Holiday Cheer from Andrew Grey and Amy Lane

The Month Before

The Month Before

“SO YOU have the Lyft app, right?”

“Yeah, Sasha—don’t worry about me, okay?” Pierce regarded his younger sister fondly. She was made to be a mother—even if she came into being one a little young.

Sasha bit her lip, trying not to argue. She’d been such a sweet kid growing up—never saying boo to either of their rather domineering parents. She’d gotten pregnant right out of high school, and even though Marshall had stepped up and married her and they’d both managed to get their degrees, their parents… well, they’d never let Sasha live down what a disappointment she’d been. Or—their words—what a slut either.

Pierce had hated them long before Sasha got pregnant, but the way they’d tried to destroy her for a simple human failing had sort of sealed the deal.

But parenthood had made Sasha—and Marshall—a great deal stronger than they’d been as feckless teenagers, and while Sasha wouldn’t argue with her beloved older brother, she would discuss things she disagreed with.

“Pierce, you almost died,” she said quietly, her thin face suddenly lost in the pallor of anxiety and the cloud of fine dark hair she could never keep back in a ponytail. “I mean… I refuse to see Mom and Dad over the holidays because they’re just… just….”

“Awful,” he supplied with feeling. Yeah. He’d resolved not to put up with awful anymore.

“Toxic,” she agreed, leaning back against her aging SUV. Darius and Abigail were sleeping in the back seat after playing out in the surf under Pierce’s supervision while Marshall and Sasha moved Pierce into the condo. Pierce had worried—he couldn’t move very well without the cane these days, and what did he know about kids and water?

But mostly what they’d wanted to do was run away from the waves and collect shells, and the one time Abigail had been knocked on her ass into the surf, Pierce had bent down and picked her up by the hand before the pain even registered.

The move had hurt—but it had given him some hope. His doctors kept assuring him that he could get most of his mobility back if he kept active and remembered his aqua regimen. Picking Abigail up and reassuring her that Uncle Pierce wouldn’t let her drown gave him some confidence that his body might someday be back up to par. And the condo had a pool, which was why he’d taken his best friend Derrick’s offer to let him use it over the winter months while Pierce got his life together. Pierce was definitely in a position to follow his doctor’s advice.

So now, looking at his sister and thinking about how much self-assurance she’d had to grow to push a little into Pierce’s state of mind, he couldn’t be mad at her.

And he had to be honest.

“I’ll be grumpy and pissed off and bitter,” he said, letting his mouth twist into a scowl of disdain for the land of the living. He’d been fighting it off since Sasha picked him up at the airport. “It’s a good thing you made me get the car app, because seriously, I may have let myself starve to death. As it is, the groceries are going to keep me going for a good long time.”

Sasha’s eyes grew big and bright, and he took her hand and squeezed.

“Don’t worry, sweetie. None of it is your fault. You would have let me stay at your place forever, and I was getting in your way. This is good. I’ll hang out here, find a little peace, and when I go back to Orlando, I’ll be up for getting my own apartment and getting out of your hair, okay?”

“I’d never kick you out, Pierce,” she said miserably. “You know that.” She wiped the back of her hand across her big brown eyes. “You just… you got out of the hospital and—”

“And I was an awful fucking bastard,” he said with feeling. Oh God. The defining moment for calling up Derrick to take him up on his offer was when he’d heard his father’s words coming out of his mouth, telling his sister she was useless because she couldn’t help him off the couch without pain. “Sasha, you deserve better than me. You deserve better, period. I’m not going to hang around you and get in your way again until I’m decent company for human beings, okay?”

Sasha shook her head, still crying. “You were in pain,” she whispered. “And you were sorry right after. And you’ve done so much for me, Pierce. I can forgive you for being mean once when you did so much for me….”

He remembered the night she’d shown up at his apartment, in tears, practically hysterical, because she’d told the parents about an impending Darius and had been read the riot act about what a fuckup she was.

He’d taken her in—let her stay with him for a couple of months until she and Marshall scraped up enough money for rent and a car. She’d gotten a job, and Pierce had paid her tuition as she made her way through school. She had a career now—one she could work from home as a developmental editor of a small press. Marshall had his degree in software engineering, and together they made a good living—good enough to afford a guest bedroom and to put Pierce up for a month after the accident.

Pierce squeezed her hand now. “You listen to me,” he said gruffly. “You don’t owe me a thing. You’re the only family I want to see—pretty much ever. So just let me work shit out in my own head, and I’ll come back for Christmas a whole new man, okay?”

