by Rhys Ford
His favorite was butter brickle, but malted-milk-ball crunch was a close second. Rocky road and dark-cherry chocolate chip usually fought a tight battle for third, but he was pretty much good for anything without berries in it—although strawberry ice cream would also do in a pinch.
“See, that’s the best part about being an adult,” Rob said around a mouthful of marshmallows and nuts. “If I wanted to eat chocolate cake and a chicken quesadilla for breakfast, I can. No one’s going to stop me. Some people—like the trash whore you are—will judge me, but I can gleefully eat anything I want and wash it down with a bottle of Mountain Dew if I want to. So, today breakfast is going to be rocky road ice cream and coffee. And as for last night, I don’t know if he came to slay my dragons or admit to his demons. What I do know is we agreed to see each other, and then he turned white and looked like he was about to pass out.”
“That’s because he was shot. The man literally took a bullet for you.” Lilith pushed her hair away from her eyes and got her rings tangled in the strands. Working them slowly out, she said, “And the family knows about you, then? How did that go over?”
“I think Bear knew, but Ivo thought I was just a fuck buddy, which to be fair, I kind of was.” Rob dug back into the pint. “They probably have to talk about it because it’s a pretty big rule. They don’t want anyone coming back and saying shit like I was coerced into having a relationship with him. I’ve seen what happens when someone is sleeping with the owner. They start to get all sorts of special privileges, and when it goes south, things get really ugly. It makes sense for them to be protective of the shop. It’s what pays their bills, and all of the brothers own it. They don’t want anyone fucking it up.”
“Well, now that I’ve seen him up close, I could totally be coerced into having a relationship with him,” she purred. “Those arms and that chest? That fucking face? If his ass matches the rest of him, I wouldn’t let him out of bed.”
“See? That’s why men don’t like to date you. You don’t respect them.” He pointed at her with his chocolate-smeared spoon. “There’s more to Mace than just a pretty face and a tight body. He’s been through some heavy shit, and his dad is… he had a gun to come talk to his son. And he brought a friend with another gun. The one thing that I can’t wrap my head around is that Mace wasn’t surprised. Through all of the crazy shit and how scared I was, it was like Mace had been in that situation so many times he might’ve been ordering the cheeseburger and asking for no onions. He was resigned to it. Things didn’t get hairy until his father’s gun went off.”
He couldn’t swallow, not with the lump in his throat. It was too easy to remember how scared he’d been. The fear of that night lingered and haunted him. His arms still burned with the memory of the old Chinese woman’s hot blood pouring down them from her wound. His back was bruised from the edge of the railing he’d fallen against, when her slight weight drove them back as he caught her up. Rob could still taste the bitterness in the back of his throat from the fear that ran through him as he curved his shoulder around the woman’s trembling body. He knew he could do little to shield her from any more bullets, but something inside of him made him try anyway.
The ice cream tasted of ashes and regret. Logically Rob knew there was nothing he could have done to prevent what happened that night, but doubt clawed at him. Seeing Mace lying so still on the hospital bed gutted him. When he closed his eyes at night to go to sleep, the image of Mace’s haggard, pale face surfaced. Seeing him today was a punch to the gut, but at the same time his heart sang.
“You’ve got it bad, don’t you?” Lilith’s question burrowed into the back of Rob’s thoughts. “And not just because he stepped in front of a bullet for you. You had it bad before, didn’t you?”
He joined her on the armchair, squeezing in next to her while silently offering up the pint of ice cream and his spoon for her to join him. It was a tight fit, but Rob needed her warmth against his chilled skin. Outside, the city was slowly waking and the fire station’s rolling doors were partially up, giving them a peek of its iconic trucks. Because he’d watched them through the windows, Rob recognized a couple of the firefighters working at the front of the bays, and he caught himself looking for a familiar inked man, despite knowing he was elsewhere.
