by Con Riley
“What do you want to do now, Aiden?”
“Pretend none of this ever happened?” That had sounded weak, but Marco had nodded.
“Shall we do everything we planned this morning, or do you want me to take you home now?”
Aiden had had to think hard for a minute. “I have to go back to work for a while. I don’t want Levi to close up by himself.” They still had stuff to talk through.
“Whatever you want. Let me go and tell the others.” He’d turned, but Aiden had stopped him.
“We were . . . . We were going to go get tested.”
“We can do that another time. There is no hurry—”
Aiden cut him off. “I want to do it.” He closed his eyes and started again, lowering his voice until Marco stood much closer. “I want us to be okay.” And more than that, he wanted to stop thinking for a while, and he was pretty certain Marco could make that happen. When he opened his eyes, Marco had started smiling.
“You want to go home and”—he struggled with his vocabulary before speaking very simply—“fuck this out of your headspace?”
Aiden had nodded. That pretty much summed up his brand-new coping mechanism.
“We don’t need to get tested today for that.” He’d pulled Aiden down until he could speak into his ear. “I can use a condom.” He pulled away a little, his brow deeply furrowed. “Or you can. Whatever you need. You can use me for sex anytime, Aiden.” His wink had been accompanied by a too-quick kiss. “But maybe you should think whether avoidance has worked out well for you before.” His smile had faded at Aiden’s sagging shoulders. “Come on. I’ll take you back to work.”
Getting back to business had been so much better than thinking about the sheaf of printouts bookmarking the notebook Marco had driven home with or the photo of a Marine that had filled the library PC screen when they told the others they were leaving.
From where Aiden had stood, the shadow cast by the Marine’s white peaked cap masked his eyes, while the rest of him was bathed in bright sunlight that glinted off a wide chest decorated with medals. Aiden had stepped closer and had nodded when Evan asked if he was okay. The closer he’d gotten, the more unavoidable it seemed that this guy might be family.
Broad, tanned cheeks with dips where dimples would easily deepen, and a wide, full-lipped mouth looked incredibly familiar. Aiden’s hand had risen involuntarily, thumb and forefinger pressing in where his own dimples were almost mirror images. He couldn’t see any evidence of the man’s eye color, but by the time he’d realized that more hands had been patting at his back—Jack’s and Paul’s and Evan’s—his nose had practically been pressed up to the screen.
When Marco’s hand had gripped the back of his neck, squeezing to get his attention, he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t seen what everyone else there had already noticed.
Marco’s expression had wavered somewhere between happiness and worry. “You look like you could be brothers.”
Much later, when the store was closed, Marco had banged on the delivery entrance and then urged Aiden to get done with his paperwork for the day. When he saw that Levi had his head buried in a carton of shirts and that Aiden looked set to reorganize the whole stockroom, he stepped back and spoke sternly.
“Didn’t I tell you that I would come to get you after closing?”
“Yes, but—”
“It looks as if you have made more work for yourself. Is this your way of saying that you would rather be here?”
“No! I don’t want to be here at all. I just—”
Marco turned in a slow circle, gesturing at the chaos. “Then why have you started this chore that has no end?”
Scrubbing tiredly at his face, Aiden shook his head, then sat down carefully on the edge of his desk. “I knew we had some shirts here that a customer wanted, but Levi couldn’t find them.” He slowly rolled down his shirtsleeves, stopping only when Levi spoke up.
His voice was muffled until he backed out of a carton. Levi clutched an armful of shirts and brandished them in Aiden’s direction, barely restraining rare annoyance. “Look! They were here all the time!” He nodded a greeting at Marco, then stumbled over words that sounded frustrated. “Let me stay late and straighten this up. It will make work so much easier if I can find everything back here.” He paused, folding the fabric he held with quick movements displaying agitation, and he frowned as he spoke again. Levi tilted his head toward a leaning stack of half-unpacked cartons. “This . . . This place is more than somewhere I come to work. I didn’t realize that was true until I couldn’t come here. All I had at home—” He quickly shook his head. “Listen, I was shocked when you fired me, and then I was really angry.” His gaze flashed in Aiden’s direction and a flush crept up his neck. “I know what I did looked bad. You didn’t have to give me my job back, I know that. But I didn’t have to take it back either.”
