by C. L. Stone
“I’m not mad,” I said. “It’s... surprising. But I understand. You can’t sleep here all the time.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” he said, his eyes sparking again. “But yes, we can’t do that every night.”
I smiled at him, catching his intention but unsure how to respond. I’d enjoyed it, too, even if it was crazy and extreme. I still wasn’t sure if I fully processed the idea of them sleeping with me in the bed, and a few of them had already done so.
“You can check the cameras, too,” he said. “Do you have your cell phone?”
I paused, trying to remember where I’d put it. Blushing, I tucked my hand inside my shirt, lifting the phone from the cup of my bra.
Victor grinned, taking the phone from me. “Secret pockets,” he said. He flipped the phone in his hands and pushed a button. He drew close to show me the illuminated screen. “This here,” he said, pointing to an app displaying a pink heart. He touched it. The app activated, showing a map of a cartoon house. It was the side view of two upstairs bedrooms, the bathroom, both staircases, a couple hallways, a master bedroom downstairs, and a kitchen and living room and the garage. “You can press any of these,” he said, and he pressed the cartoon bedroom that was colored in pink, “and...”
While he paused, a loading icon circled itself. The screen changed to reveal Victor and I standing together in the room at that moment, from the angle of the camera in the vent. My eyes instinctively went to the vent and back to the phone, as if trying to catch myself.
“It’ll make things easier on you, too,” he said. “You can check on your mother and Marie without having to risk getting caught snooping.”
This made it better. I had access to my own cameras. It was now a tool for me, not just them. “You have this app on your phone?”
He smiled, pulling his phone from his back pocket and pushing a button, showing me the pink heart, dead center on the front. “You’re always with me.”
I rolled my eyes, unable to smother the smile. “Don’t I get your app?”
He shifted, as if debating this. “Maybe later.”
Did they not trust me? Or was there another reason?
“But now that’s out of the way,” he beamed, stuffing his phone back into his pocket and crossing the room toward the attic door. “There’s one more thing.”
“Did Luke cut that beam out?” I asked, knowing Gabriel had asked him to. I turned off my phone, drawn to Victor’s new surprise.
“Not just that,” Victor said. He dropped to his knees, hooking his fingers around the door handle and opening it. “Crawl inside.”
I peered in to the shadows of the attic, not able to see far. I twisted the phone around to use it as a light but his hand closed around mine, stopping me.
“Trust me,” he said. “Just go a few feet in.” The fire flickered in his eyes.
A smile brushed my lips. They might pick on Gabriel for his presentation style, but Victor had a flair for it, too.
I crawled through the open doorway. Not a foot inside, as I expected to feel the rough of the raw wood, I was surprised by softness. My fingers spread out, smoothing over the fibers of a cushioned carpet.
The next part I noticed was the air. It wasn’t the warm and thick air, but as cool as the rest of the house. It was still dark and I crept forward, anticipating other surprises.
When I was about halfway to the platform, I stopped, sitting on my heels, and looked back toward Victor.
He hovered in the doorway, a shadow against the light filtering in from the bedroom. He crawled in, closing the door behind himself and casting us into complete blackness.
“Victor,” I whispered to him.
“Trust me,” he said.
I waited.
A click.
The area lit up around us. A track of lighting had been installed to the side.
The sconces were shaped like roses.
The lighting followed all the way to the back. The plush carpet below me was a deep blue, nearly black. The walls were covered in a dark material. I traced my fingers over the wall, feeling padding.
“It’s been soundproofed,” Victor said, crawling toward me. He stopped two feet in and pointed to the side wall. “There’s this, too.”
I knee-walked on the carpet toward him. Against the wall was a miniature wardrobe about the size of a large travel trunk. It was painted a similar dark blue color to the carpet.
Victor opened the front, revealing a tiny collection of the clothing he’d purchased for me yesterday. Skirts, shorts and blouses were hung up on the right side. A few pairs of underwear and a couple of bras were folded neatly into place on shelving on the left.
