Finding Zach (35 page)

“Bullshit. I need you. When I left Bella’s last night I thought I was going to die. I felt like I’d had part of me cut off. And there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it because it was my own fault. And here you are thinking it was
your
fault I fucked up?”

“Not my fault,” David said tiredly. “But my responsibility. At least, that’s how I felt at Bella’s. And that bastard Brian was right, damn him to hell. I can’t protect you.” He laughed humorlessly. “God, you’d think I’d have figured that out seven years ago? But no, here you are back, and I fall right back into that mindset. Protect Zach.”

“What are you talking about?”

David sat down at the table, his coffee mug forgotten on the counter. Zach took it, added cream the way David liked it, and set it on the table in front of him, then got his own and sat down across from him. David sighed. “Do you remember when my dad died?”

“I remember the funeral,” Zach said. “I don’t really remember your dad, though.”

“You were only about six at the time, so that doesn’t surprise me. During the luncheon afterwards, you got restless, and I took you out of the restaurant and let you run around for a while to wear you out. Then we sat on the porch of the restaurant and you fell asleep on my knee. While we were sitting there, your dad came out and sat down on the step next to me. He started talking about my dad, and how when he met him at MIT he—your dad—was only seventeen and it was his first time away from home and how my dad was already a sophomore and how he took your dad under his wing and taught him how to go on, and watched out for him and everything. And how my mom watched out for yours at Radcliffe, so it was kind of like the Evanses always looking out for the Tylers. And that he didn’t know what he was going to do without Phil keeping an eye on him the way he always did, helping him with the business side of the company, and helping him bounce ideas, and stuff. He was crying and that freaked me out some, but I said I would help him if he wanted me to. And he said, no, he’d have to learn to manage on his own, but he’d appreciate it if I would watch out for you. Of course I said I would. I tried to keep that promise, Zach. I failed once, epic fail on a galactic scale, but when you came back, I jumped right back into trying to protect you again. But you don’t need me to protect you. Brian was right. You can take care of yourself.”

“No,” Zach said. “He was wrong. I need you, Taff.”

“No, you don’t.” He reached over and put his hand on Zach’s. “You really don’t. But I think it’s gonna be hard for me to deal with that. That’s why”—he took a breath—“that’s why I’m not going to go with you to Boston next year.”

Zach jerked his hand back. “Then it
is
over,” he said dully.

David said carefully, his face pale and his voice shaking, “If that’s your choice.”

“
My
choice
?” Zach lunged to his feet. “My choice? You just sat outside all night long to tell me we’re over and you think it’s
my choice
? That’s rich, Taff. You couldn’t just take my word for it last night. Couldn’t just go away and let it be done. No, you had to hang around to tell me this? What do you call this, ‘closure’ or something? You asked what you did wrong last night. You made me think you wanted to make this work, to get past it, to move on, but here you are dumping me and trying to make me think it was my decision? That’s bullshit. You’re fucking with my head.”

“What are you talking about?” David was on his feet now, hands fisted. “What the hell, Zach? I didn’t say
anything
about breaking up with you! I
love
you!”

Zach backed away until the breakfast bar stopped him. “What are you talking about, Taff? You said you weren’t going to come with me next fall!”

“I’m not. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be with you until you leave….”

“Oh, ‘forever and always or twelve months, whichever comes first’?” Zach’s voice was bitter. “Well, what if I say ‘fuck MIT’ and don’t go? You gonna stay around forever then?”

“You are going to MIT,” David said fiercely. “You are not going to let whatever you feel for me stop you, ever, do you hear me? And I
am
going to stay around forever. I
meant
forever and always, damn you!”

“You confuse the hell out of me, David! I don’t know what the hell you want from me!”

Zach’s headache was pounding now, threatening to push his eyeballs out from the inside. “I don’t understand you,” he said. “I don’t understand any of this. Christ, I think my head’s gonna fall off.” He closed his eyes and turned around, leaning on the breakfast bar, his face in his hands.

He heard the scrape of the chair legs on the flagstone floor, then warm hands settled at his temples. “I’m sorry,” David whispered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean I was leaving you. I didn’t mean anything even remotely like that. I meant forever and always, Zach. I still do.” He rubbed Zach’s temples gently with his fingertips, working his thumbs over the base of his skull.

Zach stood braced against the breakfast bar, his hands clutching the edge, his eyes closed, feeling David’s warmth all along his back, his steady, strong artist’s hands easing the tension in Zach’s neck and head. “About Esteban,” he began, but David cut him off.

“Don’t talk about him if you don’t want to,” he said firmly.

“I don’t want to,” Zach admitted. “But I want you to understand.”

David’s hands slid down to Zach’s shoulders and turned him around to face David. “I understand, Zach. I don’t need to know anything. Tell me whatever you want, whenever you want. But I know enough. I know
you
. Nothing you can tell me will change any bit of that.” He cupped Zach’s face with his warm, steady hands. “I love you. Sometimes love isn’t enough. And sometimes it
is
.”

Zach closed his eyes again. “I don’t know, Taff. There’s so much you don’t know, so much I haven’t told you. How do I know that when you’ve heard it all that you’ll feel the same way about me? And if—when—I talk to that journalist guy, you’ll hear it. All of it.”

“Have your parents heard all of it?”

