MLR Press Authors' Blog » amber green

Golden Boys reviewed by D.H. Starr

mlrnet — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 19:07:06 +0000

Amber Green’s GOLDEN BOYS : Smart Ass 2 – Pressure Point reviewed at D.H. Starr – Book Reviews
“At once sweet, steamy, and written tightly around an exciting plot, The Golden Boys is a read not to be missed.”

Smart Ass: Close Quarters reviewed at Naughty in the Backseat

mlrnet — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 05:01:24 +0000

Amber Green’s Turner and Turner: One Good Turn from Smart Ass: Close Quarters reviewed at Naughty in the Backseat

Blood Lust Anthology by J.P. Bowie, Amber Green & L.Picaro

Blog Admin — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:20:00 +0000

Title	Blood Lust Anthology
Author	J.P. Bowie, Amber Green, L.Picaro
ISBN#	978-1-934531-56-3(print) 978-1-934531-66-2(ebook)
Release Date	July 2009
Cover Artist	Deana C. Jamroz
Paperback:	212 pages
Price::	$14.99(print) $5.99(ebook)

Amazon and B&N print editions coming soon

When the lust for blood and passion overwhelms where does a vampire find satisfaction?

Vampire Dreams by J.P. Bowie, tells of an author suffering from writer’s block finds inspiration for his vampire novel in the arms of a mysterious young man – or is it all a dream?

In More Than Memories by Amber Green, Dick is an ass; Harry’s anal–obviously, they’re made for one another. But scruples, and an unscrupulous vampire, come between them. What’s a ghost with a geek-fetish to do?

Bloodlust by L.Picaro offers a tale of a dystopic future. Noah discovers the reality of vampires. In order to save a friend, he is forced to trust the vampire, Adrian. A dark future awaits them both if they are unable to trust one another in order to stop a rogue vampire who sees humans as nothing more than food to toy with and sex as a way to gain immense strength.

**********************************

Chapter One

Life is the ordinary expression of magic, and much of what gets called magic is simply an unexpected expression of life. Before I caught on to that concept, the great adventurers who filled my boyhood reading and dreaming hours were magic-seeking archaeologists. I wanted to be one so badly, I stepped out onto the back stoop on a bitter-cold starry night and offered my soul for the chance.

Aunt Bella rushed out and swung a soup ladle at me, screaming at me to cancel the trade subito! Before some power agreed to it!

I grinned, ducked the arc of dishwater, and skipped out of reach.
Aunt Bella had come to stay with us the week her son and my dad and all their stockbroker buddies jumped out of the top windows of the Empire State Building. She spent her hoarded dimes on the books I begged for, jackanapes that I was. Adoring her did not keep me from trying her temper at frequent intervals. Usually, I got away with it.
Not this time. She chased me down and locked a sudsy hand on my collar. Despite both of us being coatless in the snow, she dragged me to the church on the corner, where she begged red-faced Father Patrick to explain my peril.

“You again, Dickins?” He boxed my ear, not quite hard enough to knock me down.

I dropped anyway, to get the sympathy. No dice. In mid-drop, pinching fingers caught my ear.

While I scrambled to get my feet under me, he bent to my painfully stretched ear and hissed, “I’m sayin’ this once, me boy, and once only: being half-dago with a dago nanny is no excuse to act like an iggerent heathen!”

For punishment, he assigned me an hour a night to study ancient Greek under his eye. To his astonishment, I ate it with two spoons and begged for more. He was the best teacher I ever had. But I never forgave him for insulting my aunt.

After the war, long after the war, when the army finally said where I’d been buried, Aunt Bella was the one who trekked to my grave and said a novena for me. Until she came, I was nailed to the place with spikes of rage. She freed me. After all I’d done, she freed me.

So naturally, I couldn’t leave her alone to face her old age. I did my best to take care of her.

Since she passed on, I’ve taken care of my own needs. Yes, the same needs that got me killed and posthumously excommunicated.

Which brings me to Harry.

The first time I haunted the Powers Museum of the Arcane, Harry was a Campbell’s Kid of an intern, or would have been if he was a blondie instead of having ginger-gold skin and shining black hair. Wearing him as a puppet was more entertaining than anything I’d done in ages.

He habitually tidied as he went, lining up his pencils and pens in precise order. I followed, disarranging whatever items were small enough for me to move. If I’d recently fed on echoes of a memory that some museum patron wouldn’t ever miss anyway, I could sometimes marshal enough energy to ease open the fastenings to the vacuum cleaner he ran over the carpets at closing time.

Harry at nineteen… I could spend forever drifting among those memories. Harry, trying to conceal his hard-on from the patrons. There they were, listening to his pabulum version of an Egyptian legend painted on a room divider. And there I was, feeding him the real story of how Horus waited until he knew his horny god-uncle Set was close by, then bent forward as if to pick a lettuce. Naked, flaunting his callipygian glory. Daring Set to fuck him.

An ass as beautiful as yours, Harry. Tempting the great power, the dazzler, Set the unstoppable.
Harry squirmed, then won the struggle to hold still and continue the cleanest possible version of the story in his austere Boston Brahmin accent.

Can you smell the muddy garden by the river, Harry? Rich with life, richer with death? No. Harry knew only Boston, where sunlight is a gift and the shadows chill. I fed him memories of the desert: stark sunlight, soothing shadows, and wind dry enough to do more damage than the blasting heat. I took him from the furnace of the open sands to the truest refuge there, a garden in the early morning.

Set comes to the garden, Harry. Setekh, the polite ones call him. Horus isn’t that kind. He’s god enough to know that when he comes into his power, he’ll have the strength to challenge Set. He’s smart enough to be afraid of his god-uncle, but not sufficiently smart to be sufficiently afraid. Instead, he pretends he doesn’t know Set is there, doesn’t know Set wants his ass; he bends over to flaunt what Set can’t have.
Harry broke a sweat, gulped, and explained the hieroglyphs he’d painted himself, there in the reeds behind Horus.

But this is Setekh, the mighty one. He takes the dare.I searched my library of memories, personal and stolen alike, and fed Harry a particularly intense reliving of the morning Nigel was “surprised” in a Cambridge fern garden by a randy, long-tormented groundskeeper.

Harry mentally recited the text of the Rosetta Stone. While answering questions. While looking and sounding utterly academic. And while fighting to oust me from his head.
Nobody can oust me when that distracted. Or nobody could in those days.
When the tour finally ended, he ran for the crapper. But I intercepted him, taking over the body just long enough to walk him over to the next tour group.

