Chapter Twenty-One
IT HAD BEEN Xander’s hope that the body painting would be helpful to Skylar, but he hadn’t been prepared for the floodgates it opened.
Skylar slept in his paint that night—it was almost dawn by the time they went to sleep—and though it was going to ruin his sheets, Xander didn’t care. He wouldn’t even throw them out. Every time he saw the stains, he’d think of that night and remember how incredible it had been. But when he woke, Skylar was already up, and to his dismay, showered. Dressed in what had become his new usual: polos and khaki pants, though since the morning was chilly, he’d added a cardigan. Benzaiten’s altar was already lit, and Skylar was drinking his tea and squinting at a recipe book it looked like he’d borrowed from Pamela’s stash as he bustled about the kitchen.
“Good morning.” He smiled at Xander as he came in, then frowned at the book again. “I think I might need glasses, or contacts, or something.”
“You’d look good in glasses.” Xander sidled up to him, gently bumping his hip. “What are you making?”
“Omurice. That rice omelet they make in anime all the time? I thought I’d give it a try. I’ll warn you, it may suck, mostly because I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Can I help?”
“Please do.”
They made the omurice together, and it didn’t suck. It was delicious. But to give Skylar the full anime experience, Xander wrote daisuki da yo in hiragana and kanji on the top of the omelet in ketchup, and when that proved far too ambitious to write with the nozzle, he got a brush, washed it thoroughly, and painted “I really like you” in Japanese onto their food. Skylar was impressed, but Xander couldn’t help being his own critic.
“I’d rather have written ai shiteru, as it’s a stronger statement of affection, but that kanji is tricky enough with a pencil. I’d have never managed with ketchup.”
Skylar laughed and kissed him on the cheek.
After they finished, Skylar held Xander’s hand and told him all the things he wanted to do, now that he saw himself properly. Now that he, as he put it, was finally free.
“First of all,” he began, “I want you to use Fudō Myōō Comes to Remove Benzaiten’s Obstacles in your show.”
Xander blinked. “You…do? But it’s so personal, and so obviously you.”
“Yes. It’s also your best work. I’m proud of it, and you, and of who I am in that painting, of who we were in that moment. I don’t want to hide it. Please don’t do so on my account. Unless it’s too manga for your show.”
Xander’s heart swelled. It was too manga, but fuck if he cared about that. “Okay. I’ll use it.”
Skylar went on. “I am serious about teaching in Japan, but I feel the same way as you, that I don’t want to do anything after graduation that doesn’t involve you. We need to talk to Pamela about the programs we’d have to apply for, and you need to investigate what this would do to impact your grad school career. If I wait to go, then I wait. We make the decisions based on what’s best for the two of us, and we make them together. All right?”
Xander rubbed Skylar’s wrist with his thumb. “All right. What’s next? I can tell you have a list.”
“I do. The next part is complicated, because everything hinges on other parts, but…I’m going to leave Delta Eta Sigma.”
“You’re sure about this? I mean, I know you are, but it’s such a big part of your life, or it was. I can still quote half of that speech about fraternities you gave me.”
“That’s just it. It was a big part of my life. It’s changed. Unc is going to stay, but he’s disappointed in it. If it doesn’t get disbanded before the end of the year, it will be entirely due to his efforts. I don’t want to stay and watch that. It’s not where I want to spend my life.” He lifted Xander’s hand, laced their fingers, then took his other hand and did the same. “I want to be here with you.”
“I want you here too.”
“But here’s where it gets complicated. Once I resign and move in here, I need to pay my part of rent and food and so on. Which is easy, until my family finds out what I’ve done. And as I’ve told you, soon enough he’s going to figure that out anyway.”
They had one more week until Skylar didn’t get an email from the LSAT people. “What happens then? What do you want to do when he finds out?”
Skylar sat up straight, pale and nervous but also resolved. “I’m going to go to my father and tell him everything. That I didn’t take the test. That I’ve left the fraternity, I’m dating a man, and by the way I’m moving to Japan.”
“How do you think he’ll respond?”
He sighed. “Poorly.”
“Do you think he’ll disown you or something?”
“I don’t think so, but…I really have no idea.” He looked almost green, he was so uneasy. “I think it’ll be bad, that he’ll find a way to make me feel awful, at the very least.”
“Would it be easier to go to your mother?”
