Seventeen
Rook was sick of the smell of blood.
Its cloying metallic odor haunted him, sticking to the inside of his nose and coating the back of his throat. Close by, someone was shouting, a screeching rise and fall of hysterical nonsense he humbly recognized as belonging to one of his mother’s sisters, but he couldn’t find enough energy inside of him to see who it was.
Especially since he was the reason she was losing her shit in the middle of Cedars-Sinai’s emergency ward.
There were cops. There were always cops. This time they formed a wall between him and the rest of the Martin family who’d swooped down on the hospital’s lobby. He’d gotten very fond of the blue-cotton fence cordoning him off, especially when one of his uncle’s wives—a number three, if he remembered correctly—tried to fling a shoe at his head. The stiletto would have hurt if it’d landed, but apparently not as badly as the cuffs one of the baby-faced cops snapped around her wrist when she tried to knee Montoya in the nuts.
He didn’t need their recriminations. Rook had his own to deal with. They clung to him, ghosts whispering of the pain and agony he’d brought down upon his grandfather. Sitting in the cold waiting area, Rook stared into the chaotic hall, riding the noise drowning him. If he’d only gotten into the car when Archie asked him to. If he’d not left the hospital that first night. There were too many ifs for Rook to wrap his head around and nothing loud enough to suppress the guilty echoes bouncing around in his brain.
The cold seeped into him, reaching down into places already iced over in his guts, and Rook looked blindly about, searching for something to anchor to.
And finding it in a tall, strong-jawed cop who’d cradled him in his sleep the night before.
Dante stood talking to one of the other officers, another faceless blue uniform in a sea of navy cotton. He wore his serious detective demeanor, attentive and focused, with a stern expression Rook figured they taught in an academy somewhere in the hills. The idea of Dante Montoya standing in front of a mirror practicing a variety of cop-centric faces made him smile despite the dread pressing up from his belly, and in that moment, Dante glanced his way and Rook felt something in his chest… hitch.
He was caught in the molasses of Dante’s gaze, a delectable heat Rook halfway wished he’d let consume him. The cops finished their conversation, and Dante drifted over, sliding in between the islands of Rook’s relatives, his shoulders firm and taut as he withstood their rapid-fire assault of questions.
“For all we know, he’s the one who did this,” his aunt sniped. It was a classic juvenile ploy, speaking loud enough in a childish singsong, daring Rook to call her out. “He probably arranged for someone to kill Daddy, and now—”
“How are you doing?” Dante crouched down in front of Rook, his fluid roll of accented English masking the rest of the conversation. “Do you need anything, cuervo?”
“Nah, I’m… fuck, ’Toya. This is… it’s crazy.” He leaned forward, leeching off the man’s warmth. “Why the hell would someone do this? What happened? Why did this happen?”
They’d come downstairs to a sea of sirens, lights, and ambulances. The black sedan Rook’d shared with Archie not more than a B-movie before sat with blown-out tires and shattered windows, its sides pierced through with bullets. Blood smeared the sidewalk and cement driveway, run through with tires and footprints. A pool of vomit lay next to the valet’s station, and Rook remembered stepping around it, as if tracking the remains of someone’s late lunch through his grandfather’s blood would be something Archie would not tolerate.
It’d been the sight of a paramedic struggling to pump life into a young man wearing a hotel uniform that drove him to his knees.
It’d been the man crouched in front of him who lifted him back up again.
A scrub-clad man paced down the hallway and stopped short at the horde of Martins. They descended, a murderous screeching flock pecking ruthlessly at the slender bald man, stabbing him with questions and accusations until he beat them back with a officious sniff.
Clearing his throat, he said, “Which one of you is Rook Stevens? Mr. Martin is asking for you.”
Standing up was the hardest thing Rook’d ever done in his life. Worse than the day he’d pulled his first job and forgot to take his haul and harder than when his mother first climbed onto the back of a motorcycle to go get a pack of smokes, only to vanish for nearly six months. He’d been alone and adrift most of his life, anchored to no one but himself, and there in the linoleum hell of sanitized air and squeaky-voiced blondes, Rook was afraid.
Deathly and deeply afraid to take a step, then another to stare down something he’d not imagined he’d ever face—the death of someone he’d just begun to love.
“Fucking old man,” Rook muttered under his breath, pushing past Dante with a brush of his shoulder. “He… better be okay.”
