Nine

“IT’LL BE okay, Goose. It’s just neutral territory. We’ve got to start this somewhere.” Luke patted him on the back. “Last night was hard for everyone. Even though Jules is okay, it scared the shit out of her. Her parents too. We’ve got to get your name on his birth certificate so you’ve got a say in his life. That’s something we’ve got to work on. They’re not being assholes about it but… we’re asking them to let you into their lives too. Take it easy and try like hell to keep your focus on Chris, right?”

There were other words, drowned by emotions too volatile for Gus to put a name to. They were in a square khaki-painted room devoid of anything warm or comforting. It was like the hundreds of rooms Gus’d found himself in when he was younger, walls plastered with informative flyers and a sad scrabble of toys tossed into a plastic laundry basket shoved into a corner. The furniture was utilitarian, a set of formed resin chairs with metal legs, easily stackable in case the room needed clearing. Only a naïve idiot would think the oddly hued silvery pane on one long wall was anything but a one-way mirror for people to stand behind and judge.

He’d been judged a lot through those kinds of mirrors, slotted into one home then the next, kept apart from his brothers and shuffled through a system of forms, rubber stamps, and numb, apathetic drones. Gus knew how it felt to walk through that door—hell, he might have actually walked through that particular door—only to be handed off to the next faceless social worker who’d promise him the moon if he’d just not fuck up his next foster placement.

The smell of the place made him sick. The idea of Chris meeting him inside of one of these rooms tangled a sour knot through Gus’s guts. He couldn’t sit down. He’d tried. Folding himself into one of the chairs brought back way too many memories of slouching down into a similar molded red or baby blue shell, making himself as small as he could get so no one would notice he was in the room.

People argued in these rooms—fought tooth and nail in these rooms—but not to do right by the kid trapped in the chair, too scared to move and too angry to speak. Instead they bickered and cut into each other about budgets and risky placements, not wanting to lose a good foster by plopping someone like Gus into their laps. How many times had he heard he was too much for this family or that one? When barely adult Bear came along with his fucked-up house and blood ties, they’d been thankful—grateful even—despite spending years denying the brothers’ requests to be together. It’d taken them forever to get Ivo, and again, battles waged inside of four cramped pea-soup-colored walls.

“We should have done this outside. In the sunlight,” Gus muttered, squeezing at the plush rabbit he’d brought with him. “Not in this kind of shit hole….” He bit the rest of his words off, remembering the mirror and people who could even now be behind it. The metallic stink of the building’s air was getting to him, and the collar on his one button-up shirt felt like it was choking him. “Christ, Luke. I—”

“Breathe, Goose,” his brother coaxed. Luke’s hand returned to his back, rubbing at the spot between his shoulder blades. “This isn’t a fight. Remember, we’re here because it’s the first step. They called you. Jules wants this. Her parents want this. We’re here because Lynn—don’t give me that blank look—Jules’s mom, she works here and it’s close to the hospital. She can bring Chris while Jules’s dad goes to see her. Everyone I know who’s worked with Lynn says she’s nice, an advocate. Give this a chance, man, before you paint yourself into a corner and start screaming. You’re going to be fine.”

The rabbit might have been a bad idea, but he’d picked it out because it was soft and floppy, something he’d have liked when he was a kid. He’d dressed as carefully as he could, a pair of black jeans and a long-sleeved gray shirt with thin blue pinstripes. There was no helping his boots, but they were clean, scrubbed within an inch of their life and rubbed down with leather oil. Bear had to shave him. His hands shook too much, and Gus was afraid he was going to slit his own throat.

When the call came in last night, his heart stopped when Doug, Jules’s father, told him about the fire and her injuries. Chris’s name was out of his mouth before Doug finished telling him about Jules, and Gus’s legs gave when the older man told him his son was fine. Icy fingers dug through him, spreading outward until Doug repeated his reassurances and Bear took the phone from Gus’s trembling hands, his brother’s gruff voice ordering him to bend over before he passed out. The rest of the conversation was a one-sided twenty questions from Bear and the gravelly, indistinct squawk of Doug’s voice coming through the phone’s tiny speaker.

He’d thrown up right then and there, emptying his stomach out over the kitchen floor with Ivo yelling at Earl to get away and Bear somehow arranging for Chris’s arrival into Gus’s life.

