by Rhys Ford
“You do. Keep in mind, I’ve seen you at your worst, and Rey was a big part of that, but I get the bit about second chances because you’re giving me one too,” Jules murmured. “Hell, after not telling you about Chris, I don’t have room to talk, but he better love the hell out of you or he’s going to wish Bear got to him first.”
Nineteen
EVENING HAD a grip on the horizon, firmly pulling its edge over the sun, but marigold and carnation tinted the clouds hugging the distance, and the lengthening shadows were soft gray, slowly churning opaque. The neighborhood was slowly winding down its afternoon, a few stalwart joggers attempting one last climb of the park’s steep perimeter, dodging a woman riding her scooter on the sidewalk across the street. Next door, the teenaged girl who Ivo once taught how to ride a bike washed the convertible she’d been given for her sixteenth birthday, the family’s ancient Irish setter lounging on the grass beside the garage.
Jules hobbled ahead of them, picking her way carefully across the uneven drive, her father at her elbow in a hovering shuffle a few feet behind her. She muttered at him when he jostled her side, pulling in too close. They bickered a bit, soft jabs about being old enough to walk and her always being his little girl. They got to Doug’s car, and he unlocked the passenger door for her, swinging it open while she caught up.
“I can carry some of those bags, Lynn.” Gus took up the rear behind Lynn, Chris’s hand clamped firmly in his, but the boy was too squirrely, tugging to get away.
“No, I’m good. You keep a good grip on the rabid monster,” she laughed, swinging the totes Bear’d stuffed with containers full of leftover BBQ. “Don’t get too much at the store, Doug. We’ve got enough food for a couple of weeks here.”
“Maybe a day. I’m going for seconds later. We’ll see you at home in a bit. I’ve got the shopping list,” Doug called out from the sidewalk where he’d parked. His soft-cheeked face plumped when he smiled at Gus, chuckling at the battle of wills playing out in front of the brothers’ house. Jules leaned on her father’s arm, adjusting her body to swing into the car. “Keep a good hold on him, son. Kid’s wily.”
“Christ, what the heck do you feed this kid for breakfast? Energy drinks and sugar cubes? Okay, up you go.” Gus hefted a wiggling Chris up and slung the boy over his shoulder. Capturing his son’s wiggling legs against his chest, he muttered, “Dude, stop. You’re kicking me.”
“Lots of stimulation,” Lynn said from somewhere behind him. “That and all of the cream soda he and Ivo chugged down. I hereby forbid any further burp contests.”
“I was loudest,” the little boy informed her proudly. His legs twitched again, but this time Gus had a good hold on them. “Mom’s going with Papa?”
“Yep. They’re going to stop for milk and some other stuff.” The older woman unlocked the car door, then leaned in to put the tote bags into the back seat. “Gus, you might want to put him down. He’s going to give you bruises.”
“Gus going?” Chris’s tone turned garrulous. “With us? I want him to come home.”
“No, dude, I’m staying, but I’ll talk to you in the morning on the computer like we always do. I live over here, remember?”
“No. You need to come home.” Another kick, this time harder, and his sneaker dug a groove down Gus’s chest. “Down, please. There’s another dog. I want to see him.”
“Kiddo, stop.” His voice deepened, an odd sternness accenting his words, and echoes of Bear correcting Ivo resonated in Gus’s head. “God, the bossiness is genetic. I’m going to be telling you to wipe your feet and get them off of the couch next. Leave the dog alone. Potato’s an old man. He needs his sleep.”
Chris fidgeted on Gus’s shoulder, throwing him off balance. Gripping the boy’s pants tightly, Gus gently lowered him down onto the driveway, keeping a hold on Chris’s shirt. He wiggled, tugging at Gus’s grasp, then let loose a low whine, sinking to the ground. Staring down at his son lying on the dirty gravel, Gus sent a silent plea to Lynn.
“There a reboot button I should know about?” He nudged Chris gently with his toe. “Dude, what’s the deal?”
“And there’s the crash.” Lynn sighed. “Crap, one of the bags fell over. Can you fix that and I’ll get him situated. Chris, you’re going to have to get up if you want to kiss Mom goodbye. She’s going with Papa, remember?”