“I wasn’t sure about it until I saw him last night. And he was so fucking stupid for coming down, because he’s really hurt and he just got out of the hospital, but it did something inside of me. I couldn’t breathe, and I just wanted to cry because I was all ready to fight with Ivo about him. Then there Mace was, walking through the back door as if he heard me needing him.” He opened his mouth to accept a spoonful of the melting ice cream when Lilith offered it to him. Then he mused, “I was so angry at Ivo for saying I didn’t care about Mace. I think some part of my mind was already calculating how much money I had in reserve and if you would carry me over until I found another shop, because I was going to lose my job after I punched his face in. And because he’s so hardheaded, I would probably break my hand, and then I wouldn’t be able to tattoo until that was healed so… that’s where I was in my head when he walked through the door.
“He looked like shit, Lil, but I wanted to kiss him until he was blue in the face. I was so scared to touch him. It was like he was broken and weak but strong at the same time. I can’t get over his father. And I can’t even imagine the kind of crap that man did to him. It blows my mind he’s even functional, because I can’t see how anybody could be if they were raised by someone so disgusting.” Rob shook his head when Lilith offered him another spoonful. “It’s not even that his father is racist. It goes beyond that. He actively wants to hurt people—kill them, I think. That night, I thought we were going to die, because neither one of those guys saw us as people. It’s like those kids who chase pigeons in the park, and their parents think it’s cute, but nobody thinks about how terrorizing that is to the pigeon. He’s the kind of man who actually would get sexual pleasure from hurting someone that way. And the sad thing is, I think Mace is afraid there’s something inside of him that will one day turn him into his father.”
“That’s bullshit, because I’ve seen his friends and brothers. They’re all kinds of colors,” Lilith scoffed. “From what little I’ve seen of him, I think he’s harder on himself than he is anyone else. He runs into burning buildings to save people for a living. And maybe I’m glorifying that, but he seems like the kind of guy who’s more concerned about saving someone’s skin than worrying about its color.”
“He speaks Chinese.” He chuckled. “Apparently it’s pretty bad, but he speaks Chinese to that old woman, and people like him. His younger brothers think he’s an asshole because he’s always pushing them to do better, but isn’t that what an older brother’s supposed to do? My brothers just pushed me around. He really loves his. I can see it. And Gus gets grumpy about it, but sometimes it hurts to watch them, because it reminds me I don’t have that kind of family.”
“Well, if you follow your heart,” Lilith murmured as she rested her head on his shoulder, “they’ll become your family.”
“I HATE family meetings,” Ivo grumbled while he poured himself a cup of coffee. His brother’s morning ensemble ran to a pair of black sweats and a tank top with a sparkly unicorn dancing across his chest. His hair was a tangle of muted colors, but Mace wasn’t sure if the odd ombré effect was on purpose or a result of fading, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to ask. Glancing over at Mace, Ivo held up the pot. “Do you want some? Since I’m here and you can’t use that arm?”
“Yeah, thanks.” Mace spent more than a few minutes trying to maneuver around Earl to get to the kitchen, and the scruffy mutt appeared bent on tripping him as Mace walked through the house. “If you could bring it into the family room, that would be great. The damned dog keeps getting in between my legs.”
“That’s because the damned dog knows you’re hurt,” Rey said with a laugh and closed the back door behind him. “Has he already gone outside, or should I
go on potty duty before we start talking?”
“Luke already took him for a walk.” Ivo scooped enough sugar into his coffee that Mace could almost taste it in the air. “Bear grabbed some doughnuts, but he said we can’t have any until we sit down. I’ll bring your cup in, Mace. Earl, come with.”
The shaggy mixed breed mournfully glanced at Mace and then sighed dramatically and fell into step with Ivo as he headed to the family room. Rey laughed, crossed over to where Mace stood, and clasped his hand on Mace’s uninjured arm.
“I’m glad you’re okay, man.” Rey’s voice grew husky with emotion. “If anything happens to you, I won’t have anyone to play tag with me through Chinatown.”