He wondered if anyone would be able to see me, if he did force me out.

No worries, Harry. I’m only visible in dim light, no more than moonlight. And, natch, even people who see me don’t really notice me.

Even people who could hear me perfectly from inside pretended they didn’t. And there’s where Harry was different. After the first day he’d surprised me by noticing my presence in his mind, by recognizing my essentially separate thoughts among his own, he had fascinated me. I dug among the roots of his thoughts, tracing them to those deep sensory pools from which myths emerge. I took his most occult longings, and I gave them words. I rode him while he worked, whispering smut-driven stories of buccaneers and buttocks, of pirates and piercings, felons and floggings.

Some people find pain quite exciting. For others, nothing titillates like imagined pain, the stinging burn that vanishes in a blink. With me, he didn’t have to worry about the consequences of an actual figging. I would feed him ideas and sensations that tightened his scrotum, and then I would leave him to face his real-world duties with aches and memories he could barely sort through.

Riding him was so much fun.

His work faltered under my attentions, but his popularity didn’t. I gave him my memories to draw on for answers to the most wide-ranging questions. All modesty aside, I had devoted my life and most of my afterlife to understanding the kinds of objects on display here.

He could have coasted through his studies and work alike on the information I gave him. Nigel, my favorite ride just before the turn of the millennium, had taken first-class honors at Cambridge with it. Harry soaked up my full store of knowledge, catalogued and categorized it in ways I had never considered, and within weeks launched his further studies from there.

Keeping up with one of the living had never been so exhausting for me. Or so exhilarating.

I took him as my anchor, drifting where he went. At class, he let me challenge his professors, seeing which of them leaned forward and dived into a question, finding the deepest wells of each one’s particular passion, and pumping it for information that left half the class mystified and the other half fascinated.

Usually, I whispered the questions in Harry’s mind, and he repeated them aloud. Taking over the mouth muscles would result in a stammer as he and I fought over use of his mouth. Not that he wanted to fight me — guarding the finer muscles is just instinct. Like not inhaling water. Like clenching one’s nether gate at the intruder’s first touch.

At night in his bedroom, I took his greased hands and put one over his cockhead as the other pulled heat and pressure down his shaft, one hand following the other’s downward pull. Pull and release, pull and release. Down, down, down. I made him feel he was driving cock first through an endless tight channel. Down, down, down — to a crashing climax.

His balls loved me. And that was my only hope. If he denied me anchorage, I was doomed.

By now he would be…twenty-two? Twenty-five? For all I knew, he could be thirty. Time kept slipping by. Since leaving him, I’d been too desperately strained to mark something as innocuous as the passage of time, but years matter to the living.

Most of my remaining memories are interlinked with those we forged in those seven shared months. To put it bluntly, what I hadn’t connected to Harry, I had lost.

In those brief months, living pearls hummed in my presence, loudly enough the patrons sometimes heard them. I taught Harry to listen for the subtle purr of living amber as well and the mournful whisper of living jet. He’d already heard of whispering jet and legends of how petrified wood groans to warn of impending peril. I taught him the truth behind those legends and sent him sifting other legends, other disguised truths.

Only in retrospect did I realize how happy I was.

Seven months…

Then one day, after I hadn’t followed him to class, he came in the back door of the museum with an oddly shadowy aura. He shook off the cold April rain and immediately afterward shook off my attempt to sidle into his mind. I tried again, but he shut the door on me.

Sometimes a guy thinks he can keep me out of his head like he’d keep out a whisper. He’ll turn up the radio, stopper his ears, even chant the Yale fight song. None of that works. Guys with meditation practice are more effective. They get where they can clench the mental muscles and hold me out. For a while. I liked showing them I could outwait them.

Harry had extraordinary discipline for someone so perceptive. Even so, I knew I could outwait him. I could outwait anyone.

But I had an uncomfortable feeling about how hard I’d been riding Harry in the past few days. So I mustered all my energies, which were not skimpy then, and wrote a question in the coatroom dust. Have I offended you?

He blew out most of the writing with a single huff, glanced at the clock, and murmured, “I haven’t been here three minutes, Dick. You normally need at least ten to piss me off.”

He pulled his notebook from his pocket and jotted a quick note about the dusting that wasn’t getting done in here, and a note to check elsewhere. Then he strode through the museum, whistling something complicated and bouncy.

Drifting with him, I nibbled the echoes of his memories so he wouldn’t lose any of his actual memories. The human mind keeps memories by storing the original, making links between it and others, and storing echoes of the memory alongside each memory it links to. As the links multiply, a complex web develops so that remembering one thing can easily lead to remembering another.

Harry, a diligent student, took care to hook each new fact into the web of his delightfully interconnected memories. He had plenty of strong echoes he could effortlessly rebuild.

Even feeding on the echoes instead of going for the rich meat of a primary memory, I gradually gathered the energy to write again. Dust particles are light enough to knock about with little effort, but controlling how they fall is tedious work.

Once I had the moxie up, I had to wait for him to settle in place long enough to let me find a patch of dust he’d immediately see and then write. W’s wrong?

“Doesn’t have to be anything wrong, Dick. I got plans. Sometimes a guy does. Give me a break, will ya?”

Something had clicked in his mind. He’d made a decision and didn’t want me interfering.

I backed away. Let him think I was sulking. One thing about being dead: it teaches a fellow patience.

He locked up at nine-thirty, well after dark, buttoned up his raincoat, and strode east, down unfamiliar streets.

I followed, anchored to him. The neighborhood deteriorated, losing streetlights in favor of neon beer signs. The tourist herds thinned out. Women wearing bits of shiny elastic leaned against the lampposts, their clear plastic raincoats beaded with sequin-like raindrops.

Harry abruptly turned left, into a garishly lit doorway.

Two men stopped him in the anteroom, checked his ID, accepted the money he handed them, and clipped a strip of plastic about his wrist. “Blue bracelet means no beer, kid. Don’t try to swap with nobody.”

“Gotcher.” His voice had gone rough, lost its Brahmin accent. This one word was pure Boston wharf rat.

I slipped past his defenses while he was dazzled by the sudden assault of noise, smoke, and erratically flashing lights. On a central stage, strobe-lit androgynous starvelings beat on various odd pieces of metal while equally emaciated “dancers” jumped up and down in place.

