Five

THERE WERE very few times when the house in Ashbury was quiet. Even devoid of people, in the space between opening the front door and stepping inside the foyer, the once-battered, kissed-and-made-better wooden structure moaned and creaked, its old bones slow to absorb the day’s shifting temperatures.

So it was a bit eerie for Gus to be sitting on the sectional in the middle of the family room, surrounded by the men he counted as his brothers, in a house so silent he could hear his own heartbeat.

They’d come together in the family room after dinner intending to watch a game, but then Luke elbowed Gus to open up before the game was turned on, urging him with a whisper Bear caught the tail end of. The news of Chris went as well as Gus expected or worse, depending on what would follow the shocked, heavy silence as his brothers absorbed the information .

Now he sat in the corner of the sectional and waited, his neck and forearm itching because he’d forgotten to move the hateful crocheted afghan slung over the back of the couch. Bear’d found it at a thrift shop a few years back, a pink acrylic monstrosity too scratchy to be comfortable but that seemed to always be where it could rub up against his skin. In a lot of ways, the damned afghan reminded him of Mason, especially whenever the smug asshole opened his mouth to speak.

When the storm of noise finally broke over him, it was Mason who led with the first strike, a punch of words ridged with an edge sharpened by years of imagined and real slights.

“Jesus, how the hell can you be a father?” Mace stood at the end of the U-shaped couch, exasperated and taut with emotion. “You don’t even know—”

“What? I don’t even know who my father is?” Gus was on his feet before he knew it, fists clenched at his sides, and he’d have grabbed at Mason if Ivo hadn’t slung his legs up between them, his heels resting on the long ottoman. “That’s where you’re going?”

“I didn’t say—” Mason growled. “Shit, how can you be a dad to a kid? You wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“To be fair, Gus, neither one of us knows who our father is. Only reason we have different last names is because Mom was guessing,” their youngest pointed out, a dry scrape of reason in the middle of the wet, sticky brawl threatening to break out on top of him. Ivo stood slowly, a lanky barrier for their rising anger to crash against. Angling himself toward Mason, he lightly pushed at their older adopted brother. “Back it up, Mace. Only one in this room who had a good dad was Bear, so none of us have room to talk.”

“I don’t know how good of a person my dad was. He died before I knew he was human. When you’re fourteen, your dad’s still really big in your head,” Bear rumbled from his perch on the sectional from across the room. “He should have taken you and the twins in, especially since he and Mom knew her sister was a drug addict.”

“We would have ended up with her anyway,” Gus reminded him. “You did.”

“That’s because she convinced CPS she was clean,” Bear muttered back. “We didn’t stay there long, did we?”

Gathered in the family room, his brothers were a spectrum of rage, confusion, and in Luke’s case, silent condemnation of their arguing. It’d taken Luke some time to adjust to the bickering between Gus and Ivo, the only true siblings in the group, and their older cousin Bear’s sometimes not too gentle remonstrations for them to shut up when they’d taken things too far.

Mason took to being the second oldest like a duck to water, going from cast-off problem child to Bear’s right hand. Despite not being related to the three cousins by blood, he’d cloaked himself in an interfering bossiness Gus strained against and Ivo routinely ignored once CPS finally allowed Bear to take custody of them. By the time Luke joined the brotherhood, Mason was in charge of keeping the house routine moving while Bear worked his ass off to finish his apprenticeship at the tattoo shop who’d taken him in, and Mace discovered Luke was more than willing to be cajoled, taking most of the pressure off of Gus.

“Question.” Ivo cocked his head, his attention shifting from Mace to Gus. “How the hell did you get someone pregnant? You don’t like women. Me or Mason? Sure, that’s a fifty-fifty, but you? Hell, I’d have said Bear before you.”

“Not sure what you mean by that, kid,” Bear drawled over Luke’s snort. “Do I say thanks or give you shit about slagging your brother?”

“It’s not a damned… look, can we all agree Gus is probably the second to last of us who’d have an actual kid?” Ivo shrugged. “Last being Luke, but he’d adopt or something.”

“I have enough right now, thanks,” Luke piped up. “How about if we all sit down and give Gus some air?”

“How about if Gus explains what the hell’s going on?” Mason’s eyebrow lifted. “You sure it’s yours? Who’s the mom? Is she around, or do we have to get into another fight with CPS?”

“Well at least this time, we’ll know what we’re doing,” Bear said, nudging Luke over so he had room to sit on the corner. Earl snorfled from his spot in front of the unlit fireplace, “Mace is right—”

“Of course he is. Because he’s fucking Mace,” Gus shot back, then snapped his mouth shut when Bear’s eyebrows twitched. “Sorry. Go on.”