Rey Montenegro and Mace’s friendship began as adolescents, when Mace pulled Rey out of a fire set by Rey’s drunken father, and they’d weathered more than a few storms. It’d been hard when Rey and Gus had a fling and Rey chose to break it off, which sent Gus into a spiral and, oddly enough, drove him into a one-night stand that resulted in his nephew, Chris. When Jules, Chris’s mother, finally contacted Gus to tell him about their son, Gus came home and faced Rey.
Through it all Mace secretly ached for both his younger brother and his best friend. He hoped they’d patch things up and then celebrated as they fell in love. As much as Mace would miss having Rey as a roommate when the house he and Gus bought became livable, he loved having Rey as a future brother-in-law, and it wasn’t as though he didn’t live in Rey’s back pocket when they shared shifts at the fire station.
Their games of tag were born from Mace’s inability to sleep and a driving need to pound the doubt out of his body. Their runs were brutal and spanned blocks, but by the end of them, Mace’s back stung from Rey’s hand slapping him as he jogged past him, and his belly ached from the food they ate at the restaurant they chose as their endpoint.
“Well, the doctors say I’m out of commission for a few weeks, and then after that, I’ve got physical therapy. Captain says I can come back to the station and work a light shift once I get cleared. So don’t get too comfortable,” Mace warned and shot Rey a wicked smile. “I don’t need my arm to run. And I sure as hell don’t need it to beat you.”
“I swear to God, if the two of you don’t get your fucking asses in here, the only doughnuts that are going to be left for you are the cake ones with rainbow sprinkles,” Ivo threatened loudly from the family room. “And your fucking coffee is getting cold!”
“I don’t know why Bear buys those,” Mace muttered. “Nobody likes them.”
Rey shrugged and helped himself to a quick cup of black coffee. “I like them. Gus says he gets them for me, but I don’t know if that’s true.”
“It has to be true. None of us like those. They’re disgusting.” Mace pushed off of the counter he was leaning on and winced at the ache in his side and shoulder. “Okay, let’s head into the lion’s den so I can get my head bitten off.”
“I’ll stand with you, my brother.” Rey saluted him with his cup. “I’ll just be a few feet back so the blood splatter doesn’t get all over me. These jeans are new. I don’t want to ruin them.”
FAMILY MEETINGS were a tradition in the house, a practice born of living in communal houses and foster homes. It was normally a weekly gathering to air gripes or to vent about someone else. In the early days of their family, meetings were few and far between until all five of them moved in and Bear decided he’d broken up his last fistfight. None of them had good communication skills back then, and because they were raised in an environment where physical dominance outweighed logic and compromise, fights were bound to happen. But when Gus and Luke cornered Mace in the front hall, Bear finally put his foot down and demanded they come up with a better way of doing things.
They’d all been so different then, so angry at the world and desperate to find a place in it that they almost tore one another apart while they tried to carve out where they fit in the family they’d made. The meetings were a start, and the roles they found while talking things out proved to be prophetic in a lot of ways. With Bear anchoring them in place, Luke became the mediator while Mace found himself more comfortable keeping track of the things they’d decided on before and reminding them of past instances and what they did to solve those issues. Gus usually hovered around the corners, unwilling to give an opinion unless pushed or raging to be heard if it was something he was passionate about. The youngest, Ivo, glided along and disagreed every once in a while, but to the credit of the way they raised him, he usually reasoned his way through any problems. He was particularly stubborn during his teenage years, but he evened out when he got older.
Throwing Rey into the mix was new, but he brought the same steadying influence as Bear did, so his voice was very welcome in the volatile stew of their family dynamics.
And luckily for Rey, the cake doughnuts with rainbow sprinkles were waiting for him in the box, as well as a yeast cinnamon twist that Luke had put aside for Mace.
It took a bit of shuffling on the sectional to find a place for Rey. Habit meant each of the brothers had a little bit of space around them on the couch, with the exception of Ivo, who liked to drape himself over whoever he felt like bothering that day. With Rey settled against Gus, Mace made himself comfortable in the corner and nudged Earl to the side before the dog jumped up onto his lap.
