The call ended, and Samuel simply stared at Bran’s phone as he delicately took it back.
Trent got up and carried his empty bowl to the kitchen. “My knees still turn to fucking jelly.”
If things hadn’t been so serious, Samuel would’ve laughed at the dry comment.
“Shit. He’s right,” Bran mumbled. “He forgave me for everything. Always.” His phone beeped, and Bran looked down at it. “Samuel, Misha wants your number. Can I give it to him?”
Samuel nodded his answer, and Bran’s fingers tapped on the screen as he gave the number to Misha.
Samuel’s phone was next to make a noise, and he looked down at it to see he’d received a text message from an unfamiliar number. My brother’s address is below. I won’t be able to stay more than a few hours with him, but if you intend to show that you care in any way, I expect you to be on the first flight out. If Bran is with you, Chris won’t be there.
He responded with a simple, Arrangements to make. Will keep you posted.
“Was that Chris? What did he say?” Bran asked him excitedly.
Samuel looked up, and they all stared at him in anticipation.
“No, that was Misha telling me to get my ass on the first plane to Manhattan if I meant it when I said I cared for Chris.”
Bran jumped to his feet. “I’m going with you. I can be packed in twenty minutes while Kaden makes the flight arrangements for us.”
“I’m sorry, Bran, but no. If you are anywhere near me when I arrive, Misha promised to make sure we never see Chris again. You heard him.” It broke Samuel’s heart to deny Bran, but Misha wouldn’t issue an empty threat, and right now the man clearly hated Bran with a passion.
Bran’s bottom lip trembled. “But… he’s my best friend. I should be there. I have to be.”
“If Misha thinks I can make a difference by going after Chris, then there is also hope that you two can patch things up in the future. You were much closer than he and I have been.” Samuel tried to comfort Bran with the words, because it was all he could think of right then.
Bran slowly nodded, though he hardly looked convinced. “You’ll let me—us—know when you see him again? Texts and calls. And video calls. Then you’ll tell him to come back here? Convince him somehow?”
Samuel nodded to him, giving him a silent promise that he’d do his best.
Chapter Fourteen
FOR CHRIS, lunch out with his parents each Saturday afternoon was less about spending time with them and more about being seen as the wholesome, all-American family that they were. If Misha had been in town and wearing his old Army uniform, Chris was pretty sure their dad would have acted like he’d hit the jackpot if any reporters were around to snap a family photo of them.
The car was prompt picking him up, and Chris relaxed in the warm backseat, the fine cream-colored leather cradling him, as he did some last minute adjustments to the nearly black but still plenty blue tie he wore. Ties weren’t an option, just as having his shoes shined before he arrived was something that was expected of him. He was an adult and as such had to look presentable when going out in public.
The car dropped him off in front of the restaurant, and Chris was led to his parents’ favorite table, one that offered them a perfect view of Central Park. Bran’s old apartment wasn’t far from the restaurant, but even though Bran could have easily afforded to eat there a couple of times a week, the food actually wasn’t all that good, despite the high price tag. And so they had skipped it, letting the restaurant remain a favorite spot for his parents and not any place he took his best friend, or any guy he was interested in.
Thinking about Bran was a distraction, and normally a welcome one at that, but when thoughts of Bran only made him depressed, he couldn’t afford to have them clouding up his mind. Family lunch wasn’t supposed to have any sort of drama in it.
“Christophori!” his mother called happily to him, spreading her arms wide to take him in.
He kissed her cheek, tried not to suffocate on her heavy perfume that smelled like decaying roses, and stepped back. Shaking his father’s hand came next, and the host pulled his chair out for him. There was no mention of the words they’d thrown around or of how he’d left his father standing there in his office when he’d walked out.
There was only the quiet talk of elections and issues at hand, of ladies’ parties and who would be attending. His mother was a good senator and mostly well liked, but Chris knew how much of an act her performances really were while she was in that arena. She liked the attention and the power, but he was well aware that her idea of social change stopped well before it ever actually mattered. She was a pretty act, a painting to keep behind glass and never look at too closely because of the cracks in the old paint. It bothered him that he was thinking of her in that way. A good son never would have done so.
“I expect you to be early on Monday,” his father said, finally deciding to talk to him at least ten minutes after lunch had actually begun.
Chris had barely touched his salad, but the lobster bisque he had next was likely the only thing he actually enjoyed on a menu that was devoid of anything even remotely fried or greasy. He could have killed for a bacon cheeseburger with extra cheese and no pickles anywhere in sight right about then.
Chris nodded to him. “Of course. There is plenty to do.”
“Especially when you leave your office like a child in the middle of a discussion. That was a poor performance, and I expect you to behave better than that in the future.”
His father gave him a level glare, and Chris looked away.
“Yes. That was a mistake.” He should have stayed to listen to what his father said instead of leaving. “I spoke to Misha this morning.” He was eager to change the topic and get the focus away from himself for a change. “He says hello.”
