Belonging

by Alexa Land

  The young female reporter looked into the camera and said, “They’re calling it the kiss heard ‘round the world, and as you can see behind me, San Francisco’s gay community has taken this story to heart, rallying around Tillane and Dombruso.”

  “Blimey,” Zan murmured.

  The reporter was saying, “I, along with the legions of Tillane fans gathering here in San Francisco, will be watching this story closely as it unfolds.”

  “I owe my fans so much,” he said quietly. “They deserve to know what happened and where I’ve been, and all those insane rumors need to be put to rest.”

  “You shouldn’t feel obligated,” I said. “Not if it comes at too high a cost to you.”

  “But look at that,” Zan said.

  The TV screen was filled with a shot of a lesbian couple in their thirties, one of whom had a toddler on her shoulders. All three members of their little family were wearing rainbow-striped t-shirts, and one of them was yelling over the noise of the crowd, “We love you, Zan!”

  He said, “I had my reasons for walking away from my career, but now I need to figure out how to make it right with my fans.” Zan turned to look at me. “I just don’t know how to make any of this right for you, Gianni. I can’t turn off the spotlight that I thrust on you. God, how I wish I could. I feel incredibly guilty for turning your life upside down like this.”

  “Don’t feel guilty,” I said, reaching up to caress his cheek, which was a little rough with a couple days’ worth of stubble. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not. None of this is, really. I’ve been clinging to you, but I’m not completely deluded. I fully understand we’re not in a relationship yet. In fact, you and I have never even had a first date! Apparently overnight, the whole world made all these assumptions about us. They don’t realize that what they saw was our first kiss.”

  “Zan—”

  He interrupted me by saying, “I need you to know you’re in no way obligated to be with me, Gianni. I can get the security team your brother called to take me away from here. You don’t have to be stuck with me. All you did was kiss me back. That shouldn’t mean you have to be saddled with me indefinitely.”

  “You finished?” I asked. When he nodded, I kissed him softly, then rested my forehead against his as I said, “I want to be with you. Yes, this thing between us is still in its infancy, but I’m so excited to see what it grows into. I knew it was going to have its share of challenges, even before a few hundred people showed up on our doorstep. But the fact is, I’m here because I want to be, and because I want you, Zan.” He smiled at that and gathered me in his arms, carefully, as if I was something fragile and worth protecting.

  *****

  Over the next few hours, the crowd out front grew so large that the police department sent a couple dozen officers to disperse them. A lot of the fans relocated to a small park down the block. Some of the news channels continued filming them. It looked like it was evolving into a fun party.

  The reporters were allowed to stay in front of the house, as long as they didn’t block the sidewalk or come up onto our property. More lined the alley behind us, in case anyone tried to sneak out the back, apparently. Jessie appointed himself media monitor and kept us apprised of all of those developments as he sat in front of the TV with his laptop and smartphone.

  In the late afternoon, Christopher Robin and Kieran told us they needed to go, since they were hosting an event that evening at Christopher’s art gallery. The street was closed off at both of the nearest intersections, but Dante’s security team was allowed to pull a big SUV with tinted windows up to the front of the house. As soon as it appeared on the block, all the reporters and the paparazzi snapped into action.

  Four security guards formed a square around Kieran and Christopher, who’d put on baseball caps, hoodies and sunglasses to make the short dash to the car. The paparazzi went completely crazy, pushing and shoving to try to get a shot, even though one of them yelled almost immediately, “It’s not them, it’s not Tillane and Dombruso!”

  They still pursued the couple aggressively, throwing out questions and trying to get the cameras and microphones right in their faces. Christopher was well-protected, though. The bodyguards were actually kind of superfluous, since Kieran, the ex-cop, was absolutely determined to keep his man free from harm, embracing him protectively and using his arm to shield his smaller husband. The two made it to the SUV relatively unscathed, presumably with their anonymity intact.

