Free Bad Influence by K. A. Mitchell Page B

over. But once it was out—
    To Eli, Silver said, “I’d just turned seventeen, and my parents threatened to have him put in jail. That was one of the reasons I agreed to go to that place I told you about.”
    “But if you were seventeen—shit, the laws in Pennsylvania suck. How does anybody get laid?”
    “I heard them talking with a lawyer. It was because two weeks before we got busted, Zeb got a job in my school district. Made it different, even though he wasn’t teaching me.” Silver made a disgusted sound. “I should have known they wouldn’t go through with it. Too much public exposure of their queer son.”
    Eli cupped his chin in his hands and leaned forward. “So, after the hot-for-teacher drama, what then?”
    “You know the rest.” Or as much as Silver was willing to tell. “That place was worse than a prison. After I managed my jailbreak, I hitched back home. They didn’t care what that place was like. It was that or the streets. You know what I picked. It was Baltimore or Philly, and I figured Baltimore was warmer. It was closer.”
    “No, what happened with Zeb?”
    “He wasn’t there when I got back.” That much was true. At least not the Zeb that Jordan Samuel Barnett had been in love with. “I don’t know if he quit or got fired. I didn’t know how to find him again.”
    “Oh my God, you guys are like Romeo and…Julio.” Eli’s eyes were wide with sympathy. “But wait. Why did you skip out when you figured that was him coming to the party?”
    Yeah. What about that? Lying was extra easy when most of it was true. “I’d managed to get a note to a friend to give to him after I got shipped off so he’d know where I was, what had happened. But the other night I found out he never got it.”
    “Totally Romeo and Julio. And you never saw him again until he jumped out of the car Saturday night?”
    “Nope.”
    Eli sighed and dragged his coffee cup across the table. “That’s pretty fucking epic. Even better than Kellan and Nate.”
    “An epic disaster, yeah.”
    “Do you still love him?”
    Silver jerked his head up from where he had doodled a Z in the syrup on his dish. Scratching it out with force, he said, “When did I ever say I did?”
    “You were seventeen. Of course you were in love.”
    Not at first. At first he’d just been horny and Zeb had been cute. And funny. After that, yeah, so maybe the earth did move and Silver’s stomach flipped over from nothing but a wink of one of those warm hazel eyes.
    “So?” Silver challenged.
    “So do you still feel about him the way you did before?”
    There hadn’t been any of those feelings when he saw Zeb this time. No earth moving or stomach flipping or horniness. So why was it so important to get back at Zeb? If Silver didn’t care, it should have been easy to say Fuck off and get out of my life. And if he still cared, he wouldn’t be coming up with a way to hurt Zeb.
    It wasn’t as if the plan was to destroy his life. Just give him a little taste of what it had felt to be turned away like that. To want something, to believe in it so much that you convinced yourself it was real, only to have it taken away. Silver only knew he couldn’t let it go. So what was another lie to Eli if it got Zeb free access to the house?
    Of course, the way Eli was looking right now, kind of dreamy and misty-eyed like he wanted to take Silver’s hand and squeeze it sympathetically, Eli would be doing everything he could to spin this as his “epic” love story. That might come in handy.
    He was also looking like he was waiting for Silver’s answer, and instead of taking his hand, Eli jabbed Silver’s arm with a finger. “Do you still love him?”
    “I don’t know.” Silver shrugged. “It’s been a long time.” To his surprise, it was the absolute truth.

Chapter Six
    The air was hot and sticky and as disgusting as a trick’s unwashed ball sac. Which was normal for Baltimore in late May. Silver was helping Eli carry plates and shit