Aiden opened his mouth, then closed it.
Levi quickly continued. “This is coming out all wrong.” He pointed at the jumbled mess of cartons, and then at the Post-It Aiden had crumpled. “You just said that you don’t want to be here, and this place kinda reflects that.” His hand stole up to cover his mouth as if he wanted to hold in his own words. They came out regardless. “I want to be here. I want to be here a whole lot more than any other option, so how about you let me do more? I want to. Will you let me?”
“This is too much for one person.” Marco sounded definite as he agreed with Levi. He picked up a tangle of thin leather belts and shoved them onto a shelf. “You should ask Evan to devise some kind of system with Levi. He seems like someone who likes creating order.”
Aiden saw Evan’s talent for organization differently now. It was easier, as an adult, to grasp that years spent with few possessions and an endless stream of light-fingered roommates had left Evan distrustful and in need of rigid order. He had spent the first few months after his adoption categorizing everything his new family owned. He’d driven their mother quietly crazy with his need to know who owned each possession. Their dad had listened to the way Evan double-checked relentlessly that the stuff in his bedroom was really his and no one else’s, and then had brought home a desktop label maker. Remembering things like that, and how Evan had gone hog wild, labeling everything that wasn’t nailed down, made it difficult to judge his adoptive father harshly. All those labels had driven Aiden crazy, but his dad had seen what Evan needed. In many ways he’d been a great dad, right up until the end.
Evan had begged to organize the stockroom for ages, because he thrived on structure. It seemed as if that was something Levi needed too.
Aiden looked around him.
He’d really let things slip.
“You can quit with that guilty expression.” Marco held up a rogue pair of panties, smiling briefly before frowning again. “You work more than hard enough already. Let Evan to do this with Levi. Your brother should work for a living after all you still do for him.”
For a split second, Aiden thought Theo must have spilled the secrets on his flash drive to Marco. Did he already know that Aiden paid for Evan and his mom’s unchanged lifestyle?
He closed his eyes and took some long, slow breaths. Would it really matter if Marco did know? He was going to have to tell him just how messed up his finances were at some point. Marco already knew some stuff—he’d seen his credit-card statements—but Aiden had kept the true extent of his commitments locked down tight.
When he looked again, Marco was already on his phone describing the stockroom problem to Evan. He suggested that Evan open the store tomorrow, then trade off with Levi until the work was done. Watching Marco organize his life was bizarrely freeing. Marco soon hustled them all out the door, talking quietly as Aiden fussed over the alarm panel.
“See how effective delegation leaves you with time for yourself?” He looked over his shoulder. Levi was already at the end of the loading-bay alley on his skateboard. When Marco next spoke, he laced his words with kisses. “Time to think, Aiden. That’s what your l
ife is missing. Evan has plenty of time to himself, and it seems like your mother would enjoy helping. What does she do apart from read and craft and garden? It’s only right that you let your family help you.”
He looked up at Aiden. “Sometimes I wonder why they don’t help you more.” He moved on before Aiden could give his standard answer. Saying that his business worked fine as it was, and that he didn’t need anyone’s help to keep it running, would have sounded hollow. Marco would have called him on those lies in a heartbeat.
But Marco was still enthused about the subject of delegation. “See how we have all night together now, and all of tomorrow morning?” His smile was huge, his hands on Aiden’s ass entirely welcome. “You can talk to me about your family on the way home, but the minute we get inside, I want you to think only about yourself. You cannot think about other people.”
“No one?” Aiden couldn’t wrap his head around not worrying for a whole evening.
Marco’s blinks were slow, his face settling into a contented expression. “You can think about you and me together.”
