Wade drove Brandon into New Orleans beneath a sky the color of wet concrete.
They had showered together at the truck stop before breakfast, crowding into a private stall barely large enough for Wade’s enormous body. What began as an attempt to wash away the previous night’s sweat had ended with Wade pressing Brandon against the tiled wall, both men using their hands and mouths until they were both covered in each other’s cum. Afterward, Wade had washed Brandon’s back with surprising tenderness and dried his sun-reddened shoulders before attending to himself.
By the time they reached the edge of the city, Wade had dressed in his sleeveless charcoal work shirt, worn jeans, square-toed boots, and faded black cap. The shirt exposed his tattooed arms and the thick dark hair covering them, restoring some of the dangerous appearance that had first made Brandon nervous. Only the lingering redness around Wade’s pale gray eyes revealed the man who had cried in Brandon’s arms.
Brandon wore a loose black muscle shirt with its sleeves removed and its armholes cut almost to the waistband. The deep openings exposed his lean chest, smooth ribs, and small patches of pale blond hair beneath his arms; whenever the front shifted in the breeze, it also revealed the fine blond treasure trail running down his stomach to the waistband of his tight denim shorts. Wade had given him sunscreen at their first stop and silently supervised until Brandon covered every piece of exposed skin.
“How close can you get me to the French Quarter?” Brandon asked.
“Not close.”
“Helpful.”
“Truck won’t fit.”
“Are you sure? It’s so dainty.”
Wade’s mouth shifted beneath his beard. Almost a smile.
He left Brandon near a streetcar stop and climbed down to retrieve the duffel from an exterior compartment. On the pavement, Wade seemed even larger than he had in the cab. The top of Brandon’s head barely reached the older man’s shoulder.
Wade handed him the bag, then took out his phone.
“Put your number in.” Brandon entered his number and called himself so Wade’s appeared on his screen. “If something happens,” Wade said, “call me.”
“What if I just miss you?”
Wade looked at him steadily. “Call me.”
The simple answer tightened something in Brandon’s chest.
Before returning to the truck, Wade placed one heavy hand behind Brandon’s neck and drew him into a brief embrace. His beard brushed Brandon’s temple. “Be careful,” he murmured.
Brandon wanted to say something clever. Instead, he held Wade tightly for one second and released him. “I will.”
He watched the dark blue truck rejoin traffic. Wade lifted two fingers from the steering wheel as he passed, and then he was gone. For perhaps the first time in Brandon’s life, someone had driven away without making him feel discarded.
By afternoon, New Orleans had nearly defeated him.
The heat was wetter than Pensacola’s, the sidewalks uneven, and the French Quarter crowded with tourists moving too slowly beneath wrought-iron balconies. Music spilled through open doorways. The air smelled of rain, alcohol, frying seafood, horse manure, and old brick.
Rafael’s money made Brandon feel temporarily rich. He rented a cheap room for one night, ate more than he needed, and told himself he was being responsible because most of the cash remained hidden inside one shoe.
That evening, he followed a rainbow flag into a crowded bar on Bourbon Street.
Red light washed across exposed brick walls and shirtless men dancing beneath slowly turning fans. Brandon checked his duffel with the muscular attendant near the entrance, watched him lock it into a numbered closet, and slipped the claim ticket into the pocket of his shorts.
He ordered cola because he wanted his money to last. That was when Darius King noticed him.
Darius was twenty-nine and just over six feet tall, with a long, elegantly muscled body and deep brown skin that glowed beneath the red lights. His cheekbones were high and sharp, his lips full, and his narrow eyes framed by thick lashes. Short twists tipped in copper surrounded a face so striking that Brandon looked at him twice before realizing he had been caught.
Darius wore a sleeveless black silk shirt open almost to his waist, revealing a smooth chest and a gold chain resting against his sternum. Tight black leather pants hugged his narrow hips and long thighs. Gold rings covered three fingers, and his white designer sneakers were improbably spotless.
