It wasn’t enough anymore. Tonight, she was walking to the homeless shelter. She had nowhere else to go.
But tomorrow, she’d go to the police station, demand her things, and move on. She’d buy a bus ticket, and leave.
Her heart ached, thinking about leaving Ryan, Apollo, and Matisse without a word. She knew they cared about her, and she knew they’d worry. Perhaps Cai would be relieved when she disappeared, taking her chaos with her.
It may bother Seok, but only because she upset the others.
Those boys deserved better than a girl like her; someone who would kiss one of them, and then let his roommate go down on her not fifteen minutes later. They deserved better than someone who didn’t know her own heart, who couldn’t make a decision, and who was headed nowhere fast.
Someday, if she could get her life together, she would tell them what they’d done for her and what it meant. She’d tell Ryan no one ever believed in her like he did, and she’d tell Apollo no one ever made her feel more cherished. She’d tell Matisse she never expected someone to care enough to step between her and pain, and Cai that bringing her to the youth center made her rethink her worth.
And someday she’d tell Seok that when he walked out the door after making her shatter into a million pieces, she’d reformed into something harder and finer than when he’d left.
She arrived at the front door of the shelter. The light was on above the door, and a hand-lettered sign indicated she should ring the buzzer for help. Her hand hovered there a moment, trembling before she pressed it and a voice asked her if she needed a place to stay the night.
Nora looked into the camera at the corner of the door and swallowed before answering, “Yes, I do.”
For all the times she ended up a hairsbreadth away from sleeping in a shelter, she’d never actually been inside one. It was nothing like she’d pictured, except she’d hoped the people who worked there would be kind, and they wouldn’t regard her with hate or judgement.
They didn’t.
They invited her in, and after the smallest amount of paperwork: her name, her birthday, a signature on an old-fashioned hotel ledger, they found her a bed.
It wasn’t an open cavernous room, filled with coughing, snoring swarms. Instead they brought her to a small room fitted with two bunkbeds. They were quiet, pointing out which bed was hers, handed her a blanket still in its original packaging, and wished her a goodnight.
She crept inside, using the dim moonlight to shuffle her way across the floor. Soft snuffles filled the air, punctuated by shifting blankets. The room was warm, and the bed she’d been assigned was firm, but inviting. She lay down, fully clothed, not bothering to remove her shoes and opened the blanket. She spread it out and tucked it underneath her chin, pillowing her head on her arm. This wasn’t so bad. She was infinitely grateful a place like this existed, and there were people who cared enough to make sure there was a bed out of the cold night air for someone who needed it.
Her eyes fluttered shut. She thought she’d be too stressed to sleep, but the emotional exhaustion, paired with her still-healing body, was enough to force her into oblivion. Tomorrow would bring its own challenges, and she’d have to find her backbone to get through it.
She’d have to look Detective Vance in the eyes and make demands.
And she’d have to remember, no matter how guilty she felt, she was not responsible for Reid’s actions.
Twenty-five
Revelation
Apollo couldn’t move his ass out of his bedroom. He wanted to find Nora and confront her, but he was too angry, too confused. He was afraid he’d say something he’d regret, or accuse her of something he knew not to be true.
He thought he could read people, and know if someone was playing him. He never got that sense from Nora. Every touch, every kiss they shared had been genuine.
He thought it was, anyway. Now he didn’t know what to think, and he didn’t know who to be mad at, or if he even should be mad.
The truth was, he saw how Ryan looked at Nora, and he saw how Nora looked at Ryan when she thought no one was watching. There was a connection there, but it was one he ignored because he felt something for her, too. If he was honorable, he would have put Ryan’s feelings ahead of his own, he would have said to himself, “Yeah, I like her, but Ryan saw her first.”
He didn’t though, and he couldn’t be sorry for that. If Nora hadn’t wanted to kiss him, she wouldn’t have. Right?