  “Well, that could have gone worse,” I said, watching the live feed on TV. I turned to my brother and said, “Don’t you and Charlie need to get out of here, too? Your restaurant’s going to be busy on a Friday night.”

  “No way am I leaving you and Nana to deal with all of this shit on your own. Besides, our staff has it under control,” Dante said. He’d remained vigilant all afternoon, making calls and keeping a close eye on the situation.

  I turned to my friends. “What about you guys? There are plenty more sunglasses and hoodies to go around if you want to slip out of here incognito.”

  “I’d like to stay,” Christian said. He was curled up on his fiancé’s lap in a corner of the sofa, his head on Shea’s shoulder. “Even though it seems like my dad’s coping well, all things considered, I’d just feel better if we remained close by.”

  “We’re staying as long as Christian does. We got our landlady to look after our pets and we cleared our schedule,” Skye said, reaching out and giving his best friend’s hand a squeeze. He and Dare were curled up together in an oversized club chair that they’d slid right beside the couch. “You look tired, Z,” he added, referring to the nickname Christian used for his street art. “Why don’t you take Gianni up on his offer and crash in one of the guestrooms for a while?”

  “That might be an idea,” Christian said. I directed them to the nearest empty bedroom and Shea scooped him into his arms, kissed his forehead, and carried him out of the room.

  “I’m going to go upstairs and see if Zan needs anything,” I said. I turned to Nana and Jessie, who sat side-by-side on the couch monitoring the news. “Let me know if there are any changes.”

  “Will do,” Nana said. The dog at her feet looked at me and wagged his tail happily before going back to chewing the sneaker I’d surrendered to him.

  Zan had gone up to my bedroom a couple hours earlier, saying he wanted to lay down for a while. I suspected that he’d actually wanted a little time to himself. As the day wore on, I’d watched the stress building in him. For a man used to being by himself, it was certainly understandable.

  He called, “Come in,” when I knocked lightly on the door to my bedroom.

  I opened the door just a few inches and stuck my head in. “I hope I’m not intruding. All you’ve eaten today is toast, so I thought I’d see if you wanted me to bring you something.”

  He shook his head no and held his arms out to me, just like he’d done at the airport. It was such a vulnerable and childlike gesture. I came into the room, closing and locking the door behind me, then hurried to him. Zan was sitting on the floor in the corner, his knees drawn to his chest, and I knelt down and hugged him as I asked, “How are you doing?”

  “In some ways, I’m doing better than I’d have expected. But a big part of me wants to run and hide so sodding bad. Not from you. If I ran, I’d want to take you with me. But from everything else.”

  I held him for a while before asking, “Would it help if I called a therapist or a counselor for you? Maybe they could give you some advice for getting through this.”

  “No thanks, love. I don’t do well with shrinks. I spent years in therapy with so many different people: psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and it never made any difference. And yes, I do fully understand that the common denominator in all those instances was me. It just wasn’t what I needed.”

  “I was in therapy too, actually, for a lot of my childhood. I really don’t know if it helped or not. I was so young when my parents died that I don’t thin
k I was capable of processing it, with or without all those counselors.”

  “Were their deaths related to the fact that your family was involved in organized crime?”

  I nodded, shifting around so I was leaning against the wall beside him. “My dad had been trying to go legit, but it didn’t matter. After so many generations in the business, stretching all the way back to Sicily, the Dombrusos had made plenty of enemies. Chief among them were the Natoris. One night, the head of that family and several men broke into our house with the intention of killing all of us and sending a message to the rest of our organization. They started with my parents and murdered them in their beds while they slept. My baby sister Sophie’s nursery was right next to my parents’ bedroom and they shot her next, then came for my brothers and me. Dante heard them coming and held them off with a shotgun so we could escape.”

  “Oh God. Gianni, I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine.”

