by Jaime Samms
“Band sounds good,” Len said.
Christian nodded. “We miss you, man.”
Len glanced at him, trying hard not to let the pain show on his face. “Miss you guys too.”
“We’re here now, right?” Beks said, punching his shoulder in an awkward attempt to lighten the mood.
“Take a few more testosterone pills, there, sweetheart,” Jethro said, automatically dancing back when Beks swung at him.
Beks glared at him, but melted as soon as Jethro’s arms circled hunched shoulders. “You know I’m only teasing. We’ll give you more man lessons. Soon as the T kicks in—”
“Shut up!” Beks punched him in the gut for real, and Jethro doubled over, groaning. “You still punch like a girl,” he wheezed.
“Serves you right! I was going to tell him in private, asshole.”
“Tell me what?” Len glanced from one to the other of them. It was no secret to him they’d been dating for a while, even if they’d kept it hush-hush and the fans only guessed at the truth.
“The doctor said I was ready for hormone therapy,” Beks said.
“Hormone?” Len blinked. “Why? What’s wrong?”
Beks turned the dark scowl on him. “How about the whole body-with-girl-parts thing?” Her—his, Len thought bemusedly—hands waved up and down in front of what Len had always thought of as a perfectly acceptable tomboyish figure.
“God. You really haven’t been paying attention, have you?” Beks asked.
“Apparently not.”
“Well, get with the program, dude, because by the time you come back, my horrible, squeaky voice will be gone, and I’ll have facial hair.” Turning toward the house, Beks then swung off in a disastrous parody of a manly swagger.
“You do know Asian men can’t really grow facial hair, right?” Jethro said, hurrying after his lover and tussling her short black mop.
Beks grabbed his hand, pulled him closer, and leaned on his shoulder. “Big deal. I’ll have one of those really ugly, wispy little goatee things.”
“Ew!” Jethro fended off another blow as they both laughed and headed up the porch steps, still hand in hand.
“Maggie is in the kitchen,” Vance said, coming up behind Len and grounding him with a touch at the small of his back. “And she’ll kill me if I don’t herd you all in there.” His warm, strong touch pressured Len forward and guided him toward the porch. “Inside. Best to let her start feedin’ everyone right off. It makes her happy, and a happy Maggie is what we all want, trust me on this.” He waved to the bus driver, who waved back, indicating he would park the behemoth out of the way somewhere and meet them inside.
“That’s George,” Len told him. “He’s been driving the band everywhere forever.”
“We’ve met.” Vance bent and kissed his temple. “He used to chauffer me. I heard he wanted a less demanding client. So Stan gave him Firefly.”
Len’s eyes went wide as he turned to look into his lover’s sparkling eyes. “I knew you had a wild reputation, but wilder than us?”
Vance grinned. “Infinitely so. Now git.” He slapped Len’s bottom as Len took the first few stairs, quickening his pace to escape that broad hand. “And let Maggie know we’re on our way. I see we have more guests to greet, and I want to make sure Kil’s got that horse settled so he can join us.”
“Join us?” Len turned at the top of the steps. “Why?”
“It’s your birthday, darlin’. He’s your friend, ain’t he?”
“Well, yeah, of course.”
“Then he’ll help celebrate. Jacko’s here too.”
Len’s gut twisted a tiny bit. “Jacko?”
Vance chuckled. “You are so oblivious it’s adorable. You think I’d let you go to a party on your own? As your Dom?”
“No.” Len shook his head. “Probably not.”
“So why would Jacko let Kilmer go without him?”
“Jacko? And Kil…?”
“Go and tell Maggie to set four more places. I think we’ve got another family joining us.”
Len followed Vance’s progress to the drive with his gaze to see Trevor’s brother, Wayne, unfold his frame from the front seat of a minivan. All three other doors popped open, and Wayne’s two kids and his wife appeared as well, followed in another moment by Christian’s wife. The guitarist was across the packed-earth lot and sweeping her up in a bear hug in seconds. He spiraled her back toward the house as Vance held out a hand to Wayne and welcomed him.