Aunt Bella had called jazz the devil’s twitching fit, not music at all. She would have firmly believed this place was some corner of Hell.

Harry immediately loathed the place; loathed the possibility of meeting anyone from school; loathed the stench of chemicals, stale sweat, rock-candy, and dirt weed; loathed the cacophony pummeling him.

Yet he’d come here… Why? I prodded for answers, and his face burned. He’d come to find a guy, to get laid.

Get out of here, Harry. Pay attention to your instincts. Harry withdrew his thoughts from me, but the uncertainty remained, a haze. He wove through the edge of the crowd, fully aware of the musky, just-laid scent some of the dancers wore, and went to the back wall. There, someone with unquestionable taste had placed a blue neon outline of a urinal over the opening to one corridor and a pink neon outline of a toilet stool over another.

Harry grimaced at the urinal sign and slunk down the dank, narrow corridor. Just beyond the men’s room, he stopped at an unmarked door and knocked twice. Twice more. Then twice more.

An unshaven redheaded guy who stank of burnt metal and disease opened the door a crack. “Whatcher need, dude? The can out of butt-wipes?”

Holy shit! I knew this place. I hadn’t been to The Rat’s Ass in eight or ten years. The dance hall in the front had been rebuilt. But I knew the layout. I knew the feel. I knew the dangers, too. Red there would take a bite of any candy that came through this door, and he didn’t care who caught what he had.

I took over Harry’s body, turned him around, and hustled him through the middle of the crowd, out the door, past the smirking door guards, out the other door, and onto the rainy street. “Y-y-you are no-n-not f-fucking anyone who w-would come l-looking for you here!”

Harry tried to speak, but I kept my grip on his body. He settled for a mental whine. What am I supposed to do, post an ad on a dating site? Horny teenager wants to know what it’s all about? I’d get cherry-popped all over the Internet. I’d never live it down.

His mental imagery confused me, but I seized on the fear he tried to hide — that the back room at the Ass would have cameras too. Then I tried to sound reasonable. “Ha-a-rry, y-you have to f-find someone who w-will treat y-you r-r-right.”

Let me go! I’d never felt him so angry. For such a mild fellow, he had some powerful rage buried there.

I wrestled my alternatives and let him thrust me out.

He coughed, and spoke into his hands. “Get real, Dick. I’m supposed to expect flowers, maybe? A play and a bottle of wine? Chocolates? I’m a guy.”

But he kept walking down the street, away from that hellhole.

I followed him, too far from any other anchor to find my way back to the museum alone.

He stopped dead, staring at the pavement. “That you?”

I merged with him, and he let me do it so I could look down into the black mirror of a puddle. All I saw was him, plump and angelic, with an orangish streetlight as his nimbus.

He recalled the vision that’d stopped him: me drifting behind him like some lost soul looking for an anchor, any anchor.

Me or the Milky Way. His curiosity sat up like an interested cat. “That’s what the Milky Way looks like?”

He didn’t know? Joe College, and he’d never seen the Milky Way? I showed it to him as I’d seen it most clearly, like the sheer layers of a ragged, glitter-spangled veil streaming in the wind among the stelae at Axum, the year I’d turned seventeen.

He stared, entranced. As thoroughly awestruck as I had been.

I dug among my memories for the treasures. That cold first night at the Ostia excavation, where I fell asleep over the journal my professor required and woke up wondering who’d slung a ladle of white ashes across the sky. Then the time I’d seen it as a photo-negative of the Nile flowing through the black-silk firmament.

“You’re a poet, Dick.” Harry shivered and headed briskly down the street. People who stare into mid-air with their mouths hanging open are targets, and a moving target is safer than a standing one.

I sniffed. Poetry is for queers.

“Quee-yahs,” he mocked softly. “And your point is?”

I laughed.

He laughed with me.

Surprise swirled through me. Pleasure. How long had it been since I’d laughed at anything but my own pranks? You’re one in ten thousand, Harry. Maybe one in a million. You deserve a lover who understands that, or at least who won’t treat you like a fellah to be used and thrown away.

“And where do you expect me to find someone like that? Before I go fucking crazy, I mean?”

If Erwin Crofts was still alive… If you can find me a telephone exchange that’s open at this hour, and if you don’t mind the operator getting an earful, I might be able to help.

“You do know I can dial a long-distance call from home, right? No operator needed.” He evaded a bony, desperate whore and kept walking, juggling alternatives I couldn’t discern. “You are for real offering to set me up with a blind date?”

I know a fellow who’d make sure you have all the fun you can handle. Without undue risk. “Man, I’ve seen your idea of fun. Perzeckly why should I trust you?”

He could go to The Rat’s Ass for an anonymous — he hoped — fuck, yet not trust me? I strung my anger through his nerve system, then jerked it tight. The cramp doubled him over.

“‘Kay, okay! We’ll do it your way.” He straightened up, glanced about, and lengthened his stride. “Fuck.”

? s ? s ?

He used the computer to find Erwin, who still lived in the same house in Connecticut, but who no longer had a four-digit telephone number. “Wait, Dick. This dude was your buddy in 1941? Supposing he’s mentally together enough to remember you, what makes you think he’ll believe you’re using my voice?”

This isn’t the first time I’ve contacted him since the war, Harry. He knows where to look for me and doesn’t mind traveling to do it.

I’d used blackmail, bribery, and blowjobs to pull Erwin’s ass out of Operation Barbarossa so he could be a faceless clerk in a nice, safe loot depot. I didn’t do all that because he was a good man, natch, or even because of the wickedness he accomplished with that agile tongue of his. I did it to spite a fellow who, unbeknownst to me, had already given his all for the Führer.
Erwin came to the US in forty-nine, smuggling a shipment of living opals I’d found for him. I helped him past customs, helped him find a market. He hadn’t really believed in me — in what I was — at the start of that trip. He’d had the rare gift of being able to communicate with me without speaking aloud and for a long time maintained the fiction he had developed a split personality and was arguing with some facet of himself. By the end of the trip, though, he believed.
I had trouble recognizing him now that his growl had become a quavering wheeze.
He hesitated before he admitted remembering me, but he said he — or his grandson — still ran an exclusive health club for gentlemen who require the personal services of other gentlemen. “Get him here by midnight, Dick. He must be at least eighteen to walk in the door, and no, I won’t trust you on that. Bring two forms of photo ID.”

