Page 9 of Aftermath

Bringing out his new phone—the old one was lost the day he was kidnapped—he snapped off a shot of Bourbon and texted it to Austin with the caption,"My new housemate."

"Who'd you send that to?"

"Austin," Cam mumbled, eyeing the bandages on his wrists. They were coming off soon, and he knew he'd always have to live with the scars. He had scars all over his body, but these were the deepest. Five months of being cuffed almost constantly had made sure of that.

"Yeah, he was here yesterday, wasn’t he?" Landon asked and grabbed a handful of peanuts from the table. "I'm surprised Ethan hasn’t spoken to you about that guy."

"Who?" Cam's head snapped in his brother's direction.

Landon frowned, confused, and nodded at the dudes by the grill. "Ethan? Jack's partner. Said he thought it was a shame Austin was straight or whatever." He rolled his eyes. "He read about the Huntleys in the papers—saw Austin's picture."

"Right." Cam breathed in through clenched teeth, feeling stupid. He thought his brother had saidEvan. Big difference. Jesus fucking Christ.

A week or so later, their "boss" came down and announced his name was now Mr. Strong and that he wanted to speak to Evan.

There was no response.

"Insane motherfucker." Cam brought both hands up to push back some of his hair.

He reeked, despite washing off daily and using that fucking bar of soap, but it didn’t matter. It was humid down here and smelled of mildew. On top of that, at least one had vomited and missed the fucking toilet. It also smelled like piss, which almost made Cam wish they had an impenetrable roof to their cell, too. Alas, it was a metal cover with finger-width sized holes everywhere. Just enough for the light to seep through when Psycho decided they'd had too much darkness.

And Christ, he needed a smoke. Bad. Hell, it would make the place smell better.

"Wait. The scripts." Austin kept his voice low. "It said another name on mine." He picked up the papers off the floor and pointed to the top corner. "Sam."

"There's no Evan here!" someone shouted angrily.

Cam frowned as he spotted the name on his script, as Austin called it.

"It says Evan on mine," he whispered.

"I don’t fucking get it," Landon was saying, but Cam wasn’t really following. He was busy steadying his breathing. "Do they share dudes? I mean, if Jules said it was a shame some other man was gay, I would pound his ass."

"He'd probably like that," Cam replied automatically.

It earned him a punch on his arm. "That’s not how I meant it, bro." Landon scowled at how easily he'd fallen into that one. "But can you answer my question?"

"What question?"

Landon took on an impatient expression. "Do gay guys generally share each other?"

Cam couldn’t help but laugh. "Christ, you're stupid. Why the fuck would they?" He thought back on Jack's partner's comment about Austin. "It was probably just a compliment, idiot."

"Well, how would I know? I'm not gay."

"You say that as if I am."

"You do play for both teams," Landon pointed out.

Cam shrugged. "So fucking what? Does that make me an expert?" Sometimes his brother could be dumb. "I can't believe we're even talking about this. What are you, a fucking woman?"

Landon didn’t miss a beat. "See the belly on that one?" He pointed at Jules, who was laughing about something with their mother. "I think that proves what I'm equipped with."

"Whatever." Cam sighed as his phone beeped with a text from Austin, or Mr. MBA, as he was labeled in his contact list.

If Riley sees that, she'll run away from home and we'll find her at your place. I'm deleting this photo now. Happy birthday, by the way.

Cam smiled to himself and pocketed the phone. At first he'd been a little worried Austin's abrupt departure yesterday would cause a rift or something, but apparently not. Then again, they'd fought before, and that hadn't changed anything.

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