This was one of the things making him angry. He went back, replaying events and responses, dissecting them. He second-guessed his own interpretations, and it made everything tainted. Glances he’d exchanged with Nora now seemed darker. Her face wasn’t happy, but conflicted and indecisive.
Apollo made a move to push his glasses onto the bridge of his nose, but he only encountered skin.
Oh yeah. They were downstairs somewhere. Who knew if they survived his shit fit. He sighed and stood, pacing along the edges of the room. He needed to talk to Nora in order to trust his instincts again. If he’d forced her into something she was never comfortable with, he needed to know.
What if he had? What if she’d never wanted to be held by him, and instead felt obligated to?
But what if she wanted him? What if she had legitimate feelings for all of them?
Well. Probably not for Seok. He was an asshole, and at every turn belittled and insulted her.
Even Cai was interested in her. He hadn’t missed the way he held her hand after he drove them back from the youth center. Apollo’d seen the longing in Cai’s eyes when he swept her out of the car and into the house.
He went to his door, hand on the knob, when he was thunderstruck again. He considered what Matisse had proposed; they all date her. Each of them, barring Seok, had feelings for her. He thought about what he’d feel if he knew Cai was on a date with Nora, holding her hand, kissing her goodnight.
He couldn’t deny his jealousy. The idea of another man holding her in his arms made him ache uncomfortably, but it wouldn’t be a nameless, faceless other; it would be Cai.
It would be his friend, who cared so much about people, he spent his days off volunteering at soup kitchens and homeless shelters.
Cai, who had been so broken when he’d met Apollo; he couldn’t make eye contact.
Cai, who’d been so injured by his father; he couldn’t lie on his back at night or open his jaw.
All of them: Seok, Cai, Matisse, Ryan, they’d all shared nights of insomnia, and together the darkness hadn’t seemed so bleak. If it was Cai who held Nora through her own nightmares, was it really jealousy he felt, or a yearning to hold her as well? And if he couldn’t be there, would he rather no one was? Or was he okay with the idea of his best friends holding her as protectively and lovingly as he would?
This wasn’t a decision he could make on his own.
He was wrong, he realized, to berate Matisse, and not hear him out. Worse, he’d been wrong to pull Nora into the tornado of his uncertainty. She would never let herself trust them, or trust they could do this, if he was going to fly off the handle every time someone said something he didn’t like.
And Apollo still didn’t know how he felt about the whole idea. He only knew he didn’t want his relationship with Nora to be over.
Taking a deep breath, he threw the door open and strode to Matisse’s room. First, he needed to apologize to his friend, who somehow stayed open-minded, and then he needed to find Nora and start the slow process of rebuilding her trust.
Twenty-six
Awakening
Matisse had the mother of all headaches. He’d puked his guts out, stared at his swollen face and puked his guts out again. He wasn’t mad at Apollo. He dabbed at a cut on his forehead.
Okay, I’m a little mad.
But Matisse knew ninety percent of selling an idea was in the pitch, and he had bungled his pitch but good.
His tongue touched the torn corner of his mouth. If the swelling went down, he’d look quite the badass at the end
of this, but right now, he resembled a potato.
He threw the washcloth into the sink basin and stalked out of his bathroom. His room felt too small and confining, but he wasn’t ready to face his friends yet.
Reaching for a pencil, he stuck it between his teeth before pulling open his laptop. The file with Nora’s information seemed to glare at him.
He’d passed it onto Seok and Cai, but he never read it. He’d wanted to, he still did, but was a violation of her privacy.
He couldn’t forget how reporters once dug into his past, and published things no one in his family had ever disclosed to him. When it had happened, he wished he had a heads-up. He wished he wasn’t the last to learn the things which were common knowledge, but a tacit secret, to the rest of his family.