He remembered me, all right.

Getting Harry to the train station took four minutes. I was afraid he’d pester me in the hour he had to wait for his train, but he just sat quietly with the don’t-bother-me look of the seasoned rider. A couple of the other riders held animated arguments with themselves, and one old woman sang softly in Yiddish to the ghost of a child huddled beside her, but most of them also sat stoically, neither seeing nor hearing anything beyond the scope of the expected.

At the other end of the line, we hesitated. Erwin was too old to come meet us at the train, after all. But a slender person of indeterminate gender wearing a fur-collared woman’s coat and purple spectacles held up a sheet of paper with my German alias written large on it.

Once I pointed him out, Harry approached him eagerly. “I’m…ah…”

“You’re Harry?” The gravelly voice jolted straight to Harry’s cock.

“Yeah.”

“I’m Ed. Follow me, please.”

Natch. What other option might possibly seem enticing? Ed opened the passenger door of a beat-up little four-cylinder car with a gas leak and tossed the paper into the back seat. He drove fast despite the rain, his eyes darting from mirror to mirror to road and narrowing at any other driver who dared encroach on his right of way. He kept the windows down, meaning rain-spattered cold drafts stole any warmth the heater generated.

Harry was too big to chill easily, especially with his raincoat about him, but he braced against the dash and the passenger door, his foot prodding the floorboards for the nonexistent second brake. “Talk to me.”

About what, Harry? “Hmm? Big Daddy usually shuts down the show at one in the middle of the week, but he said we’d pretend this is Friday.” Ed whipped the car left and hit his brakes while Harry clung to dash and door. “Here we are. I was told to warn you once we got to this point — it’s Gear Night.”

Harry paused, his hand on the door handle.

Leather gear, I whispered to him. Brace yourself. He frowned.

Sodomy covers a lot of bases, Harry. This is home plate to some. You might as well take a test run here, with umpires on duty. The anteroom was warm and felt tropical after the night air. An extraordinarily polite and lethal-looking man in a skintight T-shirt checked Harry’s ID, said his new haircut suited him, and opened a door. Air like locker-room steam rolled out.

Harry passed through to the coat-check room, which smelled of iron and sweat. The coat-check boy wore only a thick neck chain and a leather jockstrap.

I felt Harry’s skin itch as he broke a sweat. His hands shook slightly as he handed over his raincoat, then unbuttoned the dress shirt he’d worn to look civilized at the museum.

His white undershirt had a faint design, a snowy Japanese landscape with no lines thick enough to show through the dress shirt. I liked it.

The shirts glowed faintly purple for an instant, and I wondered if he’d been photographed.

“Sir may go on through.”

“Don’t I get a claim ticket?”

“No, sir. Big Daddy has trained this one to recognize which items came with which person.”

When he turned to hang Harry’s dress shirt, we saw fresh pink-and-red tiger stripes from mid-back to mid-thigh.

Harry recoiled.

Steady, Harry. I won’t get you into anything I can’t get you out of. The boy flexed his back, as if showing off the stripes. Did he get a whipping when he made a mistake? Did he make mistakes on purpose?

I’d heard a good whipping could make a guy come like an earthquake, but that wasn’t my game. Not the giving, and certainly not the getting.

Harry hurriedly opened the next door. Beyond was a red-lit room pulsing with a bass throb, thick with musk and testosterone.

Authors’ Meme: Amber Green

Amber Green — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:01:17 +0000

Meme
01. What are your nicknames?
FCD, Ambergris…I have rather a lot of them.

02. How does your hair look currently?
Dripping wet. But at least I got the cough syrup out.

03. What’s new in your life right now?
My novella, One Good Turn, came out a week ago in paperback (SMART ASS: Close Quarters) and not long before that in ebook form (TURNER & TURNER: One Good Turn). The ebook made the top ten sellers list at All Romance eBooks, which is gratifying, and has garnered a couple of nice reviews.

04. How many colours are you wearing now?
Two: beige and periwinkle. (Nothing matches periwinkle.)

05. Are you an introvert or extrovert?
I finally read an explanation of this dichotomy that made sense. Introverts are enervated by crowds, while extroverts are energized by them. I like being around people, but crowds exhaust me.

06. What was the last book you read?
Fearless Fourteen, by Janet Evanovich

08. Who is your favorite super hero?
Kitty Pryde

09. Is there anything that has made you happy these days?
Oh, my–yes! One thing stands out for being predictable, which makes me very happy. We stopped to pick up a wrist-corsage for my son’s Senior Prom date, and when my son went to the restroom both the shop ladies came over to me and heaped compliments on him–so thoughtful!–so polite!–such a NICE boy!
I also attended a Teen Poetry Slam this week. Only one girl showcased her ignorance. The others chose words with verve, precision and and no little sophistication. The MC also introduced me to a call-and-response word game he calls Staccato, which was fun. While we’re listing things that have made me happy, did I mention One Good Turn came out?

10. What’s your current obsession?
Writing.

11. How long does it take you to get ready in the morning?
Ready for what?

12. What websites do you visit daily?
My email, my crit group (RWU), a Charlaine Harris forum, and Pandora.

13. What was the last story you wrote?
I’m finishing up Turner & Turner: Turncoat, the sequel to Turner & Turner: One Good Turn.

14. What’s the last thing you laughed about?
I shook a bottle of cough syrup, opened it, got distracted, set it down, took care of other things, got back to the cough syrup and — you guessed it — shook the bottle again. It’s elderberry-based, so that stain will be a permanent reminder. Might as well laugh. (Yes, I bellowed some unprintables before I got around to laughing.)

15. What’s the last song that got stuck in your head?
Silent Running, by Mike and the Mechanics.

16. What’s the last movie you saw?
Last theater movie I saw was probably Goblet of Fire. Don’t remember, really. (No, I don’t get out much.)