“I’m sorry about the colors,” he said. “We had to keep it dark. The light switch is hidden, but if they ever looked inside on their own, a pink or light color they would probably see and...”
My hand shot out, my fingers falling on his lips. His eyes widened, but he didn’t have to keep saying he was sorry. He never had to apologize. They had reasons, and I understood.
As if I needed pink carpet.
“It’s amazing,” I said.
His mouth shifted into a smile against my fingers. “Still not done,” he mumbled. He nudged me toward the platform.
I started crawling. Now that there was light, I could tell the beam had been taken out. There were carpeted steps built up against the opening.
When I got close, I half stood. Another two-person beanbag chair, like the ones at Kota’s, filled the space. This one, though, was mostly black, but the top part to sit in was pink.
I turned slightly, looking back at Victor, who had followed me.
“Go ahead,” he said, prodding me on the leg.
I climbed the steps that allowed easier access to getting up and into the beanbag chair. I crawled in on my knees, intending to move out of the way so Victor could join me.
The lighting continued around my head, the rose sconces making a circle above me. The walls had the same dark padding.
I stopped short. A gasp caught in my throat.
Attached to the walls was a collection of photographs.
There they were. All of the boys’ beautiful faces. Some were individual portrait shots. Some were taken in places I didn’t know, bedrooms and dining rooms of--I assumed—the boys’ homes I’d yet to visit.
Some photos had me in the shots. There was the one North had taken with his phone while I was on his back. There was one of me being flung into the pool by Nathan. There was one with Kota brushing my teeth. There were dozens more of us at school. There were even some of Dr. Green and Mr. Blackbourne.
My smile caught again and again as I discovered a new photo. There were so many, I didn’t know where to start and I kept going back to look at different ones to make sure I didn’t miss any.
Victor was partially standing on the stairs. His head tucked in, and he studied at the display. “Pretty nice, huh?”
I slid over on the chair to give him room.
He smirked, flopping down into place next to me. I drew my legs up, but he hooked a hand over my knees, drawing them into his lap. Our bodies leaned in together. Victor wrapped an arm around my shoulders. I tucked my head next to his, gazing around us at the lights, the photos, at the beautiful work the boys had done.
“I can’t believe you guys did this,” I whispered.
His free hand dropped onto my knee, his fingers tracing along the kneecap. “We need to keep you safe, Sang. You needed a place to call us.” He nuzzled me with his face, cheek and chin pressing to the top of my head. “And we wanted to.”
“You didn’t have to,” I said, taking in a deep breath to swallow back the trembling in my voice. “You’ve already done so much for me, even before the clothes and everything from this weekend...”
His cheek bunched up as he smiled against my head. “Not quite done yet.”
I stiffened against him. What else could there be? I was overwhelmed as it was. I was like a little kid who just got way too many g
ifts at Christmas and didn’t know where to start.
He leaned against me, reaching around to his back pocket, and pulled out a set of keys. The collection varied, from house keys with different colored covers on the top, to a couple that looked like car keys. There was a single keychain, a black and pink plastic heart with a white skull and crossbones in the center.
“They didn’t have a prettier pink one,” he said, holding up the set in front of me, the keys rearranging as he flipped it over to reveal more of the keychain. “But Gabriel thought you’d like it. Skull and crossbones for Trouble.”
I partly knew the answer before I asked, but I asked anyway. “Where do the keys go?”
Victor shifted to pull his arm out from around me and to arrange the keys. “Pink is your house key, green is Kota’s house, red for Nathan, dark blue for Silas, white for mine, the baby blue is for Luke and North’s house, orange for Gabriel’s. And not that you need them yet, but the black key is to North’s Jeep, the green car key for Kota’s, blue for Silas’, gray for mine.” He lifted my palm until it was facing up and dropped the keys into my hand. He closed my fingers around the set.
I had keys to their houses and their cars. “I can’t drive,” I said in a quiet voice.
