The Foster Family (16 page)

M
ATT
SPARED
a glance for me in the car before letting Malcolm in. A few moments later, Malcolm, Matt, and his sister came parading out, loaded down with boxes, which Malcolm opened the trunk to deposit.

“You know,” he said once he had relieved himself of his first load, “you can sit there and pout all day long, but it doesn’t change a thing.”

“Only makes me look bad, yeah, I know.” And I didn’t give a flying fuck what he thought of me. If he thought he could rule my life with a touch and a few commands, he would have to think again. I’d gotten this far under my own power. I could manage.

He shrugged and went back inside. It took them three trips to load everything I had left in the world, besides my clothes, into the trunk of Malcolm’s car. When they were done, Matt came to my side, and I rolled down the window.

“This okay, man?” he asked, some concern on his face. “I mean, you look pretty pissed. Jesus!” He got a look at my face, I guess, as I turned to look at him.

“Yeah.”

“Fucking always hated that asshole,” he muttered, reaching fingers toward me, then dropping his hand as though suddenly realizing he’d been about to touch me. “Fuck.”

I sighed.

“This Malcolm guy. He’s okay?”

I shrugged. Fine time for him to ask, now all my shit was out of his house.

Matt bent to rest his arms on the edge of the open window frame. “Dude, talk to me, man.”

“Why?” I gazed at him. “What do you care?”

“We’re friends, Kerry. This is fucked-up.”

“We were never friends.”

He frowned, jerked as if he was about to stand, then made an annoyed sound in the back of his throat. “Dude, you think that if you want, but if we aren’t, it was never because I didn’t want to be.”

For a heartbeat, I stared at him. Was I hallucinating? He had never given two shits about me or what I did. He was happy to get me and my crap out of his life. I was “lost.” He didn’t need that kind of distraction. I reminded him of his own words, and he looked a little bit sick.

“Yeah. I said that.” For a moment, his gaze shifted to someplace he couldn’t see me, but then it was back. “Look, I was out of line, maybe. I was stressed. It was a bad night.”

“Yeah.” Anything to get this over with so we could get out of there.

“I’m not… good at this shit, Kerry, okay? I was scared. I knew Allison was coming, and that was some fucked-up shit.”

“You didn’t want her to be in the middle of my drama. I get it.”

“Do you?” He glanced to where his sister was standing on the lawn with Malcolm. She was like Matt, willowy thin, and unlike him, short. Allison MaKey was a tiny, delicate little thing, and she looked about fourteen. Next to Malcolm’s bulk, she looked like the child she still was, even though she was, theoretically, college-ready. I looked back to Matt.

“Yeah, Matt. I get it.”

“I don’t want this to be the last time we see each other, Kerry.”

That got my attention. “What?”

It was his turn to shrug as he straightened and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I know, right? I didn’t think it would happen, but yeah. I miss you. Allison’s a good kid, but you know. She’s not a dude.”

I laughed. “Matt, I am not a
dude
, either.”

That got him to smile. “No. But you’re you, and I sort of didn’t realize it was nice having you around.”

I blew out a breath. “That’s me. The invisible boy. Until suddenly I’m not there.”

“Dude, that isn’t what I meant.”

“It’s what Andrew meant,” I said, suddenly realizing what the pounding had been about.

“Huh?”

I pointed to my face. “Andrew. He was fine with me being invisible boy, there to get his rocks off when he wanted. Just pissed him off when I suddenly wasn’t there for his pleasure.”

“That is fucked-up.”

I sighed. “Is Malcolm coming?”

“If Andrew comes back here looking for you, I’m calling that Officer Karl guy.”

“You do that,” I agreed.

“I wish I had done it sooner,” Matt said.

“You couldn’t know he’d really come looking for me that hard, Matt. It isn’t your fault.”

“I mean even before all this. I wish I’d really told you what I thought of the whole thing from the start. I should have said something.”

I laughed at him. “You think I would have listened?”

His gaze was intense. I’d never really noticed how blue his eyes were. “Maybe you would believe me now when I say I thought we were friends if I’d acted more like one then.”

“Maybe.”

“Malcolm said I should come over one weekend for barbecue. Bring my boyfriend. Is that okay?”

