The Foster Family (27 page)

The last page was Alistair again, older, still happy, sharing a drink with another man. They looked familiar with one another, happy in the way of long-time couples, and the four or five pictures of them were clearly taken in the same living room I sat in now. He was the only one with this sort of years-long depiction. All the others came and went, and I found myself uncharacteristically hating a pretty man I’d never met, because he obviously meant something to Charlie and Malcolm.

He was important, and he kept coming back into their lives. I was on the verge of leaving, and I hated him for being the one who was allowed back.

I
N
THE
bedroom, Malcolm shivered hard, and Charlie wrapped both arms around him from behind, hoping to still the shaking and keep him in the now. It had been years and years since he’d needed to worry about knives and razor blades, needed to keep his Malcolm meltdown radar on high alert.

“Mal,” he whispered. “God, Mal, why do you do this?”

“He’s going to go, Charlie, no matter what, and maybe that’s best.”

“You always do this!” Charlie let go and forced Malcolm to look at him, moving and turning the other man until they were face-to-face. The need to hold his shaking lover and the need to force some sense into him warred within him. “You fucking always do this!”

“Don’t swear.”

“I fucking
will
swear, because you’re being a dick. You want him to stay—”

“Keep your voice down!”

“Why?” Charlie shoved at his arm, hard. Malcolm barely budged, and Charlie spun away from him, fists clenched until his nails bit into his palms and focused him. “Why should I keep my voice down and pretend what he thinks about you is true? That you don’t care, when I know you do.”

“Let it go, Charlie.”

“Let it go? Let it
go
?” He whirled, fists still clenched, jaw so tight he could barely speak. “He is what we’ve been looking for!”

“What
you’ve
been looking for, maybe.”

“Right.” The flaring anger died, smothered. “It’s always me. Fuck you, Malcolm.” He snatched his pillow from the bed and a blanket from the shelf in the closet. He stormed out the patio door leading from their room to a private deck and then to the backyard. Malcolm didn’t make a move to stop him, and he reached the gazebo unchecked. Inside, he flung his pillow onto the wide, padded bench bed and then himself after it. The blanket wasn’t going to keep him warm once the day’s warmth had dissipated. He didn’t care. He’d rather shiver alone out here than shiver alone in bed with Malcolm.

Curling onto his side under the inadequate cover, he stared out the back of the small enclosure to the wild end of their property beyond. Kerry had once hinted he’d like to do something out there, but Charlie hadn’t warmed to the idea. Not that he wouldn’t let Kerry do it—

Kerry was leaving.

He studied the shifting shadows as the wind bustled across the open space, and was glad of the thicket of honey locusts he’d planted to shield the hut from the ocean winds. It made even the low-lying junipers rock, as though buffeted by the waves he could hear crashing up along the beach. They’d be almost reaching the cliff in the stronger gusts, and he tried to let the rhythmic sounds lull him, tried to tell himself the crashing waves weren’t violent or dangerous.

“Just a bit of wind and water.” Like his father had always said. But the wind and the rain had carried his father away from them and brought back an empty boat, so he knew better. He didn’t trust what he heard with his ears. Only what his heart told him, and it said the violence, the uncertainty was always there. Just under the surface.

Outside his flimsy shelter, the bushes rocked but didn’t flutter and dance like other trees and shrubs. They kept their shape. They always kept their shape, bending and lifting in the breezes, but always staying, essentially, the same.

Like Malcolm. Charlie liked that back stretch of wild land, untouched, untamed, just like so much of Malcolm was. The outside never changed, but inside, he was as wild and rough as the junipers and the waves, and Charlie loved that about him.

But even wild things could be delicate, easily stressed if the wrong thing was introduced.

Letting out a sigh, Charlie tried to imagine the patch of property tamed, the land broken open, and his garden beds extended over the last portion of their space. Kerry might have been able to make something of that space. And maybe Charlie would have been able to let him tame the last sacred, wild corner of his world.

“But he’s leaving,” Charlie reminded himself. “They all leave, sooner or later.”

M
ALCOLM
LAY
awake watching the patio door. He’d left their quilt on the chair next to it just in case Charlie came for it. The blanket he’d taken was not going to keep him warm if he stayed out there. Once, Malcolm rolled over, putting his back to the door and his lover’s escape. He told himself he didn’t have to indulge in Charlie’s temper tantrum. But it didn’t last. He couldn’t stay turned away from Charlie, who needed him to be there, calm and stable. Kerry would leave. Forever, maybe. For a few weeks, or months. For however long. It didn’t matter. Charlie would care when he was gone. He’d miss him and want him, and it didn’t matter they’d never bedded him.

Everyone thought the sex was the basis of everything, but it wasn’t. Kerry made Malcolm feel things. Charlie hated that and wanted that. Malcolm needed to feel something, anything. Charlie was easy. Safe. The day-to-day of Charlie in his life didn’t require he go out on any emotional limbs, but it left him blank, and that wasn’t fair to Charlie.

“You can still love him,” Malcolm muttered to the dark. “You can still tell the man you love him after fifteen fucking years together.” But that was the one thing Charlie never asked for. And Malcolm got away without saying it. Without making it real.

He had one arm tucked up under his head as he lay on his back. With the other hand, he felt for the line of small, round scars down his stretched side. They were more difficult to find by touch with every passing year. That was because of Charlie, of course. Charlie healed him. Charlie quieted him and gave him strength to
be
strong. It made no sense, but it worked. He could be what Charlie needed him to be as he could not be for himself. He didn’t know why. He just accepted that was how it was.

Malcolm sighed. There was no way, after the hours Charlie had been outside, that the gazebo was still warm, and he hadn’t come for another blanket.

