eyes sometimes and smile and sort of hum low in his throat, like Adam’s ministrations felt good. There was also the part where his dick would get hard again, too—that hadn’t been Adam’s aim, at least to begin with, but it was an amazing side effect, knowing he had that much power over a man like Freddy.

  Eventually, Freddy would put a stop to the slow, teasing touching. Like tonight, when his hands shot up and grabbed Adam’s wrists. Tugged on them until Adam was lying on top of him, and he said, “Enough?”

  “Enough?” Adam echoed laughingly as he ground his hips against Freddy’s. “Or not enough?”

  Freddy groaned. “Both.”

  Present day

  Adam awoke the next morning wedged right up against the wall. He always did that. He was a burrower. He had an entire king-size bed to himself, but he always managed to migrate in his sleep over to the wall and—

  Hold on.

  Hold on.

  That wasn’t a wall he was curled up next to. It was a warm, human body.

  Freddy. Freddy, who was sleeping on his side facing Adam, his top arm slung over Adam.

  A wave of emotion—of truth—bore down on Adam. It came in several parts. The first was joy. Freddy. Freddy is here. I’m in Freddy’s arms. It was like before, but not. The eight years since Adam had last found himself here had hardened Freddy’s body. He’d bulked out. Not hugely, but enough that the arm over his torso felt heavier than it used to. And where he used to be clean shaven, modern-day Freddy seemed to perpetually sport several days’ worth of stubble. That scruff seemed to Adam a wondrous thing. He wanted to touch it. To let his fingertips drag over it. To let his lips drag over it.

  He’d given up the right to do that, though.

  And then the wave moved on, and fear displaced joy. What would happen when Freddy woke up? What would happen when Freddy left—both Adam’s bed and Bishop’s Glen? Adam’s skin started to tingle, a
nd not in a good way. His breath grew short. He had to concentrate to keep it inaudible. He wasn’t really sure what was happening to him, only that he must not wake Freddy.

  He closed his eyes, feeling like if he pretended to be asleep, he could somehow keep Freddy here. It was irrational. But maybe not, because after a few moments of concentrating on evening out his breath, the fear abated.

  And then came the sadness. The knowledge that Freddy would wake up. He would leave. And that was worse, way worse, than if he’d never been here—in Adam’s bed or in Bishop’s Glen—at all.

  Last night, Adam had allowed himself to fantasize about what that dinner party would have been like if he and Freddy were still a couple. It would have been him, not Lulu, flirting with Freddy in the kitchen—Adam and Freddy alone together in the crowd. His fantasy hadn’t gone any further than that, though. It was like his brain simply hadn’t been capable of contemplating what might have come next, after dinner.

  It hadn’t been able to contemplate this.

  Waking up in Freddy’s arms in his beloved little home.

  It wasn’t even a sexual thing, necessarily. Yes, he was sporting more than his usual degree of morning wood, and that wasn’t a coincidence, but the thing about Freddy was Adam’s attraction to him had always been more than sexual. It had been about this. About being close. About sharing the mundane details of daily life. He’d loved Freddy so very, very much.

  Which was probably why Rusty had freaked out so extremely. He’d been able to sense it, somehow.

  Adam thought he’d grieved Freddy. And he had. That first year after Freddy left town was a blur. He had only vague memories of Rusty nagging him, always nagging him, to leave town, to apply to college. Of helping his dad at Kellynch, trying in vain to get him to trust him with more responsibility. Of his mother fruitlessly attempting to mold him into a gay male version of Betsy, as if to round out a collection of acolytes. Of trying to break the spell Freddy still had over him with those few ill-fated hookups. Through it all, he’d been sad. So sad.