“You have a boyfriend?”

“Missing the point, asshole.” Matt grinned.

“Yeah, Matt. It’s okay.” I gazed up at him and he looked… relieved. Happy. I didn’t even know. He looked like everything he’d said had been real and he honestly thought I’d just tell him to fuck the hell off, take my shit, and go.

“So I’ll see you around, then,” he said with a tentative tilt to his grin.

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Good.” His grin softened to a genuine smile “That’s excellent. If you’re missing anything, let me know. If it’s here, I’ll make sure you get it back.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Malcolm was back, then, opening his door and climbing in, and Matt backed away from the car. “See you around, Grey.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “See you.”

Then we were pulling away from the curb, and he was standing in the middle of the street watching us go.

“You haven’t spoken to him since you left,” Malcolm said. There was disapproval in his tone.

“I—there was nothing to say.”

“How about ‘I found a place. I’m doing okay. Thanks for holding on to my stuff.’?”

“None of which I would have had to say if he hadn’t kicked me out.”

“Granted.”

“He only wants to pretend at being friends because you were there, and you always get what you want. He doesn’t—”

“Do not,” Malcolm said, warning thick in his voice, “presume to tell me what he feels about you or doesn’t feel. You don’t know because you never asked.”

“It never came up.”

“You never bothered.”

“It was a place to stay. Not like we were family.”

Malcolm’s lips drew tight. His fingers whitened on the wheel, but he said nothing. Miracle of miracles, he kept his demanding, arrogant trap shut for a change.

The entire ride to his house was ominous, and when we arrived, he popped the trunk and stalked up the walk. From the curb I heard a door slam inside, and the eerie silence stretched out from the front door to greet me as I stared into the trunk and wondered how to get my books into the house.

I was as achingly sore as I had been before my nap in the hospital. My wrist throbbed, and every muscle in my neck screamed bloody murder if I tried to turn my head in any direction. I was perching on a hard chair in the kitchen, trying to decide what to do, when the front door quietly opened and closed, and Charlie appeared.

“Why is the car open?” he asked.

I shrugged and held up my wrapped wrist.

He made an exasperated sound, peeled out of his suit jacket, and proceeded to bring my boxes in.

“Thanks,” I told him when he returned on the first trip.

He grunted and went back out for the next load. He took a seat at the table when he was done, and after a moment, I hopped from my stool, took a beer from the fridge, and fumbled with trying to open it until he took it from me and opened it himself.

“Thanks.”

“Sure.” I sat back on the stool.

“You’re home,” he said after he’d sipped his beer and set it on the table. A note of relief wended through his words.

“Where else would I be?”

“Oh.” He spun his beer bottle around on the table. “I don’t know. Anywhere else.”

I stared at him and he watched me back. “Why would I be anywhere else?”

“I don’t know if you noticed, but you require a lot of looking after, Kerry.”

“Thank you.” I offered him a twisted grin, but his own expression remained so neutral it scared me.

“Looking after something requires a certain amount of emotional investment.”

“I can damn well look after myself.”

“With scads of success,” he said.

I let the sarcasm skid off me.

“Comes back to that whole thing about emotional investment. You have to care to do a good job, and you’re doing a lousy one. Malcolm never does less than a good job at anything.”

“So he cares, is that what you’re telling me?”

On a strong man, a look of distress is like seeing an old nag. Something you know is supposed to be strong and powerful reduced to skin, bones, and fright. Not pretty.

“It’s what he does,” Charlie said very quietly, as though maybe he was afraid he’d be overheard. “He cares. Too much sometimes, and it kills him a little bit when it doesn’t work. He puts it on me to be the one to get attached, to take the blame for letting guys in, for being the one to want them, because he can’t carry it. He never could.”

“So you bend yourself into a pretzel and do whatever he needs so he doesn’t have to admit what he wants?”

“You don’t know him, Kerry. Don’t judge.”

“If it hurts him so much, why let him do it?”

“Because once in a while, it works. He finds what he needs in one of them. He’s happy like I can’t quite make him.”

His gaze had gone far away to some guy who wasn’t me who had done this thing Charlie said Malcolm needed. Some guy who wasn’t him either.