His father straightened a little at the mention of Misha’s name. “When you speak to him again, tell him he is expected to settle down with that woman of his sooner, rather than later. His time to start a family is running out, and as proud as I am of him in his retirement, he should do something better with his life now than traveling around Europe. It is unseemly for someone at his age to be unmarried.”
“The ladies are beginning to talk,” his mother added.
Chris wanted Misha to come out to them, if only to get them to stop talking about his brother like he had some kind of time bomb attached to his hip that was quickly approaching detonation.
“People are getting married later in life,” Chris spoke up. His attempt at covering for his brother only earned him a glare from his father in reprimand, however, and Chris knew not to speak on it again.
Without looking away from him, his father lifted his hand, signaling the nearest man with a shiny silver water pitcher held tightly in his hands.
“More water, sir?” he asked them as he came over to the table.
Chris looked away from his father to see the guy giving him a little smile, and he blushed. He should have known better than to have sex with one of the waiters at his parents’ favorite restaurant. It’d been over a year, but Chris was bad at hiding what they’d done as the memories made him darken even further.
“Is he gay? Is that why you’re staring at him?” his father demanded, as the man was still standing there with the water tipped over his mother’s glass.
Clearly startled, he splashed the water a little and stepped back quickly.
Chris looked between his father and the waiter, whose name might have been Byron or Brian. Maybe Ben. He couldn’t really remember. Nodding, he sipped some of the icy water out of his glass and hoped his father would leave it at that. Of course not, though. That would have been asking too much.
With a disgruntled huff, his father rose from the table, nearly colliding with the waiter whose name Chris wished he could remember, because he’d actually been a pretty nice guy for the few minutes Chris had spent on his knees in front of him, and he hated not being able to remember something. Without a word to any
of them, his father headed directly to the manager, a man dressed all in black and one of the few people wearing a name tag in the restaurant.
“That man is a faggot!” his father declared, causing a scene and making Chris blush again, but this time with shame. His mother appeared unbothered as she took out her compact and checked her makeup.
Figuring that it was up to him to defuse the situation, Chris got up and walked over to his father as quickly as he could without drawing even more attention to him.
“Dad,” he said, laying his hand gently over his father’s arm. “People are watching.”
“I don’t care,” his father said, jerking his arm out of Chris’s hold. “Let them see what a man does with one of them. He cannot touch my food. I will not have his disease coming near me.”
“Dad!” Chris tried again, louder this time. “This is completely inappropriate behavior.”
His mom turned around in her seat to face him. “Oh, Chris, honey, come sit back down. Your father is only doing what’s right. You know how they spread their filth.”
Chris violently shook his head. It was as if he was seeing them both for the first time and hating everything about them. The judgments, the ridicule… he’d put up with it all only to please them. And he’d been doing it for the past thirty-five years without ever once really being heard.
“I’m gay,” he snapped at her, far more loudly than he’d meant to. By this time most of the other patrons had been moved to a different section of the restaurant, either to avoid the noise or to keep the owner’s most profitable customers from being embarrassed in any way.
His father shook his head at him. “You think you are, and it is by far the most disappointing thing about you.”
That was news to Chris, who had always tried to be perfect for his parents, even now. “What else is there?” He was nearly afraid to ask, but some part of him felt like he really needed to know. Was it how long he kept his hair? That he liked getting manicures? What could it have possibly been that made his dad look at him with such disgust right then? As if he couldn’t stand to be near Chris for another minute because of how awful he was.
His father simply shook his head. “Go sit back down. This doesn’t concern you.”
Chris wasn’t so sure about that. “Seeing as how I’m gay, and you’re upset because a gay person might come within ten feet of your precious, overcooked pork chop, I kind of think it does.” It was a tone he never used with his father, but he couldn’t have stopped himself right then as the words tumbled out.
His father turned his anger on Chris, which was nothing new for him, but the backbone he currently felt holding him up was. And surprisingly, it felt good.
“You are a disgrace. At least Misha made something of himself. They had an entire ceremony for him. If he’d chosen to be a lawyer instead of some soldier, there would have been no limit to what he could have done. But you, you’re a waste. You had such promise, such talent, and you let it all go. You’re not a partner at the firm. You aren’t trying cases in the national news. No, instead you listen to pathetic people whine about their horrible little lives as they complain about divorcing people they never loved anyway.”
The problem was that his father was pretty much spot-on about what he did at the firm. He handled divorces, and a lot of them. They weren’t glamorous, but they paid damn well. Apparently he should have been trying to achieve more in the last dozen years he’d been working for his father. Too bad no one ever told him that doing everything he thought his parents had ever wanted for him hadn’t actually been good enough.
He took a step back, suddenly needing to put some distance between them. “Actually, you’re right. I am a divorce lawyer. But if that doesn’t work for you, then I guess I won’t be one anymore. Since I’d kind of thought you would have realized that my entire fucking life has always ever been just about pleasing you and Mom. Bran was right.” He laughed and had to wipe at his eyes. Shaking, he then loosened the tie that felt like it was strangling him. “Fuck. All these years. And Bran was fucking right. He should get a fucking trophy or some shit for that.”