17. Do you buy or download the movies you watch?
?

New release – Smart Ass: Close Quarters

lbgregg — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:22:29 +0000

Title	Smart Ass: Close Quarters
Author	Amber Green
	LB Gregg
ISBN#	978-1-60820-020-7 (print)
Release Date	April 2009
Cover Artist	Deana C. Jamroz
Paperback:	253 pages

Available At:	Barnes & Noble (paperback)

Turner and Turner: One Good Turn

When his parents get a gander at the sex tape sent by a blackmailer, they offer Kendall Turner a few weeks of “rest” in a cushy clinic. No, he says, and hotfoots it across the lawns of the family estate. KT isn’t his own worst enemy anymore; there’s a new candidate for the title. Suddenly, Kendall’s on the lam, trying to outrun a murder rap. Helping – by locking KT naked in their motel room – is his cousin Turn. KT has some issues: he manages to censor himself only when he lies, he’s been in love with cousin Turn since forever, and he really would rather kill himself than get more rest at another clinic.
The Men of Smithfield: Gobsmacked

Physician’s assistant Mark Meehan’s impulse control takes leave when Mark finds his bank manager, who’s also his boyfriend, in bed with another man. Volatile Mark sets out to chase down his money and patch up his pride with the help of local law enforcement in the person of rock-steady state trooper Tony Gervase. But, Mark’s impulsive scheme for revenge infuriates Jamie and jeopardizes Mark’s budding romance with straight arrow Tony.

**********************************

Gobsmacked

by L.B. Gregg

February 11

I stormed into St. Joe’s at the height of the Ash Wednesday noon mass, still dressed in my scrubs. I pushed through the massive arched chapel doors, bringing with me a gust of cold February wind. Seeing Jamie’s pretentious car parked in front of the church, I lost my shit and had to take action. I figured Jamie was expecting some kind of absolution by appearing at this penitential mass. I could see him seated in the third row, his head bowed. That gloriously tousled mass of golden hair gleamed like a beacon of innocence next to the shining, helmeted up-do of his repressed, miraculously blonde mother.

I bypassed the ushers, ignoring the hello of welcome from Mrs. Banks, my seventh-grade math teacher, and the folded program she tried to place in my hand. Failing to genuflect or splash myself with holy water, which would have sizzled on contact, I marched straight down the center aisle. My red rubber Crocs squeaked my progress in the hushed, echoing chamber of the sanctuary. Heads turned as I passed, no doubt wondering why I stormed the tasteful Moravian tile in the midst of this somber service. This was the kickoff to Lent, and the house was packed with the well-dressed, good citizens of Smithfield. Around me was a crowd of faces I’d known my entire life, but I blocked them out. I’m sure that even Christ’s eye was on me, and our priest, Father David, droning out the glum litany, looked up for half a second before dismissing me. As if he were the voice of reason and I, little Markie Meehan, needed to sit down and get with the program. I couldn’t see that happening.

I slid into the pew behind Jamie, glaring at the back of his head, and struggled with an overwhelming rage. I wanted to hurt him, not engage in some hissed conversation or exchange of keys. Fuck that. I was beyond civility. He wasn’t stepping a toe into my apartment. Ever again. The prick. I could barely look at him.

My hands clenched the book rack, and my fingers brushed against the Bible proudly displayed there. Staring at those once-sweet curls hugging his rough jaw, I slid the good book out of its safe haven. The cracked leather was worn, but its bulk reassuring. Encouraging, even. So I hauled back, fueled by boiling rage, and gobsmacked that bastard as hard as I could — in front of God and everyone — with a resounding thwack!

Jamie pitched forward, his beautiful face colliding with the pew in front of him. He hit it hard, the sound like a puck being whaled on by that high-priced stick he valued far too much. Then he melted onto the tile floor.

My follow-through pulled me over the back of the pew in an awkward nosedive onto the maroon cushions, my head flopping perilously close to Mrs. Dupree’s lap. I pushed away and clambered up, spewing my outrage and fury and maybe a little filth. I had no volume control as the words, In our bed, you bastard! rang through the church. I might have shouted, “You dickhead!”

It grew quiet in the congregation as an entire community sat frozen. I think. I wasn’t really paying attention to anyone but Jamie. And his mother. I had nearly landed on top of her when that thick cushion shifted under her skinny ass. She stood up clutching her pearls; her sour-lemon lips pursed, furiously staring me down with — and perhaps I imagine this — the glowing eyes of demonic satisfaction. Scrambling to pull myself back to my feet, I ignored her.

Any conversation with Jamie was not going to happen here. Filled with uncontrolled fury, and liberated of my usual calm, I felt oddly free. Or just out of my fucking mind.

So I cuffed him again with the Bible.

And then the folks around me came to their senses and latched their rough hands onto my arms in some mockery of Christian brotherhood, saying, “Mark. Calm down.”

“You need to leave.”

“That’s enough.”

No, it wasn’t, but they pulled me from the pew, ripping the Bible from my grip, and drove me back up the center aisle like a heretic. I looked into all those faces I knew, and I should have been shamed. But no, I had nothing to be ashamed of. Not yet, anyway.

Panting and blowing and disheveled, I glanced back over my shoulder as Jamie, limp in his rumpled suit and tie, was helped back into his seat with caring hands. He looked stunned, confused, and gray. Well, except for the blood, of course, which by this point was streaming down that proud nose.

And then I found myself excommunicated. They tossed me out those carved arched doors right into the gasping chill of the February midday. My sweat froze to my skin. Alone, exposed, shunned on the front lawn, I was still righteously pissed off. I clenched my fists and began walking back to the car, the bitter cold and wind whipping my field coat open as grit from the sand and road salt blasted my face. My eyes watered, and my nose began to run. I hit the door lock on the Jeep and climbed in. Time to go home and pick up the pieces.

Wednesday, Feb 11

12:30 p.m.

I made it as far as the stoplight at 202 and Milton before my rage subsided and I realized that I wasn’t seeing red from anger. Flashing lights followed me from the Resident Trooper’s Ford Expedition. I slapped my hand on the steering wheel and shook the fog out of my head.

“Crap!”

I had no idea if I’d been speeding, and that was a clear indication that I shouldn’t be driving. I pulled over at the entrance to the Westleigh Condos and dug my paperwork out of the glove box. I watched in the rearview mirror as my longtime friend and teenage heartbreak, Tony Gervase, climbed out of the truck, a look of resignation on that handsome, stern face. His uniform hugged his muscular form. He had that trooper hat perched on his head.

“Oh, crap!”