“Possibly, but she’s in France for the next two months. I checked already.”
Xander frowned, but before he could say anything more, Skylar captured his hands and squeezed them.
“It’s all right. It’s going to be rough, but I don’t care. I’m going to get through this, tell them what I want to do, who I want to be, who I want to be with. But I do have one request of you, if that’s okay.”
Xander turned his palm over and squeezed back. “Anything.”
“I planned to go to Manhattan to see my father next weekend. I wanted to know if you would come with me.”
“Of course I’ll come.”
“Thank you.” Skylar kissed his hands. “And thank you for yesterday. That was…I don’t have words for what that was. Magical. Surreal.”
Xander smiled a self-satisfied smile and opened Skylar’s hand to kiss the center of his palm. “I agree. I feel like we just leveled up so far past people who have conventional sex I’m going to pity sigh every time I see porn now.”
“I’m going to need a moment alone every time you get out your brushes.” He touched Xander’s face, his own countenance full of love. “You’re right. I’m so glad those assholes destroyed your mural.”
“Sometimes we sacrifice things to the gods, our payment a surrender for bounty yet to come.”
Skylar pressed his lips to Xander’s forehead. “I don’t know what I surrendered to get you. But I’d give it up a thousand times more, no questions asked.”
That was the extent of Skylar’s revelations for the moment, though there were a few more minor ripples—in the next two weeks he pulled back on some of his organizations, reorganizing some of his business focuses, and arranging to audit the Japanese course for the rest of the semester since it was too late to take it officially as a class. Ms. Mary was devastated he was leaving the fraternity but was mollified when he promised to visit her, though not on the house grounds. The fraternity itself didn’t much care, was mostly annoyed with him.
Their reaction stung Skylar and enraged Unc. “They think they fucking own him,” he growled to Xander as they worked in the Lucky 7 office one afternoon. “That’s why they’re pissed. They lost their Silver Stone. Never mind that the man is still there. But they don’t want him. They never did.”
Xander had known this all along, but apparently Unc hadn’t been prepared for this. Xander worried where else he’d be right. “How do you think this is going to go down with his father?”
“Terrible. Like the shit with the Greeks but on steroids.”
Fuck. Xander ran a hand through his hair, debating whether he should even ask his next question, then decided, screw it. “What’s Leighton Stone like? As a person, I mean.”
Unc considered the question. “He’s brusque. Doesn’t take any shit. I think he came out of the womb a lawyer. He’s always negotiating.”
“It doesn’t sound like he was much of a father to Skylar.”
Unc’s laugh was bitter. “Yeah, every time I think my old man is distant, I look at Sky and remind myself it could be worse. If it weren’t for Stone’s executive assistant deciding someone should parent Skylar, he’d probably be one of those horrible sociopaths with a trust fund.”
That would be Ellen. Xander made a mental note to find out if the woman liked art and if so, he would paint her as much as she could put on her walls. “I can’t get over how neither one of his parents pay any attention to him—and that they never have. I feel isolated from my family now, but I at least have memories of my mother’s affection.”
“Yeah, and what’s weird is his dad’s the one who gives him the most, and he’s nothing like Leighton. Not in looks, habits, or behavior. I met his mother once, and she’s pretty much like Skylar except she’s a little cold-hearted and inconsistent. Skylar never has any time for her, though. He’s always been after his father, and it’s only his father that reached back. Except I think his dad only wants a Skylar doll to install in his firm.”
The idea made Xander want to throw up. “Will Skylar’s father disown him if he doesn’t fall into line?”
“Nah. But he’ll guilt him like fuck. Shout at him. Threaten to cut off his allowance. He might do that, for a bit. Sky won’t care, though. And I’ll fund him as much as I can if it comes to it. Pamela will let him live rent-free, she’s already said.”
“He’s already looking for a part-time job. He’s got his bases covered. And it’s not like they can take back his tuition.”
“Wouldn’t do that. So it’s all moot. But they can make him feel like shit.”
Xander grimaced. “I don’t know that I’m going to be much good at this meeting. This is my nightmare setup, facing down an asshole father. I’m going to do my best, but damn. It’s not like I’m great with my own.”
Unc rubbed his chin. “Well, what if we pulled another deal like when we went to Albany? What if the seven-god posse and Fudō Myōō all went together?”
