by Amy Lane
So that left Billy and Curtis, now unabashedly taking the queen-sized bed, and Cotton and Randy taking the two twin-sized beds in what had been Lance and Randy’s room.
Lance had quietly asked Billy, Curtis, and Randy if he needed to pitch in Cotton’s portion of the rent, and had gotten a resounding no. Cotton was never going to be homeless again—that was a pact they all made, and since Henry still planned to cook them all dinner once a week, they’d never go hungry again either.
And Henry had been right. Once Randy had started going, and Lance had told everybody he was going to therapy to treat his eating disorder, Billy started going again, and so did Cotton.
Zep and Fisher were quitting porn—Lance suspected porn had been their only impetus behind the bulimia, so he was going to cross his fingers.
So the move, which consisted of getting furniture delivered and buying their own household items over the span of two weeks, was pretty seamless. So was Henry’s new job. Since Jackson had gone through surgery with flying colors, he was issuing all the commands from mandatory bedrest at home. Henry said he slept a lot, but he also sounded better. He’d even had some conversations during which Jackson had been eating, which was encouraging. Ellery said they were going away in a week, sort of a vacation before Jackson came back to the office, and Henry was all for that.
And Lance was so looking forward to going to Henry’s brother’s house for a family meal.
He’d stayed with Johnnies for the family, and this was like proof that it didn’t go away.
Dex and Kane’s house was—like so many houses in midtown—small. It had a tiny front yard but a decent backyard with a big shady tree and a terrarium pit with running water for the four big turtles that Kane had accrued both before and after coming to live there.
The most interesting thing about the two-bedroom, one-bath home, was the giant glass wall that showed off the king snake and the iguana that lived in Frances’s room. It caught shade from the backyard tree all day so the reptiles didn’t cook, and people could look out and watch the critters while they were eating at the picnic table in the backyard.
This was a special occasion. They grilled turkeyburgers and hot dogs, and Henry and Lance brought a green salad in a brand-new container, as well as some sliced fruit.
“Bunny!” Henry cried, picking Frances up and swinging her around. “Look at you, all brown from the sun! You are beautiful!”
Frances giggled. “I’ve worn my swimsuit every day for a month! Uncle Kane says I have to get a new one!”
“Uncle Dex already got her a new one,” Dex said, coming out from the house. “But it wasn’t pink, and Uncle Dex is apparently a loser who doesn’t know pink is the thing.”
Frances giggled again. “I like rainbows too.”
Dex squeezed his eyes shut. “Of course you do!”
“Put me down, Henry. I want to play in the sprinklers.”
“Wait a second, bunny. Have you met my friend Lance?”
Frances’s eyes narrowed. “Your friend or your boyfriend?”
Henry winked at him. “My boyfriend.”
Frances smirked. “Your boyfriend or your husband?”
Henry’s eyes got big. “Wow, bunny, that’s moving pretty fast. We just moved in together.”
She rolled her eyes. “But all good boyfriends end up husbands. Right, Uncle Dex?”
Lance saw the long-suffering look between brothers, and his heart did a big squishy roll in his chest.
“The best ones do, bunny,” Dex said. “Henry and Lance will give it their best.”
“And I’ll get to be a flower girl and wear a dress, and you’ll let me keep the little silk pillow, just like I did for your wedding, right, Uncle Dex?”
Dex squeezed his eyes shut again. “Yeah, bunny. They know the plan.”
Lance snickered as Henry put her down. “Wow, Henry. Are you ready for all her plans?”
“No,” Henry said blandly. “No, I am not. I suspect that is the case of all seven-year-old girls, and I’m glad she’s Davy and Carlos’s.”
“Thanks, little brother. You’re a peach.”
Henry smirked. “Pink, Davy. Remember, pink. Also, rainbows. Whatever you bought was crap, and you’ll pay for that forever.”
“Aces. Go help Kane on the barbecue and make yourself useful.”
Henry gave a salute, and Dex came to sit next to Lance on the picnic bench. He wore the air of a man who wanted to talk quietly.
“What’s up?”
