Page 17 of Fire
Toby’s face was a stone mask. He didn’t even appear to be breathing, but his gaze cut straight through Jake. “Is it?” he said at last, his tone dead.
Jake searched his face. “Is what?”
“That my name? Should we fix my ID?”
With a sharp inhale, Jake pulled back a little from the aggression in Toby’s voice. “Hey, c’mon. It’s—your choice. I gave you my name and I meant it. It’s yours however long you want it. Forever or longer. You know that.”
Toby’s gaze flickered away, his jaw taut.
“We don’t know for sure yet,” Jake said. Nope, not a snowball’s chance in hell he was tasting anything in those food baskets. He waved at James for to-go boxes, then continued quietly with what he had to relay. Tobias would never forgive him for keeping it from him, not even for five minutes longer than necessary.
“He said there were a string of deaths in the area that went quiet after the arrest.”
“The one in ’89?” Toby said immediately. He still wasn’t looking at Jake, who swallowed and forced the confirmation out.
“Yeah.”
So much for either of them getting much sleep that night.
4
Neither of them slept much that night.
As soon as they’d gotten back to the motel room, Toby had fished out his CD player and headphones and said, not once looking at Jake, “I’d like to listen to my music for a while.” Which might as well have been I DON’T WANT TO TALK lit up in fireworks across the night sky.
When Jake had given Toby that CD player for their first Christmas together, it had taken a long campaign before Tobias ever dared to use it with Jake in the room or sitting next to him in the Eldorado. All of Jake’s urging produced no effect, until they’d actually talked it out (Roger would’ve been so proud).
Tobias didn’t want to block out Jake’s voice; he didn’t want to miss a single attempt Jake might make to catch his attention. It wasn’t that he wasafraidto miss something, he emphasized. He just didn’t want to.
So they came up with a system: when Toby was wearing headphones, Jake would tap on the bedspread or dashboard or whatever was in Toby’s field of vision to get his attention.
Then, at last, Toby got to enjoy his CDs.
Like with everything else in their lives, progress came slowly. The next step was how carefully Toby framed it as a request: “I’d like to listen to my music now.” Jake had maybe been too adamant that Tobyneverhad to ask permission to use his CD player. But he knew that it helped if he could offer support each time, and he was more than willing to meet Toby halfway there.
Soon Toby’s words morphed into a genuine statement, not a disguised request, and on that day Jake did a tiny fistpump of victory.
Which brought them now to the present day and Toby’s cold pronouncement without a single check for approval.
Jake was really, really fucking proud of him, even though the cold shoulder today hurt like a bitch.
He opened a beer and turned on the TV, not paying attention to whatever was on the screen. Toby sat hunched at the dinette table, looking down at a book. Jake blinked, peering closer.
Aw, fuck.
The book wasA Field Guide of North American Flora, an oversized encyclopedia of trees and plants. It was the text Toby always pulled out after a really bad trigger.
He could just make out Tobias’s lips moving as he recited the details on the page. Location, Latin name, the seasons it grew, any medicinal or culinary uses—on and on. It was how he self-soothed and distanced himself from panic attacks or flashbacks.
Toby was taking care of himself like a badass, which was fucking awesome. It really was. If Jake felt a little stupidly lonely, that wasn’t Toby’s problem. Fuck even the idea of that when all of this was happeningtoToby.
Jake just had to figure out the right way to be supportive. And right now, that meant watching TV by himself and letting Toby fight his own battles.
* * *
They finally talkedthe next morning after their continental breakfast. Toby’s eyes were deeply shadowed, and Jake knew he didn’t look any better. At least they didn’t get any weird looks from the one family and single business man also eating powdered scrambled eggs and stale bagels in the hotel’s lobby with them.
Back in their motel room with the curtains drawn shut, Toby and Jake sat across the dinette table facing each other.