“What, we all storm his office? God, that sounds like a cheesy 90s after-school special.”
Unc shrugged. “I mean, why not?”
But Skylar nixed the idea when they brought it to him. “I appreciate the sentiment, but you all have other obligations. I feel bad enough I’m pulling Xander out of class.”
“We don’t mind, honestly,” Jacob insisted, and everyone nodded in agreement.
Xander read the expression on his boyfriend’s face, realized Skylar wanted the two of them to go alone, and interceded. “It’s okay. We’ll be all right, the two of us.”
Pamela, not missing a beat, backed him up. “Very well. I expect you’ll keep us informed?”
They promised they would, and so Friday, two weeks after Skylar should have received his scores, they got on the train and rode all the way into Manhattan to have a showdown at Leighton Stone’s firm.
“Has he contacted you at all, since that last time?” Xander asked as they rode. He’d deliberately avoided talking about the matter too much before, trying to give Skylar space because it seemed to be what he wanted, but there wasn’t any point putting off talking about the subject now.
Skylar shook his head. He was rigid with nerves, but his jaw was set with determination as well. “I talked to Ellen about it when I set up this appointment. She knows I didn’t take the test.” He blushed. “She knows about you as well. She says she’s looking forward to meeting you.”
Xander blushed too. “Oh. That’s nice.” He cleared his throat. “I’m glad your dad hasn’t been pressuring you, though I’m surprised. I thought he’d want to know the score right away.”
Skylar’s hands closed into fists on his legs, and he stared at the seat ahead of him. “He probably assumes I did poorly and that I’m coming to explain why. I doubt he expects to hear I didn’t take it at all. He won’t be pleased.”
Xander put his hand over Skylar’s.
Skylar turned his palm over, lacing his fingers through Xander’s.
They went to a tall, gleaming-gold office building just off Wall Street, where the doorman knew Skylar on sight and ushered him to an elevator and the thirty-seventh floor.
The entire floor was a law firm. Men and women rushed around in suits, speaking in hushed tones, carrying briefcases and armfuls of files, leaning in to speak to one another, holding cell phones, chuckling with colleagues as they sauntered past. Interns looked harried as they rushed past, toting trays of coffee.
This was the place Skylar had been meant to work. The thought filled Xander with horror. It was death. It was cold and unfeeling. It was devoid of color and life. It was power and drive and cunning and opportunity and money and everything Skylar, the true Skylar, was not. It was the suit Xander had painted, except it would never, ever wash off.
The receptionist had someone lead them into a deeper part of the office, down a maze of halls to another reception area, where a black woman in a sharp navy suit and sparkling gold jewelry rose to greet Skylar with a warm smile.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in.” She hugged Skylar close, closing her eyes as the embrace lingered. When she drew back, she kept her hands on his shoulders and ran her gaze up and down him, clucking her tongue. “You’re not eating enough, and you’ve been too stressed.” When Skylar tried to give her a ting smile, she shook a finger at him. “Don’t you try and fool me, child. I raised you. I know when you’re treating yourself poorly.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Skylar’s voice was meek, but warm. Xander’s heart melted, watching the pair. He’d never seen Skylar light up like this. He looked like he’d love nothing more than to be lectured by Ellen all day long.
Ellen raised an eyebrow and nodded at Xander as she released Skylar. “Introduce me to your friend, now.”
Skylar startled. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m forgetting my manners.” He turned his body and gestured between Xander and Ellen, but Xander could see Skylar’s hand shaking. “Xander, this is Ellen Mansfield, my father’s executive assistant. Ellen, this is Xander Fairchild, my—boyfriend.”
Xander smiled wide and extended his hand to Ellen. He’d worn his suit coat and a button-down shirt, but they weren’t as fitted as Skylar’s, and they limited his arm movement, so he had to lean in to extend his reach. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Mansfield.”
She smiled warmly and accepted his handshake. “Please call me Ellen. And it’s a pleasure to meet you too. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“I’ve heard a great deal about you as well. It’s an honor to make your acquaintance.”
“Well, someone raised you right.” Ellen gave him a tight nod of approval as she released his hand. “Did the two of you have a good trip down?”
They chatted briefly, about their train ride, about Xander’s upcoming show, about the weather in Takaketo, about Ellen’s family, everything except for the LSAT and Skylar’s reason for coming into the city in the first place. Finally, however, Ellen curtailed the small talk and brought them around to the subject of Leighton Stone.