“Damned room is too small. It’s—” He caught his breath, a bubble trapped in his throat when someone knocked at the door. The knob turned, and the walls closed in on him. He wasn’t ready. He’d never be ready. The enormity of having a child, one old enough to know who he was, pressed in on Gus, and he gulped down a mouthful of air. “Luke, I’m going to be—”

“Fine.” Luke finished for him. “You’re going to do fine. Any kid would be lucky to have you in their life.”

“Dude, I’ve never even been around a kid,” he muttered; then his world changed forever.

The walls faded back, the color draining from everything and everyone but the little boy being coaxed into the room. His bright wavy mane was nearly white, shot with gold, and his shockingly vivid blue eyes shone against his sun-kissed skin. Fat-cheeked and button-nosed, he looked so much like Ivo, Gus’s heart ached. He was talking, a sweet singsong about getting an ice cream later and maybe a camel, his attention solely on the older woman leading him into the room. His All-Stars didn’t match, a red on the left and blue on the right, and he kept tugging at the hem of a black Crossroads Gin T-shirt, trying to tuck it into the waistband of his jeans.

There was talking, some murmurs between Luke and the woman, but Gus wasn’t listening. His chest ached, as if punched through by something bigger than what he could take. Those blue eyes found Gus’s face, and the little boy’s mouth—a bow-shaped pair of lips so much like his own—smiled at him and Gus fell in love.

Crouching, Gus held the bunny out to Chris, then swallowed around his thickened tongue when his son reached for it, their fingers brushing when the boy took it. He was off before Gus could say hello, a babbling stream of nonsense to his grandmother before she turned him gently back around.

“Chris, honey, what do you say?” She was gentle but firm, a pixie-faced slender woman with short red hair and much too young to be a grandmother. “What do you say to your dad?”

“We’re going to get ice cream.” He stomped over to Gus, hugging the rabbit upside down, its long ears dragging across his knees. “Later. Not now. But later.”

“He’s a bit… stubborn. Doesn’t like being told no. And insists on dressing himself, so please excuse the clothes. It’s all we can do to get that shirt off of him to wash it.” Lynn grimaced ruefully. “We’re also working on manners.”

“Yeah, we’re doing the same with Gus,” Luke teased, and Gus caught himself before he flipped his brother off. “He’s tall.”

“We were wondering where that came from,” she replied as Chris began to show Gus the rabbit’s tail. “But now… well, it makes sense.” Bending down, Lynn put her hand on Chris’s shoulder. “Honey, this is your dad. Remember? We talked about him. He’s like Papa—”

“Papa?” Gus looked up at her. “Um….”

“My husband. Chris calls him Papa.” She sighed. “It’s hard to explain to a toddler what a father is. Doug’s the closest we’ve got to explain.”

“I’ll take whatever you’ve got to give me,” Gus whispered, settling down on the floor. Chris turned, his smile bright again on his face, and Gus tugged at the rabbit’s ear. He wanted to pick the boy up, hug him close and never let him go but… it was all so new and he didn’t… he hadn’t earned that trust. Not from his boy and certainly not from his grandmother. “Hey, dude. Good taste in bands. And I didn’t even know they made Chucks that small.”

“Mommy’s shoes. Like mine.” Chris stuck out his right foot, then held his arm up for Gus to inspect a smeared temporary tattoo stuck to the back of his hand. “Look at my fish.”

“Oh, little man, you’ve got to be eighteen before you get inked.” Gus chuckled. Their hands were alike, a much shorter index finger compared to the two next to it. “But that’s a nice da… danged fish. God, look at your little fingers.”

“Hey, cars.” The boy pulled at Gus’s shirt, tugging him toward the basket. “Cars!”

They played, digging through the basket to find beaten-to-shit tiny cars and a wooden block play set with enough pieces to build a garage for a game of pretend. Gus couldn’t tell when he stopped holding his breath. It might have been the first time Chris laughed or maybe when his son patted his face in sympathy for losing their faux drag race, but it took Gus a long time to realize his chest was no longer tight and the tremors under his skin were gone. At some point, the Chucks ended up on the bunny’s feet, and Chris found a book in the basket, crawling over Gus’s crossed legs to sit in his lap, demanding to be read to.

Chris smelled of green apple shampoo and grimy boy, an odd sweet earthiness Gus knew he’d miss once the boy grew too old to be held. Cradling his son, he adored the weight in his lap and laughed when Chris periodically decided he was done with a page, turning it before Gus was finished with it.