“I’m confused.” Gus spoke up first. “What are we having a meeting about? Mace sleeping with Rob?”
“I’m not sleeping with him.” Mace grimaced when Bear shot him a withering look. “Okay, I had sex with him—”
“In the shop,” Bear interjected. The gasps from the other brothers would’ve been funny if Mace hadn’t been in the middle of the problem. “But that’s not why I thought we should have a family meeting.”
“I think that’s exactly why we should have a family meeting,” Ivo argued. “Sure, Gus did it too—although not in the shop—and while Mace can’t get Rob pregnant, he works for us. What’s the point of agreeing not to sleep with employees if everybody keeps doing it? We’ve all been to those kinds of shops. We’ve all worked where there’s so much drama between who’s fucking whom that it damages the shop’s reputation and nobody can get any ink done.”
“It’s not like that with Rob,” Mace replied. “I promise you, it’s not.”
“Maybe you should tell us what it is like so we can understand.” Luke caught up Ivo’s hand and squeezed it when Ivo looked away. “Does he mean something to you? That’s something all of us are asking because he was there that night with you. While we have to protect the shop, we also need to protect you, and part of doing that is understanding where you are right now and who’s becoming important to you.”
Mace could always count on Luke to peel back the layers of emotion and get to the rawness inside. Never before had he felt so much on the edge of a cliff, especially with all of his brothers and his best friend looking at him with varying degrees of sympathy, concern, and mild anger. He couldn’t carry around secrets anymore. They’d become too heavy, and with the damage his father had already done to his life, he needed to know where his family stood.
He needed to know if they would love him, even if they knew the filth he was stained with.
“I care about Rob. I’ve been fighting my thing for him for a long time, and then one day we just gave in to it,” he confessed with a shrug. “I thought if I could somehow satisfy that itch, it would go away and we could go back to aggressively ignoring each other, but it didn’t go away. Then we spent a little time together, and I thought maybe I could have something with him. Because, except for you guys, I never imagined anyone would ever love me.
“With Rob, I find myself talking about the shit I’ve always wanted to ignore, the crap that my dad did to me and everything that I did for him.” Mace rubbed at his face, his unshaven jaw rough against the palm of his hand. “I’ve done some horrible things, things I’m not proud of. And Rob’s been pushing me to talk to you guys, to share with you, because he’s like Luke—lots of talk
ing about how you feel and what will make you grow. I’ve been scared to talk to you guys because, if you know everything about me from back then, I worry that you won’t love me anymore. And the one thing I cannot lose in my life is you guys. I just can’t.”
“You’re not going to lose us, Mason,” Bear reassured him. He reached across the couch to place his hand on Mace’s thigh. “There’s nothing that you can say that’s going to change that.”
“That’s what Rob thinks. He also said all of the crap inside of me would be easier to deal with if I shared it with you guys, trusted it with you guys, because it’s killing me inside to hold on to it.” Mace looked up at his brothers, suddenly aware of the tears in his eyes. Swallowing hard, he said, “I need to tell you what kind of monster my father is. And what kind of monster he tried to make me into.”
Sixteen
“THIS IS really fucking hard,” Mace confessed slowly. The rug was fascinating, the patterns in the nap a variegated blend of light and dark colors he’d never really noticed before. His hands were heavy and cradled an invisible weight as he laced his fingers together and crouched forward to stare at his feet.
Talking to his brothers about his childhood and the man who’d taken him from a life he barely remembered seemed easy enough in theory, but once he opened his mouth, the words he needed fled, driven from his mind like pigeons taking flight during a hawk strike. It was easier not to look at their faces, to avoid the disappointment and disgust he feared he’d find in their expressions once he told them who he really was—who he’d come from—and the man he always feared he truly was beneath the thin veneer of humanity he’d fought so hard to slather over himself.