Double Blind by Heidi Cullinan Page A

screamed through his veins.
     
    But it came at a cost, because the next thing Ethan knew, he was talking, whispering, his words breaking out of him in jagged chunks.
     
    “A car,” he said, keeping his eyes shut and his forehead pressed to Randy’s. “All I have left is a car. No credit cards. No house. No job. Just the money I won and you gave me in my pocket, and a car in the parking lot of Herod’s.”
     
    The next words felt so heavy in his chest that he didn’t think he could say them. He tried not to say them, but then his hand was fumbling in his pocket, pulling out the keys, his hand shaking as he held them out for Randy, and then he confessed the rest.
     
    “There’s a gun,” he whispered, “under the driver’s seat.”
     
    The music swelled again, but Ethan couldn’t hear it because it was drowned out by the screaming sound of an oncoming train inside his own head—
     
    —and then Randy’s hands were pressing against the sides of his face, shaking as he tipped Ethan’s head back, pressing the keys into his cheek. Ethan opened his eyes enough to see Randy’s face, lit by the blue-white light of the fountains, his dark eyes no longer sharp and cunning, just wide with shock and a little bit of fear.
     
    “Jesus Christ, Slick,” Randy whispered, and then he kissed him.
     
    The kiss was soft, so soft, and tender, and sweet. It was the sort of kiss that, even an hour ago, Ethan wouldn’t have expected from Randy. It healed Ethan and opened him up too wide all at the same time.
     
    They broke the kiss, both of them shaking, their noses seeking each other out, nuzzling. If other people were unnerved by the two grown men breaking down outside Bellagio, Ethan didn’t know, and he didn’t care. For the first time that evening, he let himself acknowledge how close he had come to never having this moment, and he let himself admit that every single breath he was taking now was one he hadn’t expected to take, and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do next.
     
    He shut his eyes tighter and pressed his hands hard against the sides of Randy’s neck.
     
    “So,” Randy said after awhile, trying to force lightness into his tone. “What now, Slick?”
     
    “I don’t know,” Ethan confessed. “But I know I don’t want to go to my car.”
     
    Fingernails curled briefly into Ethan’s cheeks. “You aren’t fucking getting within ten feet of it.” His fingers relaxed a little. “I’m thinking we’re done with the sightseeing for tonight. You want—” He stalled, then pressed on. “You okay with coming to my place? We don’t—”
     
    “Please,” Ethan said, quickly, before he could finish. He brushed a kiss against Randy’s eyebrow. “And we can—I mean, if you still—”
     
    “Fuck yes,” Randy said, and Ethan laughed a little.
     
    The music swelled again, and Ethan saw the light even through his closed eyelids, but this time it gave him ease.
     
    They went back to the street, holding hands not just all the way to the cab, but inside as well. Ethan felt slightly awkward, as if they had stumbled into a place that was very beautiful but unfamiliar for both of them even under normal circumstances, let alone to have tumbled there in the span of a single evening. Ethan hoped that it would get easier once they were at Randy’s house.
     
    Then Randy told the cab to pull over again, and they crossed a busy street to another hotel. Ethan looked up to see the word “Stratosphere” scrawled in neon red against the side of the building, and he also saw a tall, needle-like structure rising off to the side.
     
    It was to this needle that Randy dragged him, taking him through the lobby of a hotel that wasn’t half as beautiful as the Golden Nugget and up an escalator to a ticket counter, pausing only to stop and get Ethan a huge strawberry daiquiri in the most ridiculously long plastic drink cup and straw combination that Ethan had ever seen. Ethan sipped it gratefully as Randy