Always There Read online

  Always There

  By Iyana Jenna

  Published by JMS Books LLC

  Visit jms-books.com for more information.

  Copyright 2021 Iyana Jenna

  ISBN 9781646568451

  Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

  Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

  All rights reserved.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America.

  * * * *

  To all my readers.

  * * * *

  Always There

  By Iyana Jenna

  “H-hello? Mom?” Shane Gregory woke up fully, clutching his cell phone tightly. “Dad? What’s wrong with Dad?” He felt the blood drain from his face as he listened to what his mother had to say. “Yes, yes. I will. I’m coming right over!”

  He hung up and turning on his side, he shook his boyfriend, Trey Kenzo Kensington, awake.

  “Huh? What’s up?”

  Shane had gotten out of bed and was hurriedly getting dressed.

  “It’s Dad. He’s been taken to the hospital. ICU.”

  “No! Shane, what’s wrong?”

  “Hurry up, Kenzo.”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming. These jeans—”

  Shane wasn’t listening anymore, having grabbed his car keys and rushing out of the bedroom. He was thankful they were still here in Kenzo’s house in NYC. It wouldn’t take long to drive to New Jersey.

  But it was snowing and the roads would be slippery. That would slow him down when all he wanted was to drive his car as fast as he possibly could.

  “Shane, wait up!” Kenzo bounded down the porch and slipped into the passenger seat, gasping for breath. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Snow was falling heavily and the night was starless. The street lights provided barely adequate lighting.

  But Shane drove fast. So fast that he didn’t see the traffic light changing to red until the very last minute. He braked, pressing the pedal down to the floor and the car swerved sharply, spinning on the slippery road before it crashed into a tree by the roadside. The last thing he remembered was him screaming Kenzo’s name.

  * * * *

  “I’m sorry. We’re trying our best but we need your consent. Shane’s lungs are damaged beyond repair but he’s otherwise stable. Now your son Trey, he—he has serious brain injury. His skull is fractured and he’s bleeding intracranially—”

  Kenzo’s mother sobbed in her husband’s arms.

  “What are you suggesting?” Mr. Kensington asked the transplant coordinator standing before them.

  “We’re thinking of having your son’s lungs to save Shane, sir. We’ve done the cross matching and your son’s blood is a perfect match to Shane’s. I’m afraid that Kenzo is already brain dead and there’s no hope for him, but Shane, there’s still a chance for him.”

  The Kensingtons turned to look at Shane’s mother. It was not an easy situation for any of them. Mrs. Gregory looked back at them, her face pale and drawn. She looked away silently.

  “So my baby will…” Mrs. Kensington couldn’t finish her sentence.

  “If we don’t act fast, we will lose them both, ma’am.”

  Shane’s mother walked over to Mrs. Kensington and hugged her tightly.

  “Whatever is best for you,” she whispered in her ear. “Whatever your decision is, we will not hold it against you.”

  * * * *

  Two weeks later

  “Shane, honey, you sure you’ll be okay alone?”

  Shane had been discharged the day before after being in the hospital for longer than he felt. He had taken medications that mostly made him feel so tired. However, today he felt fine, physically that is.

  “Don’t worry, mom. I’m good,” he said listlessly, shoving his food around the plate with his fork, his eyes down. He could feel her eyes on him.

  Shane’s mother and Josh were going to pick Mr. Gregory up from the hospital. Mr. Gregory had been given a clean bill of health after his heart attack two weeks ago. Shane looked up at his mother, noting her tired face, and pushed his dish away.

  “Come on, mom. I’ll be okay,” he tried to put as much reassurance into his voice as possible. “I’ll just go to my room and sleep.”

  “But what if you need something…”

  “Then I’ll get it. Mom, I’m not an invalid.” There was a faint note of warning in his voice.

  “What if Kenzo showed up?” Josh, Shane’s brother, suddenly asked, fiddling with his keys.

  “Josh!” His mother exclaimed in disbelief, her face red. “Don’t say that!”

  Shane reached for his glass of water and he stroked its smooth, round edge absently. “That’s alright, Mom,” he said softly. “I’ll be very happy if he came. I miss him.” He dropped his gaze then and allowed Josh to help him up.

  “Come on, bro, let’s get you to bed,” Josh said.

  * * * *

  “Do you know what’s the hardest part of being away from you? It’s being denied to do something like this.” Kenzo ran his fingers through Shane’s short hair.

  Shane’s eyes fluttered open. “I’m dreaming,” he mumbled.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yeah, right,” Shane smiled at Kenzo. Dream or not, Kenzo’s touch felt very real, as was the way he lifted his eyebrow in that way of his.

  “This is me, Shane. You’re not dreaming and you’re not hallucinating. I’m here…to haunt you.”

  Shane snorted. “Very funny, Kenzo.”

  “Shane, look at me, really look at me. Touch me,” Kenzo said earnestly, looking at him with that damn puppy-look of his.

  Sighing, Shane reached out to palm Kenzo’s face but his hand went right through it. Shane’s breath caught, letting his hand fall on his bed.

