Steve followed Chenco down the hall, tracking him carefully to make sure his boy truly had his feet back. When Chenco headed to the kitchen and opened the fridge, Steve frowned. “I can take you through a drive-through, if you don’t want the trouble.”
Chenco’s soft laugh rolled inside Steve and nestled in his belly. “I don’t do fast food unless I’m very desperate.” He pulled out a stack of sealed containers, each one full of vegetables. “My money goes to two places: drag and food. I suffer in neither department. Everywhere else, I’m completely impoverished.”
It was an impressive array of high-quality food. “Are you vegan?”
“No, but I eat veg a lot. I’ll occasionally do a bit of flesh, but only chicken and I keep it to a minimum. I simply find that when I eat the way I do, I have more energy, more focus, and my skin and hair are a lot better.” He paused with a hummus-laden piece of cauliflower halfway to his mouth. “Well, the hair part isn’t such a big deal, but Caramela will have nothing but healthy skin.”
This, right here, this was the problem—Steve loved discipline in all its forms, and to see Chenco applying it so naturally to himself drew Steve in on a fishing line. He longed to compliment Chenco daily, to tell him he was good, to stroke him and preen him and make him slide into pleasure, to facilitate his natural self-discipline and make it stronger.
“Take all the time you need to eat,” he said instead.
Chenco did, giving his full attention to the food, and after declining an offer to share, Steve watched him stuff himself with the vegetables and the hummus, finishing up with what appeared to be homemade nut milk of some kind. Chenco cleaned up after himself too, not only putting away all the food in tidy stacks, but also washing his plate and cup in the sink.
The entire trailer, in fact, was radically transformed from the last time Steve had seen it. Not a whiff of old smoke lingered, and every bit of Cooper’s clutter and junk had been eradicated, replaced only with simple, serviceable, and above all clean markers of Chenco’s residence. Chenco took pride in his home, humble as it was.
Goddamn it, but it made Steve a little hard.
As they drove back into McAllen, he tried to figure out what about Chenco had snagged him. Steve had always admired strength, and Chenco had serious steel. The boy wasn’t just tough. He was tooled leather, yielding and bending while enduring. Some of Steve’s admiration came from the way he could tell his dominance had made something bloom inside Chenco, something which had lain dormant—it massaged his ego to think he’d been the one to bring it out, and not another man.
He passed the cannery as he acknowledged this, and the building cast a shadow over his thoughts. There was a good reason for his celibacy and his solitude. Jansen and the others called him Monk as a joke, but for Steve, his removal was serious. Important. He had, quite firmly, closed this door.
Steve found he’d consider opening it for Chenco.
Nothing was settled yet, he reminded himself as he turned down the road to the ranch. Chenco had a lot of misgivings, and even handled patiently, those might never be eased. Yet despite this knowledge, Steve knew the fallout from Chenco turning out to be Cooper’s secret son was nothing on what was going to go down between the two of them.
He was afraid, very afraid.
The fear, and the promise of what might lie behind it, tasted so, so good.
Chapter Six
INSTEAD OF LIVING in a development or in an older neighborhood as Chenco assumed, Steve lived on ranch property on the edge of town, a sprawling set of buildings separated from the road by a rusted metal gate. When they pulled up to the barrier, it was closed, but Steve pushed a few buttons on his smartphone and the hinges creaked open.
Chenco arched an eyebrow. “Nice.”
“Thanks.” Steve put the phone down on his thigh.
Glancing around the property, Chenco couldn’t help notice it was a bit of a mess. Arid, unkempt land and sagging sheds surrounded them as they wound their way to the house. A few green ash and Texas olive trees stood like lonely sentries in the middle of fallow fields, but other than this, the ranch was a wasteland. “Was this an orchard?”
“Up until the freeze.”
Chenco had heard of this, vaguely. “This the one in the ’80s?”
Steve nodded. “There were two, actually. One in ’83 and another in ’89. They thought the first was the Big One, the hundred-year freeze as bad as the one in 1888. Then came 1989 and made ’83 look like a summer day. Killed everything and changed the economy of the valley forever.” He gestured at the ruined land. “My parents were about done anyway, so they retired to South Padre and let me have the hacienda. We have an old cannery too down the road. Passed it on the way here.”