  “I really didn’t understand what was happening at the time,” I told him. “Dante woke us up, and Vincent helped Mikey and me climb out a window and run to the neighbor’s house. I remember being scared because it was pitch black, and holding Mikey’s hand really tightly because I was afraid of losing him in the dark. I remember the wet lawn under my bare feet, and I remember Vincent telling us over and over that we had to run as fast as we could.”

  I looked at my hands, which were fidgeting on my bent knees, and said, “It was years before all the pieces from that night finally came together for me. Nobody would talk to us about what had happened or why. I guess they figured we were too little to understand.”

  “Did you ever go back to that house?”

  I shook my head. “My uncles brought our toys and clothes here, and we never went back. I barely remember the house now. I don’t really remember my parents, either. Most of what I remember are things other people told me about them, and when I try to recall what they looked like, all I see are the static faces in my photographs.” I leaned over, opened a chest that was pushed up against the wall and took out an old teddy bear. “I think I have a faint memory of my dad smiling at me and handing me this when he came back from a business trip, but for all I know, it was just a dream.” I turned the little bear around in my hands as tears prickled at the back of my eyes. Zan pulled me into his arms, and I murmured as I put my head on his shoulder, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to start acting all pathetic. Talking about this stuff just never, ever gets easier.”

  “Don’t apologize, love. I’m grateful that you’re opening up to me.”

  “You’re really easy to talk to.”

  “I’m glad you think so, and I feel the same about you. I regret all those months I was too stupid to manage this.”

  I grinned and said, “You weren’t stupid. We both just needed a push to get where we belonged.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Zan remained in my room the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening. I stayed with him for a couple hours, then told him I had a surprise for him and went to pull it together. He looked a little uncertain when I came to get him, but took my hand and let me lead him downstairs.

  We bypassed the family room, where everyone was hanging out, and cut through the kitchen to the back door. “The helicopter went away and the backyard has a really high fence,” I told him, “so I don’t think we’ll be bothered on our short walk.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Someplace nice. You’ll see.”

  Nana’s house had a surprisingly large backyard, despite the fact that it was in the center of San Francisco. It had started out as a double lot, and then in the 1960s, my grandfather had bought the house next door and knocked it down, partly to expand the property, and partly because he’d thought the neighbors’ house was ugly and he was tired of looking at it. To create the illusion of even more space, trees and shrubs had been heavily planted along the high masonry fence, so it was hard to tell where the yard ended.

  In one corner, blocked from view by a tall hedge, was one of my favorite places in the world. The little white treehouse, built in the same Queen Anne style as the main house, was only six feet off the ground, nestled amid the branches of an oak tree that was older than the neighborhood. But once inside, it felt like another world.

  “Wow,” Zan murmured as he stepped through a little gap in the hedge and saw the tiny house for the first time.

  “Nana had it built for my brothers and me a few months after we moved in with her. It was meant to make us feel welcome and more at home. It did that, but it also served a more important purpose and gave each of us a place to escape when we needed to be by ourselves. I’ve used it a lot, not just during my childhood.” We climbed the ladder, closing and latching the door behind us. I’d drawn all the curtains to make sure we had privacy, and earlier I’d brought everything I thought we might need into the little space and set it up.

  It was very deluxe as far as treehouses went, with both electricity and a tiny bathroom, the exterior plumbing hidden by a wooden enclosure behind the tree. It had one main room, and its walls were painted to give the illusion of being in a lighthouse surrounded by a turbulent sea. I’d always thought that was an interesting and oddly apt choice on the part of the trompe l’oeil artist who’d been given free rein in this space, since I’d weathered many storms in the treehouse.

  That evening, I’d placed bunches of flowers around the room, just whatever I’d found blooming in the yard, along with a hodgepodge of candles from Nana’s party closet. Soft music played from a couple Bluetooth speakers, and in the center of the space, I’d set a low, round table for dinner. Once Zan was seated on one of the pillows that ringed the table, I removed the cloche from his meal, revealing a green salad and a piece of grilled salmon. According to Christian, this was one of Zan’s favorite go-to meals. “I thought maybe we could go ahead and have our first date. Is this okay?” I asked, watching him closely for a reaction.