Their hands met, fingers brushing for a long instant, and Rook nearly pulled back, needing to bury himself in Dante’s chest. There was the promise of warmth and safety there, such an alien need Rook was caught between the want of Dante’s arms and the fear of needing the man so much it crippled him.
The rub of Dante’s fingertips on his palm would have to be enough.
“Do you want me to go in there with you?” Dante edged Rook in, holding him in place. His breath ruffled Rook’s hair, a hint of coffee and mint folded into a sweet whisper.
“No, you hold them back.” The air was poisonous, filled with mutters and accusations. “And as much as I hate guns, I don’t mind if you wing them or something. Because fuck, they’re just—”
“Shitty?” He gave Rook a little push toward the hallway entrance where the nurse stood waiting. “Go on. I’ll be here. When you’re done, the cops will want to talk to him if he’s up to it. Well, if the vultures here leave anything.”
“Can you see about his goon?” Rook walked backward a step. “Guy’s an asshole, but….”
“Just because he’s an asshole doesn’t mean you want him dead.” Dante’s crooked smile did silly things to Rook’s stomach. “I’m on it.”
The room was stark, colder than the frigid confines of the waiting area where he’d left his relatives. In the sea of beige walls and steel rails, a flotsam of machines floated around a single bed, its occupant nearly buried under thick blankets and tubes. Archie lay against the white sheets, parchment gray and stiff, his lean face gaunt and drawn. As Rook approached, the old man’s eyes fluttered open, and they floated over Rook’s face before snapping into focus. Struggling to sit up, Archie lightly cursed the tight cocoon of blankets pinning him to the mattress, and Rook strode over, the weight in his belly lightened at the sound of his grandfather muttering fuck under his breath in a hot, angry stream.
“Do they think I’m going to fucking break loose like King Kong?” Archie feebly kicked at the end of the blankets, trying to loosen them from under the mattress. “Help me out here, boy. Give me some room to breathe under this.”
“They probably think you’re going to do a runner.” Rook couldn’t stop a silly grin from stretching over his face. “The other hospital probably gave them a heads-up about me so you’d be trapped.”
“Probably.” Archie pulled a sour face. “Leeches. If you’ve got money, they want to keep you in as long as they can to bleed you dry, but if you’re poor and really need help, you’re out the door before you’ve swallowed those fifty-dollar aspirins they give you.”
“Do they even give out aspirin?” Tugging the blankets out from under the mattress, Rook fluffed them up so his grandfather could move about. “How’s that?”
“Better. Now find me a hot nurse, and I’ll be great.” He took a breath. “Never mind. You’d go out there and bring me back something with a dick. I’ll get Stanley… shit, Stanley—”
“Dante’s checking on him,” Rook said as he pulled a chair close to the bed. “Doctor said he took a bullet to the lung and thigh, so he’ll be in surgery. You and I—now we’ve got matching scars on our arms, which pisses the family off to no fucking end, because you know, they’re assholes. Your concussion’s bigger than mine, which is kind of impressive, old man, because you know, I was hit by a fucking car.”
“You’re younger. You bounce better. When you’re a sack of bones like I am, we just rattle about like dice in a cup.” Archie squeezed Rook’s hand once, then clutched at the blanket. “Thought you’d gotten rid of me?”
“Right, you and roaches are going to be the only things left after the Apocalypse. Tooling around. Driving old lady Buicks and eating Twinkies.” Studying his grandfather, Rook noted the bandages along his neck and jaw, frowning at the speckles of blood coming up through the gauze. Nodding at the immobilizing cast on Archie’s left hand, he asked, “Broken or shot?”
“Broken finger. Busted the damned thing trying to grab the door handle when Stanley swerved the car. Didn’t think he’d gotten enough speed in, but we nearly went through that driveway rail, and I’ll bet you the car’s a total loss. Damn thing was only a few months old. I’d just worn in the backseat so it fit my scrawny ass.”
“You’re rich enough. You can hire an ass double and have him squirm around a car seat so it’s ready for you.” Rook snorted when his grandfather struggled to flip him off. “Want me to hold your fingers down for you, old man?”
“Shut it. I’m left-handed. I’ll have to practice.” Archie glared at a shadow skulking across the hallway near his room door. “Doctor or one of my stupid children?”
