Rend

by Roan Parrish

  “Okay,” he said, jaw tight. “Okay, I see.”

  We filled the basket, trying to choose the roundest, or reddest, or shiniest apples. I knew it had to be in my head, but the apples Rhys picked from high up really did taste sweeter, feel smoother in my mouth. Rhys grinned when I admitted it, and I rolled my eyes.

  His phone rang as we finished filling the basket. Caleb.

  “Hey, I can’t believe I have reception. I’m in the middle of an apple field. Ha ha, asshole. Yeah. Yup, he’s here.”

  Then there was a silence that I assumed was Caleb giving Rhys a pep talk about me. I kicked at the grass, then caught Rhys’s eye and pointed to the apples. He looked puzzled, and I waved him away.

  I texted Theo, Want some apples?

  Yeah! Theo wrote back. What kind?

  It had said on the marker near the entrance to the field, but I hadn’t paid attention.

  Idk apples. I bet caleb can make hash out of them.

  Theo sent back the green pukey face emoji, and Rhys hung up the phone.

  “Sorry, what about the apples?” he asked, and I held up my phone so he could see the text exchange. “Oh, good idea. The picking apples part is fun, but I have no clue what we would do with all of them. I guess people make pies and applesauce and stuff. Hey, we could probably make applesauce.”

  “I like applesauce.”

  “Seems pretty hard to mess up,” Rhys said, optimistic as ever.

  “That’s what your mom said about macaroni and cheese,” I grumbled.

  Rhys laughed. He tugged me toward him and kissed me, bending me backward in the orchard like a Hollywood starlet, his mouth tasting of autumn.

  Chapter 12

  After we’d gotten married at the courthouse, we had been giddy, giggling like children and kissing every thirty seconds. We’d stopped at the liquor store and bought a bottle of cheap champagne, then gone back to Sleepy Hollow. I’d only been to the house a couple of times, then. We’d stumbled upstairs, pulling each other’s clothes off, but when we collapsed on the bed, Rhys went still and just looked at me for a long time.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  He smiled the sweetest smile and nodded.

  “I can’t believe you’re my husband,” he murmured, his voice reverent. “I can’t believe it really happened.”

  A rush of joy went through me that I’d never felt before, and I grinned, the word husband coursing through my veins with each beat of my heart.

  “You happy?” I asked, leaning in.

  “So happy, Matty. So fucking happy.”

  “Me too,” I murmured. I hadn’t even known I could be that happy. I made a move away from him. I was just going to kick my pants the rest of the way off, but Rhys grabbed my arm.

  “Don’t leave me,” he said. It was so fast and so quiet that I thought I imagined it for a moment. But the expression on Rhys’s face—raw, embarrassed, scared—attested to it.

  “I’m not. I’m just taking off my pants.”

  “No, I mean—” He shook his head. “Sorry, nothing.” But when I kept looking at him, he said, “I’m afraid this is a dream, and I’m going to wake up and things will be back to how they used to be.”

  I knew the feeling. I shook my head and kissed him. “Not a dream.”

  “You’re mine,” he said, half statement and half question.

  “I’m yours,” I said. “Legally, even.”

  “My husband.”

  I nodded. “Your husband.”

  Rhys moaned and adjusted himself, and I looked down to see his erection.

  “And you’re mine,” I said experimentally. “My husband.” I watched his cock jump against his stomach. He whimpered and gave me a look like he was shocked by the intensity of his reaction. By how much he loved the certainty of us belonging to each other, how much it turned him on. How much it turned both of us on.

  “Wow,” I said. He was hot and silky in my hand, and as I stroked him, I whispered Yours in his ear, and felt him come apart in my arms.

  * * *

  —

  To my surprise, applesauce really did appear to be hard to ruin. Rhys had googled it, and it seemed like the only mistake we could make would be burning it, so I put Rhys in charge of stirring and myself in charge of tasting.

  “Will you tell me about what happened after you left your aunt’s house? I know you lived with different families, but you never said why you didn’t stay with any of them.”