Dex gave him a brief smile. “You’re very perceptive. Is that a doctor thing?”
“Yes. We get mind-reading capabilities in our first postgraduate year. It’s in the curriculum.”
Dex wrinkled his nose. “Sarcasm is so attractive. Welcome to the family.”
Lance chortled and then sobered. “Seriously, what’s going on?”
Dex swallowed and glanced at his brother. “So, Trav called today. Malachi transferred stateside about three months ago, and Debbie was waiting to join him in Georgia. She was getting a little upset because he wasn’t relaying any orders or any travel plans. She’d let the lease expire on their house—she had to move in with our parents this week.”
“Oh no,” Lance said. He could tell where this was going.
“Mal went AWOL a week ago and cleaned out their savings.”
Lance closed his eyes. “What. A. Scumbag.”
“Yes. Well, he’s a scumbag who knows where I live, which is not exciting. But he’s also a scumbag who wants Henry back.”
“You know this how?” Because Lance had held out hope. God, Malachi had been such a user. How important had Henry been to him, really? But apparently, Dex knew.
“I know this because he had no other reason to leave,” Dex said. “I had Trav ask Debbie some questions about how Malachi had been doing. She admitted he’d been drinking a lot and talking about Henry a lot. She was the one who suggested he transfer to Georgia so she could see him and maybe get him back on track.” Dex swallowed angrily. “Trav says she started crying. Malachi may not have been close enough to hit her, but he sure did say some shitty things to her from deployment.”
“So he knows Henry’s in Sacramento?” Lance had to make sure.
“He does. And he could show up here any minute.”
Lance scrubbed at his eyes with his hand and tried to keep the fear at bay. Henry had been so happy, so optimistic. Was he ready to face his biggest demon? “You haven’t told Henry?”
“I just got off the phone with Trav an hour ago. I’ve been trying to do the math to figure out how long it would take Mal to get here by bus, or if he could get a plane ticket as an AWOL serviceman or even if he stole a car and drove. When’s this guy going to show up on my doorstep? And I’ve got nothing. But I wanted you to know so you could let the guys in the other apartment know, and—”
“And I’ll call Rivers,” Lance said, pulling out his cell phone. “He has a contact at the police department. I’ll ask him for K-ski’s number. Henry has friends.”
Dex smiled faintly. “He does. That’s good to know. Maybe tell his friends to have some MPs on standby, because they can take Malachi into custody. Make your call. Then, if you can play with Frances while Carlos deals with burning things at the grill, I’ll tell Henry. I really don’t want Frances to hear. Her… her father wasn’t a good person. She’s had enough of that in her life.”
“Understood,” Lance said, shuddering. God, he felt Henry’s compulsion then. The one that said “protect my family”—the one that had led him into danger with Jackson Rivers, and had led him to face down Summer Frasier with a gun. Lance would do anything to protect Henry. He just hoped Henry had the healing in his heart to protect himself. “I…. Henry doesn’t deserve this.”
“No,” Dex told him, clear-eyed. “No. He never deserved this.”
Which was great that they both agreed on that. But would Henry agree if he had to see Malachi again?
THE NEWS was a cloud, but like most clouds, Henry shrug
ged and acted like he had an umbrella. But he did tell Lance to be careful and make sure there was someone with him at all times.
“I am not sure what Malachi would do if he knew about you,” Henry said. “I… I would rather nothing bad happen to you, right?”
Lance heard the quiver in his voice and gripped Henry’s hand tight.
“You know I bench press as much as you do, right?”
Henry rolled his eyes. “You know Mal and I were trained in combat. It didn’t stop him from getting the better of me. Emotional warfare works because the bad guys play to win.”
There was no arguing with that, so they ate dinner instead.
Turkeyburger, lettuce, tomato, pickles, some ketchup, no bun. Lance checked his calorie diary and saw that he was under, so he took a teeny bit of fruit salad and settled in. Henry watched him put his phone away and stroked his thigh. A team. They were doing this as a team. It made it easier.
“You got room on that phone for cake?” Dex asked hopefully. “We made little cupcakes with applesauce for you guys.”