  “It’s absolutely perfect, except for one thing.” I looked around quickly to see what I’d forgotten. Zan removed the cover from my dinner, then slid my plate around so it was beside his instead of across the table. He smiled at me as he pulled a pillow right beside him and I settled onto it with a little grin. “Thank you for doing this,” he said sincerely, leaning in and kissing me.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” I said as I poured him some wine. “I might not have cooked the salmon the way you like it.”

  “It looks fabulous.”

  “I didn’t dress the salad,” I told him as I put down the wine bottle and draped a cloth napkin over my lap. “I didn’t know how much you preferred. The dressing’s in that decanter. I made us some dessert too, but it’s not from your shopping list, so you might not like it.”

  He took a bite of the fish and claimed it was wonderful, but I was pretty sure I’d overcooked it. I watched anxiously as he ate a couple more bites, and then he asked me, “Aren’t you going to eat anything?”

  I picked up my fork and held it poised over my plate, watching as he swirled a bit of dressing over his salad. I blurted, “I tried to make it the way you do, but might have used too much olive oil. I’m sorry. If you write down a recipe for me, I’ll get it right next time.” He took a bite of salad and pronounced it perfect too, and I looked down and said softly, “You don’t have to say that. Just tell me what I did wrong. I can learn to do better.”

  He kissed my forehead and told me, “It’s wonderful, Gianni, and I’m grateful that you went through all this trouble.”

  “It’s really okay?”

  “Absolutely. The food’s delicious, the setting is enchanting, and I’m with you, so this is the best meal I could possibly imagine.” I grinned shyly and took a bite of fish. It had turned out well after all.

  When the main course was finished, I moved our plates to a little credenza against one wall and brought over dessert. I’d made a fruit plate for two and a chocolate dipping sauce to accompany it. Most of it was run-of-the mill, stuff like strawberries and
raspberries, but I’d slipped in a few slices of star fruit, just because. Zan grinned when he saw the platter. “This shows a lot of restraint. Was the market out of tentacle fruit and tanginas?”

  I smiled at that. “Buddha’s hand has probably gone out of season by now, and the other things are called tangelos.”

  “Close enough.” He plucked a ripe strawberry off the plate and dipped it in the sauce, but instead of eating it, he fed it to me. When a little of the chocolate got on my lower lip, Zan let out a low, “Mmm,” and licked it off. “Reminds me,” he said. “Those salted caramels were insanely delicious. Thank you.”

  “Really? You tried them?”

  “I did,” he said as he fed me another chocolate-dipped berry, again getting some on my lower lip. He sucked it off gently, then murmured, “They were the most delicious things I’d ever had, until now.” He ran the tip of his tongue over my lip.

  Lust spiked in both of us at the same time. I’d changed into a decent outfit for our date (which I’d had to borrow from Nico, since most of my better clothes were somewhere between San Francisco and New York) and I fumbled with the buttons on the black long-sleeved shirt. Meanwhile, Zan untucked it, then slipped his hands beneath the hem, encircling my waist as he kissed me deeply.

  He went to work on my belt and the indigo jeans, and before long I was completely naked. Zan laid me down on the pillows, picked up another strawberry and put the tip of it in my mouth. After I bit into it, he stroked my nipple with the half between his fingers, the wetness cool on my skin. I gasped and arched my back when he took my nipple in his mouth and sucked it clean. It hardened instantly and he nibbled it gently before doing the same thing to my other nipple, his beard tantalizingly rough on my skin.

  He fed me another strawberry, watching my mouth as I bit into it. Once I’d swallowed it, he kissed me, the tip of his tongue slipping between my lips. He proceeded to do this with one of everything on the platter, tasting the fruit on me instead of eating it himself.