At first glance, he looked expensive.
The second glance revealed small fractures. His lean body bordered on thin beneath the clothes. A scattering of irritated marks showed near one temple. His jaw moved occasionally as though he were chewing something that was not there. His eyes were beautiful but unnaturally bright, shifting between piercing concentration and restless distraction.
“You look like trouble travelin’ light, cher,” Darius said. His thick Cajun accent rolled slowly through the words, warm and musical despite the volume of the club.
Brandon leaned against the bar. “You look like trouble with a clothing allowance.”
Darius grinned. “Darius King.”
“Brandon.”
“Just Brandon?”
“Until the movies make me add a last name.”
Darius’s gaze traveled openly over him. He examined Brandon’s bare shoulders, the lean chest and smooth sides exposed by the muscle shirt, the strip of blond hair visible through its low arm opening, and the sun-browned length of his legs.
“Movies,” Darius repeated. “You act?”
“I’m going to.”
“Where?”
“Los Angeles.”
“Mais, you a long way from California.”
“I’m closer than I was yesterday.”
Darius laughed and touched Brandon’s hip as if rewarding him. The contact was light, but Brandon’s body responded. Darius noticed. “I know people out there,” he said. “Photographers. Casting people. Club promoters.”
“Everyone in a bar knows somebody.”
Darius removed his phone and opened photographs. In one, he stood beside a rapper Brandon recognized. In another, he posed backstage with two performers from a reality show. There were crowded parties, velvet ropes, expensive suites, and beautiful men with their arms around him.
“I put events together from here to Houston,” Darius said. “Used to do Atlanta too. I’m heading west tomorrow. Could carry you some of the way.”
Brandon heard Wade’s warning. A friendly stranger can still be dangerous.
Then Darius smiled at him as if he had discovered something rare.
“Maybe,” Brandon said.
Darius leaned closer. His scent was expensive cologne over warm skin and something faintly chemical. “Come wit’ me.”
“To Houston?”
Darius’s smile widened. “To the bathroom first.”
The restroom contained one locked stall, a cracked mirror, and bass vibrations strong enough to tremble through the metal partitions.
Darius backed Brandon against the wall and kissed him before the door had fully latched. His mouth was demanding and skilled. One hand caught Brandon’s jaw while the other slid through the open side of his muscle shirt, covering his chest. Brandon kissed him back, immediately aroused by the contrast between Darius’s polished appearance and the filthy surroundings. Darius moved with frantic confidence, grinding their bodies together as his mouth traveled down Brandon’s neck.
Then he removed a small plastic packet from his pocket.
Brandon recognized the crystalline fragments inside it.
Darius’s smile became conspiratorial. “Just enough to wake the devil.”
“I’m good.”
“You ain’t even tried it.”
“I don’t need drugs to have sex,” Brandon said massaging Darius’s cock through his pants.
“Nobody said need, baby.” Darius studied him, then shrugged. “More for me.”
He turned away long enough to snort two bumps. Brandon watched without approval, but the sight did not make him leave. Darius was beautiful, eager, and already reaching for him again. Whatever objection Brandon felt was less immediate than the heat spreading through his body to his cock.
Darius kissed him harder. He opened Brandon’s shorts and pushed them down just far enough before dropping to his knees. Brandon braced one hand against the partition as Darius took Brandon’s cock into his mouth with enthusiastic skill.
Footsteps entered the restroom. Darius did not stop.
The danger sharpened everything. Brandon gripped Darius’s shoulders and watched himself in the cracked mirror: muscle shirt hanging open at the sides, shorts caught around his thighs, mouth parted and he tried not to make a sound as he shot his load into Darius’s mouth.
When the stranger left, Darius rose and kissed him, sharing his own load back with him.
“You crazy,” Darius whispered against his lips.
“You’re the one on your knees in a public bathroom.”
Darius laughed. “You liked me there.”
“I did.”