“He’s finishing up a meeting, which I’m hoping won’t take much longer. The two of you can have a seat over there in the waiting area and make yourselves at home. I’ll send someone over to get you two something to drink while you wait.”
Xander didn’t take Skylar’s hand, but he kept a hand behind his elbow as he ushered him to the chairs beside a bank of windows. When Skylar went to the glass instead of sitting, Xander stood beside him.
“Breathe,” he said.
Skylar released the air in his lungs in a ragged huff and stared at the buildings below. “This is going to be a disaster. I barely managed to introduce you to Ellen, and she was a cakewalk. How am I going to survive him?”
Xander stepped enough behind Skylar that he could put a hand on the middle of his back and trace reassuring circles. “You’re going to be great. Form your new straight line. Out of this building, out of his version of your life, and into your own.”
Skylar sighed again, but this time Xander thought he heard some determination mixed in with the fear.
A male assistant came and asked if they wanted anything to drink. Skylar said no, but Xander asked for water, and when the man came back with it, Xander encouraged Skylar to sip it. They sat there for nearly half an hour, which Xander was sure was some kind of power play on Leighton Stone’s part, but Xander did everything he could to keep his boyfriend calm.
Then, at last, Ellen told Skylar his father would see him now.
Xander gave Skylar’s hand one last squeeze, and off they went.
The office she led them into was huge, almost the size of Xander’s entire apartment, which was weird because there wasn’t much in it. There was a seating area, a small conference table, bookshelves and filing cabinets, and of course Leighton’s desk, but mostly there was cold, empty space, and windows. It had a great view of the city, and the furniture was incredibly comfortable, but all Xander saw was wealth, power, and emptiness.
He also saw Leighton Stone.
The man looked nothing like Skylar. Nothing at all. Xander had thought this when he’d seen the photo of Skylar’s parents, but when he saw the man in person, the force of how much Skylar didn’t look like his father was arresting. Leighton Stone was shorter than Skylar by at least four inches. His hair was dark too—mostly gray now, but the color remaining told Xander Leighton’s natural color was more the color of Xander’s than Skylar’s. It was thick and wiry too, unlike Skylar’s more wispy, fine hair.
The contrasts went on and on. Leighton’s nose was flat and wide where Skylar’s was long and narrow. Leighton’s eyes were brown and shaped differently than Skylar’s. His ears were a different shape. His fingers were stubbier, his hands smaller. He even stood differently. The only similarity Leighton had to Skylar was the suit he wore.
This was Skylar’s father?
Leighton Stone had been standing at the window as they entered, but after glancing at them and waving them in with a flattening of the lips, he sat at his desk. “Come in. I assume, since you made a point of coming all the way here, what you have to tell me isn’t good.” He sighed, but he also cast a critical glance at Xander, assessing him and his cheap suit as if he were deciding which recycling bin to send him to.
Xander could feel Skylar tensing, but he knew he couldn’t touch him, that drawing attention to their relationship in front of Skylar’s father would only make matters worse. He leaned in close to Skylar instead, close enough so he could whisper without Leighton overhearing.
“New straight line,” he said, then stepped to the side again and did everything he could to telegraph strength to his boyfriend.
Skylar squared his shoulders. “I wanted to meet with you personally to discuss the LSAT. I wanted also to talk to you about my future and to introduce you to Xander.”
Leighton leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. He cut another glance at Xander, this one decidedly cutting, but he said nothing to him, keeping his focus on Skylar. “What were your results?”
For a moment Skylar’s eyes fluttered closed, and when he opened them, they were almost glazed. “I…didn’t take the LSAT.”
Leighton lowered his hands, his cool expression evaporating as he leaned forward. “You what?”
“I didn’t take the test.” Skylar’s resolve had melted, and he was floating on his fear now, like a child who knew the devil was coming for them. “I got to the center and I panicked, and I didn’t take the test.”
“For Christ’s sake.” Leighton pushed at the stack of papers in front of him and sat back in his chair.
Skylar began to shake. “I meant to take it, you see, but as I arrived I realized it wasn’t what I wanted—”
Leighton regarded his son incredulously. “Wasn’t what you wanted?”
