by Rhys Ford
There was no conflict. There was no question. In the space of a few words, Mace nearly lost everything he’d worked hard to achieve and became that scared little boy again, trapped behind a locked door.
He couldn’t go back to that. He wouldn’t go back to that. This time no one would come and save him. No one would come to pull him out of the darkness. If he stepped toward the invisible door his father held open for him, Mace knew he would be lost.
“That’s not my name.” It was the first shot he could fire in a battle for his identity—a battle he’d intended never to fight again. “That’s who you tried to make me. That’s not who I am.”
“That’s what I named you. That’s who you are.” His father jabbed at the air with his finger and brushed Mace’s chest. “You’re my son. She should have named you after me. Just like I was named after my father. You should be thankful for that name. I fixed what she fucked up. I made you, and she tried to take that away from me.”
The brief contact felt like a bullet going through him, and Mace couldn’t stop himself from taking a step back to give himself distance from the anger boiling up in his father’s face. He choked back the words of apology his brain threw up in defense, following long-scabbed-over routes of behavior.
“Everything that I am, I made myself.” Mace heard the shaking in his own voice, but he squared his shoulders and presented an attitude he didn’t feel. “Anything that you did to me, I scraped off. There’s nothing of you left. And I don’t even know why you’re here. You and I are done.”
“We are never going to be done. You’re my kid. I brought you into this world, and I can fucking take you out if I need to.” His father leaned in with spittle on his lips as he nearly shouted into Mace’s face. His hate and anger echoed through the stairwell, and his words bounced before they whispered off around the smatter of parked cars behind Mace. “Did you forget where you came from? Did you buy into the lies those people sold you? That’s what I was protecting you against. That’s the reason I took you, because your mother—”
“You took me because you wanted to hurt her. You took me and the dog,” Mace shot back. “Then you killed him and left him on our front porch so I would know how little I meant to you and to tell her what you would do to me. You spent years making sure I knew I was shit. So don’t come around me now and tell me you made me, because you didn’t make me, you destroyed me.”
“I made you strong.” His father crowded in, and Mace steeled himself not to move. The smell of cigarette smoke clinging to his father’s baggy clothes drowned out the scent of the rain, and his breath reeked of onions and decay, but still Mace locked himself in place. “Do you think you’d be as big and tough as you think you are right now if I hadn’t made you that way? Your mother would have turned you into a pussy. I made you a man. I made you a man who could hold his head up and walk through a crowd of people, knowing he’s superior to them. I made you proud to be a strong white man. I gave you a legacy, and you spit in my face for it?”
Mace waited for the other shoe to drop, and when it did, the sick rode over him again. He stared into the face of a madman—his own face worn around the edges with the filth of a personality his father once hoped to instill in Mace. He’d heard those whisperings all through his childhood—slithering tidbits of hatred and dominance that crept under the closed doors he lived behind. They were at odds with the memories of his life before the day his father shattered his childhood. The people in his mother’s circle, who were a rainbow of skin tones and languages, a welcoming kaleidoscope of different foods and unfamiliar customs.
It wasn’t just his best friend his father killed that day. He’d also killed Mace’s chance for a normal life and extinguished the love his mother once had for him.
“I don’t want you in my life.” Mace kept his arms down and his fists clenched around his jacket. “I didn’t want you then. I don’t want you now.”
“I’m the only family you have. Remember?” his father countered. “Did you think word wouldn’t get back to me about her? About how she refused to come get you after they took you from me? Did you forget that? Did she even look you in the face when she decided you weren’t good enough for her anymore?”
“You don’t know fuck about that day,” he growled back menacingly, but doubt was creeping in along the edges of his confidence. The pain of that afternoon resonated and rippled up from the sticky darkness he had on his soul. “She hadn’t seen me in years, and after you were done with me—”
“After I fixed what she did do you. Our kind has a rightful place in this world—”
“Don’t start that shit with me. I don’t buy into that crap. Despite everything you tried to make me believe, I didn’t buy it, and I’m not going to start now,” Mace snapped through his father’s words. “You broke her. Just like you broke me. So no, she can’t stand to look at me because I remind her of you. I have you to thank for that. And you’re not the only family I have. You’re just the family I don’t want.”
“Don’t hold your breath about your mother ever wanting you back.” His father pushed forward and cornered Mace against a concrete pylon meant to keep cars from driving onto the stairwell. Its rounded cap dug into Mace’s lower back, but the sharp glimpse of pain gave him focus. He held his ground and brought his chin up as his father sneered at him. “You think you’re so tough now? You don’t think I can take you? If I wanted to, I could break you with one hand. That was always your problem; you’re too fucking weak to do what has to be done. That’s why you needed me to make you a man. You’ve got too much of your mother in you.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he replied. When he realized he’d angled his body to present as little of himself to his father as possible, he shifted his weight forward to his other foot and pulled his shoulder back. “I don’t know her. You took care of that for me. I’m going to ask you this just once—what the hell did you think was going to happen today? Did you think I was going to throw away everything in my life for you? To follow whatever crazy thing you’re doing? Because I can tell you right here and right now, that’s not going to happen.”