I must have run the red light. I swear it was pink when I was under it. That was my story, and I was sticking to it. Tony lumbered up, trinkets swinging off his utility belt, those butch boots making my thighs tense. He was an attractive man, and it was hard not to stare. He had that authoritative air some men are into: tall and dark, with thick thighs and arms and a tight ass. A big Italian cop. I’d carried a torch for him in high school, a million years ago, and while he’d been kind, he’d never encouraged my interest. Then he left for college, and I grew up. Mostly. I still thought he was probably the best guy I knew, and maybe more than occasionally admired him from afar. And thought about him at inappropriate times. I used to wonder if there was something inherently wrong with me because he never once took what I had eagerly offered. So I stopped offering. And then last summer, after Tony’s father got sick, Tony disappeared and I walked into the open arms of Jamie Dupree. That bastard.

I waited until Tony tapped on the glass with his knuckle before sliding the window down.

“What seems to be the problem, Offi—”

“Knock it off. What the hell are you doing driving fifteen in a forty down two-oh-two? I’ve been behind you since the green, and you didn’t once look in your mirror.”

Fifteen? Jesus, I had taken lame to an all-time low.

“Sorry. Just spacing out.” And praying that he hadn’t heard a thing yet. It’d only been eight minutes. Not even. Well, maybe more considering how slowly I’d been driving. “I’m on my way home.”

Tony leaned into my window, his strong body filling the narrow space, his hands resting on the car, thick fingers gripping the edge. He was checking to see if I was impaired. “Everything all right, Mark?”

I tried to grin, boyish — winsome, even. I flipped my hair a little. “Yeah, sure Tony. Hey, how’s your mom?” Anything to shift the law enforcement scrutiny I was under.

“My mother’s fine. She seems to like Florida.” Tony seemed immune to my attempt to distract him. Joe-on-the-Job. Was he sniffing my breath? I exhaled sharply at him. He backed away, and I pressed my lips tightly together. Perhaps I’d had too much caffeine with my betrayal this morning? His eyes swept the interior of the car. “How’s Sarah? She have that baby yet?”

I shook my head, forcing myself to appear normal. Evidently news was traveling at a crawl today. Maybe it was the upcoming snowstorm occupying the minds and mouths of the locals as they rushed off to Stop & Shop to purchase batteries and bottled water.

“Not yet. She’s fat and cranky, but don’t tell her I said that.” My sister Sarah had been friends with Tony since the ninth grade. Back when I was still a pesky sixth-grader always underfoot and demanding their attention.

Tony was quiet. He watched me. Was he assessing my mental state? “How are you, Tony? I’ve been meaning to give you a call.” It was weak, but my heart was pounding, and I was trying for a nonchalance I couldn’t possibly maintain for more than a few minutes.

“Sure, Meehan.” He failed to soften the skepticism in his tone with a smile. I tried not to feel guilty, but he was right. I had been either with Jamie or at the hospital for months. As a surgical PA — a physician assistant — my shifts, while often mind-numbing in their regularity, occasionally went out of whack. Today I’d covered a partial shift and was still dressed in my blue scrubs. I’d been driving aimlessly for hours trying to deal with my heartache before I’d entered St. Joe’s.

Tony’s brown eyes, normally crinkled at the edges in laughter, were guarded. “Haven’t seen you around much lately.”

“I’m such an ass. We should hook up for a drink.” Jesus, I had to get out of there. Was that my knee jiggling? “So, look, what’s the deal here? You writing me a ticket or what?”

Tony’s mouth flattened, and he straightened away from the car, offended. I’d been too abrupt, but I had things to do, and I was preoccupied. Remorse hit me just as his two-way radio blasted, and he nodded curtly. “I’ll catch up with you later. Try to drive like a normal person. Say hello to your sister.” He turned his collar up and hiked back to his SUV.

“Tony. Wait. I’m sorr—” Too late. I watched him for a second, feeling like a heel. I’d fucked that up, again. I needed to mend our relationship. But first, I needed to deal with Jamie. I put the car in gear and eased back out onto Milton, Tony’s gaze on me from the truck. I carefully drove the speed limit the quarter mile back to the house.

New Release – Turner & Turner: One Good Turn

Amber Green — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:09:09 +0000

Title	Turner & Turner
Author	Amber Green
ISBN#	978-1-60820-021-4 (ebook)
Release Date	April 2009
Cover Artist	Deana C. Jamroz

Mobipocket: http://www.mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/eBookDetails.asp?BookID=166510

All Romance eBooks: http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-turnerturner-15784-145.html

When his parents get a gander at the sex tape sent by a blackmailer, they offer Kendall Turner a few weeks of “rest” in a cushy clinic. No, he says, and hotfoots it across the lawns of the family estate. KT isn’t his own worst enemy anymore; there’s a new candidate for the title. Suddenly, Kendall’s on the lam, trying to outrun a murder rap. Helping — by locking KT naked in their motel room — is his cousin Turn. KT has some issues: he manages to censor himself only when he lies, he’s been in love with cousin Turn since forever, and he really would rather kill himself than get more rest at another clinic.

************************

Chapter One

“Be sensible, Kendall,” my mother said in the patient tone that can drive me to a seething rage in three seconds flat. “In the video you are, to put it crudely, tanked.”

To put it even more crudely, I’d been tanked enough to let a guy I’d been stupid enough to trust – for a few months anyway – ream my ass until I gave in to his exhortations to squeal like a pig.

The video ended, with a curious delicacy, while I was still just bleating: Ah! Ah!

Helpless noises. An aural demonstration of my pathetic, nonpredatory status. But not as bad as the next moments would have been.

I suspected I had the family’s go-to guy to thank for that delicacy. The guy standing behind me, out of sight but never long out of mind. I’ve beaten off to dreams of Turner Scott since high school.

He’d disappeared the week he graduated, showed up three years later for just long enough to pull my nuts out of the fire, and disappeared again until a few weeks ago – when he’d taken his place at Father’s side as if he’d been there all along.

He must have brought this little home movie, must have shown it to my parents and my nauseatingly perfect big brother. Nobody else would have edited it to spare the last cowering molecule of my dignity.

But he could have just pitched it into the river. Jacksonville has so many bridges he had to have crossed at least one to get here. Thinking about that suppressed any hydraulic reaction. Or gratitude, for that matter.

Father clicked off the monitor and folded it flat into its compartment on his mahogany desk. The back was veneered with a copy of the 1609 La Florida map. He rested neatly buffed fingertips on the gleaming wood for a moment, then steepled his fingers and regarded me.

Mother spoke for him. “You must agree to counseling.”

I crossed my arms and worked at not digging my fingertips into the cashmere of my jacket sleeves. Unless I went back to accepting an allowance, I couldn’t afford to replace the jacket. I could barely afford to clean it. But living poor was better than living with Father, I reminded myself. Father has ten fingertips. Thanks to him, I have nine.