“We need to know what we’re getting into. Whether or not we’ll be able to get… hell, even access to him,” Bear continued. From the expression on his older brother’s face, Bear was gearing up for a fight, either with the state or maybe even his son’s family. “We’ve got lawyers—”

“No lawyers. Okay, we might need a lawyer, but I don’t know yet. Probably.” He cut off a barrage of questions with an upraised hand. Sitting back down, Gus made himself comfortable, then had to move his legs so Ivo could get past him to sit in the middle of the sectional, giving Mason room to sit. There was a tightening in his throat, nearly cutting off all of the air he’d sucked in when Bear began to list what they’d need for a battle he hoped would never come. “She’s okay. Better than okay. I’m the fuckup she needed to keep him safe from. Don’t give me that look, Luke. You know that’s got to be what was going through her head.”

“You just needed a little time to find your feet.” Ever loyal, Luke’s protest might have pulled a derisive comment out of Mason, but a quick flick of Bear’s narrowed eyes toward the other side of the couch went a long way in keeping Mace quiet. “Tell them the rest of it, Gus.”

“How much do you know?” Ivo rolled his head back, staring down his nose at Luke. “All of it or just bits and pieces?”

“Don’t make this a thing, Ivo. I went to Luke first because I needed to… hammer a few things out in my own head before I talked to the rest of you.” After his brothers settled down, Gus broke the heavier part of his news. “You guys know his mom. It’s Jules. She apprenticed with Bear before she left for Seattle.”

“Shit, kiddo. I mean, fuck.” Bear whistled, puffing his cheeks out, then rubbed at his face. Running his hands through his thick hair, he said, “She should have been off-limits. Not because she’s a woman but because… dude, she was my apprentice. You were working the shop….”

“Bear, tell me something I don’t know, but it wasn’t….” There’d been too much pain that night, anguish followed by a wave of darkness he’d thrown himself into. His heartbreak tore him open then, and he’d tried to fill it with everything and anything he could lay his hands on that night—whiskey, tequila, and then a sweet-faced, freckled girl with gentle hands who’d cupped his face and kissed away his tears. “It wasn’t anything other than that one night, and then she was gone.”

“She left almost three years ago.” Mason perched on the ottoman, straddling it to face the rest of the family. “You were with Rey then.”

There was an accusation in his words, unformed but growing, and Gus cut it off with a sharp retort. “This was after Rey… after we broke up. The when and why don’t matter. Chris matters.”

“I don’t remember her.” Ivo frowned, tucking his long legs under him and grabbing at his bare feet, rocking forward. “Wait, the Vietnamese girl? The one who was adopted? Or am I thinking about someone else?”

“No, that was Lynn. Jules was the girl from Russian Hill. Nice family. Her mom baked us cookies. I did a Neo-Traditional piece on her back… an eagle and a crow. She went up to Craggy Point Ink to finish up her apprenticeship under Sue,” Bear replied softly. As hard as it was to look at the head of their family, Gus forced himself to meet Bear’s gaze. He didn’t know what to expect other than disappointment, and while there might have been a shred of something hard on his rugged face, Gus couldn’t see past the softening around Bear’s glacial blue eyes. “Did she leave because she was pregnant? Is she still in Seattle?”

“I think we’ve got a bigger question to ask,” Mace cut in. “You didn’t answer me the first time. Are you sure the kid’s yours?”

“Let him talk,” Luke interjected. “Questions later. Go ahead, Goose.”

Spotting the devilish light in Ivo’s eyes, Gus slapped his brother’s knee before he could start up. As much as he and Luke had discussed how to tell the rest of the family about Chris, his stomach was a hard knot, twisting about beneath his pounding heart. A siren went by, a rattling shriek of sound close enough to put Mace’s back up, and like dogs following the flight of a tennis ball, they all looked at him, unsure and expectant.

“Not my station anymore. Rey… and I are over at Chinatown, remember? I don’t have a get-out-of-a-family-shit-free card unless it comes over on a text.” Mace tossed them a rueful grin. His shoulders were tense, but there was enough slack in his sprawl to ease some of Gus’s pangs at hearing his ex’s name roll so casually off of Mason’s tongue. “Look, dude, I’m not trying to be an asshole—”

“Really?” Ivo muttered, but the rest of them ignored him.