“You won’t use that language around your mother,” his dad scolded him sharply.
But Chris just laughed and kept moving backward until he ran into a table. Then he walked around that and kept going toward the front door. “Fuck you. And fuck this. And fuck being a lawyer at the prestigious Romanoff firm. Fuck being your disgrace of a son. I quit. That pile of papers on my desk? You can have them. The bitchy people and their whiny mistresses? Take them all. You are welcome to them. I quit. Quit. Quit. Quit.”
Damn, that felt good, almost like he was high, and he couldn’t stop laughing as he went to his parents’ car and helped himself into the backseat. “Take me home, please,” he told the driver.
“Are your parents coming too?”
Chris shook his head. “Not this time.”
The driver nodded to him, and less than a minute later, Chris was being driven through the crowded streets of Manhattan and back to his apartment. It was good to be home when the driver dropped him off in front of his building. But it was so much better when he opened his front door and found Misha standing there in his living room with his hands clasped behind his back as if he’d been standing at attention and could have continued to stay right like that for as long as he needed to.
“You’re here!” Chris said, practically running toward him before he folded his arms around Misha’s much bigger body. A lifetime in the Army had made him muscular, and though he could have easily crushed him, Chris was sure, Misha only gave him a light hug.
“Dad called me from the restaurant. Seems you had a breakdown. He’s blaming it on you spending too much time with Bran.” Misha pulled him over to the couch, where they sat down together.
Chris just grinned. “More like too much time around our dad.” He lost some of his smile as he shook his head. “I just snapped back there. Bran’s been telling me how awful he is for most of my life, and I think I saw that a little.”
Misha shook his head and laid his arm around Chris’s shoulders. “I’d prefer not to talk about Bran right now. When we spoke yesterday, you sounded miserable, and that was because of him.”
“Actually….” Chris bit his bottom lip and leaned forward on the couch. “That was more my doing.”
“Don’t you take the blame for him. Not again. He’s an idiot, and I’m glad to see you getting some space from him.”
Misha sounded angry, and Chris sighed as he turned his head, propped his cheek up on his fist, and looked over at his brother. “Bran, and Samuel too, and maybe even in a way Kaden as well, though probably just for Bran since he and I aren’t friends at all, but they were mad at me for doing something pretty bad.”
Misha froze and gave him a dark look. “I thought you’d finished being a slut.”
If only it was that simple. Chris gave him a weak smile. “I did. That’s not what this is about. You see… there’s this thing that I do sometimes, and….” He shook his head. After confessing to everyone else that mattered to him, telling Misha about his self-harming behavior should have been easy. But Misha was his big brother and someone Chris had always looked up to. It was hard to know that he’d be forever flawed in Misha’s eyes after revealing his darkest secret to him.
“What is it?” Misha asked him, his voice going low, dangerous, like he expected Chris to tell him something awful, like when Bran’s abusive ex, Richard, had beaten Chris up the year before.
“I cut myself. It’s a self-harming behavior I use as a coping mechanism. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid and stopped for a long time, but I recently started up again,” Chris admitted in the most casual, matter-of-fact way he could manage. He hoped presenting it like that to his brother would make him freak out less. He watched Misha, expecting the worst from him, like he’d gotten from Bran. Shit. Bran. He hadn’t even stopped to wonder if Misha would be just like him, if he would throw Chris out of his life too.
&n
bsp; He didn’t have long to think about that, though, before Misha surprised the hell out of him by wrapping his arm tightly around Chris’s shoulders and pulling him close against his side.
“You need to stop that, and I want you in therapy. No arguments. You get your ass in therapy or I’m putting someone on you to make sure you go. They will drag you there if they have to. I’ve still got some old Army buddies in the area that would help.”
Chris smiled and rested his head against his brother’s chest. “I’ll go to therapy in a while. I have a few things to figure out first. Thanks for not hating me like Bran did.”
“Never could hate you, but don’t for a minute think I’m not pissed off at you.”
That was a fine compromise as far as Chris was concerned. “I quit my job today.”
Misha let him go, and Chris sat back up and smoothed his hair away from his forehead.
“I know you did. What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea. Maybe I’ll travel for a while, like you did,” Chris said with a shrug. Not having a plan, or even the slightest hint of what he was going to be doing even the next day, was a whole new experience for him. In a way it was terrifying, but he was also excited. “Before I do anything, though, I need to go back to the firm and get a picture of Bran and Kaden that’s sitting on my desk. The rest of the crap Dad can do whatever with. I can’t believe I quit. I’ve never quit a job in my life. And now I quit the firm? What the hell was I thinking?”
Misha shook his head. “Regretting your choice already?”
Maybe he should have been, but that wasn’t really how Chris was feeling right then. “No. Actually, I’m scared out of my mind, but I don’t regret what I said or did or how I quit. I guess the only thing is that I wish I’d done it sooner. And I kind of wish that I could call Bran and tell him what happened, except I’m still so damn mad at him.”
Dare to Hope Page 14