“This is fucked-up,” I said. “This is so fucked-up that you think you have to let your boyfriend fuck some other guy to be happy. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“He doesn’t fuck them. He never fucks them, Kerry. He just loves them.”

“And not you.”

He shook his head and actually laughed at me. “He loves me. And he fucks me. I can’t explain. You have to be part of it to understand.”

“And if I don’t want to be?”

He glanced to the pile of boxes he’d made in one corner. “Then don’t unpack.” His tone went cold, his eyes hard when he looked back to me. “If you don’t want to, just sleep on the couch and find a goddamn apartment and don’t even talk to him anymore. Just….” His chest was heaving and there was fire in his eyes as he stood. “You need a down payment, I’ll give it to you. Whatever you need. Do not move in here, offer him something, and then refuse.”

He was standing there, ready to buy me out, do anything to get rid of me, and there was no way not to believe he meant every word. I’d never seen walls go up so fast.

“I didn’t say—”

“Just make up your mind by morning,” he warned and turned to head down the hall to their room at the back of the house.

“Fuck, Charlie, cut me a little slack here. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on.”

He wheeled back and shoved his face in close, one hand on my chair, one on the table, pinning me under his glare. “What’s going on is that he sat in that hospital all day, hovered, because already, he can’t walk away. He can’t say no to you. He can’t disengage now.” He straightened from where he’d been leaning over my chair. “You ever see the movie
Serenity
?”

I nodded. “What has that got to do with anything?”

Charlie pointed down the hall to the door of their room. “He’s Wash.”

I frowned.

“You’re the spike.”

That was like a cold bucket of water over my head.

“He will fly this relationship through every fucking thing, believe he can navigate the minefield that seems to be your life, and he will never see that spike coming until it goes through his heart. Do
not
do that to him.”

“Don’t do it to you, you mean.”

He shook his head. “I can take it, kid. Believe me, of the men in this house right now, I am the one who can take it. I’m fucking titanium.” He sucked in a breath. “He’s skin and bones and very breakable. And you. You’ll walk away because you have nothing invested anywhere.” He glanced at my pile of boxes. “Not a goddamned thing.”

“Hey, asshole, I never fucking said anything about walking away. You’re the ass hat who’s decided I’m fucking on my way out the door without even fuck—”

The bedroom door flew open and cracked hard against the wall. The handle dug into the plaster and the door vibrated, stuck there. Charlie danced to one side as Malcolm barreled out of the room, down the hall, and right into my personal space. I jumped up, knocking my chair over to bounce off the linoleum. Quickly as I could move, I backpedaled, ass hitting the counter as he reached me, fury in his eyes.

“How many times have I told you?” he asked, voice grating out over his rage. “It’s a simple rule. Now open your mouth.”

“What?”

He held something up, and I had to squint to see it was a ball gag and strap.

“The hell?”

“Mal,” Charlie began, reaching for his arm, but Malcolm held a hand up to him and he stopped midmotion, face pale.

“Open. Your. Mouth.” His gaze bored into me. I couldn’t have looked away if I’d tried. “Now!”

I flinched, squeezing my eyes shut, actually bringing a hand up to press against his chest, he was that close, but he didn’t budge. In fact, he gripped my chin in his other strong hand, and I whimpered. It fucking hurt. Might have hurt even without the recent beating I’d taken. Now it sent flashes of pain through my skull, and the whimpers turned ragged.

“Open!” He didn’t say “or leave,” but he didn’t have to. The ultimatum was there in his voice.

I glanced past him to Charlie. Distress. Skin and bones and fright. He wasn’t scared of Malcolm. He was scared
for
him. He was scared of this edge, this knife-sharp force in his lover, in how tightly Malcolm held himself. Because he could explode. As Andrew had, he could explode all over me, but he didn’t. He held tightly to his nerves and his rage, and if it didn’t come out on me, and I knew it never came out on Charlie, there was only one other place it could go.

Inward.

I opened my mouth.

He was not gentle shoving the gag in or fastening the straps around my head and already-bruised face. It fucking hurt, and there were tears and more whimpers as the thing forced my teeth apart and my tongue down and the straps and buckle caught tiny hairs and pulled them independently from my scalp.