Darius claimed the hotel suite belonged to a promoter who owed him a favor. The hotel rose above Canal Street, its lobby all polished marble and brass. Their room had a king-size bed, a wet bar, and a wall of mirrors opposite the windows.
Darius ordered room service without looking at the prices. He called three people while they waited, speaking rapidly in his rolling Cajun accent about deposits, guest lists, and a Houston party scheduled for the following night.
When the food arrived, Darius barely touched it. Brandon ate while Darius loaded some crystal into a glass pipe and took a hit..
“You want some now?” Darius asked, blowing the smoke toward Brandon.
Brandon shook his head. “I’m already having fun.”
Darius came to him, took the sandwich from his hand, and dropped it onto the plate. “Not yet you ain’t.”
He kissed Brandon and stripped off his muscle shirt. His hands moved across Brandon’s chest and smooth stomach as if he were assessing something he intended to own. Darius turned him toward the mirror. Their reflections stood beneath the low golden light: Darius tall, dark, and elegant behind Brandon’s smaller blond body.
“You gonna photograph real pretty,” Darius said against his ear. “That face gets attention. This here keeps it.” His hands squeezed Brandon’s ass.
Darius peeled off his silk shirt. His naked torso was beautiful and slightly alarming. He was lean enough that his ribs showed faintly beneath smooth brown skin. His chest and stomach were hairless, his muscles narrow and sharply defined. A small tattoo of a crown marked one hip.
Brandon turned as Darius opened his leather pants.
When Darius stepped out of them, Brandon stared.
His cock was enormous—the largest Brandon had seen in person. It rose heavily from the dark hair at his groin, thick enough that Brandon’s practiced confidence faltered.
Darius noticed. “Got quiet on me, cher.”
Brandon wrapped one hand around him and could not close his fingers completely. “Jesus.”
Darius’s eyes darkened with pleasure. “You can take it.”
He kissed Brandon and forced him back toward the bed. The meth appeared to sharpen his desire into something predatory. His hands were everywhere, stripping off Brandon’s shorts, gripping his ass, turning him into whatever position Darius wanted next.
Brandon could have slowed him down. He did not. He enjoyed the uncontrolled hunger. He enjoyed being the object Darius could not stop touching. After Rafael’s deliberate tenderness and Wade’s startled vulnerability, Darius’s appetite felt dangerous in a way that fed Brandon’s vanity.
Darius rimmed Brandon’s ass until Brandon was trembling and begging to be fucked, then pulled him from the bed and positioned him in front of the mirror.
“Hands on the glass,” he ordered.
Brandon obeyed.
Darius stood behind him, dark skin against pale gold, one hand closing around Brandon’s hip. He spread lube on his cock and Brandon’s hole quickly but carefully. When Darius began inching his enormous cock into him, Brandon’s breath fogged the mirror. The size demanded adjustment. Brandon pressed into the glass, jaw tightening as the sharp intensity gave way to fullness.
Darius watched his face in the reflection. “You good?”
Brandon nodded.
“Say it.”
“I’m good. Fuck me.”
Darius pulled back and drove forward again.
His rhythm built quickly, hard and animalistic. He took Brandon from behind while staring into the mirror, watching every reaction cross Brandon’s face. One hand remained clamped around Brandon’s waist. The other slid into his blond hair and pulled his head back until their eyes met in the reflection.
“That’s what you wanted,” Darius said. The Cajun cadence thickened as his control thinned.
Brandon’s body moved with each thrust. He watched Darius behind him: copper-tipped hair damp against his forehead, smooth chest glistening, jaw tense, dark eyes burning with chemically amplified focus.
Brandon reached back and gripped Darius’s thigh, encouraging him rather than resisting. Darius responded by taking him harder, holding him in place by his hair. Brandon’s reflection looked exposed and overwhelmed. He liked it. He liked being the reason Darius’s breath came apart.
Darius picked up the pipe again without stopping and offered it to Brandon.