“I like the one you are right now!” she said staunchly, and then she threw herself in his arms and held on tight. “Love you, big brother,” she whispered, and Marshall stood behind her, guiding her away.

“Love you too,” he said belatedly, and Marshall turned and shook his hand firmly.

“Come back when you promised, okay?” Marshall was just as slight as Sasha—two small, mild-mannered people getting along in a bright, brash world. Pierce had always fancied himself their champion knight—he couldn’t be that as he was.

He had to make himself better.

“Christmas Eve,” Pierce vowed. “Don’t worry, Marshall. Nobody likes being alone on Christmas.”

Marshall shrugged. “We wouldn’t be alone, Pierce. We just don’t want you to be.”

With that, the guy Pierce and Sasha’s parents had driven off their property with a baseball bat guided a disconsolate Sasha into the old vehicle and piloted it away.

As soon as they’d left the parking lot, Pierce allowed his shoulders to sag and dragged his sorry ass to the back door of the condo.

He crawled into bed and stayed there until he absolutely had to get up and pee the next morning.

STAYING IN bed for sixteen hours had consequences—he almost didn’t make it to the bathroom, he was so sore. After he’d taken care of business and washed down a granola bar, he realized he was going to have to be serious about that pool thing, or he really could end up curling into a ball and dying in a beach condo in Florida.

For a moment he contemplated it—he’d always been the kind of guy to consider all the angles—but eventually he decided he wouldn’t go quickly enough and managed a pair of board shorts and a T-shirt. As he walked through the tiled hall of the condo, he realized the tile was going to destroy his body almost as quickly as the inactivity, and made a mental note to buy some rubber mats at the very least, so he’d have some padding for his joints. Derrick had said to make himself at home—ergonomic home decorating was a go!

Just as soon as he got into the… ahhh… pool.

Heated, of course, and a perfect counterpoint to a cool day in the high fifties/low sixties. He’d set his phone on a lounge chair, playing something disgustingly upbeat and perky, and went about doing the exercises he and his physical therapist had worked on.

Actual physical motor activity really did have magical properties—it must have. He was working up a head of steam, the resistance and buoyancy of the water supporting his body as he used active stretching techniques, when a voice cut into his workout Zen.

“If you don’t straighten your back, you’ll be in a world of hurt!”

Crap. Whoever that was, he was right.

Pierce adjusted his form and then looked over his right shoulder, from whence the voice—deep and sharp and young—had issued.

“Thanks,” he said briefly, taking in the sprawled form of what looked to be a teenager wearing board shorts, a leopard-print bathrobe, and giant aviator sunglasses, lounging in one of the chaises. Dark hair, faintly sun streaked, was cut almost Boy Scout short around an adorable frat boy face. His hands were sort of a mess, loosely wrapped in gauze, but other than that, he was as untouched as a virgin’s dreams.

“Dude, what in the hell are you listening to? This shit.” The boy shuddered. “I’m saying. I bet you could work up a sweat if you had decent music.”

“It’s a mix,” Pierce said weakly, feeling old and slow. “I just hit an easy button, you kn—”

“I’ll get you a better sound,” the kid said, picking up the phone. “What’s your password?”

Pierce gave it to him and then stopped dead in the water and almost drowned. He was in the deep end, and he had to work to stay afloat and—

“Don’t spaz,” the kid said on a note of deep disgust. “My phone’s in the condo, and I could give a shit about your passwords. Jesus, if I was a hacker genius, I’d be someplace warm, you think?”

Pierce took a deep breath, and suddenly Katy Perry came blaring out of his phone. Well, okay, so everybody had heard this song; it did make him want to work harder. Pierce was calling it a win.

“Thanks,” he said again, panting now because he was moving faster.

The kid shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. You gonna be here tomorrow?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Same time?”

“Yeah.” ’Cause why not. Nothing better to do, right? No job, no wife, no life?

“Good. I’ll see you here with better music. Now stop doing that water walk thing and do a mountain climber—come on—I know you can.”

Pierce glared at him—and switched the move.

“There you go. Now follow my pace. You can go faster.” The kid started clapping, and Pierce struggled to keep up.

“I can’t… do… that…,” he gasped. He expected attitude back, because the kid had given him nothing but, and he was surprised when the clapping slowed.

“Sorry. You just look younger than this pace.”

Pierce had his back to the kid, but he had the sensation of a thorough visual once-over. He adjusted to the new pace and found his wind again. “Car accident,” he managed, trying not to be offended.