I cleared my throat. “Certainly, Mother. Have you already identified someone willing to help with your unseemly interest in the details of your adult son’s sexuality?”

Neither of my parents was capable of turning purple, but eyelids dropped and lips thinned. A white line traced Father’s mouth. Score.

In this family, you take what victories you can get. Then you watch for the retaliation.

I paced to the window overlooking the north lawn. Wilson and his temps had stretched colored strings, dug lines of holes, erected lines of poles, moved a perennial bed, and still were nowhere near finished transforming the yard for next week’s Autumn Festival for the Arts. Two of the men were bulling up to one another now, bumping chests and generally doing everything but whip out their dicks and a ruler.

Wilson waved a chart at them, one of his detailed blueprints of where every plant and wire belonged in this yard. The largest man snatched the chart from his hand. Wilson decked him.

Not my problem. I leaned one shoulder on the window frame and faced the real predators.

From his sleek desk, Father watched me, waiting for a weakness to evince itself. People considered him Mother’s slightly coarse backup, fund-raiser, what-have-you. Most people, of course, were lucky enough not to know him well. I hadn’t made the mistake of underestimating him since I was six years old.

Mother in her champagne-tweed suit stood between him and the Louis XV escritoire. Her face would make a Barbie’s look like a Greek tragedy mask. She hasn’t gone psychotic since the last time someone suggested that mid-November chanced being just a little too cold to be outdoors, even in Florida, and proposed moving the festival from our yard to an indoor setting in Avondale.

Today she ran her fingers along the edge of a discreet lacewood tissue dispenser, then along a rapidly ticking gilt clock presented by some grateful arts faculty somewhere. Agitation. Was she embarrassed by the graphic display? Or was time a problem right now?

The floridly engraved grandfather clock to my left swung its pendulum in slow counterpoint to the gilt clock, one measured kshink for every three gilt ticks. Like a wolfhound and a rat terrier wagging their tails.

Frosted fingernails paused on the tissue dispenser. She was trying to decide whether to try an emotional con job. My sister (strategically absent this afternoon) was immune to that tactic, but we males sometimes reacted as desired.

Sometimes. Wasn’t going to happen today.

Her fingers stilled, then fluttered over the clock. “We haven’t been snooping, Kendall. This came with a request that boiled down to…blackmail.”

Blackmail? Again? But that took balls. Len must have acquired a pair along with his new boyfriend.

I crossed my ankles. “How gauche. Turn, of course, has taken care of the matter. Did you break his kneecaps, Turn? Or just explain how easily you could?”

Mother’s lips thinned again. She referred to him as Scott. My calling him anything else came under the heading of being difficult.

She’d explained to Dean and me the concept of a shirttail relative when Turn first appeared in our lives, and she’d tried to have his name changed. One of her few failures. Whatever Father might see in Turn, Mother would never forgive him for daring to exist.

Much less for besting Dean in at least half their competitions.

She tapped the lacewood box. “Think of mice, Kendall. If you see one, you know more are hiding close by. We cannot assume this is the only recording. We must take preemptive action: A few weeks of inpatient therapy – in a nice, open setting, of course – then a few weeks of intensive outpatient therapy. I am told this is the accepted standard. Afterward, you can do volunteer work, helping others as you were helped.”

The gilt clock ticked rapidly. Open setting. Open setting. Open setting.

I blinked, but couldn’t hear ticking – just the impossible words. The carrot. A facility that promised I would never be locked in a small, bare room without a generous blood level of chemical placidity. The stick would be a less-open facility.

Of course, none of them are all that open once you get inside.

Mother smiled without deepening a single wrinkle. “We have it all arranged.”

All arranged. Including the media packages, no doubt.

A semester of my life, if not a year. How twisted would my mind get before I could convince those people I was happy and straight enough to be let loose on society?

When I was finally free, the only graduate program willing to let me resume my studies would be one where the department head owed the size of his/her paycheck to annual gifts from the Turner Trust. Graduating with credentials like that would sooo enhance my job prospects.

I could hear the toilet gurgling now.

I glanced at the only door, now flanked by my brother and Turn. They looked like light and dark paint jobs on the same model. Dean was sandy blond, like me, but had Turn’s heavy shoulders and ripped musculature. They both had the deep-set, silver-blue eyes that looked down from Father’s portrait, and his father’s portrait. They’d competed in love, academics, athletics – in every possible way – until Turn’s disappearance.

I remembered hiding on the garage roof that night, watching while he loaded his computer, a manila folder thick with papers, and an armload of clothing into Mick Wheeler’s Cherokee. I remembered wishing I were older than fourteen, so I could leave with him. The next day, nobody knew where he’d gone.

Father had forbidden anyone to trace him. “He’s a Turner, after all. Give him a little independence, a chance to mature. He’ll have the sense to come back.”

I’d gotten very drunk the night I found out Father was right.

Now he and Dean stood like bookends, a team. Between me and the door.

Dean couldn’t pin me without a fight. Dean and Turn together could duckwalk me anywhere they wanted, without wrinkling their suits.

I hoped my suit would hide my sweat. In some socioeconomic strata, a man can make a fool of himself without his family being able to do a thing about it.

My family, however, made arrangements.

Unless I agreed to whatever had been decided, I was to be declared a danger to myself or others. I was to go away for what used to be called a little rest, and was to emerge heroically humbled: the prodigal eager to help other unfortunates.

Did that mean other gays or other drunks? Drunks, I decided. Drunks have less of a voting bloc. Drunks don’t organize nasty publicity campaigns. Either way, the prospect sucked.

Sweat tickled along my spine, prickled in the small of my back. I held my breath for five heartbeats and released it over the course of ten heartbeats before I looked at Father. “Have you ever considered the consequences of going too far with your arrangements? Have you ever wondered where I would draw the line?”

He looked back blandly. “Have you ever wondered where I would?”

A cold droplet inched down my spine. How much could they do to me? My shortened pinkie finger throbbed in memory. “I appear to have worn out my welcome. Good night, all.”

I swung my weight off the window frame and headed toward the door, as if oblivious to the two big men who could take one step apiece and block it.

My brother took that step.

My heart thudded; storm clouds pulsed in my eyes.

Turn raised one stop-sign hand and looked past me to the hereditary units. “Let me take him for a drive. We can talk on the way.”

