Rebel Page 9
He was mourning a fiction, a one-sided relationship where he’d been the only one holding a broken heart when it ended.
“Yeah, it mattered. You fucking mattered.” Gus could barely keep still. Rage and anguish flared in him, fanning the embers of a hurt he’d buried years ago.
“Then why didn’t you act like it?” It would have been easier to take a hot bullet in his brain than to see the flash of pain in Rey’s expression. “You were never around, man. Not unless you wanted a quick fuck or sometimes something to eat.”
“It wasn’t like that—”
“That’s what it felt like.” Rey’s voice dropped, but the heat remained, a sirocco of gritty words heavy enough to flay Gus’s skin. “You want some advice? If that’s how you’re going to be with that kid, just… don’t. Don’t make promises to him. Not like you did to me. Because no one does empty words like you do, man. No one.”
“You don’t get to say that.” Gus pushed back, stepping into Rey. Their chests bumped, a light touch, and Rey stood firm, a solid muscled mass Gus knew he couldn’t move. There was power in the man’s body, a power he’d loved to feel around him, under him—in him. Now it was as unwelcome as Rey’s accusations. Laying a hand on Rey’s shoulder, he shoved Rey back. It was a few inches, but they were hard won and Gus took them, stepping into the space he’d made. “You haven’t been around me in three years, Rey. Three long damned years. Chris—yeah, he was a surprise—but you don’t get to hang the shit we all went through as kids on me.
“Yeah, I’m a flake. Got that from my mom. Just like my eyes.” Gus resisted poking Rey’s chest, but he wanted to. He wanted to slam a fist into Rey’s face for every single condemning word he’d spat out, but deep down, he feared his ex was right. “So I fuck up—a lot—and maybe I’m not going to be the best father there is. I never had one. Closest thing I’ve got is Bear, and he’s like only a few years older than me, but I am fucking grateful for him. I’m probably going to screw Chris up more than help, but at least I’m going to try. Which is a damned lot more than anyone did for me.”
“Bear gave you everything—”
“Bear gave me a fucking life and a family, and I can never ever pay him back for that, but he’s not my dad. He’s my brother.” Gus slapped Rey’s words out from between them. “I can’t promise to be all white picket fences and minivans, but I can be there for shit he wants to do, things he’s accomplished. I can be there to cheer him on, and if you’re around—if you stick around the family—then you’d better fucking not say one damned thing against me to him. I’m going to do my best not to disappoint him. Chris should know I’m going to be there—without even thinking about it—I don’t need you chumming the waters and setting him up for my failures.”
“I’d never do that to you… or him.” Rey’s hand ghosted over Gus’s side, and his breath caught in his chest when Rey’s fingers brushed over his hip. “I just—”
“I can’t… I can’t have you touch me, man.” It took everything Gus had to step away from Rey’s touch, especially when every bit of his soul ached to hold on to the strength he knew resonated in Rey. He wanted to feel safe, wanted someone to tell him it was okay—wanted Rey to wrap his arms around him until his heart stopped tripping over itself and the crippling whispers rising up from the dark shoals where his nightmares lived. Rey’s heat remained, a hateful reminder of what he’d lost. “You fuck me up, Rey. You still fuck me up, and right now—maybe always—I’ve got to focus on Chris, on who I’m going to be for him. I’m sorry I wasn’t what you wanted me to be, but you know what? You weren’t what I needed either, even if you were all I wanted.”
GUS RETREATED.
Back to the shop. Onto the page. Into the lines.
A street vendor chattered after him when he’d been caught on the street corner, snagged in place by red lights and a heavy stream of afternoon traffic. Hawking crystals and healing essential oils, she’d gotten aggressive, putting her hand on his arm and swearing at him when he shook her off. If he could have cleansed Rey from his thoughts with a spoonful of Italian seasoning and a mystical quartz, he’d have bought out the spices aisle at the grocery store and painted up every rock he could find.
He’d buried himself into the only quiet he could find—a piece of paper and a soft-lead pencil.