“Not yet. Soon.”
I couldn’t wrap my brain around that right now. My fingers massaged one of the keys in my hands. “You’d let me have keys? Kota said I’d probably just get his and Nathan’s.”
“When Kota gave the order to North to make keys for you, North did the right thing and made one of everyone’s. Kota had to be kidding to think we wouldn’t give you one.”
A smile teased my lips. “I’ve never been to your house, but I’ve got a key to it.”
He stretched back again to wrap his arm around my shoulders. “Any time you want, Sang. I mean it.”
I tucked my head into his shoulder and dropped the keys into my lap so I could put a palm against his chest. “I don’t know what to say,” I said. “Victor...”
“One more thing,” he whispered. “Last one, I promise.”
My body rattled against him. I wasn’t sure I could handle any more. “What’s that?”
He leaned away slightly, and with his free hand he stretched toward a spot on the wall. There was a click and the lights around us snapped off.
The darkness swallowed us up, but not completely.
Hundreds of stars started to glow. Stars lit up between the photographs, above our heads on the ceiling, in every crevice. There were enough to cast a gentle, eerie green glow on our faces.
“North thought you might like it,” Victor whispered.
I sat up and away from him, dazzled by all the stars. Some weren’t stars at all, there were heart shapes mixed in. I counted the hearts. Ten. One for all of us, including Mr. Blackbourne and Dr. Green. Our new family.
I extended my fingers to touch one heart painted next to a photograph, giving Gabriel’s smile a ghostly illumination. “Victor...”
Victor shifted on the chair, he leaned over to where I was looking, pressing his cheek to the top of my head. “Yes?”
My breath was gone and so was my ability to formulate what I wanted to say. I let go of the star to bring the finger to my lips, pressing to my teeth. “I don’t... I can’t,” I floundered. I mumbled more, but only syllables.
Victor caught my hand at my mouth. He held it, his fingers warming around mine.
I turned, catching the spark of his eyes in the dark.
“You’re not alone, Sang. With us, you’ll never have to be. Not anymore.”
My fingers trembled inside his hand. Finding the words was only slightly easier in the dark. “I don’t know how to thank you. I don’t know how to... how could I ever...”
He settled back into the chair, drawing me along with him. This time, he pulled me against him in an embrace. My palms pressed against his chest as my head dropped over his heart, the beating nearly matching my own. His hand brushed through my hair, fingers entwining through the strands. His cheek pressed against the top of my head again. “Promise to stay with us, Sang. It’s all we can ask.”
Stay? Were they kidding? “What do you mean stay?” I whispered, closing my eyes and breathing in the opulent berries of his cologne. The crease of his polo shirt folded against my cheek. My fingertips traced the angles of his chest, smoothing out his shirt. “Did you think I would leave?”
“You always have the choice,” he said. “I’ve seen it in your eyes. That desire to not burden anyone else with problems, and thinking the best way would be to go home and never talk to anyone again. I did that, too, for a long time.”
“You did?”
He sucked in a breath, and let it out slowly before he began. “My father has always been very demanding of me,” he said. His fingers traced along the edge of my jaw. “He didn’t hit me, but he’d curse and scream. A wrong note during a recital, a misused fork at a dinner party; any small thing would set him off. He’d wait until we got home and spend an hour calling me an ‘ungrateful prick who never did anything right’. And that was probably one of the nicest things he ever said.”
My fingers clutched at the material of his shirt. “Victor... that’s awful.”
“I didn’t tell the guys, even after we’d joined the Academy. They had pretty horrible things to deal with, so I felt like my own problems weren’t that bad.”
I had no idea. If that was how Victor was treated, I couldn’t imagine what the others must have gone through. “You said was,” I said. “Do you mean he doesn’t do it anymore?”
Victor’s head shifted from side to side against me. “No,” he whispered. “No, he doesn’t. When Kota and the others found out, they helped me.”
“How?”
