Unprotected Hearts Read online

  But then the panic attacks started again. He began to take breaks, hiding out in the bathroom, trying to breathe, trying to calm down. He’d found he couldn’t get to the store very often; Billy had begun holding a grudge that he had to do all the shopping while Trent stayed home and fretted.

  So here he was, in a bathroom stall, his fingers on his wrist, counting his pulse. Hoping he didn’t die here.

  Rumbling noises outside, the low growls of big men making whispered conversation. He knew he couldn’t hide forever. And he’d forgotten his pills. He took a deep breath, and tried to work up the courage to leave the stall. He poked his head out, only to see Grumman speaking to the head of the school board.

  —Nah, nah, it’ll be fine. The chemicals evaporate into the air. We dump it out there, it’ll be gone in a month, no trace.

  —But Mr. Grumman, that’s so close to the elementary school.

  Grumman, glancing up, seeing Trent. His face flushing red with rage; he had thought he was alone. Who are you?

  He snapped back to the present.

  “My name is Trent Sinclair,” he told Jace. “And I’m helping your sister take down an awful, awful man. And now I’m in danger, and I need a place to stay.”

  Jace looked from Trent to Dodi and back. “You know, I came out here to get away from drama. Not so people could bring it to my very door.”

  He rose, and seemed to take up much of the space in the cabin. He stepped toward Trent.

  It struck Trent as a little like a dream, when Jace knelt before him. But whatever he thought was happening, was quickly dispelled by Jace picking up two chunks of wood and sliding them into the iron stove. He started a fire using a wooden match, and light blazed from the stove. The little black door clinked shut, and Jace returned to the cot.

  The flames from the oven and the lanterns cast eerie shadows into every corner. Trent touched the wall with his fingers, feeling the splintered surface of the log against his skin. Everything was so exposed in the cabin. Now that the excitement of the drive up had faded, the instinct to hide was stronger and stronger inside him.

  “It’s simple,” said Dodi. “Here’s the ask—”

  “Ugh,” said Jace. “Call it a request. Call it a favor. Don’t call it an ‘ask.’”

  Trent laughed despite himself. Jace looked so grudging when he said it. In this light, his face was kind of fascinating. He couldn’t have been much older than Trent himself, but the beard, and the shadows of the firelight, made him look craggy and mysterious. It wasn’t a bad look. Too bad about that attitude though.

  “Straining my nerves here,” said Dodi. “Fine. The request. Trent is a witness in the biggest lawsuit Harlan and I have ever handled. The key witness. I’m up against Wallace Grumman. You know him.”

  Jace’s features were quiet and unmoving. “Nope.”

  “Seriously? Grumman Chemical and Fertilizer? All those big factories down by the river?”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Two years ago he bought a big chunk of abandoned real estate. A couple city blocks of vacant lots. Wasteland, nothing but scrubby weeds and old factories. Bordered a little neighborhood and a teensy elementary school.”

  Trent said, “Imagine suspenseful music for this next part.”

  “Grumman is using that acreage as a waste dump. Millions of gallons of liquid waste, stored in barrels, buried underground. Except it’s not staying buried.”

  Jace did something very strange then. He didn’t cover his ears, exactly, but his hands went up to the sides of his head. He rose from the cot and turned away from Dodi and Trent. “This is exactly why I came out here,” he said to them. “I can’t stand that shit. All you people ever do is ruin things.”

  “He has made a lot of kids sick,” said Dodi. “The government investigated, but Grumman has good friends. He didn’t even get a fine. The school held a fundraiser, and he slipped them some tax-deductible donation money to keep things quiet. The news won’t touch him. Not a word of the case in the paper.”

  “So you thought you’d make a bunch of money off some sick kids and their parents.”

  “I thought I might take down the greatest villain our city has ever seen, sure,” she said.

  Jace turned to Trent. “Why are you in this? What are you, a chemist?”