If Xander went to hell, this would be his sentence, he decided, watching Leighton Stone strip pieces off his boyfriend, one by one. Skylar kept clenching and unclenching his fists, unable to find his footing in the conversation. “Please—let me explain. I want—I need to do something different with…I mean, I am someone different than—”
“What you are?” Leighton made a tsk noise and wiped his hand over his mouth as he shook his head. “I should have installed you somewhere closer, where I could have kept a better eye on you. If only you’d have gotten into Yale in the first place, we wouldn’t have had to go through all these hoops. This is my fault, for not taking enough responsibility, for leaving things to Ellen because she’s so capable. I’ll make some calls, see what I can do.”
Skylar was wrecked now, wringing his hands, unable to meet his father’s gaze. “Please, sir—I don’t want to go into law, I want—”
“What you want?” Leighton all but sneered at Skylar, his gaze far too cold for a father. He still hadn’t risen, but he seemed to tower over his son all the same. “This isn’t about what you want. You’re a Stone. You’re going to behave in accordance with the honor and dignity I’ve given the name. You’re going to take that test. You’re going to the best law school I can bribe you into. Then you’re going to smile that pretty smile and win us the clients we need. I haven’t put all this effort into you for nothing.”
“He’s not here for your use.”
The words were out of Xander’s mouth before he could stop them. Skylar didn’t move, still frozen in place, but Leighton’s gaze shifted to Xander.
Xander went cold as the full force of that disdain turned on him. Leighton Stone’s smile had no ting whatsoever, only the sharp edges of a thousand knives.
“Ah, yes. You must be the one from the telephone. And you are what to Skylar?”
Xander darted a glance to his right, but Skylar was still immobile. Xander took a leap. “I’m his boyfriend.”
Skylar didn’t wince, exactly—it was more of a flinch, and the reason why was evident as Leighton Stone’s countenance turned stormy. “You’re what?”
Skylar looked ready to pass out. Xander decided this was his show now. He did his best to forge ahead to face the dragon. “I’m his boyfriend. We’ve been dating since—” He faltered, unsure of when to count the actual onset of their courtship.
“Dating. You’ve been dating my son. Well, that explains quite a bit, doesn’t it?” Leighton turned away from Xander, as if he couldn’t so much as see him any longer. All his focus was for Skylar now. “You aren’t dating anyone. You’re taking the test and applying to Yale. End of discussion.”
This, finally, unfroze Skylar. “Please, you need—”
“You’ve had your rebellion. I assume this was to get my attention? Now you have it. I’ll speak to the house mother at the fraternity—”
“I left the fraternity. I’m living with Xander.”
Leighton rose, looming over his desk. He looked so murderous Skylar stepped back, quaking again, but Xander stepped forward, arms spread out in defense, his blood pumping like fire through his veins as he faced his enemy down.
“Jesus, will you stop? He’s trying to talk to you, can’t you understand that? He wants to tell you about his future, what he wants to do with his life, and you won’t even let him speak—”
Leighton jammed a stubby finger in Xander’s face. “Stay out of this, boy. None of this is your business.”
Xander didn’t back down. In fact, he leaned in. “It’s absolutely my business. Skylar’s happiness is my business. Why isn’t it yours? How can you be like this with your own son?” He shook his head, pulse thumping in his ears. “Christ, you’re about as bad as my stepfath—”
Xander froze.
No.
No, that couldn’t be.
But it was as if Leighton read the thought as it passed over his mind, and for a split second as their gazes met, the glint in the man’s eye confirmed the terrible thought that had just run through Xander’s mind.
It’s almost as if you aren’t his father at all.
Xander couldn’t breathe.
“Step aside, boy,” Leighton commanded him.
Too rocked by the revelation he’d had, Xander complied.
Leighton turned his focus to Skylar once more. His gaze was flinty, his voice as cold as a December wind. “You will return to your fraternity. You will take the LSAT. You will enter Yale Law. And you will end your relationship with this man.” He sat at his desk again and began shuffling paper. “Go back to school. I have work to do.”
Xander stared at Skylar, waiting for a cue. His heartbeat rang in his ears, doubt and confusion tripping over one another in his mind. When Skylar meekly left the room, head bowed, Xander followed, thoughts swirling.
Was it true? Had Leighton actually confirmed in that glance that he wasn’t Skylar’s father? Had it been a trick to shut him up?
