Forever Promised (30 page)

“We’re married, Mickey. It’s not over until my head explodes or you kick me out on my ass. Even if my head explodes, my ghost will haunt you, and you’re stuck.”

Mikhail lifted his head and repositioned his cheek against Shane’s chest. “Then I will take my chances with the exploding head. You’re very wise. I needed reminding.”

“I love you. We can give to the people we love, but that’s not going to change us, okay?”

“Yes. Yes. But have I mentioned how mad I am at you?”

“Not right this moment. What’d I do now?”

Mikhail’s voice grew very small, like it only did when he was confessing something true, and something close to his heart. “You did not tell me how much it hurt when you leave your heart open like you do. It hurts, Shane. You’re strong and you’re used to it, but until you, I had only ever loved one person, and now I love more, and it hurts….” His voice thickened, and Shane breathed hush against his temple.

“Sh… we’ll make it better, Mickey. I swear. I swear we’ll make it better.”

“You never said how this helped Kimmy,” Mikhail muttered when he’d gotten himself together enough to talk.

“If we’re strong, we can be strong for other people. I’m not strong unless I’ve had my time with you.”

“I’m not strong at all,” Mikhail said bleakly, and Shane ran his fingers through that wild hair.

“That’s not true. Not even a little.”

“Yes? Look at me, falling apart on you—”

“I’m not strong without you. You make me better. Sometimes I think it’s just so I can be there for you, and sometimes, when I’m dealing with the kids, I realize that there’s a bigger reason for all this strength. It’s the way love works, Mickey. It doesn’t fix everything, and it’s not foolproof, but it can make life just a little bit better.”

“You make me tired,” Mikhail said, curling tighter against him. It was early November and the nights had finally gotten cold. They were waiting for the thermostat in the house to kick on at midnight, but in the meantime, the heat they radiated under the covers was the heat they had.

“Good. You need your sleep.”

“I love you, Cop. You know that, right?”

“Love you too, Mickey. Does it make you feel better to know I don’t ever doubt it?”

“Yes. As long as you keep trying to earn it, that makes me feel just fine.”

Shane smiled as he fell into dreams.

B
UT
he woke up in the morning resolved to have this conversation himself, instead of letting Mikhail do it.

“Hey, Sweetie, do you mind turning that off for a minute? You can have makeup time when we’re done talking.”

Sweetie turned around then and looked at him full in the face. “Can we leave it on so I don’t have to shut down all my browsers?”

Shane laughed. “Yeah, sure. No worries.”

“Thanks. Is this the food question? Because I was starting to think you’d forgotten me, and that would suck because I’ve got a good one!”

God, she was delightful. After Missy and all of that concentrated bitterness, it was just so much fun to talk to a kid who had taken what Promise House had to offer and run with it. She still preferred the stables to anywhere else, but every job she’d tried her hand at had requested her back. She was smart, she was quiet, and she didn’t mind working hard. Shane let her go to The Pulpit, though—partly out of favoritism, and partly because he only wanted the kids he trusted the most to be there.

“Excellent,” he said, crossing his arms and smiling. “Thrill me.”

Sweetie nodded decisively. “Shrimp and grits,” she said. “Mm-hmm. It’s a staple in the South, right? And my grandma, that’s where she came from, and she was raising us before….” Sweetie looked away, and Shane cursed her solid guards. He’d heard—barely—that her grandmother had died, and that the woman had been looking after more than one grandkid. But Sweetie’s mother hadn’t come back to claim her, and Sweetie had been on her own before Social Services had a chance to intervene.

“So, she made you shrimp and grits?”

Sweetie swallowed and nodded. “It’s real rich, you need butter and spices and such. But she’d make us go to the grocery store and buy fresh shrimp, and you know that shit’s hard to find, and then grits, and it took for
ever
, because that shit’s in the specialty section. Anyway, we’d have turkey and shrimp and grits like everyone else had dressing. She even used spiced grits to stuff the turkey. I don’t know if they did that in the South—I think she might have just been trying to stretch her money, right? So she didn’t have to buy the dressing in the box? But she added onions and celery, and it tasted real good too. Anyway, yeah. If we get our choice, I want shrimp and grits for Thanksgiving.”

Shane grinned. “I think that sounds great,” he said. “But you may have to help us make it, because honestly? I’ll bet you’re the only soul I know who knows how.”