  This would hurt Rhys. I knew it would. But he’d asked for no more lies and I’d promised.

  “The first place I went, after I was there a few months all the kids got removed. The guy was…doing stuff to some of them. Not me,” I said quickly at Rhys’s horrified look. “The girls.”

  Rhys bit his lip and nodded. He stirred the applesauce carefully.

  “The next one was a temporary placement. Just a couple weeks. I don’t really remember it there.”

  Dark painted walls and a couple of cats whose fur would make tumbleweeds in the corners. Sad kids. Sad woman. Or was it two different places? I couldn’t quite remember.

  “Then it was this older couple that was very clean, and they were thinking of adopting. It was only me and this other boy who kinda looked like me there, and it felt like an audition. I saw a picture of the couple with another boy who looked like us. Their real son, I guess? I hated it there. They creeped me out. I didn’t want them to adopt me. So I acted bad so they’d get rid of me.”

  Being the replacement for the son they actually wanted was even worse than not being wanted at all.

  “Then there was a super religious old couple, and a lot of us who got there at the same time. Everything smelled like mothballs, and they talked about being chosen by God for a mission of redemption, and I didn’t know what it meant, but they watched us like they were waiting for a sign.”

  “Is that…normal?” Rhys asked.

  I shrugged. I’d heard so many stories that normal wasn’t even a word I thought to apply.

  “The last one was Mrs. Muldoon.”

  Her hair smelled like coconut oil and her clothes like lavender.

  “She was really nice. She gave me Popsicles cuz when I got there I was freaked out and eating made me puke. She told me it was okay. She had her real son, Franklin, and then three other foster kids besides me. And Franklin hated me, I guess. I don’t know why. He just messed with me all the time. Shoving me when I passed by him or hiding my shoes. Stupid kid stuff. But after a few months it got worse. He, um. Peed in my bed. Mrs. Muldoon was real nice about it, telling me that it happened and when we get scared our bodies do all kinds of things.”

  “Did you tell her it was him?” Rhys asked.

  I snorted. “No way. He was her real son.” I could see Rhys, his childhood governed by fairness and love, about to argue, so I went on. “He started shoving a little harder and then pinching me. It just got worse. One day he slammed me against the wall and my head hit. It started bleeding. I told Mrs. Muldoon I got in a fight at school. I ended up telling her that a lot.”

  Rhys was stirring the applesauce so vigorously it was splashing over the sides of the pot and hissing as it hit the stove. It hurt my stomach to see him hurting for me.

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  Rhys ground his teeth and shook his head. “I want to hear everything.”

  “One night I was reading a comic book that Marcy leant me—one of the other kids. Franklin grabbed it from me, and the cover ripped. I got mad cuz I’d promised Marcy I’d take care of it. I told him he should buy her a new one, and he laughed at me. I kinda…shoved him, I guess. And he…beat the shit out of me. Way worse than before. It was like all that time he’d just been waiting for an excuse. I was a mess. Busted lip, broken nose, cut on my head that needed stitches, broken arm. Mrs. Muldoon came home when he was kickin
g me in the stomach. She took me to the hospital, and the next day I went to St. Jerome’s.”

  I’m sorry, she’d said, brown eyes full of pain. I’m so sorry it has to be this way.

  “How old were you?” Rhys’s voice was rough, his eyes so very hurt.

  “Twelve.”

  “How old was Franklin?”

  “Seventeen.”

  Rhys turned off the stove and moved slowly toward me. He dropped to his knees in front of my chair. “Can I…” He gestured like he wanted to hold me.

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  “I’m not.”

  I hugged Rhys as tight as I could. His breath was thick, and I could feel his tears against my neck. I squeezed him even tighter as he cried. When he pulled back, his eyes were red, making the blue glow eerily.

  “I can’t stand the thought of anyone hurting you,” he said, petting my hair. “I want to kill everyone who ever laid a hand on you.”