It was probably a psychosomatic response to his father’s presence, but that didn’t make the throbbing twinge on his shoulder blade any less painful. The scarification his father did to him one night in a dirty hotel room thankfully hadn’t produced the symbol he wanted, but it was close enough to make one of the doctors who’d examined Mace nearly refuse to treat him that night. A series of injections were meant to minimize the keloid, but they left the area stretched out in places and bumpy in others. Years later Bear took a needle to Mace’s back and set down Mace’s first tattoo, erasing his father’s repulsive marking from his skin.
“You owe me.” His father jabbed at Mace’s chest again and dug his nail into the wet fabric. The bright bitter terror in Mace’s throat thickened. “I took you—”
Someone cleared their throat at the top of the stairwell. Rob’s sneakers splashed through a small puddle and sent rippling rings out over the shallow water. He was slightly winded, as though he’d run to catch up with Mace, and his T-shirt was as soaked through as it had been earlier that morning.
Rob’s attention flicked once toward Mace’s father and then settled back on him. Concern clouded his expression. “Is there a problem? You okay, Mace?”
Mace had never been good at lying. He didn’t know if it was a genetic deficiency or just something he couldn’t properly do, because he sucked at it. His father wasn’t any better, or maybe he just didn’t give a shit who knew how monstrous he was inside.
“I’m good,” Mace replied, but even as the words left his mouth, he knew Rob didn’t believe him. “You should go back to the shop. Take my jacket so you don’t get wetter and head back before—”
It was a stupid mistake. Mace should’ve known, but he’d come so far to becoming a normal human being that he’d forgotten how depraved and malevolent his father was. Mace caught the exact moment his father realized Rob was gay and th
en his sickening delight at the near desolation of the garage.
“Shit, you’re the faggot I saw the other day. You were with that other kid from the shop,” his father practically purred. “Did you come chasing after my son? Looking for something from him?”
“And if he is, he’s probably going to find it,” Mace growled as he pushed his father away and stepped in front of Rob. “Leave him the fuck alone. Actually, leave us both the fuck alone.”
The buildup of violence was quick, surging up from the bowels of his father’s constantly simmering rage. It struck as hard and fast as the lightning that arced over the angry sky and left a trail of crackling electrical stink in its wake. Mace could taste his father’s hatred in the air, its spit of iron nails and rotted morals, foul enough to drown any decency lurking in the recesses of his father’s soul. The fist came in hot, a wild swing fueled by powerful muscles and an insanity Mace hoped he would never understand.
For the first time in forever, Mace ducked to avoid his father’s blow.
He’d stupidly never done it when he was a child. His mother never struck him, so his father’s first punch to his four-year-old temple had left Mace’s ears ringing and his mouth filled with blood where he’d bitten his cheek. It happened too quickly for him to experience anything other than a mind-blowing pain, and then another punch followed and led to a string of concussive strikes that Mace could only avoid by curling up into a ball.
His father had peeled him open, knelt on Mace’s hips and thighs to hold him down, and then punched him again. Mace thought he was going to die. Betrayed and hurt by a man he’d thought loved him, he’d been unable to do anything to protect himself, other than scream his apologies.
This time Mace was not going to apologize.
This time he wasn’t going to curl up and pray—and certainly not when it looked as though his father intended to teach Rob a lesson by beating him simply because he existed.
Ducking the first punch left him open for the second, but it landed wide and glanced off of Mace’s ribs. He grunted under the impact and absorbed the shock wave of pain as he lashed out and connected with his father’s jaw. The man staggered back, his eyes wide with shock and wild with rage. Stumbling into the stairwell railing, his father grabbed at the metal pipe and touched his now-bleeding lip.
Mace shoved Rob toward the cars and circled around to keep himself as a barrier. He felt Rob at his back, edging in closer, but Mace warned him off and held out his hand. “Stay there. You don’t need to be in between us, Rob.”
“So that’s how it is, Johnny? You making friends with… them?” Panting heavily, he grinned at Mace with a bloodstained row of yellowed teeth. “You should stick to people like you. Not that kind of—”
“Shut up.” Mace cut him off before he could go any further. “I’m going to tell you this again, and maybe this time you’ll hear me. I don’t want you around me. I don’t want you in my life. I am nothing like you. I will never be like you. I don’t want you around my family. I don’t want you around the shop. And I sure as fuck don’t want you around Rob or anyone else I know. So crawl back into whatever hole you found after they let you out and stay there. Because if I see you again, we’re going to finish this, and you’re not going to like how it ends.”
Nine
ROB STILL wore the pricks on his heart from his own father’s thorny words—sarcastic, cutting, demeaning sneers meant to make him feel small, and he bled a little bit every time he thought of the battles they’d waged. They’d been merciless, especially once Rob turned his back on the path his father decided for him, and more than a few times, Rob’s mother became an emotional hostage in their war, forced to choose between her husband and her son. He had regrets—deep ones—and doubt constantly ate at him, especially after a long, hard day with no clients and an empty wallet.
But he couldn’t imagine dealing with the hand Mace had been dealt.