Brandon shook his head, and grunted “No. Just keep fucking me with…”
Darius laughed and took a few hits, blowing each one into Branndon’s face.
Brandon turned his attention back to the mirror and used Darius’s relentless rhythm for his own pleasure. When Brandon came, shooting rope after rope of thick cum onto the mirror, Darius held him upright by the waist and hair, forcing him to watch himself lose control.
Darius continued long after Brandon’s legs began to shake. Meth seemed to stretch his need beyond ordinary satisfaction. Brandon let him, excited by the endurance and attention even as a quiet part of him understood that Darius was chasing something Brandon could never provide.
When Darius finally finished, he folded over Brandon’s back and pressed his face into Brandon’s neck.
For a few seconds, he was still.
Then he released Brandon, reached for the pipe, and began again.
Brandon returned to the bed, face down, ass up, and waited for Darius to pound his hole again.
They left for Houston before noon in a black SUV Darius said belonged to a business partner.
Darius wore oversized sunglasses, a white designer muscle shirt cut deeply down both sides, slim black jeans, and spotless sneakers. He had not slept. His fingers drummed against the steering wheel, and his jaw worked constantly.
Brandon wore a navy muscle shirt that exposed his smooth ribs and fitted denim shorts. His duffel rested on the back seat. He kept his phone in his pocket and Rafael’s remaining money hidden inside one shoe.
For the first hour, Darius was magnetic. He told stories about famous performers behaving badly backstage and promoters losing thousands of dollars over bottles of the wrong champagne. His Cajun accent made every story more theatrical, the vowels stretching lazily even when his words came too fast.
Outside Lake Charles, he stopped for gas.
“My card got froze,” Darius said after returning from the pump.
“What happened?”
“Fraud alert. Happens when I travel.”
Brandon hesitated.
Darius lowered his sunglasses. “I’m carryin’ you to Houston, ain’t I?”
Brandon paid for the gas.
An hour later, Darius asked for eighty dollars to reserve a photographer. “He in Houston tonight,” Darius explained. “Malcolm Voss. Good man. He shoot you right, agencies gonna notice.”
Brandon searched the name and found a professional portfolio. Darius appeared in photographs with Malcolm from three years earlier. “Why can’t he wait until your card works?”
“Because that ain’t how business works, cher.”
Wade’s warning returned. Keep your money where no one sees it.
Brandon gave Darius the cash anyway. Darius kissed him at the next rest stop and promised he had made the right choice.
Back on the interstate, Darius took Brandon’s hand and placed it on his lap. “Take it out,” he said.
“You’re driving.”
“I know what I’m doin’.”
Brandon opened Darius’s jeans. Darius’s giant black cock pushed free, already hard and too large to ignore. Brandon looked from it to the highway. “This is a terrible idea.”
Darius smiled behind his sunglasses. “Ain’t stopped you before.”
That was true.
Brandon unfastened his seat belt and leaned across the center console. Darius placed one hand on Brandon’s blond hair as Brandon took as much of the giant cock into his mouth as he could.
The SUV drifted slightly. Brandon pulled back. “Watch the road.”
“You watch what you doin’.” Darius chuckled and pushed Brandon’s head back down.
The danger intensified the excitement. Trucks passed only feet away while Darius gripped Brandon’s blond hair and guided his movements. Tears welled in Brandon’s eyes as he chocked and struggled on the cock. Brandon could feel Darius’s thigh tighten beneath one hand and hear the change in his breathing above the rush of the highway. Darius finally shuddered behind the wheel, one hand gripping Brandon and the other clamped around the steering wheel as he shot his load down Brandon’s throat.
The Houston party occupied an old warehouse east of downtown. Music shook the metal walls. Men crowded the dance floor beneath red lasers and artificial fog. Some wore expensive club clothes. Others wore harnesses, underwear, or nothing at all.
Darius transformed the moment they entered. People embraced him, kissed his cheeks, and shouted his name. For a while, Brandon believed everything again. Darius really was known here.