Chenco tried to imagine the land as a thriving orchard, and it made him sad. “I was born in 1991. If Cooper were here, he’d tell me I brought the freeze because I’m a devil child.”
“If you can control Arctic air masses, we’ll hire you out.” Steve shook his head. “Born in 1991. I was seventeen then. About to run off to school. A few years later I went to the Persian Gulf.”
Chenco glanced at him. “Are you serious?”
“About being that old or in the Army?”
“Both.”
“I was born in 1974. Joined the Army in 1991 and went off to keep the peace. Drove trucks mostly and dumped snakes out of my sleeping bag.” He adjusted his wrist on the steering wheel. “Went back to college when I came home and learned computers. It’s what I do now, that and selling scrap metal. Sometimes I fix bikes.”
It was too bad they reached the house then—Chenco would have liked to hear more about Steve, or maybe even tell some of his own story. As soon as he saw the lights on above the front door, he remembered what he was in for, and all desire for small talk fled.
Steve pulled up alongside a big blue semi cab without a trailer and killed the engine. Before he opened the door, he turned to Chenco. “You still have the necklace?”
Chenco had it in his hand, in fact, and he looked down at it now. “You said this was Mitch’s mother’s?”
“Yeah. It was how Randy put the last pieces of the puzzle together. Mitch kept it in his room to remember her, and then one day it was gone. Cooper said he didn’t take it, but Mitch always thought he had.”
“Either he took it or Mitch forgot he’d hidden it in the bottom of a drawer in Cooper’s bedroom.”
Steve looked grim. “Such a fuck. I hope he’s on a fat spit about now.”
“I hope he’s trapped in the skankiest gay club in history.” Chenco let out a breath and closed his hand over the necklace. “Okay. So I’ll give this to Mitch and hope it helps us start off on a better footing.”
“From what I understand, it’ll win Mitch and Sam both, and I already told you Randy’s cool.” He put a hand on Chenco’s shoulder. “You ready?”
Hell no. “Sure. Let’s go.”
The house was bigger than Chenco’s stepfather’s, which was really saying something. It was old, though, a true hacienda with sprawling additions and adobe and a tiled roof and fancy windows. Like the rest of the ranch, it was run-down, but it wasn’t as decrepit as the rest of the property. Clearly someone had put effort into keeping things put together as much as possible, but there was no escaping the overbearing sense of weariness the house carried.
The porch light was on, illuminating a rounded door. Light pooled from the first-floor windows, and occasionally shadows moved across them.
I’m about to meet my brother. Chenco’s gut clenched.
Steve put a hand at his elbow and led him through the door.
The foyer was brightly lit by an ancient, beautiful chandelier, and it spilled open into a living room full of white leather furniture over heavy terra-cotta tile. Though old and showing wear, the furnishings were clearly high quality. In its day, this had been the showplace.
The room was full of plants and light—and people. Randy sat in the corner of a long couch, Sam beside him in caretake
r mode. Mitch Tedsoe stood off to the side in the archway to a formal dining room.
He looked like a younger, healthier Cooper, except when Mitch saw Chenco enter the room, the associations with his father ended. Mitch looked tired, wary…and hopeful. Reminding himself of Steve’s stories about how Mitch had changed since those journals, and arming himself with what courage he could muster, Chenco crossed the room to his brother and held out his hand.
“I heard this belongs to you.”
The fear his brother might be anything like Cooper evaporated as Chenco watched Mitch with his mother’s necklace. It was exactly as Steve said—the grown man, who couldn’t be a whole lot younger than Steve, stared down at the necklace with the eyes of a young boy. A wounded young boy, and Chenco tried to imagine what fun Cooper must have had with him. Nothing about this man before him matched the menace Cooper had promised Chenco would find in his elder brother, nor the hate and violence of those journals.
Once again Cooper had given him nothing but lies.
