Shades of Gray (25 page)

“Well, Special Agent Sutton, have at it.” Danny spread his arms wide with a challenging raise of his eyebrows.

“Danny, you don’t have—”

Danny took him by surprise, rushing forward to slam him into the wall. Miller’s head cracked against the plaster, his arms pinned beneath Danny’s weight.

“What do you want to know?” Danny shouted, one shaking fist aimed and ready to fly. This Danny was not someone Miller recognized, his face hard and determined, his eyes crackling with disdain. Miller flinched, bracing for the impact, but the punch never came. Danny let his arm fall. He pushed roughly away from Miller, muttering, “Fuck,” under his breath.

Danny retreated to the far side of the room and leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. “What do you want to know?” he repeated.

Miller took a steadying breath, his eyes level on Danny’s, searching for the man he knew—the man he’d sent running for cover.

“Who was Ortiz?”

“He was the first person I met in Texas. He was just a couple of years older than me. We—”

“Were you lovers?” Miller asked quietly.

“Does that question fall under the heading of personal or business?” Danny smirked. “Not that you probably give a shit anymore, but we were just friends. We worked at the car wash together.”

“So Hinestroza recruited you both?”

Danny shook his head. “No. Only me. But Ortiz was desperate for money. He had a family back in Mexico, so after I’d been working with Hinestroza for a while, he came and asked me for a job. I said no at first, but eventually I talked to Hinestroza and he took Ortiz into the operation.” Danny gave Miller a bland stare. “Shouldn’t you be taking notes? Or do you have a tape recorder hidden around here somewhere?

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Maybe wearing a wire under your fancy shirt?” Miller ignored him, talking past the sharp twist of his heart.

“What happened then?”

“He got hooked on coke. Started using with Madrigal. The problem was, Madrigal could afford his habit and Ortiz couldn’t.” Danny sighed, rubbing his face with both hands. “He stole some cocaine from a shipment.”

“Ah, Jesus,” Miller sighed.

Danny’s eyes flew to his, sad and angry. “They took us to a warehouse and Hinestroza ordered him killed. Madrigal tortured him.” Danny blew out a trembling breath. “Then he shot him in the stomach and left him to die.”

Miller clenched his fists until his knuckles screamed. He knew what Danny was leaving out from his matter-of-fact recitation. Colin had read him the medical examiner’s report over the phone. Ortiz had endured the unthinkable before he’d finally died. Miller didn’t need the details to imagine what Danny had been forced to see and hear. No wonder he still had nightmares.

“You didn’t kill him, Danny,” Miller said, as gently as he could.

“Yes, I did.” Danny’s voice was flat.

“Just because you helped him get a job doesn’t mean you’re responsible—”

Danny held up his index finger in a mocking wave. “You haven’t heard the best part yet.” He paused, the muscle in his jaw thumping under his skin. “I could have saved him, but I didn’t.” Miller walked around the bed and sat on the edge closest to Danny. He didn’t reach out and touch him, but he wanted to. “Tell me.” Danny made a gagging noise in his throat, swallowing back misery like a bitter pill. “Hinestroza said he wouldn’t kill Ortiz if I took his place.”

Danny’s eyes were far away, glistening with the liquid sheen of unshed tears. Miller’s heart broke watching him, splintering into a Shades of Gray | 193

thousand pieces inside his chest.

“Jesus, Danny,” Miller whispered. “You couldn’t have saved him.

Hinestroza would have killed him anyway, after you.”

“You don’t know the first damn thing about it,” Danny spit out.

“Hinestroza isn’t a liar. He never has been. If he says he’s going to do something, he does it. Whether it’s killing you for stealing or sparing you because someone else took your punishment. He doesn’t go back on his word, not ever.”

“You didn’t kill him,” Miller repeated. “No one would have chosen to take his place.”

“Bullshit,” Danny said. “What would you have done? Would you have let him die that way?”

“I… shit, Danny, I don’t know.” Miller threw up his hands in frustration. “Probably.”

“Well, that’s the difference between us then. Because my answer wasn’t ‘probably’, it was ‘yes’, a no-hesitation ‘yes’.” Danny’s voice broke and he sagged back against the wall.

“I don’t believe that,” Miller said. “I think you agonized over your decision then, just like you’ve probably agonized over it every day since.” He stood up, moving toward Danny but still not touching him.

“I know you, Danny. You’re not as hard as you pretend.”