“Aw… aw hell. I’m sorry. I’m being an ass. I should just leave you to your workout.”

“No,” Pierce called out, stopping to tread water and cool down enough to talk. “Sorry—just… I was getting a workout. I suck doing this alone.” He kept his arms and legs moving and found the kid on the side of the pool again—he’d moved from where Pierce had first spotted him to stand right in front of the line Pierce was using to go back and forth.

“Yeah, well, being alone sort of sucks on all fronts,” the kid said philosophically. “I’ll try not to be an ass if you try to do a hard workout, how’s that?”

Pierce found himself nodding, even though he’d only come out to the pool out of what he deemed necessity. “Deal,” he panted.

“Okay, now back to mountain climbers. I’ll set the pace, and if it’s too fast, cry uncle.”

“Groovy,” Pierce breathed, positioning himself to go. “Now shoot.”

The kid put him through a decently difficult workout, adjusting for the things Pierce couldn’t do yet and pushing him hard in the stuff he could. After forty-five minutes, Pierce was starting to cramp up, though, and the kid had him stretch out.

Good stuff, really—the blue freedom of the water, the structure of the workout, and the congeniality of dealing with another human being without bitterness or backstory served as sort of a purge—some of the self-pity Pierce had wallowed in for the past sixteen hours was rinsed away.

But not all of it.

He was getting out of the pool when the damage in his calf and thigh screamed protest, and he groaned and grabbed on to the rail. The kid was right there, though, stepping into the water regardless of his pricey flip-flops and the hem of his leopard-print bathrobe.

“Uh-oh—overdid it. C’mon, let me help you to the hot tub. I’ll give you a rubdown, okay?”

“No,” Pierce grunted, suddenly aware of this kid. Lean and narrow but defined practically by muscle group, his body was a work of art, and Pierce didn’t even know if he was of age. And even if he was of age, he was too damned young for Pierce.

“No hot tub?” the kid asked sharply. “Or no gay guy touching you?”

Pierce’s face heated. “No hot teenager touching me?” he mumbled, limping toward the steamy goodness of the little spa and trying not to lean too much into the kid’s strong arms.

The youngster’s throaty chuckle didn’t reassure him in the least. “I’m twenty-three, old man, so cool your jets. Besides, I’m”—his voice dropped sadly, and the suddenly vulnerable look on his frat boy face made him look even younger—“well, I’d like to become a massage therapist, but I’ve only got half the coursework and hours done. Seriously, though, I’m halfway a professional, and I’m pretty good, so maybe let me work out the cramp in your leg?” He smiled winningly and used his free hand to lift his shades so he could bat a pair of admittedly limpid and arresting amber-brown eyes. “After all, I did work you over pretty hard.”

Pierce rolled his eyes at the double entendre, but as he reached for the rail of the hot tub, he had to concede that having his leg worked on would make the whole working-out thing feel like less of a mistake.

“Yeah, sure,” he muttered, taking the steps creakily one at a time. “Sure, you can squeeze my muscles till I scream.”

The kid chuckled again, inviting Pierce in on the laugh. “So you’re happy to let me rub one out on you?”

Pierce groaned. “God, kid, I can hardly walk. No sex jokes until I can make it out of the pool without collapsing.”

“So there can be sex jokes. Eventually. I just want to make sure.” Very gingerly the kid lowered Pierce until he was sitting. After he straightened, he scampered up the steps and pulled off his sodden robe, laying it out on the chaise to dry, and kicked off his ruined leather sandals.

“Oh geez.” Pierce thought of the massacre of perfectly good shoes and robe and was attacked by his conscience, which he’d assumed was dormant or dead. “Kid, I’m sorry about the clothes—”

“Don’t be.” He shrugged. “They’re my old man’s, and since he kicked me out of the house for Christmas, he can pretty much kiss off his super classy robe and huaraches, you hear me?”

Pierce wasn’t sure whether to chuckle or be horrified. “Just for Christmas?” he asked, making sure.

He lowered the sunglasses over his eyes again, probably to help him look insouciant when he was—in all likelihood—wounded. “Folks were having important political friends over. I’m a gay embarrassment, so I got the beach house. Last year they were in Europe, and I got the beach house with my boyfriend and we fucked like lemmings. No boyfriend this year.”

“The lemmings are safe?” Pierce asked, sympathies reluctantly stirred. Parents who judged their kids for sexual activity? He knew those assholes! Pierce and Sasha had grown up with their very own set.

Kid laughed, sounding young and happy instead of casual and cynical. Pierce liked the sound. “Here, let me rub your leg down—I promised.”

