CHERISH (30 page)

“I fucked up. First, I need you to know I’m sorry. Before I even try to go into the explanation, I need you to hear that because it’s really the only thing that matters. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah? That’s great, but it doesn’t fucking finish it man. I mean . . .” I turn up my palms and squint at him. He starts to step slowly away from me and I grab his arm.

I see the pull of pain in his face as he raises his eyes. Not physical pain. This is something deeper. His brow is tight. His lips don’t have their usual upturn. I imagine it’s how I looked all those times he came to rescue my ass and talk me down from a few ledges of my own.

“I just don’t get it.” I can’t hide the exasperation in my voice. “Why didn’t you just tell us where you wanted to go? Why did it have to be such a fucking circus?”

“Would you guys have agreed?” His voice flattens as he blinks and turns his shoulders back to square with mine. “Let me take him to Egypt?”

I sigh. “Probably not. But you fucking still
needed to tell us
. Why the fuck after all these years do you suddenly want to go home anyway? You always told me you didn’t have any fucking family, Louis. What was I supposed to think when we found out you were off to fucking
Cairo
?” I rub my face, trying to find a logical path through everything I need to ask. “That’s where your family is, the family you said you didn’t have? It was complete bullshit, Louis. A huge fucking part of me wants to kick your ass all over this marble floor.” I’m losing the minuscule amount of calm I possessed when I entered this house. My fists are tight and heat rises up from my core. The pulse throbs in my ears.

“Please, man. Just come in. Sit down. Let me explain.” He gives me a defeated look. “Please?”

I tilt my head toward the ceiling and blink a few times, deciding if I can follow him without throwing my arm around his neck and squeezing.

“Fine. But I’m telling you,” I jab a finger in the air at his face, “one fucking thing right now. If you ever,
ever
fucking try to take him away from Promise again? I will rain down such a hurricane of destruction on you, you will beg me to end your fucking life. We clear?”

Louis nods and turns to step down the hall. I follow, our matching footfalls the only sound on the cold marble hallway. He turns a corner, into his large office at the back of the house, and holds the door for me.

“Here.” He gestures to two leather chairs sitting in front of an unlit fireplace. His mahogany desk sits off to the left. Computer monitors flicker in the gloomy room.

I bite my upper lip as I slowly lower myself into the chair. He takes his seat, leans back and clasps his hands over his middle.

“Can I tell you something first? Then you can ask me whatever you want. I’ll answer anything.” Louis meets my eyes and I see the man I’ve known for so many years.

I set an elbow on the arm of the chair, bring my knuckles to my lips and give him a single nod.

“Okay. I obviously have a family. But I didn’t lie to you about everything.” He takes a deep breath before continuing. “I did grow up part of my childhood as an orphan. On the streets. After my father kicked me out and renounced me as his son.”

Louis brings up one hand and rubs the side of his face, then pushes it back over his head and grabs his neck for a long moment. The tension clenches in my gut. He’s not off the fucking hook by a long shot, but I’m no longer imagining how to splatter his brains all over the walls.

“We both know, family isn’t always what it should be. Let me ask you something.” He meets my eyes and holds my gaze until I raise my eyebrows and acknowledge him. “What would you have done to gain back your father? To get back your father’s love? His respect?”

He’s going somewhere with this, but this isn’t fucking about me so I stare down his question with silence.

He turns his eyes to the dark window behind his desk. The half-moon glows through a thin streak of clouds.

“When I was ten, my father found me looking at a picture. A naked picture. Now, that would have been enough to earn me a beating. My father was not a kind man, but I loved him and I never wanted to disappoint him. Only, the picture I was looking at wasn’t of a woman.”

He stops there, giving me a moment to absorb. But I'd already guessed what he was going to say.

