Slow Shift by Nazarea Andrews (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📗

helps—not just Ben’s skills, but the fragile broken feeling thing that’s been hanging over them since Chase began to orbit the Reids.

~*~

Chase joins the cross country team at the instance of Coach, but he learns quickly that he likes it.

He likes running, and he thinks that's something he can blame on Tyler. It's strange that so many things in his life can be traced back to Tyler, to Lucas, to what they've brought into his world, intentionally or not.

Sometimes he wonders what would have happened to him if he hadn't wandered into the forest while his dad was drunk after his mom's death. He wonders what would have happened if Tyler hadn't been there to find him.

He can't imagine it, where and who he would be. It's like trying to erase his dad or Ben—it erases too much of himself to be possible.

~*~

Chase traipses into the house while Tyler is cooking, and his head comes up, tracking the boy as he crosses the living room to greet Lucas.

He's grown accustomed to Chase smelling like other, like people he doesn't know and doesn't trust, but they've all been sugar sweet and tart. They've all been female, the subtleties of their scent and arousal grating but recognizable. But this—

This is male and thick, musky. The scent of sweat and lust, but not just Chase. Tyler wants to snarl and snap, but he doesn't.

He finishes binding the lamb and slides it into the oven before he follows Chase, who has retreated to his bedroom. He’s sitting on his couch, grinning wide at his phone, and it irritates Tyler, just a little.

Chase is here and his smiles should be his.

He shoves that thought down and clears his throat. “Homework?”

“Nah,” Chase says, aiming his grin at Tyler, “I finished it with my new lab partner during free period.”

Tyler nods and then shifts. “Who is it?”

Something goes worried, almost scared, in Chase’s scent, enough that Tyler straightens, even as Chase stares at him blankly.

“Who's who?”

“Lab partner,” Tyler prompts gently.

Chase blinks. “Oh. Um. Ryan.”

Tyler nods and studies the younger boy, who’s fidgeting and nervous. and it makes something hurt in his gut. “You know I don’t care, right? If it’s a Ryan or a Cassie.”

Chase’s gaze snaps up to meet Tyler’s, color flooding his cheeks, and Tyler says it again. “I don’t care who it is, as long as they make you happy.”

Chase clears his throat and nods, jerky and uneven.

Tyler huffs. “Don’t hide too long, ok? I need your help on the potatoes Lucas likes. And I wanna work out.”

~*~

In October, Chase brings Ryan home and introduces him as his boyfriend instead of his lab partner. John stares at this surly teen with dark hair, a bad attitude, and eyes that watch Chase too attentively, and feels his stomach twist.

“Is it wrong to hate the kid?” he asks Reid when Chase drags Ryan to Tyler’s birthday dinner a few weeks later. Tyler gives him a bland look and John bristles defensively. “I don’t hate everyone.”

“You liked Cassie,” Tyler agrees, and watches as Ryan leans in to kiss Chase, dragging him away from Lucas briefly.

Neither man misses the way Ryan’s expression goes jealous and ugly when Chase laughs and twists away to fix a party hat on Lucas’s head.

“I hate him too,” Tyler admits. John passes him a beer and thinks this is probably not the kind of bonding Chase was hoping for.

~*~

Chase is shivering when he knocks on the door to the house in the woods in late January, wearing a thin white shirt and his favorite red hoodie, jeans soaked through and feet bare.

Tyler takes one look at him and curses, low and vicious, pulling him inside and trying not to think about how wrong it is for Chase to knock on the damn door.

He’s never knocked. Not even once.

Chase doesn’t even react when he’s standing in the bathroom and Tyler hesitates. “You need to warm up,” he says softly. Chase blinks and Tyler moves away, just long enough to turn on the shower.

“Chase? Can you get undressed and in the shower for me?” he asks, coming back, and Chase gives a nod that’s almost frantic.

Tyler retreats then, and he’s grateful he can’t smell blood or anything else on Chase because he already wants to kill something—someone—and he doesn’t know that he’d hold himself back if Chase were physically hurt.

When Chase emerges, he’s wearing a pair of Tyler’s old sweats and one of Lucas’s gray v-necks. He looks impossibly small. For a moment, he stands in the hallway, backlit by the light, tiny and still and fragile, and he whispers, “I’m sorry.”

Tyler whines and opens his arms.

Chase makes this noise then, a broken thing that leaves Tyler flayed open, a noise that hurts him, and darts across the room, scrambling into Tyler’s lap. He presses into Tyler with a low whine and Tyler wraps him up, holds him tight and closes his eyes. “It’s ok, sweetheart. It’s ok. You’re ok.”

~*~

Chase never does talk about it, whatever happened between him and Ryan, but after that, he doesn’t date much.

Sometimes he goes out with girls Brielle or Ben set him up with, but it’s never intentional, never with the goal of making it into something lasting. He stays away from guys completely, a wariness in him that makes John ache to beat the hell out of Ryan.

Occasionally, though, he’ll come home sweaty, with eyeliner smudged under his big eyes and glitter high on his cheekbones, delivered to his door by Tyler with a terse goodnight and a stony look.

John doesn’t ask where Chase goes and what he does. He just trusts Tyler to keep him safe.

Tyler always does.

~*~

It’s strange, he thinks, that a man he was so sure would hurt Chase is the same man he trusts to keep him safe.

~*~

He doesn’t talk to Tyler about it, just cries in his arms that first horrible night, and he doesn’t talk to his dad, because his dad wouldn’t even arrest Ryan, he’d just kill him.

He sure as hell