A heavyset Latino promoter in an embroidered black jacket hugged Darius and looked Brandon over appreciatively. Darius introduced him as “the next face outta L.A.” Two photographers took Brandon’s picture. A bartender gave him drinks without charging.
Darius led him through a black curtain into a rear room. Mattresses lined the walls beneath dim red bulbs. Naked men kissed, sucked and fucked in shifting groups, their bodies shining with sweat. The air smelled of sex, smoke, lubricant, and chemicals.
A naked man held a pipe toward Darius. Darius accepted it. Then he offered it to Brandon. Brandon shook his head.
“Still don’t need it?”
“Still don’t.”
Darius grinned. “Suit yourself.”
He used it and pulled Brandon into the crowd.
The sex that followed was less an encounter than a current. Hands moved over Brandon from every direction. Strangers praised his body, kissed his neck, pushed the muscle shirt from his shoulders, and passed him between them. Darius remained near him at first—gripping his waist, biting his shoulder, pulling him back whenever another man held him too long.
Brandon surrendered to the room’s animal energy.
Darius pulled Brandon’s shorts down roughly and fucked him again against the wall, one hand tangled in Brandon’s hair while other men watched. Brandon met every rough movement, excited by the audience and by Darius’s territorial hunger. At some point he felt a sharp, burning sensation as Darius sprinkled some meth onto his huge cock and fucked it into Brandon.
“Hey, what the-” Brandon tried to say but Darius covered his mouth and pressed him into the hall, fucking him harder and harder until felt Brandon’s body relax as the drugs took hold.
Gradually, Darius’s attention fractured. His eyes moved past Brandon toward the pipe, the strangers, and the promise of another sensation. He repeated the same touches without noticing Brandon’s responses. He disappeared into the shifting bodies, returned long enough to bite Brandon’s shoulder and thrust against him, then vanished again.
Brandon fell onto a dirty mattress and felt his clothes being pulled off of him. He lay on the mattress, naked and fingering his ass with need.
Three men had been watching.
The first was a Black man in his mid-thirties, tall and massively muscled, with midnight-dark skin, a shaved head, and a close beard outlining a hard, handsome face. He was naked except for a black leather harness stretched across a chest thick with muscle and short, tightly curled hair. Sweat gleamed over his shoulders and down the deep channel of his spine.
Beside him stood a stocky Latino man near forty, shorter but almost as broad. Dense black hair covered his heavy chest, round stomach, thick arms, and powerful thighs. His beard was full and damp around his grinning mouth. A red jockstrap framed his substantial erection and left his hairy ass bare.
The third man was younger, perhaps twenty-eight, white and lean, with a shaved head, a narrow face, pale green eyes, and long limbs covered in fine brown hair. He was completely naked. A silver ring pierced one nipple, flashing whenever the red light crossed him.
All three looked at Brandon as though Darius had abandoned something valuable.
The large man in the harness approached first, kneeling over Brandon.
“You still playing, pretty boy?” he asked. His voice was deep enough to vibrate through the music.
Brandon was naked, flushed, desperate for cock and wet with sweat, his blond hair disordered from Darius’s grip. Red light moved over the defined lines of his chest and stomach, while the fine blond treasure trail beneath his navel pointed down toward his hard cock. His skin still carried the marks of mouths and hands, and his hole felt empty and needy. “Yes,” he said. “Can you fuck me?”
The man in the harness caught Brandon by the neck and pulled him close. The kiss was brutal and immediate. His beard scraped Brandon’s mouth while his broad hands closed around Brandon’s ass, lifting and spreading him without hesitation. The man smelled of leather and sweat. Brandon pressed against him and felt the hard planes of his chest crush the air from his lungs.
The stocky man moved behind Brandon.