Gus never saw what happened. With his head down to dig out a loose container of grilled corn, he only heard the shouts and the horrifying shriek of tires. The world then ran in hiccups of time, slices of long moments scented with burning rubber and tasting of the bile burning up his throat when he saw Chris lying on the side of the road, crying and screaming at the top of his lungs. He wore only one sneaker; the other was caught under the wheels of a massive silver Cadillac.
Jules fell, trying to get out of her father’s car, yelling their son’s name, and Gus couldn’t find his own legs, shock turning him to stone. Someone was calling Rey’s name, then Mace, and it took him a moment to realize the rawness in his throat was from him screaming for his lover and brother to come help his son.
“We got him.” Rey’s hands briefly touched Gus’s back, and Mace thundered past, tossing Ivo the keys to his SUV with an order to get out his first aid kit. The air was cold on Gus’s face, or it could have been the warmth simply fled his body, leaving him numb. Rey was gone, a broad-shouldered, stern-faced man wearing Rey’s handsome face taking his place as he hurried to Chris’s side. Throwing a glance over his shoulder, Rey shouted back, “Call 911, Gus. We’re going to need an ambulance—”
“Fuck that, tell them we’re taking him in once we get him on a board,” Mace growled, taking the supplies Ivo scrambled to hand him. “Tell them we’re coming in. Give them the make and model of my car. Everyone step back.”
The skinny woman who owned the Caddy stood on the sidewalk, wringing her hands and smoking what looked like her fifth cigarette. Luke stood with her, in full consolation mode, jotting down her information and soothing her nerves. Gus shut down his need to throttle her, to wrap his hands around her scrawny neck and shake her until her eyes rattled out of her skull.
“I’ll do it,” Bear said curtly. “Gus, we’ll take care of this. Keep Jules together.”
His brother’s voice in his ear pushed Gus to move. Swallowing the sick in his throat, he moved closer, but Mace’s hard look kept him a step back. Jules reached for him, her bare arms shaking and chilled. Blinking away tears, she wrapped him in a hug, clinging to his side while Mace and Rey worked on Chris. His arm was twisted around, an odd angle to his shoulder, and when Mace touched his chest, Chris began to vomit.
Shaking Jules off, Gus stepped forward, but Bear grabbed him before he took another step. Rounding on his brother, he snarled, rage and fear shooting through him. “Let me the fuck go, Bear. My kid’s—”
“Stay there, Gus.” Rey’s order stopped him in his tracks. Stopped them all actually, but Lynn shoved at Doug, fighting his hold on her arm. “You too, Mrs. Wagner. Bear, did you get through?”
“Yeah, cop’s going to be here in a second. The operator said he’d bring you in. Ivo, go get my keys and make sure Earl’s in the house.” Bear shouldered past Doug. “Are you taking him to UCSF?”
“That’s too far—” Lynn protested, but Mace cut her off.
“Yeah, they’re the best,” he grunted over Lynn’s outburst. “Okay, let’s get him up and into the back seat. Rey, ride with him there. Someone can take the front seat next to me if they shut up and let me drive us in.”
“I should have been watching him closer. He was coming to give me a kiss, but I couldn’t get out of the car fast enough,” Jules rasped, her face white and tearstained. “God… I should have. I grabbed him, and I couldn’t…. God, Gus. I did this to him.”
He couldn’t see straight. His gums turned numb; then his face followed. A pit formed in his belly, hard and stinking of fermented frustration and rage, but Gus couldn’t find a way to purge it. Anger turned the edges of his vision r
ed, but a cold, icy fear dominated his thoughts. Chris wasn’t moving anymore, and the mewls coming from his spittle-clotted mouth were weakening. He wanted to climb into the SUV, unwilling to let Chris out of his sight, but he didn’t have that right, didn’t have that presence in his own son’s life.
“Get in the front seat.” Steadying himself, Gus hitched his arm around Jules’s waist, his insides a knotted mess, but he couldn’t stop to think about anything other than going forward. “We’ve got to pull our shit together right now. Wipe your face and take a big breath, Jules. He’s going to need to see you’re okay. He needs to see that right now. And when the doctors take him in, you’re going to tell me exactly what the hell happened, because right now I’m so fucking pissed off and scared, I want to puke.”
“HE’S GOING to be okay.” No matter how many times Rey said it, Gus didn’t seem to hear him. “It was a dislocated shoulder, probably from when Jules grabbed his arm. Everything’s okay.”