  “Kenzo, what are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I miss you, Shane.” Kenzo said simply.

  “No, no, no. I mean, what are you doing here. You’re not supposed to be here, Kenzo.”

  “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  “I am! God knows I am. But this is not right. This is…”

  “Too absurd for you?”

  Shane’s vision started to blur. “This is…hard,” he whispered. “You were gone. You might be here right now but you’re going to leave me again.”

  Shane started to cry, the wall that he had been building up around him crumbling into a pile of dust. He hadn’t cried after he woke up at the hospital after the surgery, not even once. And he didn’t cry when they told him that Kenzo, his Kenzo, had died in the accident. His fault, it was his fault that Kenzo died, and he cried brokenly, flinching away when Kenzo reached out for him.

  “Kenzo, you have no idea. You don’t have any idea what I’m going through. I’d rather die than go on without you.”

  Kenzo looked lost and confused. Wearing hi
s gray T-shirt, he was still very much the same Kenzo that Shane knew and loved. He looked beautiful, and so real, and alive. Distracted, Shane almost missed Kenzo’s next words.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Shane,” Kenzo said quietly. “You have no idea what I went through. Alone. Silence all around me. I’m not supposed to be here, they tried to stop me from going to you. But Shane, I’m here now. I come back to you.”

  “But you died,” Shane choked out. “We buried you.” He hesitated, “Why—why did they let you go?”

  “I don’t know!” Kenzo threw his hands up in the air. “And I don’t care. The important thing is I’m here with you now. Oh God, I miss you so much, Shane.”

  Shane tentatively tried to touch Kenzo again but he only got empty space. He sighed in despair.

  “Why can’t I touch you?”

  “Because I’m a ghost?” A grin broke on Kenzo’s face. “Shall we go get Whoopi to help us out?”

  “Damn you.” Shane turned away in irritation but Kenzo grabbed and turned him around, taking Shane into his arms.

  “But you can feel me when I touch you, don’t you?” He thumbed Shane’s lips, making him moan softly and close his eyes, trying to get the most out of that simple touch.

  When Kenzo’s lips touched his, all thoughts of ghosts and dreams and him going out of his mind flew away. All he was aware of right now was Kenzo, Kenzo, Kenzo, who felt very much alive to him, surrounding and filling him with love.

  * * * *

  Shane never asked his mother what really happened to him after the accident. She only told him that Kenzo had not survived his head injuries and that his parents had let him go after he was pronounced brain dead by the doctors. But now with Kenzo back with him, and Kenzo was back, even if Shane was the only one who saw Kenzo, Shane felt the need to find out the truth. There must be something that was keeping Kenzo here.

  “Mom,” Shane called out hesitantly after breakfast several days after Kenzo showed up for the first time.

  “What is it, baby?”

  “I—uh—want to know what exactly happened with Kenzo and me, after the accident I mean.”

  His mother looked at him long and hard, then she swept her gaze around the dining room, as if expecting to see someone else, maybe Kenzo, there. There was no one else though. Kenzo had not made his appearance yet and for that Shane was grateful. He needed to talk to his mother about this alone.

  “Why, Shane? Why is that important?”

  Because my dead boyfriend’s ghost comes to me every day and night to make out with me. Oh, and he jerks me off, too.

  Shane almost screamed out those words. Almost.

  He shrugged. “I, I just want to know. Please, Mom,” he looked beseechingly at his mother.

  Mrs. Gregory sighed. She stood up and went to the window, looking out with unseeing eyes. “You were both very badly injured. Kenzo had serious head injuries, the doctors operated on him but—”

  “But he didn’t make it—”

  “He didn’t make it. The doctors couldn’t fix him.” She paused, turning toward Shane, her face full of pain. She whispered, “You almost didn’t make it either.”

  “I didn’t?”

  His mother looked back at him helplessly, tears brimming in her eyes.

  “Your lungs were damaged, Shane, damaged beyond repair. You wouldn’t have lived if not—”

  Shane suddenly felt cold all over.

  “If not for what? Mom. Tell me please.” He paused. “Did—did Kenzo, did he give his lungs to me?”

  His mother looked away from him, her back stiff.

  “Mama?” Shane’s voice was hardly above a whisper. “Did Kenzo die because of me? Did he, Mom?”

  His mother’s silence told him the answer.

  “Oh God…”

  “Shane, you could have died. Kenzo was on total life-support, there was no hope at all for him. But you, you could still be saved. And we didn’t, we didn’t want to lose both of you. Shane, please, please understand how it was for us. For me. I couldn’t say no when Kenzo’s mother signed the consent…“

  “But you had him killed to save me.” It was like Shane didn’t hear a word his mother was saying. He shook her hand off his arm, ignoring the hurt look on his mother’s face. “I should have died with him, Mom. No wonder he comes back.”

  “Shane?”

  “I—it’s nothing.” It was one thing to tell his mother that he had been dreaming of Kenzo but to say that Kenzo has come to him, talked to him, touched him, like a real, living person, one whom only Shane could see, that was just asking for trouble. Shane could just imagine his parents sending him to see a psychiatrist, could already tell what the diagnosis would be. Acute depression? Maybe even schizophrenia.