Aiden made it nearly a whole hour before getting out the notebook. Marco found him at the kitchen table, printouts from the library arranged across its surface. Marco’s shower-wet hair dripped over sheets of paper as he leaned down to kiss Aiden’s nape.
“I thought you were all mine this evening?” His tone was gently teasing. “Do I have to lock this stuff in the truck, then hide your keys somewhere you’ll never find them?” He stood behind Aiden, wrapping his still-damp arms around him. “Maybe I was too easy. I should have made you wait instead of getting you off so quickly.”
“I wasn’t that quick.”
“You were magnificent.” That was all Marco said. He kissed the back of Aiden’s neck until Aiden twisted in his seat so Marco could kiss him properly. The screech of the chair on tile was piercing as Aiden shoved it back from the table, pulling Marco down onto his lap.
“Magnificent?” Aiden smiled into Marco’s shoulder, smelling the shower gel they’d washed each other with after getting home. Its scent was faintly spicy and had eased his coming across Marco’s soap-slick skin.
“All I wanted was someone to wash my back.” Marco’s teeth were sharp, nipping the shell of Aiden’s ear. “I didn’t expect you to shove me against the tile and use my ass like that.” He snorted back his laughter, adding, “You only want me for my ass cheeks.”
Aiden held him tighter, swallowing down words that were too serious for this moment. He wanted Marco for far more than that.
Marco had listened all the way back from the store, letting Aiden talk his ear off. What the hell was up with that? Aiden used to sit in silence while Marco filled his rare downtime with endless, inane chatter. Today they’d done the opposite, and now that Aiden thought about it, it wasn’t the first time lately that Marco had taken a back seat to his conversations.
This time, Marco had let Aiden run his mouth about the man who might be his birth dad as they drove home across the city. The few times he’d chipped in, he’d cut to the heart of Aiden’s worries.
“You think he wants you to forget the past, to forgive him right away for playing no part in your childhood?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.” They’d waited for the light to change. Just before they drove off, Marco had said, “Is that such a bad thing?”
Was it?
They drove for another half mile before he could get his words in order.
“Yeah. I think it’s pretty awful. In fact, it’s unforgivable. I had a good life once I got adopted, but who walks away from family? Who does that to his own kid?” Even thinking it was enough to make him feel sick. He’d had years to mull this over, and he was sure he couldn’t think of a single reason that was justifiable.
“The first entry read as if he thought he had good reasons. Perhaps he only wants a chance to explain his side of the story.”
That comment had led to a sudden blast of bad temper that Aiden had thought he’d gotten over years ago. Marco hadn’t said anything else for a while, letting him fill the cab with vitriol and years’ worth of confused sadness.
No reason would ever justify leaving a kid—a little kid—looking out of every single window that he could push a chair to, hoping to see his mommy. He’d done that even after he knew she was never coming back. His voice died out as he remembered.
He’d thought she was his only parent. He’d thought he’d done something wrong to make her leave him with complete strangers. Group homes were meant to be for kids who had no other option. Finding out that there had been another adult, someone decorated like a hero, who’d acted as if he hadn’t existed?
No reason on the planet could ever justify that.
Marco had told him to pull over, and he’d done so without hesitation, responding to the instruction as if it were a life preserver thrown onto stormy waters. He’d clung to Marco’s voice as evening traffic hurtled past them, making his old truck shake each time a semi thundered by.
“Tell me what you’re thinking.”
He’d repeated his thoughts aloud, blurting his small-boy fear and devastation, and Marco had nodded.
“And for this you blame your father?”
“Yes.” It was either that or blame himself, and he’d done that for enough years already. It wasn’t his fault his birth mom had gone off the rails. Aiden had started up the truck and rejoined the flow of traffic. He’d blame losing her on a man who had maybe pushed her onto that downward, drug-fueled spiral if he wanted.
“It read as if he had a different story. Maybe one that you should hear before you damn him.”