“Orderly. Well, someone holding a piss pan,” he said, craning to get a look. “And Alex’s mom isn’t too bad. Quiet.”
“She’s like a Milk Dud. Chewy and sticks to your teeth. Not bad, but let’s face it, in a box of chocolates, that’s not what you’re going to be reaching for first.” He shifted, groaning, then pushing Rook’s hand away when he reached for the call button. “Don’t call anyone. I’m just trying to get comfortable. Answer me this, are you doing okay? You’re not hurt or anything, right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Rook grabbed the call button anyway, keeping it out of his grandfather’s grasp. “I wasn’t in the car with you, remember?”
“Idiot! I know you weren’t in the car with me. I’m asking because, after we got hit, I kept hearing some asshole open the door and say, He’s not here. Stevens isn’t here.” Archie’s voice wavered. He closed his fingers over Rook’s wrist, painfully digging his nails into the tender flesh below. “Who is after you, boy? And what do I have to do to stop them?”
The time went well past late and was into early dawn by Rook’s third cup of bitter diner coffee. The hours spent with Archie tore him down, and as a milky sun rose on Hollywood Boulevard, Rook sat staring out at the buzz of traffic inching across the soupy morning. He’d lost track of the trucks he’d counted ambling past the diner’s enormous windows, the panes speckled by dirt and insect splatter.
Perched on a busy corner near the shopping monstrosity erected to anchor Hollywood’s growing obsession with its own sycophants, the diner normally gave Rook a good place to sit and watch the area’s unique blend of tourists, locals, and the bottom-feeders desperate for anything coming their way.
In the too-early-for-food hours, however, pickings were mighty slim.
A sunbaked woman in a pink boa and star-spangled bikini stood on the median between the street’s lanes, her impossibly orange curls teased up into a crowning mess over her teak-hued wrinkled face. Her body shimmied with loose skin over her thighs and gut, flapping as she waved a sign announcing to passersby she was available as a tour guide to the stars. The veins in her arms were a black tangle thick enough they were visible from across two lanes of traffic, and Rook’s chest ached in sympathy when he caught her looking over her shoulder periodically to watch for cops.
Dante slid into the booth across of him, his legs jostling Rook’s as he got comfortable. A waitress sidled up to the table, a pot of hot coffee at the ready to top off their cups, and Rook half heard Dante thank the woman as she rattled back his order to him. Rook shook her off when she asked if he wanted something other than coffee, going back to stare at the older woman who could have been the server’s twin if they’d taken similar paths.
“You doing okay, cuervo?” Dante’s hand came down over Rook’s, pressing their fingers together. Their fingernails rubbed, a pearl on pearl sensation Rook realized he’d never really felt before. Something on his face must have piqued Dante’s curiosity, because the cop tilted his chin up and asked, “What? What’re you thinking?”
“It’s weird. How much you touch me. I never would have thought you’d be… so touchy.” His mind wasn’t firing right, and words he should have known were slipping away under the fugue swamping Rook’s thoughts, but he fought to find what he needed to say in his mind’s stew. “You’re out.”
“Yes…?” Dante drew the word out, confusion clouding his face. “And?”
“I mean, like, you’re really out,” Rook murmured, sliding his fingertips over Dante’s outstretched palm. “It’s weird. Because you… stroke and do things, like when we walk, you touch the small of my back. Like when we were in the hospital and I started to go down the wrong hall, then you caressed me there. In front of those cops. In front of everyone.”
“I’m not ashamed to touch you.” Reaching for the packets of sugar at the end of the table, Dante shrugged. “I’m gay. We’ve been… together, and even if it’s been a little bit crazy—you’re a little bit crazy—I like you. And I’m also half Mexican, so you’re going to see me eating burritos once in a while. There’s going to be a lot of really normal things you’re going to catch me doing. Just so you know.”
“See, gay? Not a thing to advertise when I was growing up.” Rook pressed his lips together. “I got used to hiding it. Okay, just not really talking about it. Think it’s why my mom left. You know?”
“You really think that?” Dante shook a creamer out into his coffee, stirring as he looked up at Rook. “You think she left you there with those people because she thought you were gay? You were what? Seven? Eight?”
“I told her I liked boys like she did. I thought she was going to vomit.” He shrugged, refusing to let the image of his mother’s disgusted look surface up from his memories. “She split the next morning with some guy she’d just met. Hard not to make that connection, you know?”