A hairy arm wrapped around Brandon’s waist. A bearded mouth found the side of his neck, biting lightly before the man’s tongue soothed the mark. Brandon was compressed between them—smooth, lean, and pale against two heavier bodies. One set of hands kneaded his ass while another traveled over his chest and pinched his nipples hard enough to make him gasp into the first man’s mouth.
The lean man watched from only a few feet away, stroking himself.
Brandon saw the hunger in all three faces and felt something inside him open to meet it.
The large man broke the kiss and looked into Brandon’s face. “Get on your knees.”
Brandon obeyed, positioning himself between them.
The stocky man’s hairy hand remained at the back of his neck as the lean man stepped forward. Brandon took the black man’s sizable cock into his mouth while using his hand on the Mexican’s shorter, thicker dick. A third pair of hands moved over his shoulders, chest, and face, directing him from one body to the next as he sucked on all three of their cocks.
Praise came from above him in broken fragments.
“Pretty little thing.”
“Look at that mouth.”
“Give him more.”
Brandon loved it. He loved being surrounded by hard bodies and urgent voices. He loved that they expected pleasure from him and assumed he could provide it. The Paradise Room had taught him how much power existed in being wanted, but here the wanting had no limits. Every hand that reached for him confirmed that he was still valuable, still desirable, still capable of becoming the center of any room.
The man in the harness grabed Brandon’s hair and spit on his face then commanded. “Get on your hands and knees boy.”
Brandon obeyed, positioning himself on the mattress then looked back over his shoulder.
The stocky man had removed his jockstrap. His heavy 8 inch erection rose from thick black hair, his broad body made larger by the red shadows.
Hands guided him down onto the mattress. The vinyl covering was warm and slick beneath his chest. Someone lifted his hips. Another man knelt in front of him, spreading his thighs so Brandon’s face rested between them.
For a moment, Brandon occupied the center of all three men.
The stocky man worked his cock in him from behind, slowly enough to allow Brandon’s body to accept the thick pressure. Brandon’s fingers tightened against the hairy thighs beside his head. The man in front threaded both hands through Brandon’s blond hair and guided Brandon’s mouth toward his cock while the large man in the harness knelt beside them, gripping Brandon’s erection.
The first hard thrust drove Brandon forward. He moaned around the man in his mouth. The sound excited all of them. The stocky man gripped Brandon’s narrow hips and established a heavy, relentless rhythm. His hairy stomach struck Brandon’s ass with every movement. In front of him, the lean man used Brandon’s mouth with matching urgency, holding him by the hair but easing whenever Brandon needed air. The muscular man’s fist moved over Brandon in time with the bodies using him from either end.
Brandon surrendered to the rhythm.
The pleasure became indistinguishable from the loss of control. His body moved because other bodies moved it. His breath came when the man in front allowed him to lift his mouth. His hips were held at the angle the man behind preferred. Even his approaching climax belonged partly to the large hand controlling it.
And Brandon loved that too.
The man fucking him from behind finished first, folding his broad, hairy body over Brandon’s back with a broken groan as he came inside him. He remained there for several breaths before withdrawing.
The large man in the harness immediately took his place. He was larger and more controlled, his muscular body covering Brandon’s almost completely as he entered him with his thick 8 inch cock. Brandon felt the leather straps scrape his back each time the man leaned forward. One powerful arm locked around Brandon’s waist and lifted him partly from the mattress.
The lean man released Brandon’s mouth so he could breathe.
Brandon cried out.
The man behind him drove deeper, holding Brandon against his chest. Thick muscle and coarse body hair pressed along Brandon’s spine. The lean man kissed Brandon while the stocky man moved around them, offering his mouth and hands wherever there was room.
They passed Brandon between them without ever fully letting him go.
By the time the second man came inside him, Brandon’s thighs were trembling. Sweat ran down his face and chest. His lips felt swollen, his skin oversensitive, his body exhausted but still hungry for the next touch.