It was a lie he’d told too many people before, but standing in the sterile paleness of a hospital waiting area, it was all Rey had to offer. He and Mace shifted their work schedule nearly as soon as they broke through the front door, calling their captain to plead their case. She’d cut Mace some slack, but Rey had to work for it. Explaining to his watch commander he needed to stick around because he was in love with Mace’s baby brother took some fast talking, and she’d been skeptical. In the end, it felt like he’d sold his soul to the devil, but it’d been worth it once Gus reached for him and softly begged for a hug to wash away some of the darkness clouding his mind.
A chaos reigned in the wide open halls, brewing storms captured and isolated in niches and alcoves littered with clusters of oddly shaped plastic chairs and heavy wooden tables. They’d found a spot by the intake doors, a sea of inked men and a middle-aged suburban couple who’d aged at least twenty years in the past few miles.
The hospital was one he’d been in before, both on the job and after a few of the brothers’ more insane adventures in home improvement. He’d spent more than his share of hours in the emergency room waiting for one or more of Gus’s family to get stitched up or put into a cast. Despite the familiar, lingering smell of cleaner, bland food smothered in gravy, and the bitter kick of burnt coffee in the air, this time it was different. A pall draped over the family, dulling their vivacity and bowing the proud set of their shoulders. This time, instead of lightly teasing a smile or two from one another, the brothers were a wall of silence, grim and unyielding, forming a semicircle around Gus.
If there was any time in the past he’d felt outside of Gus’s life, it was when the brothers closed in. Except for now. Now something was different, something shifted among all of them, and Rey stood on the inside looking out. This go-around, when their blood ran hot with worry and anger, he’d been folded into the circle, drawn in by Bear’s stepping aside to leave him room to reach Gus and Mace’s firm slap across his shoulder once they got Chris into the facility and into the doctor’s hands. Luke and Ivo were silent, mismatched sentinels holding a low conversation next to a bedraggled potted plant set next to a cluster of plastic chairs.
Lynn and Doug sat together, their hands entwined and their knees touching, their conversation too muted for Rey to hear, but there was a worried tone to their murmurs. Jules had been swallowed up by the maze of rooms and doors nearly as soon as they’d come in, after a pair of scrub-wearing nurses maneuvered a sobbing Chris onto a gurney, then took him in for tests. The information leaking out of the halls was sparse, the residents delivering their news with expressions peppered with too many glances of suspicion for Rey’s comfort.
“They think we hurt him,” Gus muttered under his breath. He’d turned, touching Rey’s shoulder with his own, and leaned in, his brows knitted tightly together. “The red-haired doctor… he kept asking me where I was when this happened and if I was angry or upset about something. He was probing me, trying to get me to say we did this to him.”
Shaking his head, Rey countered, “Gus, that doesn’t mean—”
“That’s exactly what that means,” he hissed back. Rage glinted in his pale blue eyes, a fire silvering his gaze. His hair was wild, a finger-combed mane he’d wrestled with ever since Chris was taken in. “They think one of us did this to him.”
“Gus.” Luke’s sharp retort brought Gus’s head up.
“He’s not wrong, Lucas,” Lynn said, her voice quiet and defeated. “If I had a custody case going through arbitration or review and this happened to the child, I’d look at the parents. You have to. The courts are rightfully alarmists where abuse is concerned. And if one or more of the parents have been a victim of familial violence as a child, people are going to look long and hard at what happened. It’s a better-safe-than-sorry mentality.”
“So what? They think Jules did this? Or Gus?” Ivo frowned. “Shit, I’ve had worse happen to me before Bear got me. What—”
“Not helping, Ivo.” Bear rumbled. “Things change.”
“Assholes like Bulcher are still around,” Gus reminded them. “I fucking hate this. We didn’t do anything wrong, but they’ll look hard at me… at Jules. Meanwhile, there’s shit that goes on under their damned noses and everyone looks away.”
“Not everyone, Gus.” Luke’s reproach was gentle but sharpened around the edges.
Stress tightened Gus’s shoulders, digging lines around his sensual mouth, and from the storm gathering in his eyes, he was on the brink of losing control. He’d regret the words he’d fling out, and Rey caught the worried glance Bear and Mace exchanged behind their brother’s back.