The shop had an artist area, a smaller corner storage room Bear converted to a den, where they could sketch away from the main floor. He and Mason wrestled a couple of drafting tables into the space, placing them against the wall under one of the long windows, but Gus preferred to draw on the old dinette table set in the middle of the room. It’d come from their house, graduating out of the space once Luke joined them and they needed more than four place settings. It was sturdy, and they’d resurfaced it with new laminate, mostly to get rid of the scratches they’d put into it cutting stencils out without a mat to catch the blade’s end. The room was a bare-bones utilitarian square hole made of cinder block and long high windows with a stillness Gus loved, especially when his mind was too noisy for him to handle.
“A Russian phoenix,” Gus muttered at the scribbles he’d laid down, then glanced at the research he’d pulled up to study. “Jesus, what’s this guy thinking, going down his arm with this? Totally would have kicked ass as a back piece.”
“Talking to yourself again?” Bear’s voice broke through the muted thunderstorm playing through Gus’s earbuds, and he jerked his head up, startled by the intrusion. Grinning, his older brother joined him at the table, turning one of the chairs around, then straddling it.
“You know, you could just sit down like everyone else once in a while,” Gus pointed out, gesturing at the chair’s back with his pencil. “Or better yet, not come in at all. I’m trying to work here.”
“You’ve drawn that same beak three times. It’s not getting any better looking.” Bear dug through Gus’s reference materials. “Why don’t you take a break?”
“One, I have to start at the beak or things get all… fucked-up towards the back of the head.” As much as Gus hated to admit it, Bear was right. The phoenix’s beak was off. Sliding the papers away from Bear’s hand, he turned them around, studying the forms he’d liked. Glancing up briefly, he met Bear’s concerned look with a smirk. “Two, yes, I did call the lawyers and Jules but had to leave messages, so now I’m just waiting to hear back. Three, I don’t want to talk about Rey.”
“Funny how you always end up your lists with the things that trouble you the most.” Bear’s humor lifted the rumbling tone in his voice. “So Rey more than the lawyers?”
It was maddening having a brother who could read minds. Worse was Bear’s relatively easygoing nature and steady personality made it difficult to push back. Not that pushing back was ever something Gus did anymore, not since Bear’d threatened to pick him up by the head and squeeze his brains out of his ears. Eyeing his brother’s massive hands, he’d decided then and there he’d toe whatever line Bear drew for him to follow, and it was a decision he’d never regretted.
“Jules’s parents hired the lawyers, and what can they say? That I ink for a living? Jules does too.” He shrugged, putting down his pencil. “I don’t have my own place, but she lives with her parents. I live with… you and Ivo. Juvie records are sealed, so no one can hold that against me. The only thing anyone can get hinky about is… Mom.”
Grief hovered at the edge of Gus’s brittle control. His mother left him with more than just his eyes and careless nature. As much as she’d taken from him, Melanie Scott’s final acts left scars Gus knew he’d never be able to cover up, much less ignore. There were keloids on his heart, soul, and mind, adhesions to the brutal legacy he’d inherited from a woman so selfish she couldn’t stand the thought of losing control of anything—or anyone—she felt she owned.
Leaning back in his chair, Gus exhaled hard, then tilted his face up toward the ceiling. His brothers’ faces held too many of his own features, similar shapes he saw in the mirror, but there was a part of him—a mewling,
aching part—that still searched for his own face in the crowd.
“Why dig into you now?” Bear pondered, breaking through Gus’s thoughts. “Maybe because you’re in the city?”
“Because I want to see him. I told her that.” He looked down at Bear, recalling the silence on the other end of the phone during the last conversation he and Jules had. “I don’t want a couple of hours here and there. I want weekends and Saturday morning cartoons. I want to be able to do dad things with him. Like ball games and… whatever fuck else that means.”
“Don’t think they have Saturday morning cartoons anymore, Goose.” Crossing his arms over the chair’s back, Bear hunched over and settled his chin on his forearms. “I think now it’s just watching the same kid’s movie eighty times in a row until you want to stab a pair of chopsticks into your ears.”