  Looking into his fierce eyes, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that punches and broken bones hurt a hell of a lot less than the things he couldn’t punish people for.

  I leaned in and kissed him, kissed the salt from his lips. He was holding my arms hard enough to bruise, but I didn’t pull away.

  “It’s okay,” I said and kissed him again, trying to soothe him.

  “It’s not okay, Matty!”

  “No, I know, I just meant…I didn’t mean it like that. Just meant I’m okay, I guess.”

  “But…you’re not. You’re not okay, are you? And you didn’t want me to know.” His voice broke, and I wished for some magic word I could say to erase my past.

  “I’m…a lot better with you.”

  I pulled Rhys off his knees and went to taste the applesauce. “Needs more sugar,” I said.

  “You think everything needs more sugar.” But he added more, turned the heat to low, stirred it, then left it to simmer as we went to sit in the living room.

  “So that’s when you met Grin? When you got to St. Jerome’s.”

  “Yeah. He was there for two years before me. I met him on my first day.” I’d told Rhys all about Grin. He was the only consistently good thing in my life, really, before I met Rhys. I’d just never told him how we met because I hadn’t wanted him to hold it against Grin.

  “These kids convinced Grin to trip me at dinner. He was small for his age, got picked on a bit, so he did it to make them like him or whatever. My food went everywhere. In my hair, on the floor, all over me. And I had my left arm in a cast, so I kinda twisted and rolled when I fell. The other kids at his table thought it was hilarious. Grin hadn’t seen my cast when he tripped me. He felt awful. Instead of giving me shit and laughing like the other kids, he helped me clean up the food. Gave me his mashed potatoes since mine were all splattered. He said he took one look at me and knew I needed a friend.”

  “I’m glad you had him.”

  I nodded. I was pretty sure without Grin I wouldn’t have made it out of St. Jerome’s alive. I was pretty sure my own mind would’ve turned on me in ways I couldn’t take back.

  “You, um…” Rhys rubbed his mouth, uncharacteristically reticent. “You always told me Grin went to Florida because of a job, but the other night you said he went to Florida because of you. Were you two…?”

  “No. No, I fucked up.”

  I felt my ears go hot at the thought of that horrible day. For years, Grin and I had been inseparable. In St. Jerome’s and after. And I’d never thought of him that way. I’d noticed he was cute—how could I not? But I thought of him like a brother, really. He knew I was gay and seemed fine with it. I knew he never talked about sex or crushing on anyone, and I was fine with that.

  “I hate thinking about it. It was about a year after St. Jerome’s. We were living together with three other guys in this tiny walk-up in Chinatown. It was an awful apartment, and I was working this shit copy-shop job that took forever to walk to. Grin couldn’t get a job. Two of our other housemates didn’t have jobs. We scrambled every month to scrape together rent. It wasn’t a great time.”

  The thrill of being free of St. Jerome’s, of being on our own, had been intoxicating for the first few months, but as the reality of what our lives were going to be like set in, the thrill had worn off.

  “One night I had a bad day at work. Stupid shit, but by the time I got home I was in such a foul mood. I grabbed a book and went to go read in Columbus Park. Grin came and found me, and he bought me an ice cream cone. A vanilla soft serve. He was so broke, man, but he bought it for me, and he wouldn’t take even a bite. We walked around, shooting the shit, whatever.”

  It was dark and Grin had smiled at me and I felt so impossibly grateful that I had him in my life, that I’d met him, that he’d befriended me.

  “I don’t know. I was upset and he said, ‘It’s gonna be fine. It’s all gonna be fine.’ And I…I kissed him. It was so stupid. He was horrified. I ran away. Like actually ran. I apologized a hundred times and then I ran and I walked all night so I didn’t have to go home and see him.”

  The shame of it still burned low in my belly and in my cheeks. I had felt like filth. Like a predator. Like a monster.

  “The next week he left for Miami. Some friend of some random uncle had a job for him. It was supposed to be temporary, seasonal work, but he never came back.”

  “You kissed him because you cared about him, babe. It happens,” Rhys said.