“So when Archie….” The cop exhaled hard, clicking his tongue against his teeth. “You figured your grandfather would be the same way.”
“I came at him, you know? Because he was this thing to be conquered, not an actual person.” Rook leaned on his elbows, jostling the table. “Archie was like the bogeyman. He was why Beanie—my mom—left home. And then she left me.”
“How did he get a hold of you, then? Call? Sent someone?”
“He didn’t know about me. Beanie never contacted them, and I’d… well, when you and your partner came around to fuck up my life, she figured I might need a lawyer or something. She gave me Archie’s name and where everyone lived.” It’d been an odd night, cradling his drunken mother as she railed against her father’s machinations while pushing Rook to give her money. “I don’t know if she called someone or… anyway, he found me out… and there we were. Shit, I can’t even think here, Dante. Tonight… yesterday. So much has fucking happened. I just know today when I thought—when I saw him there in that damned bed, he looked so fucking small, and it… killed me. Inside.”
“Archie loves you. He was glad to see you were okay.” Dante snorted at Rook’s incredulous smirk. The waitress returned, filling their cups and dropping off Dante’s plate of bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast. Pushing the plate between them, Dante tapped the fork at Rook’s elbow and said, “You eat and I’ll talk. Or I listen and you eat and talk. But either way, you eat.”
The fried pork crumbled on Rook’s tongue, nearly cardboard tasteless under the ashen worry he’d heaped on himself. Chewing, he swallowed, catching a hard glare from Dante when he tried to put the bacon back onto the plate. Another bite and his stomach rebelled, but he continued chewing, chasing the bite down with a gulp of scalding sweet coffee.
Rook’s words bubbled up from inside of him, percolating until he couldn’t breathe, and the emotion they carried tightened his throat. He had to speak, had to get out the one thing he couldn’t take back down, because it would burn into his soul and he’d carry the scar of its swallowing for the rest of his life.
He sounded small when he spoke, so far away from the man he thought he’d become. Instead, Rook found the broken child inside of him—a child he thought he’d buried years ago when his mother faded into the distance behind a roar of engine noise and blue smoke.
“I was so fucking scared, Dante,” he whispered, looking back out at the woman standing in the street, hoping to feed on someone else’s dreams of touching the stars. “Just so damned fucking scared.”
The bacon fell away, disappearing somewhere. Rook didn’t know or care because his world was suddenly filled with Dante, the cop’s—his cop’s thick arms wrapping around him, pressing him into a broad muscled chest where a heart beat in strong strokes in time with Rook’s own fluttering pulses. Everything around them faded, sliding away from the walls Dante erected around them.
Rook heard nothing. Felt nothing other than the man who’d come around the table to embrace him, to hold him steady as his world fell apart and he had nothing to stand on. The edge of a cliff suddenly appeared beneath Rook’s feet, and he stared down into the blackness of loss, mourning a grandfather he thought he’d lost and possibly would never ever truly be loved by. A step forward, and Rook knew he’d tumble down, shattered on rocks he’d sharpened with his own acidic tongue… only to be saved by Dante’s touch.
“I almost lost him, ’Toya,” Rook mumbled into a crease in Dante’s shirt. The man smelled of coffee, soap, and tired male, a familiar comfort he’d grown too used to. He’d have to let go soon, too soon, but for now, for then, Rook allowed himself to hold on as tightly as he could, unwilling to be flung back in the maelstrom he’d been thrown into. “God fucking damn it, I’m not… I can’t do this. I can’t care.”
“You already care, cuervo. No stopping that once it happens.” Dante’s fingers were in his hair, stroking away the prickles across his scalp. “I’ll have the waitress pack this up, and we can eat it back at the—”
“Fuck the hotel,” Rook grumbled, pulling away from Dante to rub at his eyes. “I want to go and lie in my own goddamned bed, on my sheets, and let you hold me. For however long you can be there, but fuck it, I’m sick of running away—from me… from the psycho that’s out there… even from Archie. I’m tired of it, ’Toya. I just want to go… home. And I don’t even have a goddamned home. Can you do that for me, Dante? Will you just take me home and… stay there with me? For a little bit?”
“I can do that, cuervo.” Dante caught the waitress’s attention, motioning her over. “And babe, I’ll hold you for however long you want me to. And even then, I might not let you go.”