“I’m going to need help, Bear.” Fear scraped through him, running its pointed nails through the meat of his thoughts. “Fuck, maybe I shouldn’t—”
“Shouldn’t what? Step up?” An eyebrow went up, but there was the barest quirk of Bear’s mouth nearly hidden under his trimmed scruff. “We’re here, man. No matter what, we’re here. You’re not alone and you’re not your mom. You’ve got to reach down and find what you missed out on because that’s what Chris is going to need. And you know what else? You’re going to fuck up.”
“Wow, thanks for the pep talk,” Gus snorted. “Fuck, Bear, maybe try not to kick me in the balls here.”
“Here’s what you’re not hearing,” Bear said, tapping at the table in front of him. “You’re going to fuck up like everyone before you fucked up and everyone afterwards. I tried like hell with you guys, but there were times when I had to crawl back and say I was sorry because I got something wrong. First thing I learned was if I screwed up, I apologized. Because if I can do it, so can you. You’re going to have to be an example, kid, because Chris is going to be watching you more than listening to you.”
“Then why the fuck does Ivo wear heels and dresses?” Gus cocked his head. “Because he sure as hell didn’t see that in the house.”
“Because that’s what he wants to wear.” His brother shrugged, massive shoulders slicing off the sunbeams streaming through the windows. “Because what he wears isn’t as important as who he is. He likes heels. He likes skirts. And a lot of people are going to have fucked-up ideas about that, because he isn’t trying to be female, he just likes wearing those things. But he’s strong enough in his own mind to challenge where people try to put him. Ivo’s… Ivo. Just like you’re you. And Chris is going to be Chris. Do you really have a problem with your kid brother wearing heels?”
“Maybe. Yeah, in the beginning when he first came into the house. I wanted him to be… not weird,” he confessed. “Now I’d fuck up the first person who spits on him. A lot of it is just… habit, I think.”
“Habit you should break because you don’t know what your kid’s going to be like.” Bear nodded. “You smear shit on something—on someone else and what they do—and he’s going to learn those things are bad. You won’t be any better than people who call you faggot or queer. Or who look at your ink and think you’re not worth anything. Don’t be what you fight against, Gus, and don’t make your kid fear you, because what you mock and disparage might be who he is.”
“So I shouldn’t give Ivo shit about wearing plaid schoolgirl skirts?” Gus grinned at his brother.
“No, you shouldn’t,” he murmured. “Because I’d rather he wear that skirt than slice himself open to dig the pain out from under his skin.”
“Yeah. I get that.” It was an easy thing to agree to, especially about their youngest. Sighing, Gus played with the end of his pencil, the phoenix’s wonky beak forgotten. “Just promise me you’ll be there to help me fuck up as little as possible, because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t apologize well.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that.” This time Bear’s smile flashed with a droll humor. “Now you can tell me where Rey fits into all of this. Where did the two of you leave it?”
“Leave it? Same place it was before I chased after him all over the wharf. Nowhere. Rey doesn’t fit into this. Into anything.”
Bear regarded him for a long moment, probably stripping Gus’s words down to the bone so he could suck the truth out of them. Chewing on his lower lip, he sighed, then said, “Does he know you’re still in love with him?”
“No, and I… can’t be, Bear.” Gus shook his head, refusing to surrender to the swell of emotion filling him. “I’ve got too much going on, and he’s… I’m not what he wants. What he needs. Second verse, same as the first. Nothing’s changed there, man. I don’t want it to because I’m not going to get into something with him just to have it fall apart again. Once was enough, Bear. I do it a second time, then I’ve learned jack shit from what my mother tried to do to me.”
Eight
FEAR WAS a thief.
It stole a man’s confidence, took everything from him. Sometimes with whispers, undermining his ability to think and spreading thread-thin cracks in his truths. Other times it struck with the full force of a tsunami, pulling in a man’s strength to feed itself, then unleashing its fury on his mind, drowning all sense and reason until he couldn’t breathe.