“And that is an unforgivable sin in my family. Even so, I took the beating. Many beatings. The food and sleep deprivation while they tried to
fix
me. Bringing in elders from our mosque to try to help me. After weeks of torture, I was finally allowed back into the house. A few months later, one of my brothers saw me stuffing a photograph under my mattress. I was eleven, it was nighttime and I thought I was alone. Doing what eleven-year-old boys do at night with a dirty picture. Only, when he walked in on me, I shoved the picture away, and of course he got my father and they dug it out. They almost killed me that night. Beat me so badly, blood was coming out of my ears. These three fingers you used to ask me about?”

Louis held up his left hand where his middle, fourth and pinky fingers all bent at odd angles from the center knuckle.

“My father broke one, and each of my brother’s broke another. Then, they dragged me, bloody and unable to stand, into the alley behind a slaughterhouse and stuffed me into the garbage. They told me I no longer had a home, that I’d cursed the family. A curse that could never be undone. Not unless I brought home my own son one day. To prove I was pure again.”

Louis clears his throat, crosses his legs and gives me a weak smile. I offer nothing back, but I’m listening and the clench in my gut turns from anger to sadness.

He picks at some invisible spot on the front of his white dress shirt before he continues. “I lived on the streets. Nearly died more than once. Being gay in Cairo is not how you want to grow up. So, I ended up here, by a lot of fucking luck. And not without some fucking baggage too. I think that’s why you and I connected the way we did. I understood your pain. I understood what it would be like to have a father that hated you in a way you didn’t even know people could hate. But I swore to myself, if I ever got out of there, was ever able to rebuild a life, that I would stay true to myself. I wasn’t going to go out and make a baby just to earn my way back into a family that thought I was inhuman.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

He licks his lips and blows out a breath, dropping his eyes as his hands go to his knees and squeeze.

“Living the way I did. The things that happened to me. They left some damage behind, Beck. When I first came to the United States, I wasn’t who you see now. I broke. They broke me. And that broken part, it would take over sometimes. Leaving me with days, hours, fucking weeks sometimes where I remembered nothing. Finally, I found a doctor. He was able to get me stable, but for a long fucking time, any sort of trauma or surprise, I would disappear again. Going blank. From what they tell me, all I would talk about is the family curse and bringing a son home. But I could never touch a woman. I mean, I wouldn’t. Like I said, I swore I would be true to myself. And up until Holly, I was.”

“Did you rape her?” I could have thrown a little sugar on that question, but naw, he needed it straight.

“
No.
That’s not what happened. I’ll tell you if you want me to.”

I nod, I want it all. I need all the pieces so I can be fucking sure they all match up.

“She called me that night. I knew her, but not very well. For some reason, she’d set her sights on me and when I didn’t return her attention, I don’t know, it was like some twisted game. Some challenge. I kept my distance, but one night she paged me. She had my pager number from CPS, probably Jeremy. Anyway I called her back and she was hysterical, saying Promise was in trouble and she needed to go to her apartment and get some money and she didn’t have a ride or some shit. It didn’t make sense, but when she told me she’d left Promise at her dealer’s house as collateral, I flipped. I told her I would just pay, but then she had some other reason she needed to go to her apartment first. So, I picked her up. Drove her there. Once we got there, she got all seductive. Ended up telling me Promise was fine. She was at a neighbor’s house and she just wanted to get me alone or some crazy shit. I tried to leave. She blocked the door. Started taking off her clothes. I did what I could to talk her down, to let her know I was not interested.”

“Well, obviously that didn’t work, so what the fuck?”

“Man, it got fucked up. She started screaming at me, calling me a fag. Said the only reason a man wouldn’t fuck her is if he was a fag. Said she and Jeremy knew I was gay. Started fucking taunting me about liking little boys or some crazy shit. There are no lines that woman won’t cross. Anyway, I was wrong, but I broke. She was completely naked, taunting me and I snapped. I bent her over a table and I did it. But I didn’t rape her, it’s what she wanted. Then I left. That was it.”