  “Shane?” The voice came from the door. Kenzo.

  The air suddenly felt too thin and the temperature dropped. Shane saw his mother’s eyes go round, and he looked up slowly toward where the voice was coming from. Kenzo—or his misty apparition, quite unlike when he appeared to Shane alone—was standing by the door.

  Kenzo was looking at Shane’s mother. “Thank you, Donna, for telling us that. I’m…happy, and grateful, that I had helped save your son.”

  “Ken—you died because of me.”

  “It was the right decision, Shane. I would have died anyway. This way, I still live, through you.”

  “Kenzo, is that really you?” Mrs. Gregory’s voice was shaky.

  Kenzo turned to Shane’s mom and smiled a little.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry if I scared you but I needed to…come out.” Kenzo grinned, his face dimpling. Even in death, Kenzo was still his silly, goofy self.

  Shane’s mother no longer looked shocked or afraid. She walked over to Kenzo, and Shane suddenly realized that his mother wanted to give Kenzo a hug.

  “Mom—”

  “Wait—” Kenzo said at the same time.

  But Shane’s mother was already stumbling over when all she caught was thin air.

  “I’m sorry,” Kenzo said. “You can’t touch me, but you can feel me touching you.” He touched her face gently and she gasped at the feel of Kenzo’s cold fingers.

  “Stop groping my mother, Kenzo.”

  Kenzo grinned from ear to ear while Mrs. Gregory blushed.

  “No worries, man.”

  Shane kept quiet while Kenzo talked to his mother. He was glad he had finally known the truth, but the whole thing still unsettled him.

  * * * *

  Shane’s eyes were fixed on the computer screen while Kenzo straddled a chair behind him. They had looked at various sites, most of them cracky, but there were some genuine-looking ones too, looking for ways to send Kenzo on his way to…wherever he was supposed to go. Not that Kenzo wanted to go, he told Shane as much, but still Shane felt that he should be doing something, and not just accept things the way they were.

  After some time, Shane sighed and leaned back on his chair.

  “I give up, Kenzo. Seems like you’re stuck here.”

  “No problem for me,” Kenzo said lightly. “Besides, why do you want to get rid of me, Shane? Aren’t you happy that I’m here?”

  “That’s not fair,” Shane said sharply, more than a little bit annoyed. Of course he was happy that Kenzo was him, it was just that—

  “Kenzo, you remember what was said about angry spirits, disembodied, scared, violent? I, I’m scared, worried, that you will turn into one.” Shane swallowed, there, he had said it, his worst fear about Kenzo. Not that he was afraid of Kenzo, or what Kenzo might later turn out to be. He knew that Kenzo would never, ever hurt him, no matter what. But he was afraid for Kenzo, that he might turn malignant and no longer be at peace with himself.

  But Kenzo simply laughed, that low, rumbling laugh of his that did something to Shane’s insides. He tousled Shane’s hair. “Hey, what’s a little interspecies relationship, man and ghost, between friends, huh?”

  Shane huffed, “You idiot.” But he was smiling, Kenzo’s good hu
mor already working its magic on him. He never could stay upset with Kenzo for long, even now it seemed.

  “There’s just another thing, though.”

  “What?”

  “I wish I could touch you. It’s frustrating not to be able to hold you. I want to hold you, Ken, I want to kiss you,” Shane felt his face heat up a little.

  “We’ll work on that, baby. I promise you, you’ll soon be able to do whatever you want with me,” Kenzo grinned mischievously and Shane couldn’t help but grin back.

  “But in the meantime,” Kenzo’s voice had gone low, his eyes dark, and something stirred low in Shane’s belly. “In the meantime, I get to do this.”

  Shane gasped.

  “Or this.”

  “Kenzo!” Shane was panting now as Kenzo touched him everywhere, made him feel. Kenzo was around him, over him, Kenzo was everywhere. The night ended with them in bed, Kenzo loving every part of him, kissing and caressing every inch of Shane’s naked skin, savoring and memorizing, each touch more electrifying than the last, bringing Shane to the height of ecstasy over and over again. Sex with Kenzo had always been good but this was something totally different, this was sublime, and Shane was left shattered and worn out by the end of it, while Kenzo, the bastard, looked down at him, smug and not even a little bit out of breath.

  They looked at each other for long moments. And Shane suddenly realized, they could do this, have this forever, for he was bound to Kenzo just as much as Kenzo was bound to him. Kenzo was in him, physically and spiritually, and nothing was going to tear them apart.

  Not even death.

  THE END

  ABOUT IYANA JENNA

  I'm Iyana Jenna and you can call me Iyana. I like writing, romance, and man-love, so you're mostly going to find my stories as M/M whether they are for adults or young adults. They are not going to be too heavy on explicit sex, though, as many say that my stories are considered sweet romance.

  When I don't write, I teach English to children, teens, and adults. I also work in the curriculum and materials department in a language institution. Among my responsibilities are writing books and tests.

  For more information, visit iyanajennaauthor.wordpress.com.