Oh, but it fits so well. Everything about it fits so well.
When Ellen saw them, she ushered them into a conference room. She got them tea and cookies, and after a few whispered words to her staff, she closed the door and sat with them, rubbing Skylar’s shoulder as she tried to get the story out of him of what had happened. Eventually Skylar stammered out a rough rehash, his voice sounding slightly teary. All through it, however, Xander sat quietly, not drinking his tea, almost too shell-shocked to move. When Ellen touched his hand, he startled, nearly falling out of his chair.
She regarded him with concern. “Hon, are you all right?”
Xander didn’t mean to do it. He never would have, normally, but he was staring at her, and she was so kind, and after the cold hollow that was Leighton, with the weight of his potential discovery, he didn’t think. He simply tried to unload it. “Leighton—he can’t be. He can’t be Skylar’s father.”
Ellen went still, her expression one of shock—and sadness.
Xander wilted.
Skylar turned to the two of them, blinking. “What?”
“Never you mind, child.” Ellen’s hard gaze on Xander was a reprimand, an order to keep quiet.
Skylar wasn’t having it. “No, what did you say, Xander? What did you mean, my father can’t be my father?”
Xander shifted his focus from Ellen to his boyfriend. Skylar sat with the windows at his back, where the afternoon sun was setting, but with the tinted windows, it didn’t get through. Everything about this office is sterile. Xander wanted to throw a chair through the glass and let real air, real sun inside. To gather Skylar in his arms and sail with him out of this nightmare back to Takaketo.
Where they belonged.
Despite the tinted windows, the sun rose on Xander’s heart, showing him the way to his answer.
He took Skylar’s hand, held it tightly. “The man in the other room has no hold over you.”
Skylar looked ready to cry. “Xander, he’s my father.”
Xander drew a breath, felt the fire of rightness burning inside him, saw the Palace of the Sun shining in the morning light inside his mind’s eye. “No, Skylar. He isn’t.”
Skylar stared at him. “What?” He turned to Ellen. “What is he saying?”
Ellen took his hand. She looked older, sadder. At first Xander thought she would deny it, but after what appeared to be some kind of internal struggle, she shook her head with a heavy sigh. “What your boyfriend says is the truth, though I don’t know how he figured it out. Leighton Stone is your father. But he’s your adoptive parent, not your biological one.”
Skylar looked back and forth between the two of them. Panicking. “I don’t understand.”
Ellen never let go of his hand. “Your mother was pregnant when they met. Some French tutor of hers. He had dreams no grander than being a poet, and she had higher ideals. She didn’t want an abortion, and she didn’t want to give you up. Your father liked the idea of a pretty society wife, and they made an arrangement. But your mother tired of playing house and chased her own dreams, which is when I came into your life.”
Skylar looked poleaxed. “So he’s not my father.”
Ellen shook her hand, clasping his hand with both of hers now. “He is your father. He adopted you. He’s taken better care of you than your mother.”
Xander wasn’t having any of this. “No, Ellen. You have.”
Skylar’s tears ran down his cheeks. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Ellen looked so tired. “That was your father’s choice. He wanted you to believe you were his son in every way possible. He does love you. No matter what else you believe, believe that.”
The façade was starting to crack around Skylar now. When he spoke, his voice was lost, and sad. “Does he love me, or the Skylar he wants me to be?”
Ellen sighed, “Oh, honey.”
Xander picked up his boyfriend’s other hand, giving him a gentle kiss with his thumb. “I can’t say how much he sees the real you, but I bet Ellen’s right. He does love you, in his own way. You know I understand about parents who aren’t there for you, who don’t see you for who you are. What I can also tell you about is that sometimes you have to let go of your parents, even though it hurts. Both the ones who gave birth to you and the ones who stepped in for them. You can’t keep chasing down their approval. You have to be the one who decides what your life is worth, and if they don’t like what you’re doing with your life, you have to let them go. Even if it hurts.”
Skylar stared at Xander, tears still falling. Still lost, still trapped behind the same wall of glass he’d been in since he entered the law offices. A wall of fear—fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of being left behind. Fear of being all alone.
Oh, how Xander understood that terror.