Which brought him to Nora. Did he open this file and read what it was spooked her or did he wait for her to share it with him in her own time? The arrow hovered over the file. He wanted to know. He wanted to know if the things the reporter hinted at were true: did she have a relationship with her foster brother? Had she made up the story about her mother dealing drugs? All the answers were there in that file. They were his as soon as he clicked.
But they weren’t really his answers.
There was a big difference between getting the answers he wanted and earning them. And he hadn’t done anything to earn these answers. With a click, he dragged the file into the trash, and then, in case he was tempted later on, he emptied it. Then he remotely opened Seok and Cai’s hard drives and deleted the file from there as well.
There. Now they were all on equal footing. Matisse chose to ignore how, if he wanted to, he could search for the information all over again. Right now, when the temptation was the strongest, he hadn’t succumbed.
He heard a quick rap against his door and then the knob turned. “Matisse?”
Quickly, he stood, putting his gaming chair between him and his visitor. “Are you going to knock the shit out of me again?”
The door opened wider, and Apollo hovered in the hall. “No.”
Apollo looked just as awful as he did, and he felt a little proud he’d managed to inflict so much damage on the bigger and stronger man. He stared at the ground, for all the world looking like a kicked puppy. “Can I come in?”
Nodding, he stepped around his chair. “I was coming to see you anyway.”
Apollo walked over to the bed and sat, rubbing his forehead, and then wincing when he caught the bandage covering his cut.
“You needed a stitch in that one.”
“It’s fine.” Apollo lowered his hand. “I glued it.”
Matisse shuddered. He did not appreciate Apollo’s ability to MacGuyver health care.
“I’m sorry I reacted the way I did,” he said, getting right to the point.
He shrugged, but accepted his apology. “I shouldn’t have laid it out like that. I acted too fast.” He sat. “I’m sorry.”
“We’re cool?” He finally met Matisse’s eyes.
“I don’t know, are we?” he asked with uncertainty.
Apollo kicked his feet back and sprawled on the bed staring at the ceiling. It reminded him too much of being a psychiatrist, and so he stood, leaning against the wall.
“It’s up to her, man. You know?” Apollo began. “And we, all of us, Seok included, need to talk about how this impacts us. Seok can’t stand her, and if we are all interested in dating her, she’s going to be around a lot. He owns this house, we need to think about what this means.”
Here was Matisse’s chance to share information with his friend in a sensitive way. “I don’t think Seok hates Nora. I think he’s scared of how much he likes her.” There. He was sensitive, wasn’t he?
Apollo sat up. “What?” he asked quietly.
“I think Seok cares about Nora.”
Shaking his head, he stood and paced the room. “I didn’t see it. I’m so fucking blind. How could I be so fucking blind when it comes to you guys?”
“Why would you have ever considered this?” Matisse asked. “This isn’t some sitcom, or a fucking… I don’t know… anime. You saw a girl, you liked the girl, the girl liked you. It should have been simple.”
He snorted and then winced. “I don’t know how I feel about this,” he said again. “But I do know I want to be with Nora.”
“I want that, too.”
Slowly, Apollo nodded. “We need to talk to the others, and then we need to apologize to Nora.”
Matisse agreed. “Do you think this is possible?” The words slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them.
Apollo’s face was serious. “I don’t know, Matisse, but I don’t want to give her up.”
Without another word, Matisse slipped out of his room. He knew Apollo followed behind him. The door to Nora’s room was closed and he hesitated a moment before continuing on. Apollo’s footfalls stuttered and he turned to see him listening at the door, his head cocked to hear her inside.
Matisse raised an eyebrow, and Apollo gestured, hold on, before shaking his head. “She must be asleep.”
He nodded. La belle fille had a horrible, rotten day and they’d put her through the wringer. He hoped she got a full night’s sleep because when she awoke in the morning, they’d be there. He knew, even before talking with the others, this was going to happen. He knew they would try this thing out, he just didn’t know if it would work.