Still, it was harder than it should have been to put away his fear and face the man he’d been conditioned for so long to regard as an enemy. Not until Steve posted himself like a sentry at the wall near the fireplace was Chenco able to speak, and as he did his gaze kept flicking back to Vance.
“I’m Chenco,” he said.
Mitch nodded gruffly, tucking his thumbs in his jean pockets. “I’m Mitch. Your…older brother. I guess.”
He seemed about as stunned as Chenco felt. Their awkward silence made Chenco uneasy though, so he kept talking. “Chenco is short for Crescencio. My last name is Ortiz, but only because my mother made my stepfather adopt me legally. On my birth certificate it originally said Tedsoe, as my mother lived in hope for a long time.” Chenco moved the necklace closer. “Here. I only took it because it was pretty and I had a feeling it belonged to someone who had hurt Cooper, which made whoever it was my hero. It should be yours now.”
Mitch handled the trefoil as if it might dissolve at a touch. “It was my mom’s. Her great-grandmother gave it to her. It came from Ireland.” He drew a breath, and the next part sounded as if it came from the bottom of his gut. “When I was little and got scared because Dad hit her, she’d let me hold it.”
God, Chenco wished he could bring Cooper back to life so he could kill him. “Where is she now, your mom?”
“Houston. Remarried, though I don’t think she stepped up much.”
Mom was clearly a touchy subject, so Chenco let it go. Trouble was, he didn’t know what they were supposed to talk about now. “So. Anyway. It’s nice to meet you. Sorry for stabbing your friend.”
Mitch smiled. “Don’t worry about it.” He stared at the necklace for another minute, then tucked it in his pocket and squared his shoulders. “Right. I suppose we should do a proper introduction.” He pointed at the couch. “You met Randy, and this is my husband, Sam.”
Sam had been watching them, but at the mention of his name he came over and held out a hand to Chenco. “Hi. Nice to meet you.”
Chenco accepted his hand, trying to decide how angry Sam was. Not as bad as he’d feared, which was good. He put forth his best effort at making things better. “It’s nice to meet you. Sorry about that earlier. I learned to be wary of anything connected to Cooper, and I wasn’t sure meeting my older brother would be wise.” He turned to Mitch and shook his head. “It’s creepy how much you look like him.”
Mitch reached into the breast pocket of his shirt, withdrawing a beat-up pack of Winstons and a lighter. He lit up a cigarette as he answered. “I get that a lot.”
Chenco wondered if he should mention the journals, but instinct told him no, not just yet. Part of him worried speaking of them would bring the scary kid who’d penned the scree back to life. Instead he turned to Sam. “Is Randy going to be okay?”
Sam nodded, his frowning gaze lingering on his husband’s cigarette. “It’s literally only a flesh wound. It wasn’t deep enough to need stitches, and I cleaned it out and put some dressing on. He’ll bitch about it for a few days, but he’ll be fine.” He smiled a half-smile. “I’m an RN, so I know what I’m doing. He’ll be fine.”
Chenco glanced over at the couch. Randy looked a little pale, but otherwise he was much the same as he’d been the other two times they’d met—eagle-eyed and dangerous. He didn’t smile as he met Chenco’s gaze, though. If anything, he seemed guilty. “I’m very sorry. It just threw me when I put it all together. Plus you look like him too, you know.”
Chenco wrinkled his nose. “I do?”
Randy nodded. “It’s not so much your appearance as some of your gestures. They reminded me of Mitch and Cooper both. When I figured it out, I was so surprised I couldn’t stop my mouth.” He grimaced. “But knowing Cooper, I should have been more delicate about it.”
“It’s okay,” Chenco said, and he meant it.
It was fine, he decided, being here. It still felt odd to trust strangers so fast, but…well, the same instincts had initially told him this was a bad plan. Now they switched their allegiances to sticking around, especially as long as Steve Vance was in the picture. He wasn’t sure if this meant his instincts were seriously fucked or if things were okay.
It occurred to him that outside of a few texts, Booker had pretty much abandoned Caramela and Chenco both. The realization hurt—maybe Chenco was safe, but shouldn’t his friend have followed up a little better? He’d expected Booker to be here, supporting him, but he wasn’t. Probably he’d run home to Trist because he was upset.