“I’m a little short of cash.” The bearded man shifted his shoulders and tilted his chin back, his narrowed eyes fixed on Rob’s face. “How much do you have on you, Johnny?”
“I’m not giving you any money.” Mace’s honeyed baritone dropped to a raspy growl and layered a veneer of menace over his words. “You’re not going to get anything out of me, so you might as well just go.”
Tension threaded through the air, a tapestry woven from a past Rob didn’t share but that wasn’t hard to guess at. He would have to be senseless not to see or hear the trouble between Mace and his father. The man who only a few hours ago broke Rob’s mind with a seemingly endless patience and passionate lovemaking lay buried beneath a lock-jawed granite barrier, his rigid, strong body shielding Rob from harm.
And there was definitely harm. Rob didn’t need to know exactly what had passed between Mace and his father, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to, at least not firsthand. There was malevolence in the man’s body language, an unspoken promise to peel Rob’s skin from his flesh so he could use it as a mat to wipe his feet on. The derision Rob had reaped from his own family was always subtle, a minimizing of his intelligence and capabilities, but this was something more than the casual dismissal he’d encountered before.
The man staring over Mace’s shoulder left Rob with no doubt that he would take his time breaking Rob’s body and enjoy every second of pain he could inflict.
Father and son stood only a few feet apart, but the distance between them was vast. Rob wasn’t imagining the tremble in Mace’s fingers when he clenched them into hard fists, his knuckles already bloodied from striking his father moments before. Something passed over his father’s face, and the smirk he gave Rob was a promise of future violence if their paths ever crossed again.
“I’ll leave you to your friend.” The man shrugged and stepped sideways down into the stairwell but kept his shoulders turned and his attention fixed on Mace. “See about trying to help your old man out. I’ll talk to you later.”
The only sound fighting the rain was the man’s heavy boots as their thick soles scraped at the cement stairs. Rob didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until his lungs began to shake in his chest and stabbing pain shot through his ribs. He gasped at about the same time Mace did and trembled in both relief and suppressed terror.
They stood in the cold until a VW Rabbit rattled its way onto their level, its body doing a metallic salsa, shimmying and shaking until it finally came to a shuddering rest in a parking spot a few feet away. Its driver, a young girl with blond dreads, flung herself out of the vehicle and slammed the door behind her. Muttering to herself, she looked shocked when she slammed into Rob and then stepped on Mace’s discarded jacket. She apologized in a stream of words Rob couldn’t make sense out of and then hurried toward the stairs as she awkwardly tied an apron branded with the name of a nearby restaurant around her slender waist. A few steps later, she nearly knocked into Mace, and she muttered another garbled apology as she took the stairs at a full run.
“Jesus, she’s… lost in her own brain there.” Rob shook his head at the woman’s pinball bounce past them and then said, “Are you al—”
Mace turned, and the look of fear and disgust on his face stole Rob’s breath.
He watched as Mace fell hard and dropped to his hands and knees. Wracked by spasms, Mace gagged, and his back arched as his taut stomach struggled to push up its contents. Mace retched and dry heaved a few times. Then he sat back on his haunches, and his throat rippled as he stared up at the ceiling.
The sick hit Mace in the few steps it took for Rob to reach his side.
It was as violent as the encounter with Mace’s father, a twisting of flesh and bitter fluids, and it was all Rob could do to get Mace to let him help. Mace strong-armed Rob and pushed him away with a hard shove as he scrambled to his feet to get to a nearby trash can. Partially open to the sky, the landing edge was wet. Mace’s shoulders were quickly drenched, but the cold rain didn’t seem to have any effect on him or the shock waves that coursed through him.
Mace’s
fingers were cold and clammy when Rob grabbed at them to pull Mace out of the downpour, but he shook him off. Trembling, he continued to empty his stomach, and his shoulders quaked with the effort to stop, but his body refused.
“I’m going to call Ivo. He’ll—” Rob had already hit the shop’s number on his phone when Mace shot a hand out and knocked the device down. Its protective case hit the cement, and the phone bounced and landed facedown a few feet away. “Fuck, Mace… you need some help.”
“He’s… got a client he’s working on. I’m not worth pulling him out of that,” Mace grumbled as he turned his head slightly to look up at Rob with wild blue eyes. His hair was nearly black from the rain, and the edges of his mouth were tinged with blue. His lips quivered as he spoke. “I… just need to get… home.”
“Let me get one of your brothers,” Rob insisted, and he swallowed a scream when Mace shook his head. “I can’t leave you like this. At least let me help you get back to your place. Jesus, what kind of asshole do you think I am? That I’ll just dump you after you went through that shit?”
“That?” His snort was as bitter as the smell of his sick in the trash can. “That was nothing. And why should you be any different from my mother?”
LETTING ROB take him home was a mistake. It was one of a long line of mistakes, but as he stumbled into the living room, partially blinded from the cold and the shock of seeing his father, Mace knew it was the blunder of a lifetime. He didn’t take anyone he had sex with home, and he refused to show any bit of his life to anyone he shared his body with. But there was Rob, in the middle of his living room, arm around Mace’s sore ribs and straining to get Mace to a shower.