My brother frowned, looking at me and then past me. This wasn’t in the script. I held my breath, and my position. The units behind me would be communicating with their eyes. Nothing I could say or do would improve matters.

I had to get out of here. Away from them.

I held still, breathing by the numbers as sweat ate through my antiperspirant.

Turn’s shining silver gaze fixed over my shoulder, either monitoring or taking part in the Eyeball Telegraph.

Out of here! Out of here! ticked the gilt clock.

Wait, said the old one. Time it right.

Dean’s phone buzzed against his Italian leather belt. He started.

I snatched open the door and hit a jog, fear winning over dignity.

Father spoke. “Take care of him.”

He meant me.

I ran.

The driveway’s pea gravel crunched under my kidskin oxfords and under the shoes of a single follower. I saw the image we would make in manga style, pictured myself turning to confront my follower, and snorted. I could outrun either of them, but my two years (on and off) of tai chi lessons didn’t exactly equal their six-plus years of fierce dojo competition.

Wilson stopped in my path, chart in one gloved hand and a bright yellow cement bag poised jauntily on his shoulder. He sidestepped.

At the same time, I sidestepped – to the same side.

I play soccer. I constantly dodge guys who want to tackle me. Why am I square-dancing with this lunk?

I tacked left and Wilson quick-stepped out of my way. He wasn’t as stupid as he looked.

I sprinted past him, heading for the line of parked vehicles beyond the garage: Dean’s new truck and Turn’s gleaming Lincoln and my secondhand Kia.

The brief dance had cost me. A shadow’s head bobbed at the level of my shadow’s knees.

He’d get me when I stopped to open the car door. Luckily, I had keyless entry. I clicked the Unlock button on my key tab.

The headlights didn’t flash, meaning the lock didn’t open.

I clicked again, cursing the dying battery. Cursing myself for not having replaced it this morning. Yesterday morning. Hell, on Monday after standing for ten minutes in the rain outside the Turner Lab at school, clicking until the locks popped open.

They popped just as I reached the door.

Weight slammed me against the car. My breath gushed out, and I saw stars.

The weight rolled to the side. I clung to the cold metal, trying to breathe.

Turn pulled me off the car and tight against him, like I was his teddy bear to hug – a stunningly intimate gesture. He’d die if he knew.

He didn’t spare me a glance, though, as he took the key from my hand and muscled past me to the driver’s seat. His silver-blue Turner eyes roved left and right, tracing the horizon. “Go around. I have to drive, KT. Don’t argue.”

He hadn’t left me breath to argue with. I dashed around to the passenger side and fumbled with my seat belt.

He took it out of my hands and clicked it for me. He wasn’t driving me to any mental hospital; instinctively, I knew that.

He was in combat mode for some other reason. Something had happened. Something bad.

“Lower your seat, KT. All the way. Hold your head below the window. No, you’re too tall – looks suspicious. Got a cap? Put it on. Tell me you haven’t defused your air bags.”

My passenger seat didn’t raise or lower. Only the driver’s seat did. This wasn’t a limo. The back right window was a piece of Plexiglas Len had cut and installed for me. “I’m lucky to have working air bags. Why would I mess with them?”

“Good. Cap.”

While reaching into the back for my cap, I saw him pull a remote from his pocket. “Dude, we’re way out of range for the gate ope -”

The gate was sliding aside. Did Father know Turn could do that? Dean didn’t know, or he’d insist on a high-powered remote of his own – and Dean would not have resisted showing it off to me. I took a breath. “What’s happened, Turn? Who called just now?”

“They’ve already found Leonard Stewart’s body.”

Body? I sat up. No fucking way! Len can not be dead.

I thought of my parents’ tenseness, their too-calm faces, and Dean’s visible jumpiness. Yes, way.

Then I saw red. “You killed Len? For what? For fucking me?”

He flicked me a glance. Amused. The fucker was amused!

“I take it the outrage means you didn’t do the job on him either. So, if you were a detective instead of a budding ethnobotanist, whatever that is, who would be your prime suspects?”

Me. I’d be second in line behind his current boyfriend until someone found out about the blackmail. When that came out, I’d jump to the head of the line. But I’d bring along Turn, the man who’d beaten the living shit out of the last pair of guys who’d tried to blackmail the units over me.

My vision contracted to a tunnel, me to him. He hadn’t actually denied killing Len. He’d been gone a long time. Had he needed a strong show of loyalty to win back his place at Father’s shoulder?

“Right. You and me,” he said, although I hadn’t voiced my thoughts. “We need to get out of the immediate arrest-zone and give the processes a while to work. Then, when the lawyers say it’s safe, we can voluntarily go by the police station for questioning.”

Processes. One end of the machine opens to let people voluntarily walk in. The other end shits sausage links. Don’t ever ask what happens in between.

The tunnel threatened to close in on me. I’d been jailed once, overnight, though the rest of the guys from the party were bonded out within an hour. When I’d called for help, Father told me I’d get a lot of growing up done in one night behind bars.

I guess it depends on how you define growing up.

I’ve had three surgeries to reduce the scars. People say the remaining lines look like premature wrinkles. Trust me – they don’t. Most of my right cheek is still numb. I’d taught myself to eat and enunciate as though nothing had happened, but I couldn’t fully pucker my lips.

Tunnel vision wasn’t going to help. I did breathing exercises, mental tai chi, until I could see. Good thing Turn had the wheel. Moss-draped live oaks and 1920s-era houses make San Marco a scenic neighborhood to drive in, but too many drivers here like to keep one foot on the gas and the other on the dotted centerline.

Turn threw me a glance. “You okay, KT?”

“Define okay.” I hadn’t dropped into a blind panic. Which might have surprised everyone. One could almost think the units had choreographed that scene to tip me over.

“They said you go into fight-or-flight mode at the drop of a hat these days.”

I shivered. So that scene had been choreographed to send me off the deep end. Why? And by escaping it had I jumped from the barbed wire into the quicksand?

For a murder charge, they can hold you until trial. Especially if you have a record of not showing up for a hearing – even if you were heavily sedated in a hospital at the time of that hearing.

Even with a lawyer, things can go wrong. Even with parents desperate to get you out, which I couldn’t be guaranteed of, the processes can take too long.

I finished a cycle of slow breathing before I spoke. “We are fucked.”

He nodded. “Pretty much.”