Don't Go L.J. Breedlove (books to read fiction TXT) 📖

tossed him a bottle of water. Ryan twisted the top off and took a couple of swallows.

“I’m going to be in the Crow’s Nest,” Cage said, referring to a secret space the newsroom had created on the third floor. It was used mostly by independent journalists covering the protests who needed a place to stay for a night. Or hide out for a day. Cage had set up a computer editing station up there finally. “Buzz me if you need to,” he said. “I’ll keep an ear out.”

“Thanks.”

Ryan sat at Emily’s workstation and used the time to read Eyewitness News online, answer a few emails, and edit a letter to the editor which he sent on to Emily’s queue. He heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and he got up to let McShane through the gate.

“Come on back to my office,” he said. “It’s private. Well sound-wise at least. I’ve cursed the editor who thought these offices should be made of glass.”

McShane looked around the newsroom with interest and settled comfortably into the sling chair in Ryan’s office. As usual, he seemed to dominate the space he was in, to own that space. Ryan had studied him at the parties to see how he did that. When he became editor, and interacted with McShane on campus, he realized the Provost used the same techniques to dominate meetings as well.

McShane was studying him now. He broke the silence. “So Black is coming for me, and he wants your help,” he summarized. “He is right, you know. A front-page Folio piece would be extremely well read.”

Ryan shrugged. “You’ve known that could happen your whole career,” he observed. “Either you have a strategy to refute it, or you just don’t care. Or, my personal take, the danger of it happening gives an extra edge to the party.”

The man across from him grinned. “We’re more alike than you realize,” he said. “I hope you plan to go into academia. You’ll have my job in 30 years.”

Ryan laughed, then realized he was serious. Huh. “But no, that story won’t be assigned on my watch. And most certainly not to help Black. Black is out to get you. Why? And what really happened that night?”

McShane pulled in the dominance, and Ryan watched to see how he did that, and then he was just another administrator with a problem. “Let’s start with that night. What do you remember?”

“About that night specifically?” Ryan asked. “Things were a bit blurry that fall.” Losing Teresa had sent him farther into a tailspin. He considered the question.

Chapter 13

2 a.m., Saturday, Nov. 24, 2017, at a Portland private club — Ryan had started out as he usually did, at Embers. It was a Portland icon, long past its heyday, but Ryan liked it. He’d end up somewhere else eventually. The real question was who would he end up with and what would they do then?

See? He thought, it’s all about the who, what, when, where, and the oh so fun, how. He avoided thinking about the why, because that was a downer. And he didn’t do downers. He wore black leather pants, and a sleeveless black T, cut to show his tattoos: a sleeve and then the dragon peeking out from his shoulder blade. It made people want to pull off his shirt to see the rest of it. Which of course was the point. One of the points.

He was dancing with a woman — older, in her 40s he thought — who had a fine body under a skin-tight red dress and hungry eyes. He knew her as Ruby, they’d played together before. He thought they might do well together tonight. He grinned at her, happy to be moving to the music, a pounding, pulsing piece. He was happy to be part of the crush of bodies where he didn’t have to think and the dragon lurking in his brain was at bay.

Like the dragon on his shoulder.

A man cut in, not to dance with Ruby, but with him. Ryan didn’t mind. He liked sex, all the aspects of it, the sweat on the skin, the taste of salt, the movement of body against body, the pleasure. The shape of the body? He shrugged. Sex was a Taijitu circle, the yin and yang curled against each other.

This man? He knew this man, not just from the private clubs and parties, but from his other life. From the university. And he didn’t like him. He’d had a class with him just last term, as a matter of fact. Teresa had not been impressed, and her arguments were solid, he had thought. He had written a paper that incorporated feminist thought because of her arguments just for the fun of it. Professor Ian Black had not been amused. But honors seminars were P/NP for that reason.

“Professor,” Ryan said, looking wistfully after Ruby. He liked her.

“I’ve seen you in the clubs and afterwards,” Ian Black said, shouted really. He was not a bad dancer, Ryan acknowledged.

“I’m not hard to find,” Ryan said, non-committal. He’d been a part of the scene for six years, hard-core probably three, maybe four. Well depended upon your definition of hard-core, he guessed. His first sex party had been five years ago. He’d been 16.

He hadn’t noticed Black before. If he had, he wouldn’t have taken a class from him. Not one he shared with Teresa, at any rate.

“I’m headed out to one you might find amusing,” Black had said. And Ryan had been wasted enough to go.

Ryan had considered it a good party. Good people to dance with, all the coke he wanted, and a high-quality open bar. So far, he’d been just a tourist. Watching. He liked to watch. And, at this party, a lot of people wanted watchers, so it was working out. Black had not been clingy, thank the Lord, because there was just something off there. Black was risking a lot by including a student in his games, whatever they were. But Ruby had shown up