Sweetie shook her head. “No, no—that’s not true. Martin can make it. He said his brother used to make it too, so that guy—you know, the tall one who calls everyone sugar? Yeah, he can make it too. Martin said so. He said he was almost sure of it—but you had to ask… shit, I’m sorry, I can’t remember his name—”

“Jeff,” Shane said, trying to fit Martin into his worldview of Sweetie at Promise House. “Jeff—and I’ll ask him. I’m pretty sure he’d be happy to.” And, a
ha
, a teaching moment, something Shane could give this girl that she hadn’t let him before. “It makes him feel good when he can remember something nice about Kevin.”

Sweetie caught her breath. “Even though he’s dead?”

“Well, yeah,” Shane said, thinking about Mikhail’s mother. “Those memories, they’re all we’ve got when someone passes. Anything we have that gives them back to us, that’s precious, right?”

“But….” Sweetie swallowed. “He’s got… you know. He’s
married
, he’s got a whole new man. Isn’t that… isn’t that disloyal?”

God. It was easy to tell yourself she thought this way because she was young, but Shane knew—anyone could believe this. Human beings had been telling themselves terrible stories about sin and betrayal since the species began.

“No,” he said softly. “Not if he’s glad for who Collin is. It’s okay if he misses Kevin. That doesn’t mean what he has with Collin is any less important.”

Sweetie nodded. “Oh,” she said, her voice small. She blinked hard a couple of times. “I… I’m gonna go back and finish my e-mail, is that okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks for telling me your favorite dish—it’ll make Thanksgiving a lot better.”

She let out a little sound. “Uhm, you know our counseling days?”

Yes. He knew. When the kids weren’t working, they were counseling. Keeping them busy solved three-quarters of their problems.

“How can I forget?” he asked dryly, and she grimaced.

“Yeah, well, how come none of this comes up during
those
?”

Shane had been in the room with Sweetie. “You’re a tough nut, darlin’. We’ve been spending the last three months just trying to find the right key.”

“Humph. Well I guess you know now,” she said, turning around and dismissing him.

He barely refrained from doing a fist pump of triumph. Yup, he knew.

Shrimp and grits.

T
HERE
was a whole other Thanksgiving planning meeting at The Pulpit that Sunday. Given that everybody who
wanted
to eat at The Pulpit sometimes had other obligations, it had to be timed with military precision, as did who was bringing what. That sort of thing made Shane’s head swim, but Benny and Jeff sat at the table sharing a legal pad and a pen and got everyone’s input with so much competence, Shane was mildly surprised they didn’t do it tech, with a computer and a spreadsheet and some sort of alarm that said, “Abort! Abort! Abort! Too many people are bringing pie! Someone needs ice cream, stat!”

“Okay,” Benny said after taking a pull on the glass of milk at her elbow, “here’s what we got. Jeff and Collin are going to Collin’s mother’s for pie, but they can make dinner.”

“And Collin’s mother is donating a pumpkin cheesecake so she can have her baby boy for the evening,” Jeff chirped.

Benny looked at him with big eyes. “Oh God—is that as
amazing
as it sounds?”

Jeff nodded and did a double wrist-flap with a twist. “Oh, honey—there is
no
comparison. I would sell my soul for just one bite! Would you like us to bring you some?”

Benny whimpered and made puppy-dog eyes, and Jeff pretended to be blind.

“Oh, God, no! Not the puppy-dog eyes! You had me at ‘pregnant woman’, precious, no need for overkill!”

“I’m trying not to milk the pregnant thing until I can’t move anymore,” Benny said, and Shane thought that might be never. Benny’s figure was a little fuller, and her hair was a little shinier (not in a good way—the poor kid’s hair was stringy), but she still looked pretty energetic and very, very well.

Shane was relieved. They’d all worried over Amy with Jon-Jon, and it was nice to see that
this
pregnancy, this gift, was going okay. Nobody wanted Benny to have a rough pregnancy anyway, but
especially
not this time.