The five of them had developed a bond over years, and with it came a deep level of trust, but it had been sorely tried in the last week. The heart of their friendship was strong, stronger even than the ties he had to his family, and he was confident they could come through this.
Ryan, Seok, and Cai were in the kitchen. They were all nursing injuries like the ones he and Apollo had. Matisse went to the fridge and pulled out beers, walking around the kitchen and handing them out to everyone. Apollo rested his bottle against his head and slid down the wall to sit next to Cai, who reached into his back pocket and pulled out his key chain to pop the top off the bottle and then offer it to Apollo.
Matisse drank deeply and shuddered. Ugh. He examined the pony-necked bottle, this was not the beer he would have chosen.
“Beer snob,” Apollo called.
He shrugged. “It’s called having taste.”
Seok held the bottle in his hands, rolling it back and forth between his palms before taking a small sip and then putting it on the ground.
“I’m sorry about the table,” he ventured.
Seok met his eyes and then glanced over at the pile of lumber. “It’s fixable. Maybe I’ll make a new one. Doesn’t matter.”
“I apologize, Seok,” Apollo offered as well.
He nodded at each of them. “Thank you.”
“We were discussing Nora,” Ryan was direct and to the point. “And what we should do. What our next steps are.” He kept his voice pitched low, as if he was worried about waking her, eyeballing both Apollo and Matisse.
He let the topic sit with them, not pushing for them to speak. Matisse sized up the room. He knew how he felt, but he didn’t want to be the first to speak. He didn’t want to talk anyone into anything; he wanted them to come to the conclusion on their own.
Cai surprised him by speaking first. “I don’t have a relationship with her like the rest of you do.”
Huh, interesting. Matisse considered Seok, intercepting Apollo’s questioning scrutiny. Seok met each of their gazes steadily, and even though a light blush stained his cheeks, he didn’t look away.
“But I like her, a lot. More than I should.” Cai’s voice trailed off.
It was the perfect opportunity for Matisse to jump in. “What is should? What else matters except how we feel and how she feels?”
“You’re being dangerously ignorant, Matisse, and you know it.” Seok scowled at him until he was the one who blinked.
“I’m not living in hiding,” Cai interjected. “I’m not my father. I’m not going to move to the fucking desert to live with Nora.”
&nbs
p; “You have a valid fear,” Ryan allowed. “Not about becoming your father. None of us believe you would, or could. You would never let it happen. But what we are considering is so taboo, we could lose everything.”
“It would be worth it,” Matisse argued.
“You don’t know that,” Cai interrupted. “She’s been here a week.”
“I know it,” Apollo said, finally speaking. “I may have spent a handful of days with her, but I can tell you right now; I would never consider this, except for her. She would be worth it. Don’t get me wrong. You don’t want this, I’m fine with that. But she’s mine. She’s mine or she’s no one’s.”
“And if she wants one of us?” Ryan asked.
“Fuck, man.” Apollo’s face paled. “Better one of you than someone I can’t trust.”
Matisse clapped his hands. “Exactement! That is the point! Though I don’t appreciate the tone with which the last statement was uttered. Who are you comparing us to?”
Matisse’s words did what he intended them to do; his friends chuckled and shook their heads. Apollo reached over as if to cuff Matisse, but the sight of his potato face made him stop.
“I want to try this,” Ryan stated quietly, his voice managing to carry across the room.
“I do as well,” Seok stated calmly. “She sees me, who I really am.”
“You’re going to have a lot to make up for,” Apollo said, pinning Seok with a glare. If he didn’t, he would be there to hand him his ass.
“I think she and I understand each other very well, thank you.” The color deepened on Seok’s cheeks.
“When are all of you getting the time to do this?” Matisse asked. “I’m outrunning reporters and you’re upstairs putting the moves on her.”
“I can’t deal with comments like those,” Apollo said heatedly. “I’m fine, you know, knowing in theory. But I’m not going to sit around and swap stories.”
Finding Honor Page 17