Lacing his fingers through Skylar’s, Xander leaned in and pressed against the glass. “Just remember. No matter what happens with your father, you aren’t alone. You have everyone at the Palace. You have Ellen and her family. And you have me—for as long as you want to have me.”
Skylar’s wall of glass shattered. With a sob, he let go of Ellen and pulled Xander into a tight embrace.
Shutting his eyes, Xander wrapped his arms around his boyfriend and held him right back.
EVERYONE KEPT ASKING Skylar if he was all right.
Xander gave him space on the train ride back, only holding his hand, but when they got back to the Palace of the Sun, everyone came up to Skylar looking at him as if he’d come back from war. He escaped to the apartment, where he cocooned himself in bed with Hiromu and Hokusai, but when the loneliness was too much and he wandered down to find Xander, everyone looked at him with even sadder expressions, and Skylar knew they knew everything now.
Which was good, because he didn’t want to have to tell them that his father wasn’t his father. That his whole life had been a lie.
For days, he wandered like a zombie, replaying every scene from his life, trying to find clues that would have given away the secret if he’d been trying to look. He couldn’t find anything. He still didn’t understand how Xander had figured it out so easily, so eventually he asked.
Xander looked sad, and slightly embarrassed. “You don’t look alike. At all.”
Well that was a ridiculous reason. “All kinds of people don’t look like their parents.”
“No, that’s not true. I’m a portrait artist. I look at the details of faces. I should have been able to see something similar, and I found nothing. But that wasn’t the only thing, really. It was more…the way he behaved. He reminded me of my stepfather. The way he regarded you wasn’t like a father. I mean, it’s not like my birth father is any good either. But there was something so familiar about it. And then I said it, and he looked at me, and I knew I was right. Then I said as much to Ellen, and I knew.”
Skylar spent a lot of time on the phone with Ellen too—her home phone, not her line at the law office. She told him more about how his parents had come together, how he’d been adopted by his father, and why she’d taken such an interest in him.
“You were such a sweet little boy, and all you wanted was love. It broke my heart to see you left alone like you were.”
This alarmed Skylar. “They left me alone?”
“Not literally, no. You had nannies and babysitters and au pairs and everything a rich little boy could want, except the thing you wanted most. Someone to hold you on their lap and read you stories and tell you how to be a good boy. So that’s what I did, and what I taught my girls to do. You turned out all right, I like to think.”
Skylar shut his eyes, basking in the praise. “Thank you, Ellen.”
She told him about his birth father too, as much as she knew. His first name was Charlie, but she didn’t know his last name. He’d graduated and moved on from his mother’s college, but after that he’d practically disappeared. She said she’d do some hunting to help him find out more. She answered every question Skylar put to her, patiently, kindly. She even looked up his father—Leighton’s—blood type when he asked to know what it was.
“He’s type O,” he told Xander one night as they lay in bed together. “If I’d have known that, I might have figured it out sooner. I can’t have a type O parent, if I’m type AB.”
“Well, technically you can—there’s precedent, though it’s rare.” Xander sighed. “But yes. If you were looking for more evidence he’s not your birth parent, which I suspect you were, you have it.”
Skylar didn’t know what he was looking for anymore. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop from Manhattan, because he hadn’t gone back to the fraternity and he hadn’t broken up with Xander, and at some point he assumed his father—Leighton—would have something to say about this. Ellen said she would speak to him about it, but Skylar knew there was only so much she could do, and at the end of the day she wanted to keep her job, that she needed to, with a daughter still in college and a wedding to plan.
He stumbled through the next week in a haze—he attended class, but he didn’t take notes, and he actively avoided engaging with people in the halls. After his phone ID told him his father was calling, he panicked and started leaving it in the apartment so he didn’t have to answer it.
The others did their best to help. They tried to get him to eat, to go on walks, to laugh. Skylar wasn’t much company, though, even when he was with himself. He couldn’t stop worrying. Wondering. Thinking.
He wondered where Charlie the French tutor was now. Had he married someone else? Did he know he had a son? Would he be excited to hear that Skylar had found someone he loved, that he knew, at last, what his dream for his life should be? Or would he never have stayed with his mother even if she had tried to make it work? Had his mother, in the end, truly chosen the best path for herself, but this path simply hadn’t been the best one for her son? Of course, she had yet to so much as call him after his father’s revelation. Did she know? Did she even care?
Had she ever cared about him?
What was his birth father’s last name?