INSIDE, LEN was comforted by the familiar chaos of his friends settling in around the gigantic dining table. Janet’s baby was gurgling happily away in a swing contraption fastened to the doorframe by a giant clamp, and Janet was laying plates out around the table. She laughed and joked as though she had known these people her whole life. There were no starstruck google eyes at any of them, and for that Len was grateful. Maggie called out instructions, and Clive and Jethro hurried to comply, at the prompting, of course, of Alice and Beks.
It was so much like nights all through high school, in Trevor and Wayne’s kitchen, their mother presiding and Wayne’s girlfriend, later his wife, trying to keep everyone on point.
“Nothing ever changes,” Christian sighed, thumping Len on the back as he passed and squeezed into the last chair. He pulled Stephie down on his lap, and she giggled, pressing her face close to his to whisper something that made him grin and kiss her hard.
Just as they always did, the two of them slipped into a world where they were perfectly alone together in the middle of the most chaotic of situations.
It was surreal that Christian’s words had been so very right, and utterly wrong at the same time. Everything had changed. Len had changed. This life, of family crowding in to be fed, was a throwback. They weren’t starving teenagers anymore. They weren’t scraping by. So much life had happened to them all, it was ludicrous to think nothing had changed. And still, they laughed and joked as though it was just last week they had all been together doing this.
“Go get more chairs from the back hall, Len,” Vance said. “Kilmer will give you a hand.”
Len nodded and wandered off toward the back of the house again. The chairs in question were stacked against the wall just inside the back door, and Len was pulling three off the top of the pile when Kilmer clomped in through the door.
“Hey,” Len said, hefting his load.
“Hey. I’ll take these.” Kilmer reached for the rest, but Len put his burden down and faced him. “I met Jacko.”
Kilmer straightened. “He said.”
“Vance has slept with an awful lot of people.”
Kilmer shrugged. “I don’t know I would call what he did with Jacko ‘sleepin’’ with him exactly. Jacko’s been a Dom a long time. He’s been part of the leather world almost as long as you’ve been alive. I mean, Doms like Vance aren’t just born. He made himself what he is. Sure he’s got the instinct for it. The natural inclination. But he’s got some serious technique, and he had to learn that somewhere.”
“You think he let Jacko tie him up?” The idea was strangely unnerving for Len. The thought of the man he relied on to be so strong, so in control, on his knees to anyone else made his skin go clammy.
“You’d have to ask Vance.” Kilmer looked almost as unsettled as Len felt. “It isn’t any of my business who Jacko has, or how, when he’s not with me. I don’t ask, and he doesn’t volunteer.”
“Vance?” Len’s heart dropped out the bottom of his soul.
“Good God, no!” Kilmer laid a hand on Len’s shoulder. “Fuck, Len, if you don’t get that Vance is a one-guy kind of man, you two have some serious talkin’ to do. He played around, sure. When he was single. He ain’t single now. Get that through that thick head of yours, will you?” Hefting the pile of chairs still sitting beside the wall, Kilmer gave him a sympathetic look. “These are really things you should be talkin’ to him about.”
“But he said I could talk to you.”
“Not about Jacko. If Jacko knew I was talkin
g about him like this, he’d punish me for it, and that ain’t anythin’ I’m interested in. You can talk to Vance about their past, or maybe to Jacko, if you’re brave enough.”
“You scared of him? Of Jacko?”
Kilmer set the chairs down again. “No, Len, I’m not scared of him. I respect him. I know where the lines are he expects me not to cross. Talking about his past before I was with him is a line I’ve never been invited to go beyond. It’s not my business.”
“Vance isn’t like that.”
Kilmer shook his head. “No. Vance isn’t like that. And I’m not with Vance anymore. Neither is Jacko. I’d guess Vance is with you partly because the guy you need is a guy he wants to be. How you are appeals to him. How I’m built is not what he wants. And people are goin’ to be eatin’ standin’ up if we don’t get these chairs in there. Or brawlin’ for the last one. I can hear the riot startin’. Come on.”