  Trent looked down at his clothes. He wasn’t sure how chemists dressed, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t in oversized black hoodies and skate shoes covered in spiderweb designs. “I’m the librarian at the school he poisoned,” he said.

  Jace raised an eyebrow. “How does a librarian get mixed up in this? Did they store the chemicals in books?”

  Trent was caught off by the tone in Jace’s voice. So cold and uncaring.

  Dodi laughed at this exchange. “Forget it, Trent. My brother cared about nothing but his celebrity bodyguarding business for most of his adult life. Now all he cares about is…what do you care about now, Jace? Bench-pressing logs?”

  “Fuck off, sis.”

  “Anyway,” said Trent, “I’m in this because I can prove that Grumman knew about the effects on the school. And that makes me a target. And clearly you don’t care. Which is great! It must be really nice to be some kind of monk out here. Very head-clearing.” He turned to Dodi. “Look. Just take me somewhere else. Maybe I could stay with my mom or something.”

  “What, you think Grumman hasn’t already been to your mom’s house?” she said.

  “Your brother doesn’t want me here. I can’t stay in the city. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just get a train ticket and go up north.”

  Dodi put her head in her hands. “Shit. I am going to lose this case.” She stood up, and brushed off her pants. “Bro, nice to see you again. Trent, I guess we’ll try to find you somewhere else on this earth that a billionaire industrialist can’t find you. Maybe a nice desert island somewhere.”

  They made it to the door, when Jace said, “Stop.”

  They turned to look at him.

  He glowered at them both. “Two days,” he said. “Trent can stay for two days. Then you have to find somewhere else.”

  Dodi sighed with relief. Trent did not.

  Once Jace had agreed, the reality of the situation sunk in for Trent. He was stuck. In the forest. No electricity, no clothes, no friends. With a man who clearly didn't want him there and didn't care if he lived or died.

  This was going to be a bad couple of days.

  3

  Jace’s instinct was to escape. Having people in his cabin was wrong. It’s what always happened. People start showing up, wanting to talk. Wanting you to have feelings about things. The pressure of figuring out what they were feeling, since nobody ever said it plainly. It took too much out of him. He didn’t have the skills anymore.

  Dodi wasn’t an issue. He’d dealt with her and Harlan his entire life, and knew just the right level of sarcasm and bitterness to use to keep her on her toes. Besides, she had only two emotions when it came to Jace, frustration and disappointment. Jace could blow that off.

  But this stranger? When Trent walked outside the cabin with Dodi, it was such a relief that Jace almost laughed at the sudden lack of strangers in his home.

  He sighed and began to straighten things in the cabin. Where would the stranger sleep? He’d have to throw extra wood on the fire; Trent was going to freeze in that outfit he had on.

  “Stop,” Jace told himself aloud. He’d come out here to escape all that. The responsibility of taking care of people.

  A stranger was going to stay with him. Not long. Too long. A stranger whose life was going to be complicated and confusing. Who would need him to do things. Who would want to have conversations about their pasts and shared interests, all the things people did that he could not stand.

  His fingers twitched, and he grabbed a screwdriver from the small toolbox he kept under the cot. He flipped it around in his fingers to calm himself.

  This was so wrong. This was going to end terribly. He should never have agreed t
o help Dodi.

  There was no further time to think. He could hear them speaking through the door.

  “Are you going to be able to find your car?” Trent asked her.

  “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine,” she said. “And you’ll be fine too. Get some sleep.”

  “What about clothes? And…can you bring me a book or something? Or a laptop? Or anything?”

  “That was a long drive, Trent, and I can’t risk making it too often. I could be followed. But maybe Jace can take you into town.”

  Jace watched Trent slump, hearing this. Jace had gone through that same sense of dislocation, his first time out here without his devices, his connections.

  A few more words of comfort from Dodi, then she and Trent shook hands, and Trent walked hesitantly back to the cabin.