Fear was Death’s companion, shortening a man’s life thread in looped pinches, a cat’s cradle made of bad decisions, panic, and despair.
It was kept back by ritual and rote, a hammering of discipline and training Rey kept at the front of his mind whenever he donned his bunker gear. Going through a door knowing a storm raged inside ate at a man’s resolve, opening the way for fear to dig its fingers in and rip his world out from under him.
Mason was at his left, working through the labyrinth of corridors and oddly shaped apartments in the old Chinatown building. The walls were right in spaces, then careened out, creating vortexes of heat and ash when the flames found a particularly tasty decades-old buildup of wallpaper and particle board furniture. Forcing himself to breathe normally, Rey worked around Mason’s side, his face mask bumping on a piece of door trim, its paint bubbling up from the encroaching flames. Their gear was cumbersome, a heavy weight distributed as evenly as possible, but it was better than dying, something Rey reminded Mace of every time they strapped on everything they needed to carry when clearing out a floor.
It was tricky following the hose crew during a sweep. The building was ancient and its sprinkler system spotty at best, according to one of the residents they’d dragged out of a first-floor studio. Fueled by a buffet of combustibles housed in the building’s outer brick walls, the fire raged around them, balls of sparks leaping from one wall to the next. The central staircase was unusable, having fallen first to the flames, and the outer escape platforms were impassable above a certain point.
They’d gone in before the second floor was fully engulfed, hoping to clear out any residents caught on the buildings’ upper three stories. A swinging basket hovered at the end of the broken hall window, ready to lower anyone they found. Murphy, their rookie, made the first catch of the day, hefting a frail, elderly woman and her three cats into the bucket after wrestling the felines into a pair of kennels. Her curses chased him back into the building, admonishing the freckle-faced young man for forcing her out before she was ready to go.
“We owe him a beer!” Mason shouted at Rey through their comm.
“Is he even old enough to drink?” Laughing, Rey continued to work the apartment. “Back room’s clear.”
“Crawford, Montenegro, report.” Their chief’s call crackled over the speaker, her voice booming through Rey’s eardrums. “How much do you have left to go?”
“Half done,” Mason replied, testing the floor near a crumbling piece of drywall. “Floor plan’s wonky. Suppression teams sweeping through. Got maybe three more apartments to check on our end. Do we need to—”
There was a noise, a reedy, thin sound creeping out through the cacophony around him, and Rey muted his comm, standing as
still as he could to listen. The mask muffled some sounds and amplified others, sometimes throwing off directional echoes until he could orient himself. Standing in the silence of a crackling firestorm seemed… odd, but there was a graceful quietude in the ravenous flames, a gravitas beneath the racing clock and surging adrenaline in his blood. Fire was a fait accompli of sorts for most people, except the insane ones who broke through its defenses to beat it back into submission.
It came again, faint but strong enough to lure Rey toward the next door along the hall. They’d breached the building without much more than a glance at egresses and a quick prayer to whichever saint was on call that day in Heaven. The knob didn’t turn when Rey tested it, ducking when something flared up near his left side.
“Mace! Rey! We’re going to pull back!” Their lead, Stevens, shouted over the comm. “Are you clear?”
“Breaching door!” Rey grumbled back over the line. Turning, he slapped Mace on the shoulder before his friend got too far away. “I think I heard something. Need a door chock.”
“They’re pulling us… but… hold…. Stevens says to go in.” Mace’s voice echoed over the line, his lips moving under his mask’s clear guard. “I’ve got your back. We’ve got—”
Mace’s voice was buried beneath the burst of ceiling tiles giving away above them. Smoke billowed down into the hall, trapped by the lack of airflow, and the fire shifted, catching on a dangling piece of drywall. Fear walked between them, muttering its dirge, and Rey shoved it aside, reaching for the trust he had in Mace. There was no one better on their crew. If Mace promised to keep him safe, he would make the breach and go through the door.