Zach shook his head. “Most of it they know. But not all.”

“Will they still love you after they hear what you have to say?”

Blinking, Zach said, “Well, yeah… I guess. They know the worst, anyway. About what I did to Esteban.”

David snorted. “You think
that’s
the worst? You are such a dweeb, dweeb.”

“What can be worse than knowing your kid is a murderer?”

“A., you’re not a murderer. I’ll bet that Esteban dude killed a shitload of people before you took him out. Your doing that was justifiable homicide in my book, for that reason alone, not only because of what he did to you. And B., knowing about practically
anything
he did to you is a lot worse than hearing that you killed him.” David dragged Zach’s head down onto his shoulder and kissed his ear. “I try not to think about it, but just the little you’ve told me breaks my fucking heart, love. It just makes me
insane
, knowing you went through shit I can’t even imagine. And still came out in one piece.”

“Well, not quite. I’m sort of back in one piece, more or less,” Zach mumbled into his neck. “After years of therapy.”

“No. He didn’t break you.”

Zach pulled back. “Sure he did. I broke, Taff. I buckled under, did what he said, was what he wanted me to be. I never expected to get out of there; I just expected to eventually die. How is that not broken?”

“Because, dweeb, when you had your chance, you took it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people back down when they had their chance, afraid of the risk, afraid to be brave. And they weren’t in a situation as… as
fraught
as yours. Hell, there have been times when I didn’t take a chance, because I was scared. And it wasn’t life or death—it was just… just life.” He drew back and cupped Zach’s face again, his brown eyes searching Zach’s earnestly. “A broken man wouldn’t have even tried to kill Esteban,” he said urgently. “A broken man wouldn’t have even
thought
about it. You
did
it. You took the chance. And you got out. You won. He lost. And you aren’t letting what happened to you stop you anymore. Like last night. You went out with old friends. You laughed and made jokes and ate pizza and there wasn’t anything about Esteban there to haunt you, was there? Not until that asshole made his move.”

“No. It was… it was normal,” Zach admitted. “I mean, it was what I think of as normal, and the guys seemed to think it was normal. No weirdness at all involved.” His fingers closed around David’s wrists. “Kind of a far cry from what I was doing when you first came home—the pickups, the drinking….”

“Hey,” David said, “that was just another way for you to fight back. You weren’t going to be what he tried to make you. You
aren’t
what he tried to make you.”

Zach closed his eyes. “I’m still not where I want to be,” he said. “I’m still, I don’t know, still afraid.”

“News for you, dweeb. Everybody’s afraid. You just gotta suck it up and move on.” He kissed Zach gently. “Deal with what you can and back-burner the things you can’t. Just like you’re doing.”

“I don’t know how I’ll get along without you in Boston,” Zach said.

David snorted. “You’ll do fine. We’ve got a whole year to work on your confidence. Hell, kids way younger than you go off to college on their own; kids who have their own hang-ups and issues. You’ll be in good company. You think I was okay when I went off to UCLA?
Hell
, no.”

“No?”

“No. Because it was only a year after I lost my best friend and the love of my life.” He bumped foreheads with Zach. “You won’t have that problem, because you will
never
lose me. I will be here.”

“Forever and always.”

“Forever and always,” David echoed. He pulled Zach close and rested his head on Zach’s shoulder. “I’m tired, dweeb. What say we crawl into bed and catch a few hours of sleep before you have your therapy session?”

“Is that what you want to do?” Zach asked.

“Why? What do you want to do?” David raised his head and grinned at him.

“Well, drag you into the bedroom and make love to you until you can’t see anything but me, of course.”

David grinned. “News for you, dweeb,” he said again. “I already can’t see anything but you.”

Chapter 25

“
O
KAY
, it’s set,” Brian said, and sat down in the chair across from the couch. “I’m going to use this recording solely for reference, to support my notes. Once the article is completed to both our satisfactions, the tape will be destroyed to protect your privacy, as per the agreement we just signed. Is that acceptable?”

“Yes,” Zach said. His voice shook.

On his left, Richard squeezed his arm gently. Jane took his right hand and laced her fingers through it. But it was at David that Zach looked, turning his head to where his lover sat behind the couch, his arms folded on the back. David met his eyes, his own warm, and reached out one hand to touch Zach’s cheek.
I love you
, he mouthed, and Zach’s lip quirked upward in an attempt at a smile. Then Zach turned back and took a deep breath.

“The last thing I remember is walking out of the airport in Costa Rica. It was humid, but cooler than I’d expected…”

Epilogue

Four years later

“I
T
’
S
A
particular honor for me to be here today,” Richard said to the crowd in Killian Court. And crowd it was; at last count, more than twelve thousand tickets had been accounted for. His own family had two; Jane and David sat together somewhere in that vast sea of faces. “Not only as a graduate of this school, though that is something that I have always been proud of. But today my pride goes beyond just that of a graduate of—in my humble opinion—the best science and engineering school on the planet.” That won a roar of approval from the students and spectators. “No, today my pride, and my gratitude, is all wrapped up in the
people
of MIT: students, professors, staff, administrators. I am proud of my son and what he has accomplished in the past three years here. But I am equally proud of the school that took him in and helped him accomplish those things. Your support and protection and education and encouragement means the world to me and to my family.