It was over before Gus could take another breath.

They were there for two hours, a blink of time Gus wanted to drag out. He hated letting go. Hated standing up and handing the rabbit to Chris. Loathed watching the little boy take it, then fell in love all over again when Chris wrapped his arms around his legs, the rabbit slapping Gus’s calves. Shoes gathered and on the proper feet, Gus hugged himself when Lynn picked Chris up, balancing his weight on her hip.

“We’re going to have to arrange for times we can get together.” Her apology face was back, and Gus could hear the hesitation in her voice. “We want him to know you, to have a relationship with you but—”

“You don’t know me,” Gus interjected softly. Luke stood silent, a welcome presence at Gus’s back. “I get it. I do. I’ll take whatever you give me. Sure, I’d like to take him for weekends and stuff but… too soon. And I need to know what I’m doing, get my shit together—crap. Sorry.”

“Nothing he hasn’t heard from Jules.” Lynn chuckled. “We’re working on her manners too. There’s three of us. We can make this happen. I’d love for you to be able to take him eventually. Jules knows she should have involved you from the beginning, and I’m… we’re… sorry you missed all of those years. And right now, I’ve got to get him over to his pediatrician. Time for a checkup so he can go into preschool.”

Gus reached for the envelope he’d shoved into his back pocket. “I can pay—”

“Down?” Chris reached for Gus, and he touched his son’s hand, shaking his head. “No. Down.”

“Kiddo, we’ve got to go. And Gus, put anything you’ve got into an account, and you spend it on him when you’re with him,” she replied, tsking at Chris’s fussing. “He grows like a weed. We’re going to have to take out a loan just to keep him in shoes.”

“Thanks for bringing him.” Luke finally spoke, waving to Chris, who’d leaned back as far as he could against his grandmother’s arm. “I’m looking forward to being an uncle.”

“I’m looking forward to having more people to back us up when we say no to a pony.” Lynn grinned, pulling Chris back up. “Just remember… no to the pony, Gus… and everything will be fine.”

The door closed a few seconds later, leaving Luke and Gus alone in a room no longer brightened by a flaxen-haired toddler with mismatched shoes and Ivo’s bossiness. He met his brother’s smile with a queasy one of his own, then sat down hard on the industrial linoleum floor, scattering the convoy of metal cars they’d played with.

It was too much to take in. He was responsible for that little boy, and his life was as much of a mess as it was before he left, fleeing the city when he could no longer stand to look at Rey at any more backyard parties or on Mace’s heels when they came to visit the shop. He tried. For two and a half years, he’d tried and then always came back. But one day, seeing a smile on Rey’s face and knowing he hadn’t put it there, finally wore Gus down. That six-month trip was the longest he’d been away from his family, from Rey, and now he had to knit back together every relationship he’d left strained and unraveled.

“How the hell am I going to help raise this kid when I can’t even get my own life together? Shit, Luke… I’m going to fuck this up so much,” he moaned, burying his face in his hands. “So fucking badly.”

“Yep, you are,” his brother agreed, sitting down next to him. Wrapping his arms around Gus’s shoulders, Luke dragged him into a tight hug, rocking Gus slightly when he bit back a sob. “But you’re going to be the best damned dad, Goose. Because if any one of us deserves to be loved by that little boy, it’s you, brother. It is definitely you.”

REY SWORE he wouldn’t go. One o’clock came and went, the afternoon sun driven back by a bit of misty rain and a veil of heavy clouds, but he’d stayed home, doing all the mundane adult things he needed to do. Mason bullied, cajoled, then halfheartedly threatened Rey to go with him to the house, but it didn’t feel right.

Or at least not for the reasons Mason wanted him there.

Not for the reasons Rey wanted to be there.

But an hour after he’d pulled a load of clothes from the dryer, Rey found himself circling the brothers’ neighborhood looking for a place to park.

It was late enough in the day for street parking to be scarce, and the drizzly weather didn’t appear to deter the walkers from using the mountainous park across the way from the house, bringing an influx of vehicles to the long stretch of hillside space.