His mouth twisted to a smile against my head. “That’s a story for another day. But it was the hardest thing for me to do to admit something at home was wrong. There were times I considered quitting the Academy entirely and leaving everyone behind so they wouldn’t find out and so they’d never know. It might have been the most difficult thing to admit my problems to them, but it was one of the best things, for me and for them.”
My hand loosened the grip on his shirt. “I guess that’s a hint.”
“Running away doesn’t help anyone. We’ll fix whatever we have to. You just have to tell us.” His fingertip traced over my cheek. “Stay with us, Sang. Don’t run from us anymore. The only way our group works is if you can be honest with us.”
“What if it isn’t fixable?”
“There’s very little out there that isn’t fixable. Death, going to prison... But anything else we can usually figure it out.”
“How?”
He laughed, his baritone echoing through me. “You ask me that a lot.”
“Sorry.”
He smoothed his cheek across the top of my head. “You’re not sorry.”
I honestly didn’t know what I was anymore. I was still overwhelmed by the gifts. I was still wondering about Victor’s story and how he managed to get his father to stop belittling him. I was still curious about what trouble the others were in and how they fixed it together. Wasn’t I protecting them by not bothering them over things I could handle?
I had to trust his experience. All I had to do was tell them. Why did it feel like the hardest part? “I want to stay with you,” I whispered. That was the easiest to say. I wanted him, all of them, to know.
“Are you sure?” he asked in a quieter tone.
My fingers gripped his shirt again. I wanted to be sure he knew I meant it. “Yes.”
The hand at my face shifted to my back, hugging me in close. He breathed in deeply against my hair, his breath shifting the locks against my head. “As you wish.”
With my cheek pressed to his chest, my eyes wandered to the pictures around us, the stars above our heads, the outline of the chair we sat in. All the things they did for me seemed like so much, and all they wanted was to make sure I stayed with them. I didn’t want to leave them bef
ore, but I also didn’t feel my place among them. Kota promised, as well as the others promised, that it would happen. I would eventually know where I belonged with them. What I had to trust, what I needed to keep reminding myself, was that I did belong. I belonged somewhere, right? Why not with them?
There in the dark with Victor next to me, and his promise that they wanted me, and the promise from the others displayed before me in the pictures, the stars, the clothes, all the new things, they were doing what they could, before I even knew what I wanted, to ensure I believed it like they did.
We grew quiet together. There were many things I wanted to say. I wanted to thank him again. I wanted to ask him more about his father, his life. I wanted to ask about the others. I wanted to tell him something, a problem, a small one, just to offer something of myself to let him know I understood. My mind was a mess, though. All I managed to do was slip my cheek against his chest and massage my fingertips in a tiny circle along his collarbone.
I didn’t want to let go. This was as close as I’d ever been to any of them. A feeling of warmth and belonging was seeping into me through his touch, and I wanted it to last.
His fingers traced along my ribs. “Sang?” Victor whispered.
“Yes, Victor?”
He shifted a hand from my back, sliding down my arm until his fingers found the bracelet at my wrist. He breathed against the top of my head, heating a small circle of my skin. “We should go out.” He paused, swallowed, “I mean if you want to, I could take you out sometime.”
My eyes widened, focusing on a single heart glowing against the wall. Out as in a date? What about the others? Kota? What would it mean if we started dating? What if something happened and we found out we didn’t like each other?
My own heart thundered and my mind whirled trying to grasp the right thing to say. “Where would we go?” It slipped out first and I pursed my lips, unsure.
He released a breath. I felt his mouth smiling against my head. “I'll take you anywhere you want.”
It wasn’t what I meant. I’d asked the wrong question and it gave him an answer that he wanted and I couldn’t take it back. Something inside me didn’t want to. I liked Victor. Everything I’d said about him the other night, about being handsome and looking out for me, I admired in him. The only problem was I liked all of them. A yes to him felt like a betrayal to the others. Wasn’t dating about choosing one guy to date? “Victor, I... I’ve never... I mean I don’t know...”