“Hey, let’s take a walk. Get some air.” Touching Gus was iffy. The stress of waiting was wearing on him, and for a moment, Rey thought he’d be told to fuck off, but instead Gus nodded. “Bear, tag us if you hear anything. We’ll come right back inside.”
They wandered for a good ten minutes, through the halls, then finally past the ER’s front doors. Gus said nothing, but every once in a while, their shoulders would bump or their hips would brush. The silence hanging between them was heavy, a fear-forged chain of unspoken words and violent memories. Finally, when they reached an expanse of lawn, Gus took Rey’s hand and held it, nearly too tight for comfort but the strain on his handsome face eased. When Rey brought their clasped hands up to his mouth, Gus smiled, then laughed when Rey bit lightly at his fingers.
The night air was cool, nearly chilly, and the bustle of the hospital died down once they got away from the main sidewalks and parking lot. Traffic along the street was light. The slush of tires on blacktop burbled under the sounds of clinking silverware on plates and conversation coming from an open-air café across the street.
“I don’t want to go too far. He should be out soon,” Gus said.
“How about that bench over there? We can sit for a bit, then head back.” He squeezed Gus’s hand, tugging him toward a sitting area near the end of the hospital grounds. “If you’re thirsty, I can go grab you something.”
“Nah, I’m good. I think I just needed to get some space. I was about to chew on Luke’s head, and he didn’t do shit to me.”
“Pretty sure we were all wound up a bit tight. You guys were borrowing a whole lot of trouble back there.”
As cold as the bench was, it was welcome after the pacing they’d done in the hospital. His legs ached a little bit from treading across the hard tile floor, and once the adrenaline passed, Rey found his hands were shaky and his jaw hurt from being clenched too tightly on the drive over. Sitting in the faint buttery-lit wash of streetlamps and restaurant signs, he was grateful for the walk to clear his head, especially when Gus stretched his arms out and gave him a rueful smile.
“God, I suck so hard.” Gus let out a tremendous sigh, then straddled the long seat, facing Rey. Slowly leaning forward, he rested his forehead on Rey’s shoulder. “I was so fucking scared. And mad. God, I’m so fucking mad, babe. I want to choke someone.” There was a clarity in Gus’s hooded eyes, one crystallized by re
ality and terror. He swallowed; then his voice dropped to a whisper and emotion throttled his words. “And I want to just take him home. I hate that he’s in there and it feels like I’ve let him down. I’ve let him get hurt. I promised him, Rey. I promised him he’d never get hurt.”
Rey reached for his lover, dragging a stiff and angry Gus into his arms. The fight between them was mostly symbolic and ripe with pride. Then Gus folded, seizing Rey’s waist in a tight embrace to hold on for dear life. The dam holding back Gus’s tears crumbled, and his shoulders shook with the silent, gasping sobs he poured into the curve of Rey’s throat. Stroking Gus’s back, Rey rocked him gently, waiting for a break in Gus’s angry deluge.
“I love you,” he murmured, pressing his lips against the top of Gus’s head. “But you can’t promise to protect Chris from the world. He’s going to get hurt. And he’s got to know you’re someone safe to come back to. He’s going to feel that in his bones. Just like I do. Because loving someone doesn’t mean needing them to be what you want them to be or swaddling them in bubble wrap so they can’t move. It means them knowing, deep down inside of their heart, you’re going to be there to hold them when they fall and celebrate when they fly.”
As Rey looked out into the future of his life, he could only see it with a complicated, troublesome blond tattoo artist filling its foreground. He wanted to wake up to a pair of hazy pale blue eyes blinking at him when the alarm went off, and he wanted to die knowing he’d had sex with Gus on every flat surface of the house they could manage, including a few spots that probably weren’t wise to attempt.
“You’re frightened. I understand that. There’s things that happened to you that I’ll never really understand,” Rey continued, holding Gus tighter. His breath was warm on Rey’s shoulder, and the grip he had on Rey’s torso was bordering on painful, but Gus needed him to be a rock, something he could easily give. “You’re lashing out because you were let down by a lot of people who should have been working to help you, and now if—and I mean if—someone from CPS looks at what happened here, you’re worried they’re going to decide against you because that’s how it’s been in the past.”