Pierce grunted. “Kid—”

“Hal—”

“Like the computer?”

Hal stared at him, unimpressed. “Oh dear, a Space Odyssey joke. I’ve never heard one of those, given that I’ve had this stupid name since birth. Now give me your leg.”

Pierce complied, startled by the venom. “Well, I could call you ‘Prince Hal,’ like—”

“King Henry the Fifth? Like in the Branagh movie?”

Pierce racked his brains, trying to remember. “I thought Branagh just did Hamlet ,” he said, confused.

Hal gasped and wrapped his hands around Pierce’s ankle. “Heathen! How could you not know about the Branagh King Henry? He was young and still faithful and downright adorable!”

As he spoke, Hal worked his capable, agile fingers up Pierce’s leg—between that and the hot, bubbling water, Pierce’s entire body was melting like chocolate in the sun.

“The faithful part is important to you?” Pierce asked, trying to keep his mind on the conversation and not just tilt his head back and drool. Maybe his doctor was missing out on something here. The rubdown in the tub after the physical activity felt like an exciting new way to make a battered body feel whole again.

“Mm-hmm… wow.” Hal rubbed careful circles around the network of scars on Pierce’s knee. “What did you do here?”

“Car accident,” Pierce told him again.

“I know that—but here?”

“The door buckled in and ripped up my knee and thigh,” Pierce admitted reluctantly. “My arm and shoulder too.”

“You were driving,” Hal assessed. “What happened?”

Oh, Pierce didn’t want to talk about this. “One of those super big trucks ran a red light,” he said shortly, and then Hal started rubbing circles at the place where his knee was stiffest. Not the part with the scars, curiously enough—it was like Hal had magic fingers.

“Bummer. Were you alone in the car?”

Ugh. This was what Pierce didn’t want to talk about. “My soon-to-be ex-wife,” he said, unable to control the loathing.

Hal seemed to hear it anyway—but didn’t stop working Pierce’s calf and knee. Belatedly, the intimacy of the situation hit Pierce, and he felt stupid. Another human being was touching him, giving him pleasure that was unsolicited by duty or money.

It had been so long.

Pierce closed his eyes and groaned, waiting for Hal to ask the inevitable question.

“Soon-to-be ex?”

It hadn’t taken long.

“We were fighting when the truck hit us,” Pierce remembered. “When I woke up, Cynthia was hovering over my hospital bed. She said ‘Pierce, I forgive you.’”

Hal grunted, eyebrows knitting as he worked on a particularly tough knot.

“That sounds… well, sort of bitchy. What did you say back?”

“I said ‘Cynthia, I want a divorce.’”

Hal cackled—and his hands moved up to Pierce’s thigh, one hand holding the inner thigh and the other working on the outer.

A charge of heat zinged from Hal’s knowing, awesome hands straight to Pierce’s groin, and he wondered how embarrassed he’d be if he didn’t call a halt to this divine exercise in physical therapy.

Pierce tilted his head back and shuddered and then grabbed Hal’s hand—but not hard. “A little personal, a little fast,” he said quietly.

Hal grinned, seemingly not put off at all.

“My crowd tends to be a little fast,” he said, waggling his eyebrows. Then he winked. “That’s okay—taking your time has its advantages too.”

Pierce groaned comically and relaxed when Hal went back to his calf. “You don’t even know if I’m open for business,” he said, trying not to be an asshole. He’d barely gotten out of bed that morning.

“You didn’t sock me in the nose. I’m calling it a win!”

Pierce felt sort of a reluctant admiration. “An optimist,” he murmured. “Rare species, highly endangered. Usually found in small family groups of quiet suburb dwellers.” Pierce remembered Sasha and what an asshole he’d been. Gently he pulled his leg out of Hal’s grip.

“What’s the matter?” Hal asked as Pierce gathered his noodle-y muscles and rose to pull himself out of the hot tub. “I thought we were getting along so well!”

“We were,” Pierce said, hating himself. “But I’m sort of toxic to nice people, and kid, you’re just… just really nice. I’m giving you a chance to save yourself some prick burns.”

“Huh.”

Oh God, the concrete was hard on his feet and joints. He started a slow, determined limp to his chaise, but he couldn’t resist. That word was just sitting out there, begging for banter.

“Huh what?”

“No one has ever tried to save me from their inner prick before. Harold Justice Lombard the Fifth is intrigued.”

Pierce stopped by a table, catching his balance on the back of one of the chairs. “Is that really your name? And you’re an optimist? Holy God, kid, run far away from me—you’re like a unicorn or something!”