THE MEAL was loud and chaotic, and Len watched mostly from the sidelines.
“You ain’t eatin’,” Vance said, heat and voice and power assailing Len all at once as the big man came up behind him. A shiver chased the heat and Len barely managed to keep still. “Take this.” Vance handed him a bowl of thick stew, wrapping around him from behind as he brought the meal over his shoulder.
God, how he wanted to sink into the heat and let it banish all the cold and uncertainty.
“Eat.”
“Not hungry.” Len set the bowl down on the sideboard nearby and hugged himself. It was too easy to take Vance’s offer of strength and cocoon himself in it, but where would that leave him when Vance was gone? When the others left? When he was staring at this table, empty, and Vance was locked in his office, once more avoiding the difficulty of keeping a man who couldn’t hold himself together without help?
“Like it hasn’t been weeks since I saw any of them,” Len mumbled, watching the tumult and longing, somewhere too deep to reach anymore, to be a part of it. “Like they didn’t chuck me out of the band as if I was some bit of rotten tomato in their sandwich.”
Vance peered down at him. “Rotten tomato?”
Len shrugged.
“You been drinkin’, darlin’?”
Shaking his head, then thinking better of that response, Len gave him the truth. “Couple of beers.”
“Well, stop.”
A sound of annoyance crawled up Len’s throat, and he let it out. “I’m fine.”
“I wasn’t askin’.” Vance picked up the food and held it out to him again. “Eat.”
Len slithered out from behind the bowl and headed for the kitchen door and the front room. He wasn’t interested in food or Vance’s orders. He wasn’t interested in sitting around pretending nothing had changed when they all knew full well the band was only here on Stan’s orders to be nice to him, and Vance’s request.
A moment after he’d left the hubbub of the kitchen behind, footsteps on the hardwood alerted him he wasn’t alone.
“Vance, just leave me—”
“Vance is still in the kitchen fuming,” Clive said.
“You can leave me alone too,” Len muttered, flopping onto the couch.
“We need to talk.”
“Got nothing to say.” Len rubbed at the leather of his cuff, but the motion, the acknowledgment of the symbol, brought him no comfort this time. The emotional goo inside had snowballed again, and Len was pretty sure it was too heavy to allow him to stand under its weight.
“Well, I have plenty, so you can listen.”
“Fuck you, Clive. You had your say back in Boston. I’m out. I get it. It’s done. What else is there?”
“How long?” Clive asked, moving to stand over him.
Len looked up into his stormy eyes and shrugged. “How long what?” But he thought he knew. He wasn’t about to admit Clive had a right to ask, had a right to be angry still.
“How long were you planning on torturing him like that?”
Len stared. He definitely wasn’t going to acknowledge they could talk about him—Damian, or Trevor, or whatever the hell he called himself these days—without having to use his name because his specter, his absence was so very much a part of their gathering. “There was no plan. I wasn’t torturing anyone.”
“We all looked out for you, Lenny. We had your back. We took you in, and that was what you gave back. Bruises and scars?”
“You don’t know—”
“I know!” Clive jabbed a thumb at his chest and leaned forward, invading what little personal space Len had left. “I know he can barely get up onstage. I know he stutters through every opening. I know he can’t sing anything you two wrote together. Jet has to sing the ballads.”
“Damian never sang ballads.”
“I know Chris has to pep talk him down from a panic attack every night just to get him onstage. Whatever you did—”
“I didn’t do that to him! I—”
“You beat him! You made him feel worthless. You taunted him with what he wanted and took it away again every time! You made him this way!”
“No!” Len rose and shoved, catching the bigger man off guard enough he stumbled back a few paces. It wasn’t as bad as Clive made it out to be. He couldn’t believe it was that bad. He couldn’t admit Clive was right. “I didn’t shove needles in his arms or tell him to bend over for every dominant creep who wanted a piece of his precious goth-boy ass. He did those things, and when I wanted him to stop, he went out and did it again. I couldn’t control him!”
“And you thought hitting him would do it?”