Swaddled by old trees, the brothers’ house stood in dappled evening shadows, a graceful old lady with good bones and an understated elegance Bear painstakingly restored as the years went by. He’d helped out with the shingles, hammering them down on the second-floor turret, and nearly broke his leg falling off the roof when bribed into helping paint a piece of trim. Standing at the end of the driveway leading to the old single-car garage no one used to park a vehicle in, Rey listened to the rise and fall of male voices coming out of the home’s open windows, indistinct blurs of sounds with more than a little affection folded into a chorus of mocking banter.

They were his family in a way. He’d watched a coltish, devilish Gus mature, growing taller and broader, his face filling out to fulfill the promise of his teenaged prettiness. He’d been there when Bear brought Ivo home, the young boy skittish and reluctant to be included in anything. Ivo bloomed when Luke finally joined them, and he’d felt more than a few pangs of regret and jealousy when the brothers inked themselves with the star they’d drawn together.

Rey knew his feelings were… out of place. He had a family. A mother who’d found and married a good man, giving him a solid base and a surprise baby sister, a vivacious, smart eight-year-old girl who he adored and stole every chance he could to get over to Marin. He’d had holidays with formal dinners, houses filled with relatives who looked like him and spoke like him and whose arguments were kept out of sight.

The brothers were messy, loud, and sometimes verbally violent. They clashed constantly, arguing over past slights and imagined disrespect. The stinging sarcasm was sometimes tempered by reason if Bear or Luke was around, but for the most part, it was a constant battle of egos and personalities.

Until one of them fell.

And today Gus might have fallen, so they all would be there, shoring up their defenses and planning their reprisal, a band of brothers tied together with a bond Rey couldn’t understand, couldn’t be a part of but envied just the same.

Standing at the end of the drive, Rey debated turning around, crawling back to his car, and sliding away before anyone noticed he was there. It was a short argument, fraught with pacing and a bit of muttering. Then a husky rasp called out his name, jerking Rey around.

He’d heard that whiskey roll of his name in his memories and in his dreams, thickened with need or exhausted and panting. He’d licked nearly every inch of the man’s tanned, golden body, nibbled along the lines of his ink from the word rebel and five-brother wonky star on his forearm to the vibrant Japanese-style beta fish curved down his ribs. Rey knew the taste of Gus’s release and how sensitive his skin was along his inner thigh, just as he knew that in a few days, Gus would return to the spot his life broke, staring out at the cold, choppy water and wondering at a bunch of whys and what-ifs no one would ever be able to answer.

Then walk away, refusing to glance back until another year rolled over him and he would be drawn back to that spot, that moment once again.

“If you’re here looking for Mason, he’s inside,” Gus spoke out, nearly hidden in the canopy of branches covering the tight drive. He was sitting on an old thick half wall a few feet from the street, his sneakers’ heels dug into the rough painted brick, his back against the house. “And if you’re here to give me shit, you can just turn right back around. I don’t need any of it today.”

The rawness in Gus’s voice dug deep into the shreds of Rey’s doubts. He hurt, Rey could feel it. The shoving away was a too-familiar dance he’d fallen for more than once, a biting snap to hide the fear in Gus’s heart. Or at least that’s what Rey was going to gamble on.

“I’m not here to give you shit,” Rey promised, ambling down the drive.

The gravel was loose beneath his shoes, sliding when he walked. He stopped in front of Gus, catching a whiff of something sweet on his breath, then spotted a dab of bright red at the corner of Gus’s mouth. He had his thumb on the spot before his brain caught up with the shock of touching Gus again, feeling the warmth of his skin and the slightly coarse grain of his chin where he’d missed a spot shaving. Gus flinched, and Rey’s knuckles stilled in midstroke on his cheek.

The recoil wasn’t new. Not for Gus. Moving too quickly drew a startled reaction, and in the past, Rey’d nursed a resentment when Gus’s lashes flicked down and he jerked back, ever so slightly but enough for Rey to drop his hand. He left his thumb where it was, then rubbed at the spot, smiling ruefully when it refused to be rubbed out.

“Fruit punch?” Rey kept his touch and voice to a soft burr, running his thumb pad over Gus’s lower lip. As irrationally angry as he’d been a day or so before, he’d still wanted to plunder Gus’s mouth, to suck in the breath ghosting a warmth over his palm.

“Cherry lollipop.” His chin went up, almost breaking their contact, and a defensiveness settled over his handsome face, challenging Rey. “What do you want?”