Malcolm pushed the sheet back and swung his legs to the ground. The wind had picked up, and from the door he could hear the crashing waves below the yard. The air smelled like rain even though none had yet fallen. The trees whipped around above and the whole garden was a frenzy of dancing and gyrating plants. They were possessed tonight by their fey spirits it seemed, and if he was even a little bit superstitious, he would have run across that yard to get to Charlie.

As it was, he managed to keep it to a fast walk as the first fat drops began to fall.

Charlie was there, lying on his side, looking out across the untamed portion of the yard, his back to the door.

“What’s back there?” Malcolm asked softly.

“B-bush,” Charlie said between clattering teeth.

Malcolm hurried to him with the quilt. “Here.” He dropped it over Charlie.

Charlie offered no acknowledgement other than continued shivering.

“Charlie.”

“Don’t order me around, Mal. I can’t blow you or bend over and pretend that will make everything all right.”

“Just move over,” Malcolm suggested, acting as if Charlie’s quiet words hadn’t sounded so much like a death knell.

After a few shuddering heartbeats, Charlie obliged and scooted forward enough that Malcolm could climb under the blankets with him. The only real sound now was the rain hitting the roof.

All Malcolm could focus on was Charlie’s heartbeat thudding against his own chest. He wanted to make this better, but he couldn’t give both Charlie and Kerry what they wanted.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked. “Order him to stay?”

“Would you?”

“No, Charlie.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m really afraid he actually would.”

“Why don’t you want him to?”

“I do want him to. But it’s the same as it always is. He has to live his life. The only way we can keep him is if he decides his life is here. I cannot make that decision for him. I know you hate this part, but it’s the one thing I can never order them to do. And especially not Kerry.”

“Why especially not Kerry?”

“Because. Andrew broke something in him, and he doesn’t realize it. It makes him too vulnerable to accepting that I know something he doesn’t. That I know better than he does. He might stay because he’d think I was telling him to for his own good, and I wouldn’t be. Not really. I’d be telling him to stay because we want him to, and that isn’t a reason.”

“Yes, it is.”

Malcolm kissed the back of his lover’s head. “Charlie.”

“I know.”

For a few minutes, Malcolm nuzzled and kissed around his neck and finally, gradually, Charlie relaxed into his arms. “Right now, Charlie, here, you and me. What do you want?”

“Tell me,” Charlie whispered.

Malcolm knew what his lover wanted to hear. All the ways he saved Malcolm from himself, stabilized him, and made him sane. Telling him those things required he examine all the ways he was unstable and crazy. It meant admitting he knew Charlie knew he was no all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful Dom. Admitting Charlie gave him submission not because he deserved it. He gave it because he wanted to make sure Malcolm’s world made sense. Admitting that meant admitting he had no real power at all.

He licked along the outer shell of Charlie’s ear. “You’re my rock, Charlie,” he admitted. “My haven.” He kissed the side of his neck, pinched up a bit of skin between his teeth, and sucked hard until Charlie gasped and squirmed, and he was sure his mark would be there for a long while. “You’re the one I loved first and the one I’ll love always.”

Charlie went still in his arms. Preternatural silence filled the night. The rain had stopped, or turned to an ocean mist blowing across the open spaces, at least. It made no noise as it soaked the landscape. It filtered through the gazebo screen and dampened their covers. Charlie began to shiver again, and Malcolm tightened his hold.

“You heard me,” Malcolm whispered, keeping his lips and breath fluttering along Charlie’s skin. They offered warmth and connection he didn’t know any other way to convey. Words were too easy to say, and sex was cold. Those warm, breathy moments in between were his safe times when he could be anything and not get hurt. Charlie protected him there.

His back pressed to Malcolm’s chest, Charlie nodded.

“Did you think because I don’t say it, it isn’t true?”

“No.” He sounded so hesitant, as if maybe he had begun to think that very thing.

“Do you doubt it?”

Charlie shook his head against his pillow, but didn’t speak.

“I’ve heard you tell the kid often enough.
I love him and he loves me.
That’s what you tell him. Did you think you were lying? Stretching the truth?”

Charlie shuddered as Malcolm moved a hand, scrubbing it down his front to find the edge of his T-shirt and lifting to find chilled skin next. He moaned low when Malcolm pushed the shirt up and found his nipples. They were already hard with the cold, and he rubbed, drawing the most delicious noises out of Charlie.

He sounded halfway between pain and ecstasy. “But that’s where I keep you, isn’t it, Charlie?”

“Huh?” Charlie shifted, ass pressing back, chest pressing into his touch.

“Hovering,” Malcolm supplied. “Between excruciating pain and blissful pleasure.”

Charlie grunted.

“What do you think we are?” he asked.

“I don’t”—he gasped and jerked as Malcolm tweaked one nipple, then the other. “What?”

“You said you couldn’t blow me,” Malcolm said, helping him make the mental jumps even as he distracted him with touch and breath and anticipation. “Or spread for me because why? You’re mad at me?”

“I don’t get to be mad,” Charlie breathed.

Malcolm smiled grimly. “That’s not exactly the rule, now is it?”

Charlie wheezed out a loud groan from deep within his chest, a response to Malcolm torturing a nipple with pinches and slaps and a final, hard thump that stole the rest of Charlie’s breath.

While he tried to catch it, to catch up, Malcolm worked smoothly and quickly to get him naked under the covers.

“Mal….”

“What it is, Charlie, is that you can be as mad as you want. When I come to you, you don’t get to say no.”

A jerking nod answered that. Not exactly a “Yes, Sir,” but it was something.

Malcolm pushed his own sleep pants down to free his cock and reached around to stroke Charlie’s as he curled his hips around to align his cock with the crack of Charlie’s ass.

His lover was hard and hot in his palm, cold and unyielding in his arms.