The lean man rolled Brandon onto his back. Unlike the other two, he climbed over Brandon and kissed him before positioning himself between Brandon’s legs. His pale green eyes remained fixed on Brandon’s face while he shoved his thin, but long 9 inch cock in him.
The eye contact should have made the encounter more personal. Instead, Brandon realized the man could be a serial killer for all he knew. The realization surfaced and disappeared beneath another surge of pleasure. Brandon wrapped his legs around the man’s waist and pulled him deeper. The others knelt on either side, their hands traveling over Brandon’s chest and stomach. One gripped his blond hair. The other closed a fist around him again.
The three men watched his face as his control finally collapsed. Brandon came across his own stomach, arching between their bodies while the lean man continued moving inside him. Pleasure tore a cry from his throat. Hands held him down, held him open, held him together until the trembling passed.
The lean man shot his load moments later and lowered himself over Brandon, breathing against his neck.
For several seconds, all four men remained tangled on the mattress. Then the room shifted. The stocky man kissed Brandon once and moved toward someone else. The muscular man in the harness followed another naked body through the red light. The lean man withdrew and disappeared without a word. They left Brandon exactly where they had found him.
Brandon lay on his back, sweaty, sore, covered in and filled with cum, and totally euphoric. Red light pulsed across his naked body. Around him, men continued coupling, changing partners, and reaching for the next available sensation.
Across the room, Darius appeared briefly between two strangers. His eyes moved past Brandon toward the pipe in someone else’s hand. He showed no recognition that Brandon had spent the last hour beneath three men.
Then he disappeared again.
By the time Brandon finally rose from the mattress, his muscles felt loose and unreliable. Sweat cooled across his skin. He found his shorts beneath another man’s shoe and pulled them on without underwear.
Brandon waited beside the dance floor for nearly an hour.
At first, he was annoyed. Then concerned. Then embarrassed by the concern.
He checked the restroom, rear room, loading area, and parking lot.
The black SUV was gone.
So was Darius.
Brandon reached for his phone.
His pocket was empty.
He hurried to the room where Darius had left the duffel. It was gone too. His clothes, charger, headshots, identification, and Rafael’s remaining money had disappeared with it.
Brandon borrowed a stranger’s phone and called his own number.
Voicemail.
He called Darius.
The same.
By sunrise, he had pieced together enough of the truth. The SUV belonged to someone at the party who expected Darius to deliver money. Malcolm Voss had not agreed to a photo session. Darius had sent Brandon’s eighty dollars to a dealer. One partygoer admitted seeing him trade a phone and several pieces of identification for cash and meth.
Near the warehouse exit, Brandon found Rafael’s business card lying facedown on the concrete. Either it had fallen from the duffel or Darius had removed it and left it behind. Brandon chose to believe Darius had been unable to take absolutely everything.
The possibility did not make him forgive Darius. An explanation was not an absolution. Brandon slipped Rafael’s card into his remaining pocket and walked away.
He spent the morning behind a twenty-four-hour diner three blocks from the warehouse. A tired waitress allowed him to use the restaurant phone. Brandon knew only two numbers from memory. His mother’s. And Wade’s.
He dialed Wade first. The phone rang once. Brandon hung up.
He imagined Wade’s quiet voice asking what happened. He imagined admitting that he had ignored every warning within hours of receiving it.
Pride was a poor shelter, but for the moment it was the only one he could tolerate.
He swept the diner’s sidewalk and carried boxes from a delivery truck in exchange for breakfast and twenty dollars. The waitress found an old backpack in her car. A cook contributed a faded gray muscle shirt. Brandon bought a prepaid phone from a convenience store and spent the afternoon reporting his identification stolen.
By evening, he had made another cardboard sign.
WEST
He stood near the entrance to Interstate 10 wearing borrowed clothes and carrying almost nothing. Darius had promised him opportunity and now he had nothing. Fucking asshole.
A minivan slowed on the shoulder ahead. Brandon tightened his grip on the sign.
This time, before approaching, he photographed the license plate.
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