“Thing is, I don’t want you to get hurt. Hell, I don’t want any of us to get sucked into something we can’t get out of.” Mason gentled his tone, staring past Gus’s shoulder and into the shadows beyond. He blinked, and a sheen flitted over his eyes before he looked away. “We’re going to get attached to a kid, then find out he’s not really yours or she does the whole ‘you can’t see him because I don’t want you to’ shit. I just want to make sure we know what’s going on before… fuck, Gus, you know how this shit goes. We’ve all been a part of that kind of crap.”

“Hey, I know, Mace. I do. I had the same kind of reaction when she finally got a hold of me because I didn’t fucking remember going near her until she started talking about the party we’d hooked up at. Then it was like everything clicked, and I had to catch my breath.

“She didn’t tell anyone I was the dad. Not even her parents. They thought he was some guy she’d dated then split when she told him. They didn’t ask, and Jules didn’t say anything.” He made a face, hearing Jules’s harsh words in his mind when she’d told him why he’d remained a secret. “She didn’t… doesn’t… think I’d be a good dad, and I’ve got to be honest, a couple of years ago, she’s not wrong. I’m not even on his birth certificate as his father, but I was the only one she’d been with at the time so… I was the sole contender for the DNA swab.”

“Why now?” Bear prodded, shifting forward on the couch to rest his forearms on his thighs. The room’s overhead lights caught at the silver flecks near his temples, picking out the metallic strands among his dark brown hair. “Do her parents know? What’s her plans?”

“She’s back here. In the city. She got an art scholarship… a full ride… and her parents asked about Chris’s dad, so she spilled the beans that he’s some gay asshole who does tattoos down at the pier instead of the slacker they never met. They were the ones who told her she needed to let me know about Chris. So I could decide if I was going to be a part of his life.”

“It means going through the courts,” Luke slid in carefully. “He doesn’t have any parental rights, and even if they’re willing to let Gus be his father, there’s going to have to be a formal arrangement. Family Court’s going to want to look into everything from his criminal records—”

“Juvie doesn’t count,” Ivo cut in.

“Juvie does count. Gus never petitioned to seal his, and records aren’t sealed automatically. Those possession charges when he was sixteen? Those will be there,” Luke pointed out. “The court’s going to want to know how much he makes, if he has a steady income and a place to live. It’s different now. Back then they would dump a kid on anyone. Now you’ve got to prove you can do the job.”

“We’ll want the custody agreement to be formalized. That way if things go south, they can’t yank him away from Gus.” Bear stroked at Earl’s head. “We’re going to need a lawyer. When did you find out?”

The shock of Chris resonated still, a wave of alarm, fear, and something Gus didn’t have the strength to pick at. Looking back at everything he’d been, all he’d done, with nothing to show for it but a transient lifestyle, a banged-up motorcycle, and four brothers he’d let down too many times to count. He didn’t know the first thing about being a father, and his skin itched, tightening in on his bones with a clear drive to leave San Francisco without even a glance at the rearview mirrors.

“Jules told me when I was on the road. When I got to Portland, her parents paid for a paternity test because, well, they’re serious about me knowing if Chris is mine. Bear, you’ve met them. They’re solid, and Jules… she’d just moved back home from up there or I’d have seen him up there.” He’d missed seeing Chris by a few weeks, and the relief he’d felt was empty, mingled with an odd regret strong enough for him to taste in his mouth when he tried to go to bed at night. “So I’ve known about him for a while now but… as soon as she told me… shared with me the results, I came home. I can’t… won’t run away from him. I’m not going to do what was done to us. I can’t.”

“What does she want? Full custody and you get visitation or joint custody?” Bear murmured, steepling his fingers in front of his face. “Where does this leave you, and what do you want to do now?”

Gus wanted to tell Bear he’d like to run screaming. No one would have blamed him—probably even expected it—and for all he knew, it could have been the best damned thing for Chris if he wasn’t in the kid’s life. Yet sitting across from the man who’d dug in, made Gus and Ivo a home, and carved out a family from the broken, lost boys they’d found along the way, Gus knew better. He wanted more for the little boy he’d only seen in pictures and a couple of too-short videos. A little boy who looked so much like Ivo but without the wariness in his bright eyes and who didn’t flinch when his grandmother raised her hand near his face to take a sippy cup from someone a few feet away.

There were too many holes in the five of them. Holes left by men and women who should have been there to protect them or, like for Luke and Mason, caused by them. In the few short clips he’d seen of Chris, there’d been an undercurrent of something strong and easy between the round-faced toddler and the people in his life. He smiled easily, laughing when a fat-bellied dachshund waddled up to him and licked his face. Gus didn’t know how to laugh like that. It was freeing, a touch of something magical he’d never had and so commonplace for the towheaded little boy who had his younger brother’s deep blue eyes.

