He turned his head to look at me. “I don’t want to go. I want to wake up Christmas morning and lay around all day watching TV and eating and having sex with you by the fire. I just want to be with you.”

  I reached for him and he moved fast, rolling sideways into my arms, wrapping himself around me, laying his head on my chest with a deep relieved sigh. “We should go there if that’s what your father wants. We can have our own Christmas when we get home, and you can hire someone to water the tree while we’re gone.”

  “You want to get a tree?”

  “Of course. I’m in love with the idea of having you under it all wrapped up for me.”

  He shivered hard. “I will be the best present you ever got.”

  “You already are.”

  His arms tightened. “You scared me to death with this bullshit.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t ever do it again.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You promise?”

  “I do.”

  “I like the sound of those words.”

  I couldn’t stop smiling.

  Chapter Six

  We fell asleep and woke up three hours later, a little after one, both of us starving. After we showered, we went downstairs, and as promised, it was just my father, Gillian, and my brothers. The minute we walked into the living room, Chase was there, right on top of me.

  “Eli,” he said softly. “You scared the crap out of me.”

  And all at once there were voices from everywhere coming at me, the questions flying as the noise got louder and louder.

  “Stop!” my father shouted, and everyone did. “You two must be ravenous.”

  “I had planned to make biscuits and gravy this morning,” I told him. “Sorry that plan fell through.”

  “There’s always tomorrow, Eli.” He sighed deeply. “Isn’t there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. We have enough cold cuts to feed an army. Come make yourselves a sandwich,” he said, looking at Craig.

  “Would you like to formally meet my boyfriend, Dad?”

  “I very much would,” he said, turning back to me, reaching out and grasping my shoulder.

  “Dad, this is Craig Zhao. Craig, this is my father, Foster Hartline.”

  “It’s my pleasure, sir.” Craig took a breath, offering my father his hand. “I love your son, and I promise you, this trip notwithstanding, I normally do a very good job of taking care of him.”

  “From what I saw when you got here,” he said with a smile at Craig, taking the outstretched hand in his, “you do an excellent job. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I watched them look each other over, size one another up, and like what they saw. Lucas and Gillian were next to meet Craig, and Chase told him what a thrill it was to meet the man who had given the world Rover, the company that was poised to rival Apple very soon.

  “Are you a billionaire?” Gillian smiled at Craig.

  “Not yet, ma’am, but I’m working on it,” the multimillionaire said honestly.

  “Of course,” she agreed, awed by him.

  He turned and looked at me. “I’m gonna pass out if we don’t eat, J.”

  I smiled at him before turning for the kitchen. Everything was laid out as though there had been a production line earlier. We both made enormous roast beef sandwiches with pickles and potato chips on the side. Taking a seat in the living room, my father and brothers already there, I was going to get back up to get drinks when Gillian was suddenly there asking me what I wanted.

  “Oh no, I can get it,” I told her. “You should sit.”

  “Sweetheart, please let me do something for you. Let me get you something to drink.”

  So I stayed where I was, beside Craig, my thigh against his. “I’ll take an iced tea, if you have it, and a Pepsi for him.”

  “Is peach okay?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Coming right up.” She seemed really happy to be doing something for us.

  When my father cleared his throat, I looked over at him.

  “What part of your name, Elijah Alexander Hartline, would prompt Craig to shorten your name to the letter J?” my father asked.

  I took a breath and looked at him. “Jacob,” I said, pulling my driver’s license from the back pocket of my jeans, having pulled it from my wallet earlier to show it to my father. I held it out for him, and he hesitated just a minute before taking it from me.

  He examined it a long time. The silence was long enough for Gillian to return, set two tall glasses down in front of me and Craig, and take a seat beside my father. He passed her the license, which she stared at, eyes growing big, before leaning forward to put it into Lucas’s waiting hand.

  “So which do you prefer?”

  “I like Eli when you say it.” I smiled at him. “But I’m Jake to Craig.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough. Tell me—us what happened, Eli.”

  “We’ll take turns, huh?” Craig patted my knee. “’Cause we gotta eat.”

  He also knew that it would be hard for me to tell it all. But if he could help….

  “Okay.” I took a sip of the homemade peach iced tea. “So there was no car accident, but you pretty much know that.”

  The faces, all of them were staring at me, all of them leaning forward. Chase was holding my license, having gotten it from Lucas, fiddling with it in his hand as he waited.

  “We got there, to New York, and stayed with Aunt Kara for the summer. And it was fun, it was really great, and we did all the touristy stuff, the museums and the zoo and the park and Times Square and all of it. We had so much fun. But when the summer was over, she wasn’t ready to come home. Aunt Kara’s roommates came back for school, and we had to find another place to stay, but it was okay, because by that time Mom had made her own friends, and so they put us up.”

  I stopped to eat, and Craig curled a long strand of hair around my ear before turning to my father. “Your wife was a drug addict, Mr. Hartline. Did you know?”

  He took a breath and shook his head no. “She took a sleeping pill now and then, a pain killer when her back hurt, but it was nothing… and everything she took had been prescribed by our family doctor. I never saw her abuse anything.”