“You don’t know me,” Danny sneered. “You have no idea what I’m capable of. When we first started… this,” Danny motioned back and forth between their bodies, “I thought about using it to save myself.

I considered it. Don’t fool yourself about the kind of man I am.” Anger flared inside Miller at Danny’s words, blindsided by the knowledge that Danny had teetered right on the edge of betraying him.

But how’s that any different from what you’re doing to him right
now, Miller? There are all types of betrayal. At least he didn’t go
through with it… unlike you.

“I’m still the same man you met in that interrogation room. The one you thought was a piece of shit. Nothing’s changed.” Danny’s voice was steady, but his eyes were broken.

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Miller took the final step, pressing against Danny, holding his face, forcing Danny to meet his gaze. He could feel the violence in Danny’s body, the urge to shove rising up beneath him. “Yes, it has.

Everything’s changed,” Miller said, emphasizing each word.

“Including you. Including me.”

“No, we haven’t.” Danny pushed against Miller, sending him stumbling backward. “Look at us right now. Miller the FBI agent getting his answers, and Danny the criminal with a lifetime of bad deeds behind him. That’s all we’ll ever be.” Miller was not a talker; he’d always been uncomfortable with words, constantly struggling to find the right thing to say. But with Danny, conversation came easily. Miller felt heard when he spoke. But now that old insecurity, that inability to put together the right words, hit him hard at the exact moment when Danny needed him to fix what was broken between them—what Miller had broken when he’d diminished what they felt for each other, reduced Danny to a function of his job.

“That’s not true. That’s not who we are when we’re together.” Miller’s voice was shaking, but he did not look away. “I’m sorry, Danny. For Ortiz. And for what I did. I… I got scared.” Every muscle in Danny’s body contracted, fighting Miller’s words, a sobbing moan escaping as his eyes tried to run where Miller could not reach them. “I should hate you,” he whispered. “I want to hate you.”

“Danny,” Miller murmured, pulling Danny forward, enfolding him tightly in his arms. Danny grabbed on with all his strength, pressing himself against Miller’s body, his back heaving under Miller’s hands.

Danny’s breath was hitching in his chest, and Miller pulled back a little. He ran his hand down Danny’s bare leg, pushing his fingers up under the edge of Danny’s boxer shorts to touch the scar on his thigh.

Danny sucked in a breath, his hand coming down to shove Miller away.

“How’d you get it?” Miller whispered.

“Who wants to know?” Danny replied, his voice rusty with tears.

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“The FBI agent?”

Miller closed his eyes. He wished he could go back and start the morning over, come at Danny in a gentler, more honest way. “No. Just me. Just Miller.”

Danny looked past him, over his shoulder. “Madrigal did it…

afterwards. With his trusty razor. It was a message from Hinestroza. A way of telling me not to fuck up like that again, bringing someone who couldn’t be trusted into the fold. And the scar was to remind me of what I’d done—that I’d chosen my life over Ortiz’s.” The desire to murder another human being had never been so wild in Miller’s blood. He wanted five minutes alone in a room with Madrigal and Hinestroza, wanted to make them both suffer the way they’d made Danny suffer all these years.

Miller slid down Danny’s body onto his knees, pushing up Danny’s shorts with his hands to expose the thin, white line. He ran his fingers across it slowly, Danny trembling under his touch. Miller lowered his head and licked the scar with the tip of his tongue, light and soft.

“Miller,” Danny sighed, his voice weary and sad. He pushed out and away, trying to escape. “Don’t… please.”

“It’s okay. It doesn’t have to mean what he wanted it to mean. We can change it, make it something different. Just like we did with the snake on your back.”

“There’s no changing it. There’s no making it better.” Danny pulled his leg out from under Miller. “It’s a piece of who I am. You can’t erase all the ugly parts of me, the parts that don’t fit who you want me to be.”

Miller stood, tucking his hands into his pockets. “That’s not what I’m trying to do.” Never had he been this crushed by sadness, not even when his mother died—it felt like a steel vice around his chest, smothering him with sorrow.

“Don’t fucking lie to me. I can always tell when you’re lying.” Danny was right—of course he was. Hadn’t Miller wished, more 196 | Brooke McKinley

than once, that he could feel for Rachel what he felt for Danny? That Rachel could be the first person he thought of when he woke up in the morning and the last person he wanted to touch before he fell asleep at night? Or that at least Danny could be a different kind of man, one who was upstanding and honest, a man who hadn’t spent most of his life in the shadows?