Len’s head was shaking in denial even as his fists clenched. Even as the rage flared behind his eyes, turning everything red, and the urge to lash out clawed to get free. “I didn’t think.” He ground the words bare, scraped raw by teeth clenched as hard as his fingers around the unbearable pressure to swing, or vomit, or maim. To do whatever he needed to do that wasn’t giving in. “I was frustrated. Pissed off. I just—I couldn’t anymore, Clive. Some days, I just couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t keep it in.”
“I get it, you know. You had a crap foster home. You had a shitty relationship, and we all backed you getting the hell away from Ace. We all went to his goddamn funeral with you, even though we thought he didn’t deserve any of it. But we did. We supported you, and all the time, you were—”
“You don’t know fuck all!” Len surged forward, temper snapping through the thin ties of restraint he’d managed as his palms connected hard with Clive’s chest. “You will never understand!” He pounded, and Clive gripped his upper arms, pushing him almost gently away as he continued to flail. “You can never understand!”
“Clive.” Alice’s voice came from the living room doorway, but they both ignored her.
Clive shook his head, but not at her interruption. He was denying Len. “You can’t keep doing this, Lenny.” His voice had dropped from vibrating anger to steely quiet. “You can’t. This doesn’t fix it.”
“Lemme go.” Len twisted and fought the grip Clive only tightened until it hurt. Until it would leave bruises. He held to Len’s temper until it burned itself out in futile struggle. At last, Len’s fists came to rest on Clive’s heaving pecs, and they both stilled except for the vibration jangling through every muscle as they fought to remain immobile. Len could feel Clive’s tension. He could feel the other man’s utter need to let him go and walk away. To leave him alone to wallow in the mess he’d made.
He stiffened, silently staring at Clive’s chest, a tiny voice in his head begging not to be let go. Not to have one more person walk away from him.
Clive released his arms to cover his fists. “How many people you gonna bruise and batter before you get that you can’t keep it together by breaking everyone around you? You doing this to Vance too? He wearing long sleeves in forty-degree weather because there’s marks he doesn’t want us to see?”
“Shut up.”
“You going to become Ace, Lenny?”
“Shut up!”
“That the only thing
that’s going to keep you whole? Because as long as you’re like this, you can’t come back. Long as you’re one step from losing your shit on the person who says the wrong thing or looks at you from the wrong angle, you can’t be around Damian. He’s the broken one now, and we gotta keep him safe. Even if you’re the one he has to be safe from.”
Len swallowed spiked shards of the emotional barbed-wire ball inside and shook his head. “I am not like him. I’m not. You don’t—you can’t….”
“Understand?” Clive pushed him away, voice going hard once more. “I understand you can’t keep yourself under control. I don’t know why. I don’t care why. You hurt people. I won’t have you hurting my people. Not anymore. If you can’t put what Ace did behind you, then how you gonna get better? You gotta let that shit go, man.”
Len snorted. “Let it go. Right. You ever have someone wrap their hand around your neck and hold you down, Clive?”
Clive snorted, but his thick arms crossed over his chest and his feet shifted.
“You ever have someone you care about wrap his hands around your throat and squeeze until you can’t stand up? Can’t think? Can’t fucking see?”
Clive had gone pale, and from the doorway, Alice gasped.
“No,” Len went on. “You’ve never had that happen. You’ve never had that happen to you. Never had that person who was supposed to keep you safe roll you over and take what he wanted. It wasn’t a shitty relationship. He was a shitty person. He was vile and brutal, and he took everything. He didn’t just fuck me when I didn’t want him to. He took away my ability to say yes too.”
“Len.” Vance strode into the room, but Len moved away from him.
“Don’t fucking touch me.”
Vance held up both hands, stopping in the middle of the ornate carpet, the fringes of which shifted under Len’s toes.
“Clive, you don’t know. To be choked until you pass out and wake up with that inside you.” He shivered and hugged himself, wishing so hard he didn’t ever have to think about it, but knowing it could never not be a part of him now. He’d said it out loud, and there was no purging it from his soul.