  “So this is where you live,” said Trent when he entered the cabin.

  “Why do you say that?” asked Jace.

  “Well…it is, isn't it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why shouldn't I say it?” Trent's brow was furrowed like he was deep in confusing thought.

  “Because it's small talk,” said Jace. “Of course this is where I live. Away from people and conversation”

  Trent stared at him a moment. “Oh…kay .”

  “I don't mean to sound rude. It's just that you've suddenly become a pawn in my brother's revenge against me.”

  “I've never actually met your brother, just Dodi.”

  “Doesn't matter. Harlan is behind you being here, trust me.”

  “I'm just here to hide.”

  “You're here for other reasons than that, you just don't know about them. And worse, now I have to figure out what my brother is up to sending you here. Meantime, I just don't have the patience for small talk.”

  “Okay, okay. We don't have to spend the night laying down rules of conversation, do we? It has been a stressful day, and I'd like to just lie down.”

  Jace looked around the room. Lie down. Yes, but where? He had only one cot. Dodi should have thought of this and brought another cot or air mattress or something. But then she hadn't been here since Jace first started building the cabin. She didn't know about the furniture.

  The thought that she should have somehow asked before arriving kept coming to mind.

  But then Jace realized that Trent was staring at him. “You can take the cot tonight,” said Jace. “But only tonight. Tomorrow we have to figure something else out.”

  Trent looked around the room. “I'm scared to ask,” he said, “but where is the bathroom?”

  4

  Trent woke up so sore he felt like he’d been beaten in his sleep. There was a noise outside, a steady muffled thump…thump. Every twenty or thirty seconds. Thump. He hurt so much. The cot was narrow and had no real support to it; he’d slept with his head and shoulders tensed. On the other hand, he was alive. He pushed himself up, listening to his neck creak. Hurting but alive seemed like a fair bargain, given the alternative.

  Thump. What was that?

  One swift look around the cabin let him know that Jace was gone. That was a relief. The whole night had been so awkward. It had taken Jace about ten words to explain the bathroom situation (ugh) and where the fresh water came from (a pleasant mountain spring, thank god), and then he just ran out of conversation and wrapped himself in a blanket on the floor to sleep. The idea of carrying on a conversation with him today was just torture. Jace seemed intent on not being interested in anything. It was clear from the things Dodi said that Jace had once been a relatively normal person out there in the world. What happened?

  But that question, interesting as it might be in some other context, wasn’t nearly as important as figuring out what to do with himself today. Thump. It had occurred to him that even though he didn’t have any books or his laptop, he did have his phone. Maybe he could get some good pictures in the woods. His roommate Billy had been doing film projects lately, little animations using dolls and pieces of rusted machinery, and Trent thought he might love some images of decaying trees and mossy rocks to work with.

  He stepped outside. The air was heavy. Mist still played at the edges of the clearing, although the morning sun was beginning to burn it off. Maybe he would head down to that stand of pines, get as close up as he could with his cell phone camera, and get some interesting pictures of tree bark. Fascinating!

  “Where are you going?” said a gruff voice from nearby. It made him jump.

  Jace was at a stump a few yards from the house. Split logs were stacked to one side. Uncut logs were on the other side. Between them, Jace, shirtless, his sweaty chest and shoulders gleaming in the morning sun. An axe on his shoulder.

  “I thought you were some kind of monk now,” said Trent. “Suddenly you’re a lumberjack?” He tried not to stare at the rippling muscles in Jace’s flanks, or the definition of his back.

  Jace’s brow furrowed, and he swung the axe down until it stuck in the stump. He bent to pick up his shirt, and used it to wipe the sweat from his forehead. “Monks need fire too. Where you headed?”

  “I was going to get some pictures in the woods. Get some air.”

  “Is that wise?”

  Trent shrugged. “Not sure what you mean.”