  Craig took a breath. “Well, from what Jake saw, she had a pretty serious dependency on painkillers and sleeping pills that changed drastically in New York, blossoming into a full-blown meth addiction. Do you know what that is? Meth?”

  He nodded.

  I had watched my mother become completely addicted to methamphetamine or meth—ice, crystal; it had so many street names—watched her smoke it first in a roomful of others and then, as the days, weeks wore on, coming home to smoke alone in our postage-stamp living room in our tiny two bedroom apartment.

  I took a sip of tea after swallowing more of my sandwich. “She lost weight. Her face and skin….” I turned to look at Chase. “You’re a doctor. You must know what it looks like.”

  He was squinting at me. “It must have ravaged her.”

  I looked back at my father. “I wanted to call you and tell you where we were, have you come get us, but even then I knew that she’d never leave. She was so far gone so fast.”

  “What about being a mother to you, to your brothers?”

  “It was the drugs that were important, Dad.”

  “Why didn’t you send word to me so I could have come for you?”

  “I was all she had.”

  There was a silence before he spoke again. “You know she called and gave me updates, but after the summer, when I was expecting you both home… that fall was when your grandfather died, and your grandmother moved in with us, and then the firm was having trouble, and I just… I let her, and you, get away from me.”

  “But why would you question her?” I asked him. “You knew her, knew I was safe with her.”

  He shook his head. “When she asked me for the separation, I told her to put you on a plane home, but she said you were already in school. She wanted you to stay there, and I let it happen.”

  What comfort could I give him?

  He got up and came around the coffee table, taking a seat beside me, hand on my back as he looked into my eyes. “I was at work while she raised all of you. I had no idea how to be more of a father than I was. When your grandmother moved in, she took over everything your mother had done. She hired a maid so she could focus on me and your brothers. She organized our lives and made sure dinner was on the table the minute I stepped through the door at the end of the day. It was nice, the order, and I didn’t miss your mother at first.”

  “You guys were fighting so much before we left.” I sighed. “It had to be a relief that she was gone.”

  “Like I said, it took me a while to miss her,” he confessed. “But I missed you from the second you left.”

  “I was okay.”

  He stroked my hair back from my face and then dropped his hand away, shifting so he was sitting on the edge of the couch, facing me. “Go on.”

  “Sometimes when I came home, she was gone, and I wouldn’t see her for days, and then I’d find her sleeping in a doorway because she forgot where she lived. I know she was taking the money to pay the rent and the utilities from your joint checking account, Dad, but I also know that you put her on an allowance.”

  “I had to. She—”

  “Oh, I know why you did it,” I assured him. “She would have bankrupted you with her drug habit if you didn’t. But she started using the rent money for drugs, and pretty soon the apartment was gone, and we were staying with a string of friends.”

  “Where was your Aunt Kara in all of this?”

  “She moved to London, remember?”

  “Oh yes, that’s right.” He nodded.

  “She had no idea what was going on,” I said, eating again.

  “The way the allowance was set up,” Craig said, and all eyes shifted to him, “Jamie got her money at the beginning of the month and had to wait until the beginning of the next month for more. With the money going to drugs and nothing left over for food or a place to stay, she ended up in an apartment owned by Dalton George.”

  “I don’t understand how you were eating or going to school,” my father said to me.

  I shrugged. “I knew if anyone found out about Mom that I would get sent home and she’d be alone. You’re not that bright at sixteen, seventeen.”

  “Eli—”

  “Oh God,” I groaned. “You don’t know how many times I’ve thought that if I had just done something different

  that—”

  “You were a kid,” Craig cut me off, and I turned to look at him. “Your father was out of the loop, and you were taking care of your mother. None of it, as I’ve told you a million times, was your fault. None, zero. Do you understand?”

  Logically, I knew that, but there was still guilt that lived in me that I doubted would ever leave.

  “Look at me.”

  I realized my eyes were on my socked feet, and so I lifted my gaze to his.

  “Baby,” he murmured, reaching out to put his hand on my cheek, “you were just a child. You did what you could, you went to school, and you got a job as the graveyard clerk at a drugstore, you—”

  “How did you get a job working overnight?” Chase asked me.

  “Mr. Jun. He loved me.” I smiled over at him. “He knew I wouldn’t steal from him, and mostly he paid me in groceries. If anyone ever asked, I wasn’t actually working there, just watching it until whoever came back. I wasn’t on the payroll, so no one was the wiser.”

  “Jesus,” Lucas muttered under his breath.

  “Jake.”

  I looked back at Craig, and his hand slipped around to the nape of my neck as he leaned me forward and kissed my forehead.

  “Finish quickly, because it’s starting to make me sick.”

  The first time I’d told him, he had thrown up halfway through and been bawling by the time I was done. He had been sad for my mother, but more for me.

  “So.” I turned back to my father. “I fed her, I made sure she took a shower, I went to find her when she didn’t come home, but then Dalton came and explained what he wanted for the apartment.” I took a breath. “Mom had to let his friends party with her whenever he wanted.”

  “By party you mean have sex,” my father clarified.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” My father dragged in a breath. “Did she agree?”