“I get white sugar and butter,” Frances said smugly. “Because Uncle Dex says I’m so sweet.”
“I get them because I eat whatever the hell I want,” Kane said without compunction. “But you guys feel free to have applesauce without sugar, because I can see where that would be fun.”
“Subtle, Carlos, real subtle,” Dex teased, and the conversation devolved into good-natured kidding about all manner of subjects as they finished dinner.
Henry and Lance were cleaning up when Kane went into the house to get dessert. They all heard the hard, almost frantic knock at the front door, and Lance and Henry met eyes right as Kane hollered, “Dexter, keep Frances where you are, ’kay?”
Henry set down his dishes and ran out the side gate to the driveway, Lance hot on his heels.
Lance remembered to shut the gate, and he was pulling his cell phone out right as he witnessed poetry in violence.
A tall, lanky, brown-haired man came flying off the porch to land, flat on his back, on the small patch of lawn in front of the house. Kane leaped off the porch to stand over the guy when Henry got there, staring in confusion at the wild-eyed stranger on the ground.
“Malachi?” he asked, puzzled.
“Henry, get this motherfucker off—”
Kane bent down and grabbed the guy’s ear, then, while Malachi’s arms windmilled, he pulled him up very slowly, Malachi howling all the way. When he got him up, Kane locked Mal’s arms behind him, hauling them up against his shoulders until his struggling stopped.
Dex’s husband was nobody to mess with, and Lance would never forget that again.
“You will use good fuckin’ language in my house,” Kane said flatly. “And nobody’s leaving you alone with Henry.” He looked over to Henry and shook Malachi hard enough to make him whimper. “Right?”
Henry’s mouth twisted up at the corners. “Right, Carlos,” he said. “Lance, can you get K-ski’s number?”
“Yup.”
“Text him and tell him to get the MPs over here. We’ve got an AWOL soldier.”
Lance’s fingers flew, and the response came so fast, he was pretty sure Kryzynski had been sitting on his phone. Three-minute arrival. They were going to case the place anyway.
Thanks, sir.
Tell Henry to hang in there.
“Henry!” Malachi begged. “Man, I came all this way just to talk to you.” He sent Kane a fulminating look. “Alone. Don’t I deserve to talk to you alone? After all we been through?”
Henry’s mouth parted, and his eyes grew shiny bright. “Kane, you can let go of him. It’ll be fine.”
Lance’s heart crashed to his feet.
Malachi gave an arrogant grin, and Kane let his arms fall to his sides. Mal drew his elbow back quickly, like he was trying to get Kane in the kidneys with it, but Kane grabbed it between his forefinger and thumb. “I will crush your skull like a walnut,” he said easily, and Malachi took a few hurried steps away, yanking his arm from Kane’s apparently painful grip.
“Henry, come here,” he said. “We need to talk.”
Lance looked at Henry again, his heart aching. Please, Henry, don’t go with him. Don’t. You’re not his. You never were.
He saw the indecision in Henry’s face, the stoicism. Henry had been determined to do it all alone, from paying his share of the rent to keeping this man—and their terrible secrets—locked in his heart. But God, that wasn’t him anymore. Couldn’t he see that?
For just a moment, Lance could see Henry forgetting all the hard-learned lessons of the last couple of months, and his heart almost shattered.
Then Henry shook his head. “It was easy when we were alone,” he said softly. “Wasn’t it?”
Mal wouldn’t meet his eyes. “You and me, we had a good time alone, right?”
Lance wasn’t even aware he’d moved until Henry turned and put a gentle hand on his chest. “No, baby,” he said softly. “Not over him.”
“Me and you,” Mal snapped, trying to intrude into their contact. “We’re how it’s supposed to be, right, Henry?”
“I thought so,” Henry said. “But… but that’s only because I didn’t know what good was.” He dropped the hand from Lance’s chest and turned back to Mal. “You had me so fooled, I thought good was when you remembered lube or didn’t knock me around. I thought good was when we got leave together and you didn’t have to tell people I broke up a bar fight with my face. That’s not a good time, Malachi. That’s a bad time. That’s eleven bad years of a very bad time. You think I’m going to go back to that now?”