And Jeff was
so
not on board with anything that didn’t make her the center of attention. “Don’t want to milk it?” Jeff’s voice rose shrilly. “Sister, you are our
queen.
You are like grand girl-pooh-bah of all the gay boys in this room—and that’s a lot of gay! Don’t just
milk
it, sausage it, egg it, pancake it—Benny, my love, you get the whole grand slam of gay breakfasts out of this one! You should get pumpkin cheesecake every
day
—”

“Except then I couldn’t fit out of the house,” Benny said dryly, and Jeff sniffed and put his hands on his hips. For once, Shane didn’t think he was being overdramatic.

“Okay.” Jeff pouted, sinking down next to her. “Fine. You get low-fat
cheesecake, but the kind that tastes like full-fat, so you can pretend it’s good.”

“Well, it’s good to know you celebrate the human oven,” Benny said dryly. “I promise to gestate to the best of my ability.”

Jeff stood up so fast his chair shot out behind him. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, no, no, no, no… you do not even get to
joke
about this, girlfriend—this is not… you just….” Jeff threw his hands up in frustration and then turned to Shane
of all people to help him out. “Talk
to her!” he snapped. “Don’t just stand there like a taxidermist’s wet dream,
talk
to her! Counsel! Be… be all Zen and shit! Make her see!”

And with that, Jeff flounced out, and Shane watched him go in surprise.

“His mom’s getting worse,” Collin said, and Shane turned to Jeff’s husband in sudden understanding. Collin was, well, young—twenty-seven, which was younger than Mikhail, who was nearing thirty. But he was still beautiful with his blond hair caught back in a ponytail and his blue eyes serious for once. He’d looked like a pro on the soccer field next to Deacon, and very much like a grown-up on the day he’d been married. He looked grown-up now.

“Ah,” Shane said, thinking about Jeff’s quiet crusade to keep touch with a mother who couldn’t remember, from one day to the next, whether her son was still in high school or grown and graduated from college and married to a man. “So maybe Jeff’s the one who needs to be counseled.”

Collin lifted a shoulder. “Couldn’t hurt. Not that we want her to think she’s just an incubator, but, you know….”

Shane looked over to the table, where Crick was smacking Benny upside the head. “‘Just an oven’ my
ass.
I swear to Christ the oven never nagged me to cook a fucking
flan
for dessert. Did you all hear that? A
flan.
Like I’m gonna know what to do with
that
shit. You will get fruit sorbet and like it, Ms. ‘I’m just an oven’, and you’ll sit down and knit while Deacon helps me with the cooking too!”

“Oh
hell
no!” Collin said, suddenly shifting his attention. “Jeff will help you with the cooking.”

“You haven’t even
seen
my cooking!” Deacon said, surprised. He was leaning against the back counter, wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt and looking unfairly young. His long feet were bare on the tile of the floor, and he was drinking a flavored water because Crick wouldn’t let him have soda on general principle.

“Yeah, but I don’t have to be a genius to know that you’ll find some way to either hurt yourself doing it or poison us all trying. No. Leave the cooking to the pros and just… just feed the horses and be Deacon, and the world will be a better place.”

“I
have
tasted your cooking, Deacon,” Benny said drily. “Collin’s got the right idea. Besides, Jeff does, like, gourmet stuff. He can be my wingman any time.”

“Why is not Amy doing the cooking?” Mikhail asked from the living room. He was perched on the arm of the recliner so he could scratch the dog’s ass with his toes. It was a rainy, cold November day, and
nobody
wanted that dog to get too wet—least of all the dog.

“All her shit’s packed,” Benny said shortly, and Shane remembered that Jon and Amy weren’t here, in this room, for exactly that reason. Most of the people here had spent the week helping them pack a big-assed shipping crate with the majority of their stuff, and they were sending it today, so it would be at their new house in a DC suburb the day after Thanksgiving.

“Fuck,” Mikhail said succinctly. “So, have we given any thought to some sort of gift for them? A parting gift?”

“Yeah,” Benny sighed. “Jeff and I are knitting blankets, and my useless brother is drawing them a pretty picture.”

“So that’s two months of my precious art time, boiled down to a kindergartner with a crayon. It’s almost poetic.”

Benny let out an exaggerated sigh. “My brother the artist spent his time wanking off on paper—how’s that, Crick? Feel better about that?”

“Yeah. Much.”

Shane laughed a little at the byplay and then looked behind his shoulder, toward the door. Quietly, he wandered out to the front porch, grabbing Jeff’s coat and his own from the line of hooks in front of the door.