  “Under threat of losing my home, I let you stay here, because you need protection. Now you’re wandering off into the woods where who knows what might happen. I think you’d better stay here.”

  “Oh, you are kidding me. I’m not just sitting in the cabin for the next two days.”

  “Sorry that fearing for your life got dull that quickly.” Jace pulled on his shirt. It gave Trent a little pang of regret, watching those big shoulders get covered up.

  He’d never really gotten close to big guys. He’d always been on the slim side himself, shy about his body. Shy was an understatement. He was terrified to be exposed in front of people. It wasn't even a matter of being unfit; he did plenty of exercise in the privacy of his room. But he felt so much fear and shame when it came to his body. Just another of those things he should really have discussed with his therapist but never did. But this body-fear went both ways; guys with muscles frankly intimidated him, even when he found them attractive. So most of his dates in the past had been with other skinny shy guys. He didn’t know how to act around guys that looked like this.

  Especially if the guy in question was going to keep him from even walking around. What was he going to do, chop wood?

  “Okay, so I feel like I’ve just got to say this—”

  Jace broke out in a loud laugh. It was the first laugh Trent had heard out of him. It was harsh and bitter.

  “Um…what?” Trent asked him.

  “Do you always talk like that when you’re avoiding conflict? Okay so I feel like…”

  “That’s just how I talk.”

  Jace shook his head. “It’s not how you’ve been talking. Your face is showing signs of stress now that it wasn’t earlier. Your voice has gone up in pitch. You’re scared.”

  “When some guy with an axe tells me I’m stuck indoors all day, yeah, I guess I get stressed.”

  Jace smiled. “Anger. Your eyebrows lowered, and your upper lip raised to show me your canines. That’s more honest, I think.”

  Trent was at a loss. He had no idea what was going on. One minute the guy was mocking him, the next minute he was studying which of Trent’s teeth were showing? What kind of maniac had Dodi made him bunk with? “Listen, I’m going to walk to the woods now. Maybe you’ve been stuck out here too long, but you should know that the thing you just said was a totally abnormal conversation. Not the way people talk.”

  “I never had much time for the way people talk. It’s a distraction.”

  “Um, yeah. So…walking to the woods now. Bye.”

  Trent felt a little like cringing, hearing Jace laugh again behind him. But why was he letting the man throw him so off-kilter?

  It didn’t occur to him until he was halfway to the stand of trees that he hadn’
t taken his medicine this morning.

  That was interesting. For his anxiety, he took an antidepressant daily, as well as tranquilizers when he needed them. Without them, sometimes he felt that he could hardly carry on a conversation.

  And yet here he had just spoken to an absolute weirdo without the benefit of meds.

  It made him hold his back a little straighter as he walked. Wasn’t that something? He’d had an actual, real-live-human interaction all by himself. His doctor would be proud of him.

  Of course, that meant one more thing on his list of items he needed from home. By instinct, he pulled out his cell to call Dodi, then remembered there was no signal out here. Sure enough, zero bars.

  How did Jace manage with no communication? He glanced back at the big man, half-expecting him to be staring back at him, laughing still, but no, Jace was stacking his split logs by the side of the cabin.

  But just because the big lumberjack-bodyguard-canine analyst had gone back to his mountain man hobbies, didn’t mean Trent was going to have an easy time. In fact, things were about to go seriously wrong for him.

  5

  He didn’t need the wood. Jace shoved the split logs into their stack. Even though it had begun to get cold at night, he had already chopped enough to get him through the next few weeks. If he was honest with himself, he had needed to get out of the cabin, away from Trent. A little manual labor was usually all he needed in order to clear his head. And this time it had the benefit of waking and annoying Trent, so all the better.

  It had been a rough night. Jace had every night for the past year alone. Trent wasn't wrong about Jace becoming a monk, although that had started even before he moved to the cabin.

  He blinked. No thoughts about his life before the cabin. It was one of the rules he kept for himself. He shook his head to get the thoughts out.