“Henry, it wasn’t like that!” Mal cajoled. “I only ever hit you when you got ideas about leaving, and look at us—”
“You destroyed my career, Malachi. I had a right to leave, and you took the Army away from me. You think that means you care?”
Mal shook that off. “It was a shitty job, anyway. C’mon, man. You can’t just dump me. We’ve been tight since grade school!”
“And that’s where it should have stayed,” Henry snapped. “You’re married, Mal. Did that escape your attention?”
Malachi grinned like a salamander, and Lance’s gut churned. “Is that what’s got you so turned around? You want me to leave your sister? I left your sister—”
“You left my sister pregnant and alone and broke. With my parents, where Dad can knock her around for not being good enough to stay married to you, because that’s such a treat.” Henry swallowed and shook his head. “I can’t do anything about that. Debbie, my parents—they’re not going to listen to me now, or Davy. But that’s their world. This is mine. And in my world, I deserve a guy who cares about me.”
“I didn’t care about you?” Malachi demanded, his voice breaking. “We had each other’s backs, Henry Matthew Worrall. We were in each other’s back pockets since we were kids! I loved you, goddammit!” Mal reached out to grab his arm, and Lance started to hit the Call button, because he’d be damned if Mal laid a finger on Henry again.
“You raped me!” Henry roared, breaking the contact, and Lance almost dropped his phone.
Mal sneered. “I didn’t do nothing that you weren’t begging for—”
But Henry held up a hand and took a deep breath. “I said no. I took a promotion to make it illegal for me to say yes. And you did it anyway. It may never go to court, but you know what? I’ll press charges anyway.”
Mal gasped. “You’ll what? You’ll tell all those people that—”
“The people I need to care about me know,” Henry said. “They still care. I work in a law office now. I’ve got some help with the charges. Hey, it may go to court. There’s precedent. Because you and I both know you didn’t have my consent. You say that word to yourself—say consent. Say rape. Tell yourself that’s who you are. Say it until you believe you’re a bad man, Malachi. Say it until you know you’re the bad guy.”
“You were fucking your sister’s husband,” Malachi sneered, advancing in on him.
“That doesn’t make you a fuckin’ saint!”
“My big mistake was thinking we had a relationship,” Henry said, taking his own step forward. “It was in thinking I had a choice. I was coerced, and you’re the bad guy. And I’ve made some mistakes—God knows I have—but you are a mistake I’m not going to have to live with. Not again. Someday, I’m going to be married to a nice man who would rather chew off his own wrist than hurt me. He’s a doctor, Malachi, smarter than me, but he still thinks I’m something. That’s a relationship. That’s how I know what you and I had was bullshit. That’s how I know I don’t ever have to go back to the military, or even back to Montana, to know I’m home.”
Malachi grabbed both arms this time and shook him. “You’re talking crazy!” he shouted. “You and me, we’re what’s real!”
Henry broke the grip again in a classic self-defense move, and when Malachi tried to grab him again, Henry broke it again. “Keep your fucking hands off me!” he snarled. “You don’t ever get to fucking touch me again!”
Malachi hauled his hand back and slapped Henry in the face, hard enough to split his lip and bloody his nose, and Kane and Lance both moved in to stop that shit, but Henry was closer. He pulled his elbow back and took him down—two punches to the nose, the jaw—and Malachi’s knees wobbled as he held his hands in front of his face.
“Henry?” he moaned, his voice broken. “Henry, you hit me…. I’ll fucking kill you, man. You and your little pissy boyfriend. You fucking hit me!”
Henry wiped his split lip and bloody nose on his shoulder. “You’re the bad guy,” he said, and Lance heard the tears in his voice—but the strength too. “And I’ve got good guys ready to stand up for me now, but I don’t need them to beat you.”
Mal dropped his hands and snarled, feral as a wounded bear. With a howl, he rushed Henry, who had the presence of mind to step back and trip him, so he flew forward and ended up sprawled face-first on the concrete. And then Henry did a thing that terrified Lance to the bones.