Gus hadn’t pulled away, but his pale blue-gray eyes were hooded, turning to silvery storms behind his oddly dark, long lashes. A foot or two separated them, the air turning warm from their bodies’ closeness, and Rey fought the urge to slide in between Gus’s parted legs, push him against the side of the house, and kiss the desperate sadness from his wary gaze.

“God, I fucked us up,” he whispered, cupping Gus’s face. Another flinch, smaller this time, but the wariness grew. “And I hate that I hurt you. Made you… scared of me. Scared to be touched by me. I’m sorry for… the other day. For three years ago. For fucking everything in between… I’m sorry, babe. I’m—”

“I can’t do this, Rey. Not now. Not… I’ve got a kid. A son. And I can’t have you pushing back into me, into my life, because I can’t… I’ve already got one tightrope to walk on. I can’t walk two.” Gus clamped his hand over Rey’s mouth, stopping him, then dropped his arm back to his side, pushing Rey away. Shaking his head, Gus said, his voice broken and sorrowful, “I can’t spend my time wondering what I’m going to do to piss you off, what’s the thing I’m going to not do to make you turn me out. You fucking broke me, and yeah, I didn’t help things. I screwed up too. But now? I can’t afford to fuck up my son. He’s got to come first. I’ve got to—”

“I know. I get that.” There were sacrifices Gus was going to make—ones his own mother had and Gus’s mother had not—but Rey understood those struggles. He’d seen them firsthand, his mother’s only focus for years after his father fled the fire he’d started. “I’m asking for a chance, Gus. We keep circling back to each other. Even when we try to stay out of one another’s way, we’re drawn in. I think about you when I should focus on going through a building about to fall down around my ears, and it’s all I can do, not to have you in my mind. I’m not perfect. Neither are you. We… have something real and some problems too—that’s the truth—but we also seem to need each other.”

“We tried…,” Gus reminded him, a soft, painful stab from a knife Rey’d sharpened himself years before. “You fucking broke me, Rey. You decided for us, for me, that I wasn’t good enough to be in your life. I didn’t have a say. I didn’t get a fucking choice. You just… fucking decided.”

“And I’ll pay for that for the rest of my damned life, Gus.” The frustration building in him breached, breaking the surface of Rey’s control. His hands were on Gus’s thighs, encroaching on a right he’d been given once and thrown away. “I keep reaching for you in the middle of the night, and you’re not there. I wake up missing the taste of you. Even after three years, I can feel you there inside of me. I was stupid, and I want to fix it… fix us. We can’t keep running away from each other, Gus, not when we keep coming right back to where we’d left off.”

Their mouths touched, but Rey couldn’t have sworn who’d leaned in first. The fire he’d walked through yesterday, its searing heat and deadly touch, lay in a tepid heap compared to the succulent pleasure of Gus’s tongue playing over his lips. He moaned, or maybe Gus did—he wasn’t sure, but Rey stepped into the cup of Gus’s parted legs, and he slid his hands down over his ex-lover’s waist, his fingers brushing over soft skin and hip bone.

Gus’s jeans were thin, an old, worn pair dotted with paint and wood stain, nearly white across the thighs and torn in places Rey ached to lick. His dick responded to the heavy press of Gus’s arousal when Rey deepened their kiss, his fingers worked into Gus’s flaxen-bronze hair so he could pull him closer, savoring when the flavor in Gus’s mouth shifted, going from sweet, syrupy cherry to erotic male.

There was no mistaking the desire stoked up between them, not when Gus shivered as Rey’s mouth roamed over his throat with a trailing sting of nips and suckling bites. Gus’s hands clenched Rey’s shoulders, kneading at his muscles, then cupped the back of Rey’s neck to draw him into another heart-stopping, breath-stealing kiss.

Pulled in tight with want, Rey reeled in shock when the heels of Gus’s hands dug into his chest, shoving him back. Panting, Gus swallowed, stiffening his arm to stop Rey from moving back in. A chill doused the heat they’d built up, the evening air thickening with cold, and Rey stumbled back, rocking on his heels. Disheveled, Gus ran one hand through his hair, his gaze hard and wary once again.

“What’s Ivo always tell me? ‘You can always say no, Gus.’” His voice broke, and in the faint brush of light coming from the living room’s windows, Rey spotted a shimmer on the silver in Gus’s eyes. “So… I’m going to say no, Rey. Yeah, I want to fuck you. God knows, I want to fuck you something fierce but… no.”