Crossing town had taken forever. Every stoplight turned red as he approached it, and assholes cut him off with their thoughtless, reckless driving. At almost every intersection, Marco prompted another spill of words. Then he’d sit and wait as Aiden drove on for a quarter mile before spewing thoughts he’d held inside since childhood. By the time they pulled up outside Peter’s house, he was wrung out and exhausted.
He’d never talked so much about himself.
“Home.” Marco had sounded tired too.
“Yeah, home.” And it was. A house borrowed from a man he hardly knew, where he’d met someone who drove him crazy for constantly changing reasons. It was the only place Aiden wanted to be now.
They’d gone inside together, stripping in the bathroom without conversation. Marco had soaped him from head to foot in the shower, making him bend so Marco could rub conditioner through his hair and later lift each foot while Marco knelt before him with shower gel in hand. He’d taken his time, washing every inch of skin, kissing him when the suds rinsed off, then kneading his tired muscles.
When Marco had turned his face to the showerhead, quickly washing his own hair, Aiden had been transfixed by his ass. It was so pale in contrast to the rest of his deeply suntanned body.
How that led to Marco bracing against the wall on tiptoe, with his back a deep, delicious dip and his ass crack just the right height for Aiden to run his cock through, he couldn’t remember. All Aiden knew for certain was that going through the motions of fucking his very own de Luca felt like exactly what he needed. He’d rubbed and shoved and wrapped one thick forearm around Marco’s chest, hauling him back against his body. When Marco had reached behind him, awkwardly grasping Aiden’s cock, Aiden had soon shot, his spunk stark white against Marco’s golden skin before it washed away.
Marco had held him up as he slumped, braced once again by the wall, but had still managed to jerk off as Aiden kissed across his shoulders. They’d ended their shower with laughter, and by the time they got done, Aiden had felt so much better: lighter, and more able to face what Evan had shoved into the notebook.
Now Marco sat on Aiden’s lap at the kitchen table, teasing him as Aiden sorted the printouts Jack had given him into chronological order. Marco wriggled free.
“I shall go and put on some clothes.”
Aiden shook his head. Clothes on Marco were unnecessary.
The small towel wrapped around his hips already covered too much.
“Okay. Then I shall make us some supper.”
Aiden nodded. That sounded like a better plan.
“Try this wine. Tell me what you think about it.” Marco dropped another kiss onto his forehead, pushing damp hair out of his way. His voice lowered. “Sit. Read. Talk to me if you need to. Yes?”
Aiden met his gaze and nodded. He would talk if he needed to. Getting out the worst of his anger on the journey home had left him feeling weird and fractured, but now that Marco had put him back together, he felt he could face what his birth dad had written.
A squall of rain hurled itself against the window. Marco shivered at the sudden change in the weather, heading out of the kitchen before returning wearing sweats. He chopped and stirred for a while, preparing a simple supper. As saucepan contents simmered, he sang something in Italian, and Aiden sipped Chianti.
Aiden read and read, sometimes paging back through sheets to reread a particular passage. He frowned as he worked through a stack of search website entries that all started with the same message: I’m looking for my son. Their content was standard—a short message explaining that Aiden had a family who badly wanted to meet him, followed by an email address and cell phone number. Jack had found a military bio too that held some basic details, along with some pages from a local-to-him newspaper that mentioned Aiden’s birth dad by name. He’d even found out the name of the business he now ran. Aiden typed it into his laptop browser and then paused, not ready yet to click Enter.
Marco served their supper. They ate in silence until Marco finally spoke.
“So, what is your verdict?”
Aiden picked up his near-empty glass and said, “The wine? It’s good. I’ll have another.”
“You’ll have exactly what I give you,” Marco grumbled, but poured them both another glassful. “Now, tell me. Who have you been reading about? An asshole who should have known better? Or someone who had valid reasons for not bringing up his son?”
Aiden shrugged, looking at the pile of paper and at his laptop on the counter.