  “The drugs, Dad.” I sighed deeply. “Of course she did.”

  “And what happened to you?”

  “Some days I had to sleep outside or over at friends’ houses or, in the summer, on the fire escape. And that was bad, but what I really hated was when I came home and Dalton was there waiting for me,” I said, raking a hand through my hair. “Mom would be passed out in her bedroom, drugged out of her mind, and he would be there, on the couch, having a beer, watching TV like it was his house and he belonged there. I mean, he was our landlord, but he didn’t live with us.”

  “Who was he?”

  “He worked for a guy named Miguel Trejo who ran drugs, was a pimp, and extorted money from the businesses in the area. The word was that Dalton was Miguel’s muscle.”

  “What a mess,” my father said.

  “It was.”

  He took a shaky breath. “What happened to your mother?”

  “Dalton killed her,” I told them all.

  “Why?”

  I took a breath, and Craig put an arm around me because he knew I was slowly starting to fray. He nuzzled his face into the side of my neck and pressed a kiss there. Just that much comfort allowed me to pull myself together.

  “Deep breath,” he whispered into my hair, squeezing so tight, letting me know I was safe and whole and loved. Letting me feel my body in relation to his and know that I was grounded.

  The last part was hard, the part I hated.

  One night while I was alone in the kitchen, I heard a key in the lock. Turning, I found Dalton and another man I didn’t know and my mother. She was passed out, but I was used to seeing her that way, and the way he was carrying her, tenderly, was nice.

  “Thank you for bringing her home.” I smiled at him.

  “You’re welcome, sweetheart.” He grinned back, walking her into the room, leaving me alone with his friend.

  The man was leering at me, making me uncomfortable. He said his name was Levi, and I nodded.

  “Thanks for coming with him,” I said, yawning. It was so late, after one in the morning on a school night.

  “No problem,” he assured me, crossing the tiny apartment to me. “You do a real good job looking out for your Mom. We all think so.”

  I nodded, so uncomfortable, my skin crawling. “Well, I’m going to bed. Dalton always lets himself out after he sees my mom.”

  “Sure,” he said, his eyes all over me as I walked by.

  When I was almost to my bedroom, Dalton stepped in front of me. “Did you meet my buddy Levi?”

  “I did. He introduced himself.”

  His eyes were raking over me from head to toe and back to my face. “Good.”

  I tried to walk by, but his hand went up on the wall, keeping me there. “Dalton?”

  He cleared his throat. “What would you give me to keep your mother safe?”

  The question was absurd, he knew my answer. “I would give anything.”

  “How ’bout you, sweetness? Can I have you?” Dalton pressed me.

  I had been terrified when he shoved me into the wall, his one big hand holding both of mine over my head, his big body pinning me. I could feel his erection against my groin as he wedged his knee between my legs, spreading them, his other hand tight around my throat. He tasted like beer and cigarettes when he shoved his tongue in my mouth to taste me. I pulled back and he slapped me hard across the face.

  “Don’t fight me,” he warned. “Just because you ain’t never been kissed.”

  But I had. The captain of the football team and I had been doing that for six months already. At seventeen, I knew who I was, knew I was gay, and I had consummated my lust with Isaac Dwyer a handful of times in the back of my pickup truck. We couldn’t tell anyone—he was the quarterback bound for college on a scholarship—but I didn’t care; I just wanted to kiss and have my dick sucked and rub against each other until we came in our jeans. But since I knew the difference between what I invited and what I didn’t, I squirmed and fought Dalton to no avail. The man was massive in comparison to me. I wasn’t expecting the hard slap across the face or the punch in the stomach that doubled me over before driving me down to the floor.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” he said to his friend Levi as I tried to get air into my lungs. “He’s prettier than she is.”

  He left me, shaken and scared, with the promise that he would be back.

  “I begged her to leave with me,” I told my father. “But she couldn’t, and I was never really sure that she believed me anyway.”

  “She should have, but then her son should have come first from the beginning,” he told me. “Without question.”

  “He was gone for two weeks,” I said, sighing, “and so I figured he was gone for good.”

  “But he wasn’t,” my father said, “was he?”

  The night I woke up with a man on top of me, another guy in the room holding me down, I thought that the fear alone would kill me.

  “J.”

  I looked up at Craig.

  “Just finish.”

  The details—how I had realized it was Dalton, how he had torn my clothes, how Levi had punched me in the face, held down my arms, how Dalton’s lubed fingers had been thrust inside of me, how many times he had bitten me and drawn blood—those didn’t need to be shared. Only the climax of the tale was crucial to my family, how events had unfolded once I was free.

  I didn’t need to tell them that I screamed as I rushed at Dalton, yelled out Mommy like I hadn’t done since I was eight. No reason to say, even in his grasp how her head had turned and I saw the love there, clear and true for the last time.

  I had flown at Dalton even as he’d brought the knife down and taken my mother from me forever. Why burden them with images of blood, of what her eyes looked like when they were empty, and what Dalton’s looked like when the knife was turned on him over and over. Rage was a devouring, monstrous emotion that I had never felt before or since.

 

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