“I don’t know what to say,” Miller admitted, his shoulders slumped in defeat. “I’m so fucking confused. About you and me and us.

I don’t even know who I am anymore. Or what it is I really want.” Danny refused to look at him, his jaw closed and hard, eyes on the floor.

“Danny….” Miller spoke through tears gathering heavy and thick in his throat. Even without the possibility of a future together, the idea of it ending this way between them brought pain he could not bear.

Danny responded to the ache in his voice automatically, his gaze coming up to land on Miller’s, anger in a losing battle with compassion, one hand reaching out. Miller marveled at his own selfishness, seeking comfort and reassurance from the person he had just wounded, taking for himself what Danny probably could not afford to give.

But Miller claimed it anyway, let himself be drawn close with Danny’s whispered, “Come here.” Danny ran his thumb under Miller’s eye, kissed him softly, the way he had the very first time.

They held each other for a quiet moment, and then Danny’s hands moved down Miller’s torso, slipping between their bodies to tug gently at his waistband. Miller scrabbled at the buttons on his shirt, wanting to rid himself of his clothes, the markers of his job. There was an urgency as they came together, a desire to erase the memories of the morning, but there was a somberness, too, a recognition of what this meant for both of them.

When they were stripped bare, Danny lay back on the bed and Miller crawled up beside him. They pressed together, Danny’s back to Miller’s front, not moving, just holding. Miller could feel Danny’s heart beating under his hand, Danny’s dark hair sliding against his Shades of Gray | 197

cheek.

Miller leaned forward to kiss the hollow where Danny’s neck and shoulder met, his mouth tracing along the bone, then behind, dipping down to meet the serpent’s tongue with his own. Danny was shuddering against him, his breath coming faster as Miller reached around and took Danny in his hand, wetness leaking out onto his fingers.

Danny tipped his head backward until their mouths met, Miller’s tongue tender on Danny’s, consolation for all the harsh words they’d hurled at each other. Danny bit Miller’s chin lightly, smiling against his skin. “I miss the stubble,” he whispered.

“I’ll let it grow.”

Danny started to turn over, but Miller held him still. “No, this way. Just like this.” He rolled away and grabbed lotion from the bedside table, coming back to spoon against Danny’s body as he smoothed it on. Danny drew his top leg up toward his chest when Miller positioned himself, rubbing against him, sliding in just a little then backing away, over and over until Danny was moaning low in his throat, pushing back against Miller, his face flushed.

Miller thrust forward slowly, and Danny opened up for him, drawing him in deeper. He wondered if he would ever get used to how good it felt to be inside Danny, how they fit together in all the right ways, their bodies not concerned with doubts or divisions or what tomorrow might bring, the union of their flesh the only topic on the agenda.

Miller propped himself up on one elbow, fighting to keep his eyes open; he wanted to see the way Danny’s face went soft and peaceful with each thrust, his tongue catching between his teeth as he moved with Miller, rocking his hips. Miller was struck by the sudden wish that Danny would call him ‘baby’, the way he had that night against the door, but he couldn’t bring himself to voice the desire.

Danny turned to look at Miller, holding his eyes as Miller slid forward, groaning as he sank deep, and clenching hot and firm around him. Danny’s unwavering gaze left Miller feeling exposed and 198 | Brooke McKinley

unveiled, the depth of his emotion for Danny rising up in him with unstoppable force, making him almost sick with longing, wrenching words from his mouth.

“Danny, I—it’s more than this for me,” Miller said urgently, their lips almost touching, desperate for Danny to hear beyond his words. He clutched Danny’s hip, fingers sinking into his skin. “It’s more than just this.”

Danny stopped moving, pulling Miller’s hand up to his mouth to kiss his knuckles, run his tongue along Miller’s palm. “I know,” he whispered. The tears that Danny had been holding back all morning were overflowing now, running down the sides of his face to form uneven pools on the dingy, white sheets.

Miller exhaled a trembling breath and caught Danny’s tears in his hand. They made love silently except for their low moans and the sounds of their bodies joining together. Miller thrust steady and strong, wanting to make it good for Danny, wanting him to feel loved. Danny came quietly with a deep wavering sigh, spilling over into his own hand. Miller wasn’t far behind, his own tears wetting Danny’s collarbone as he fell forward, his body shaking against Danny’s warm skin.