I see the burden on him. The weight of everything he’s telling me. He hangs his head before he finishes saying what he has to say.

“I talked to Northrup already. I’m heading over there tomorrow, try to make right what I've done. I did set up the surveillance tape to make it look like Jeremy broke in the building. I did that. I wanted to distract them from Promise and besides . . . that guy’s a dick. But it was wrong. In so many ways and I don’t even believe I did it. My head was fucked up, hearing about my Dad, then your Dad died.” Louis takes a long breath. “I still shouldn’t have done it. When I found out Promise had a brother, I could feel myself losing it. When I found out he was mine? I’ve been fine for so long, but it brought it all back and I fucking snapped. I did shit I wouldn’t normally do. Like doctoring that tape.”

“It still doesn’t make sense, man. I mean, why after all these years do you care now what your family thinks?”

“A month before
your
dad died, I got a letter from my brother. My father’s dying. He’s got cancer and he wanted me to know that because of what I’d done, my father would die with a curse on his soul. Then when I found out about Jordan, it just fractured. It all just came flooding back and I did my best to fight it off, but in the end, I lost it. We got custody settled and inside my head I knew I shouldn’t do it. Take Jordan to my family. But, like I said, I lost it. I was wrong and I almost got him killed.” Louis’s voice breaks. “My son.”

There's a long moment before he can carry on, and I let him take it. The weight of all this is on his shoulders and I know how that must feel.

“When my father shot Jordan . . . no, scratch that, I knew before that day I’d made a huge mistake coming back. Nothing had changed. Sure, they let me in. Told me I’d lifted the family curse. But of course, nothing was different. I was still the aberration. They actually tried to get me to leave Jordan with them and come back here. Asked why I didn’t have a wife. Where his mother was. It all just started all over again. I can’t even make sense of it myself. There’s a hold your father has on you, you know? In my culture, from the moment you are born you are a reflection on your entire family. The scars are so deep. It just all flooded back and I really thought I needed to go there. To make Jordan–make myself–a part of the family again. When you showed up, I knew I was talking bullshit. Telling you Egypt was his home now. I’d already started to see clearly, but when my father pulled out the gun, I knew I had to wake up.”

“Are you fucking awake now?”

“Yes, I’m awake. Wide awake.”

“Okay, good. Because you and I are going to renegotiate the custody agreement. I’m not taking Jordan from you, but you are giving Promise primary custody. The rest we will work out as we go. Got it?”

Louis nods and somewhere in between us, I hear my heart start beating again. I see him as he is. A broken man. A man ripped apart by the guilt heaped down on him by his family all those years ago.

What he did, putting Promise through all that. I don't know if I'll ever completely forgive him for that. But the rest of it. Water under the bridge.

Because I understand why. And that's what matters. I understand, and for what it's worth, I don't harbor any ill will toward him.

At the end of it all, Louis is still my friend. I’ll work on letting it all go, but it will take a while. Whatever he's done, he's still the same good guy that I knew. And I can't even begin to tell him how grateful I am that that's the case.

I let out a sigh. “Jordan’s about to become an uncle.”

I fight the smile, but it wins and Louis loses the same battle.

Eight Months Later

Promise

“Oh my god, my god, Beck.” His tongue is searching my opening, his face between my legs as his two day unshaved beard reddens the insides of my thighs.

When he pauses I know to look down at him, aware that he's looking up at me. I catch barely a glimpse of him over the fullness of my nine month tummy. While I watch, he takes a long, slow suck on my sensitive clit, holding my gaze, then smiles. “Don’t make me wait for what’s mine, babe.” He rains down kisses on my outer lips before diving back in and sending two fingers into my drenched opening, curling them and hitting my g-spot until ragged groans are coming out of me. He stops and the deep vibrations of his voice are tickling me. “I want that baby out of you. I want to see what we made. The book says orgasms can bring on labor, so we aren’t going to quit until that happens.”