What should his last name have been, instead of Stone?
Where do I belong now?
With Xander—that he knew, that truth enfolded him every night, literally, as Xander wrapped his arms around him, teased him with his paintbrushes, bullied him into eating, nagged him forward through each day. Created with him. They still worked on Hotay & Moo, but they lay twined together and whispered of other stories they could make too. Sometimes Xander would lean over to reach for his sketchbook, roughing out ideas.
Sometimes Skylar invented wild story concepts just to see if he could get Xander to sketch them.
Skylar kept waiting for his father to make his next move, to try harder to bring him to heel. He didn’t know yet what he’d do when that happened. Zelda was eager for it; they wanted Leighton to come for Skylar so they could eviscerate him. Unc devised amateur legal scenarios and promised to share his trust fund with him when it kicked in at twenty-five. Jacob and Cory huddled together envisioning business schemes, certain that they could come up with something the four of them—Jacob, Cory, Xander, and Skylar—could do to keep them all solvent enough that parents wouldn’t matter.
Pamela didn’t say much, but whenever Skylar got too nervous, she told him not to worry, that his father didn’t scare her, and she’d take care of him as long as he needed a parent to help him through.
Skylar appreciated their help. In the end, though, he knew ultimately he had to walk through this moment alone, at least inside his heart. Walking was, largely, what he did. He went out a lot in the evening, in the state park. Sometimes he went in the morning instead, wandering the trails until he was too tired to move or his mind unclouded.
One morning in late October, three weeks before Xander’s BFA show, he woke up before the sun rose, unable to go back to sleep, and he had the most powerful urge in the world to start walking. Normally he stuck to the main trails so he didn’t get lost, but that morning the trails were full of fog, and as he came over the hill, the first rays of sun were creeping over the horizon, just a faint glow, and the woods he passed were full of soft, rolling mist that beckoned to him. Even though he was more likely to get lost today than ever, he couldn’t turn away.
He started through the trees, heading toward the sun.
He didn’t know where he walked, only that he felt he was walking somewhere, that something led him. Toward the sun. He kept going, moving faster and faster, his feet soaked from dew, caked with mud. He had to ford a stream, the same one, he thought, he’d waded through the day he’d cut his leg, and he shivered with cold and damp as he huffed up the ridge.
The ridge overlooking a valley with a great rock in the center of it.
Skylar cleared the crest just as the sun reached the horizon, streaming rays of gold across the valley, into his face, into the crack in the great, weathered rock that stood before him. This wasn’t Xander’s ridge—it was someplace new, somewhere Skylar had never been before. The rock was huge, something no human had put there, something which had stood there long, long before any white man had deigned to defile the state of New York. It was a rock which, when he looked around, stood sentry over what he knew from his history lessons were Native American burial mounds.
It was a rock which, sometime in the last hundred years or so, someone had quietly turned into a shrine.
He could see the sacred objects from where he stood. A jar, a mirror—there were a few other pieces of what should have been an altar tucked beneath the ledge, but time and the elements had taken them away. Even without them, though, Skylar thought he could have felt the presence of the god, the kami here. Certainly the indigenous residents of the area had—they’d buried their ancestors around it. And after all this time, tucked into the woods, the god carried on.
Skylar fell to his knees. Clapped his hands twice, bowed his head, shut his eyes, facing the god and the sun.
“I don’t know what to do.” His voice was soft, quiet, but it carried on the wind, lifted into the trees, nestled in the leaves. “I want to move forward. But I feel like no matter what I do, I keep getting tied down.” He opened his eyes, lowered his hands, and stared at the kami. “I try to see myself as Xander sees me. I don’t want to follow my parents’ path. Especially since they, not together, aren’t truly my parents. They raised me on false pretenses. They never saw me. They never let me see myself. How can I do that? How can I keep from letting their vision cloud mine? How do I replace what they took from me? I try, and every time I just get pulled back. I don’t want to fail anymore. I want to stand before my father—the man who played that role—and show him who I am. But I don’t think I have the strength.”
The sun hit him, and he turned to it, opening his arms, tears on his face.
“Please help me,” he whispered. “Please, please help.”
He wasn’t sure what god was listening at that point. But there in the glade, with the god and the ancestors of those who had lived in Takaketo before him, he knew one thing for certain.
Someone heard him.