Before he could even think about moving on, Hal had hopped out of the hot tub and was sprinting for Pierce’s stuff. He came trotting back holding Pierce’s towel, phone, and oh sweet baby jebus, his padded flip-flops.

“Here.” Hal set the flip-flops down so Pierce could step into them and then handed over his cane. While Pierce was getting into his shoes—and finding his balance—Hal wrapped the towel around his shoulders.

“Thank you,” Pierce said reluctantly. “That’s kind.”

Hal came around in front of him and pulled the ends of the towel together, making sure he was wrapped tight.

“Now, I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? And don’t worry about bringing music, because I’m going to fix you right up. I’ll bring Backstreet Boys—that’s your generation, right?”

“I’m only thirty-two!” Pierce complained, not sure when he’d agreed to a second workout.

Hal’s cheerfully salacious grin told him all he needed to about what he had just inadvertently done. “Excellent. That’s truly the best news I’ve heard all day. I’ll bring something good—trust me.”

This close, Pierce could see the wickedly sparkling brown eyes behind the sunglasses—and the sudden swallow and slightly parted lips that indicated Hal wasn’t quite as bold and brave as he was pretending to be.

It was the vulnerability that did it.

“Sure,” Pierce said softly. “I’ll be here tomorrow at ten.”

And that was enough, apparently, because Hal gave him a toothy grin, then moved to the side and bowed with an elegant gesture. “Then carry on, good sir. We shall see each other in the yon.”

Oh geez. What a little hambone.

“Of course, Sir Knight,” Pierce returned, resigned to his fate. “Be careful of your unicorn horn, okay? I’d hate to see it broken or bent or anything.”

“Will do.”

Pierce made better time with the cane and the shoes, and his limp away from the field of battle had a little more dignity this time.

But he was not free from the wonderful world of social interaction—not just yet.

As he approached the back of his condo, he watched an older woman struggle to get her little foldable pull cart full of groceries through the back gate that led to the individual courtyard that was a feature of all the lower-level condos. The gates were tricky—they all had a really strong spring—and Pierce had been forbidden from even trying to wrestle his luggage inside, which was why Sasha and Marshall had done it.

But the elderly woman, dressed flamboyantly in bright magenta and sky blue, didn’t have a Sasha and a Marshall, and Pierce figured what the hell—how hard could it be to reach over and hold the gate open, right?

He reached out and pushed, and she hauled her dolly up over the concrete step and into the little patio.

“Thank you,” she said shortly.

“Anytime,” he told her, waiting patiently for her to clear the gate so he could lower his arm.

“You know, you shouldn’t spend too much time with that Lombard kid—he’s trouble.”

Pierce was surprised enough to let the gate slip out of his fingers, and he scrambled to keep it from crashing into the grumpy old hag and her absurdly stocked shopping cart. Seriously—she had five boxes of protein bars. If she didn’t have some laxatives stuffed in that thing, she’d be in a world of hurt.

“I’m sorry?” he asked, trying not to wince as he strained all the muscles he’d just loosened up in the hot tub.

“That Lombard kid. He’s—” She looked both ways, like somebody could hear her. “—you know. G-a-y. And he’s not quiet about it either! Last year he brought his”—she wrinkled her nose—“boyfriend to the condo, and they were holding hands and snuggling. Perfectly awful, if you ask me.”

Ugh. “I didn’t, you snotty bitch,” Pierce snapped, letting the gate close on her cart.

“Well, I never!”

“You should,” Pierce told her, hobbling away. “And while you’re at it, buy some laxatives—you’ll feel better. Jesus, lady, he’s a sweet kid. You really gotta gossip about him like that?”

He had to admit, he got a great deal of satisfaction hearing her swear at her cart and the gate and Pierce all together as he made it through the gate of his own apartment. If he was going to let his inner asshole reach out and touch people, telling that woman off was the way to go.

Besides.

He walked into his condo and leaned back against the door, letting some of the outrage seep from his body.

That sweet kid. Seriously—what had he done to deserve that old biddy and her bitchery? Pierce felt a surge of protectiveness swelling his chest. Yeah, the kid might make more advances, but Pierce was a grown-up. He didn’t have to give in. What mattered was Harold Justice Lombard the Fifth didn’t have to spend his mornings alone.

Pierce couldn’t do much. No job, no wife, no life, right?

But he could be a willing recipient of all that chirpy goodwill.

What could it hurt? Seriously. What could it possibly hurt?