He wanted to know what that felt like… to have someone see that kind of love when they saw him and to be a face in the crowd at all the stupid things kids went through… a face Chris wouldn’t have to wonder if he’d ever see because he’d know—without any doubt—Gus would be there.

“I’m his father,” Gus finally replied, touched at Bear’s short, knowing smile. “And I hope you all are ready to be uncles, because I’m also going to do my fucking best to be his dad.”

“COME ON,” Gus cajoled the massive coffee machine, tapping its side as it burbled and sang. “Just… hurry up.”

It’d been three in the morning by the time he’d finally crawled into his king-sized bed, set up under the split-up attic’s eaves. A small landing and two doors separated his original room from Ivo’s studio, but it was quieter than downstairs, especially since Luke and Mason were up at the crack of dawn to go save the world, with Bear hot on their heels to open up the shop. He had no idea where Ivo was, but the house was empty. He’d made a halfhearted promise to Bear to stop by 415 Ink before closing.

The dog began to snore in time with the coffee machine, his bellowing snorfles and rumbles rolling out from under the dining room’s long wooden table. Someone industrious had optimistically covered the cushions of the table’s mismatched seats with navy fabric, but the dog’s wheaten fur seemed to be winning out, speckling a few but practically coating the captain’s chair where Bear sat. Earl let loose a mighty crackle of a snore as the machine finally pushed out a steady stream of aromatic coffee, raising Gus’s hopes he’d get a cup in before nightfall. He was already dreading driving the beat-up SUV Bear kept as a family loaner car, and the thought of dragging himself down to the pier in a pink-champagne Explorer with half-scraped-off youth soccer and cheer stickers stuck to the rear window only depressed him more.

“It’s like the damned things grow back, Earl.” Gus glanced at the canine, but there wasn’t even so much as a nose twitch. “Jesus, dog. Have you no pride? Do you have any idea how stupid you look with your head sticking out of a blush rose car? And seriously, what the fuck is wrong with this coffee machine?”

He didn’t hear the door open or even the tread of footsteps on the house’s wide planked floor. Gus saw the light change in the kitchen. A shadow fell across the overhead oak and antique glass cabinets when a man’s head and torso cut through the soft beam near his head, and the morning went to shit when Gus recognized the man’s face reflected in a cabinet’s inset panels.

There was a special pain reserved only for when an ex-boyfriend walked back into a guy’s life. It was made worse when the rug and relationship were yanked out from under you without warning. Gus wasn’t sure if he’d really had a steady thing with Rey or if it’d been a one-sided, maybe-falling-in-love space he’d built in his own head, but the pain—the twisting burn of soured feelings and a scorched heart—was definitely real.

Gus never knew his marrow could wither in his bones or that his face numbed from the shock of his heart crumbling to ash inside his chest. Not until the moment he glanced up and found Rey Montenegro standing behind him. It became a struggle to keep from biting through his lip so he wouldn’t let a single damned tear fall… even as Rey’s reflection shimmered, his lashes growing damp with each blink.

The old glass wasn’t as perfect as a mirror, but it gave Gus enough for his memory to fill in what he couldn’t make out on Rey’s strong features.

Rey’s hair was longer than it’d been the last time Gus saw him, probably at some family thing where he only stayed for five minutes after Rey came through the door. He’d spent a lot of time running away, slipping out of back doors without so much as a word to the man who’d once took him apart with his lips, hands, and dick. His belly remembered those lips on the ridge of his navel, felt those teeth sink into the soft meat on the inside of his left thigh. His fingers had traced the small triangular scar on Rey’s jaw, the results of a childhood experiment on running with scissors, and he’d explored Rey’s full pout with eager lips, their naked bodies stretched out over a mattress they’d flung on the floor in the attic—the same mattress Gus wrestled onto a box spring and slept in last night.

Fuck… seeing Rey Montenegro hurt like hell, but aching for the taste of the damned man in his mouth was going to kill him.

“Hey, Ivo, tell me there’s room in the freezer.” Rey held up a pair of large blue plastic bags with the red logo of a pier-side fish market on their sides. The plastic rustled and something inside one shifted, tilting its weight, but Rey’s large hand was firm, clenched tightly around the taped-off handles. “They had a sale on Dungeness, and Bear said to grab a few for the house. We just need to find a place to put them.”

“Huh. Ivo? Really? You know something, Rey?” Gus snorted, shaking his head. Turning around, he swallowed the odd barb lodged in the back of his throat, then said, “As often as you’ve bent me over to fuck me, I’d think you’d be able to recognize me from behind.”