  I shrugged. “I guess. But it was…wrong. Unfair. I don’t think Grin really likes people that way. It was selfish.”

  “Have you talked to him about it since?”

  I shook my head.

  “He knew just where you’d be. Last night. When I came home and found your phone, I called Grin. It was strange to talk to him. I’ve heard so much about him but never heard his voice. When he answered he thought I was you. You were right, he sounds like he’s smiling.”

  I nodded. I’d texted Grin that morning to tell him I was alive.

  “I told him you’d taken off and I couldn’t find you. He gave me a street address like he was looking right at you.”

  I looked down.

  “Did you…talk to him about stuff? When I was gone? About how you weren’t doing so well?”

  I shook my head. “Not exactly. I just told him I’d started going back there. He told me to stop. He knew where it was cuz I used to go there before sometimes. After St. Jerome’s.”

  I pushed off the couch and went to the kitchen, where I guzzled a glass of water. Then another. Something smelled off.

  Rhys came into the room. “I think…Did we fuck it up?”

  Rhys grabbed my shoulders, his eyes blazing. “No way. We did not fuck it up. We are going to be happy. You are. I’m going to make you so fucking happy, baby, I swear.”

  I choked out a laugh, and Rhys looked stricken.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Sorry. Thank you. I just…I meant did we fuck up the applesauce. I think it’s burning.”

  “Oh shit.”

  Rhys turned off the stove and grabbed for the spoon.

  The applesauce at the bottom of the pot was definitely burnt. The stuff on the top looked okay. I tasted it, and it had a little bit of a smokiness to it, but that was okay. Rhys tasted it and immediately spat it into the sink.

  “No?” I said.

  “Ugh!”

  I shrugged. “ ’S fine for me. I’ll eat it.”

  Rhys shuddered, but scooped the top half of the applesauce into a Tupperware and left the pot to soak.

  “Cooking sucks,” I said.

  Rhys sank back onto the couch, caught my wrist, and pulled me to kneel on the cushion between his knees.

  “I want to know where you’ll go,” Rhys said fiercely. “I want to be the one who knows those things.”

  My heart beat a little faster at
the heat in his eyes, the command in his voice.

  “You’re mine. And I’m yours. Do you get what that means to me?”

  I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Tell me.”

  His eyes darkened, and he held me by the hips.

  “It means I’ll tell you anything—everything. Anything you want to know. Because you’re my husband. Because we’re partners. And it means you can tell me anything. You can, Matty,” he insisted. “I can take it, I swear.”

  “Say it again,” I said. “Husband.”

  “You’re my husband. I’m yours.” His voice was only a whisper but he infused the words with a dark intimacy that made me shiver.

  “Will you show me more of that?” I asked. I kissed his throat. “That possessiveness.” I kissed his jaw, and he held me closer. “I know you feel it more than you let on.” I brushed my lips over his ear. “I can feel how hard it makes you every time.” I trailed my fingers between us and, yes, his cock was a bulge in his pants. “So hot,” I whispered.

  Rhys dragged my mouth to his and kissed me. “Yeah?” His eyes burned into mine, and I nodded. “I don’t want to…” He gestured between us. “Ever force you. I know you like it when we’re in bed, but I was…I didn’t want to cross any lines.”

  “I like it,” I said quickly. “I want to see it. I want to see all of it. It makes me feel, I don’t know. Safe. Like if I actually do belong to you then you can’t…you won’t. You might not…”

  “Leave you.”

  “Yeah.”

  He stroked up and down my spine. “You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he said, voice low.

  “Just for the truth. Same as you’re asking from me.”

  “I don’t know if you’ll like the truth of it,” he said.

  “I was pretty sure you would hate mine.”

  “I’m afraid it’ll scare you away.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll scare you away.”

  Rhys snorted. “Okay, well, I guess that’s fair.” Then he softened and ran the backs of his fingers over my cheek. “You won’t, though. I’m not going anywhere. Okay?”