What about me? You left me to strangers, to let them comfort me? And yet you ask me to surrender control of my career to you?
Chenco stilled himself, turning away into a quiet corner, pulling himself to center. It didn’t work, though, not as well as it should have.
He felt a hand on his arm, and the sweet, perfect memory of being on his knees came to him, making him okay.
“Chenco?”
Chenco opened his eyes, smiling up at his host. “I’m fine.”
Turning around, he took in the living room full of newfound family, then joined them.
THEY ENDED UP out on the patio. Mitch stoked the chimenea, Randy found the extension cord for the twinkle lights, and Steve passed around bottles of Bohemia. Sam declined but accepted an offer of a margarita. Chenco only wanted water, though when he heard they had San Pellegrino, he gladly took one instead.
Steve hung back, watching and listening as the half-brothers got to know one another.
“My mom is illegal,” Chenco began, when asked to tell his story of how he ended up living with Cooper. “She came over with her first husband in the mid-eighties because he had some big plan about making it in America. They’d been middle class in Saltillo—she worked at a bank and had a woman clean her house once a month. In the valley, she was the one cleaning houses and being spit on for being an immigrant. It broke her heart. One night she ended up at a bar, a handsome American flirted with her, and I happened. She had it all fixed in her head, I think, how she’d fallen in love and the guy would rescue her like a prince. It was Cooper, and he wasn’t the saving type. She came to him when she was pregnant, and he called her a dirty whore and told her he’d kill her if she came near his wife.”
“Sounds like the old man, all right,” Randy said into the mouth of his beer bottle.
Chenco nodded, a curt acknowledgment. “It kind of worked out, though. She left her first husband in case I didn’t come out brown enough. He’s a first-class dick, so she was better off. She hoped for a few years, sending Cooper pictures of his baby boy, but it never came to anything. She was on her own, and it was bad, but then she met my stepdad.”
When Chenco paused to take a drink, Steve hated the look of loss that crossed Chenco’s face.
Clearing his throat, Chenco continued. “He owns a car dealership, and he has a big heart. I grew up in a nice house in Edinburg. I have a little sister and a baby brother, and we went to good schools, but Mom never let us learn Spanish. I
always thought it was weird, having this crazy Mexican name to honor some grandfather I never met. But she named me before she decided I was going to be the one to make it, to be the big American star. I’d be a doctor, she said. I had everything I could want.” He smiled sadly at his bottle of Pellegrino, running his fingernail over the label. “Everything except a trunk full of dresses and heels.”
“So what happened?” Sam asked.
“What happened is she caught me in her makeup one too many times. I was in Catholic school, so they had me talk to the priests and nuns a lot. I think she could have handled the gay okay, but I was so fixated on the dresses, she flipped out. I can’t understand her Spanish so well, but she’d be on the phone to her best friend and cry about how she was afraid I was going to get a sex change. Didn’t matter that I told her I wasn’t. All she saw was she’d given me everything in the world, and I was throwing it in her face.”
Randy’s smile was sly. “That’s the problem with freedom. People tend to do whatever they want with it.”
Chenco shrugged. “Basically I was a bit of a mess when I was eighteen. She told me if I wanted my college money and a place to live, I had to date a girl and submit to my stepdad inspecting my life, making sure I wasn’t hiding any dresses or anything. I said no way, so she kicked me out, and I had to regroup fast. I thought, I’m going to find my father. I bet he’ll love me for who I am.”
“Shit,” Mitch murmured.
“Pretty much,” Chenco agreed. “Took me three months to convince him he was my dad, and this only after I stole a beer bottle and money enough for a DNA test. I don’t know what I thought this was going to prove—like he’d all of a sudden have a personality transplant, but it kind of worked out in the end. Part of it was he was plenty sick then already. He’d had his first stroke, and he couldn’t keep himself together. I needed somewhere to stay, and I was a little wild in the head over making it work. I kept telling him he owed me, and eventually I realized he couldn’t walk well enough to throw me out of the house and wasn’t strong enough to beat me, not badly. So I moved in.”
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