Dex in Blue
Page 35
Dex nodded and bent down and kissed Kane’s temple. “Baby, I’m gonna go get Frances, okay? I’m going to be mean to your sister, though. Can you forgive me for that?”
Kane looked at him with one eye covered and one eye needy as hell. “Make sure the baby didn’t get hit, okay? It sounded like he was hitting her.”
Dex clenched his jaw and nodded. “I’m going to be a few hours. Don’t worry, Kane. I may fuck up in almost every other way on the fucking planet, but I’m not going to let you down with this one.”
Kane squinted at him. “Don’t go talking bullshit when my head hurts, Dexter. You ain’t never let no one down.” Kane closed his eyes then and groaned. “God, can we get to the part with the drugs? I hate to sound like a pussy, but this shit fucking hurts!”
The paramedic laughed a little and said, “We can start an IV once you’re in the back, okay, sweetheart?”
“Don’t call me sweetheart,” Kane grumbled. “That’s his name.”
Dex got under one shoulder and helped him up, thinking that Kane was cold and probably going into shock. Dex was fighting not to just howl and push himself into the ambulance with him. Oh God. Kane. They got him lying down on the stretcher, and Dex bent down over him and kissed him on the side of his mouth that wasn’t swollen (crap, it was all swelling!) and nuzzled his cheek.
“I love you, Carlos. You do me a favor and don’t give us any surprises while they’re running tests and shit, okay?”
Kane nodded foggily, and Dex jumped out of the back of the ambulance, and it was like jumping back into the world after being in a bubble in time. There were lights and people talking and even a news crew in the distance, and Dex wondered how they didn’t make it to Kelsey’s house and thought maybe Kelsey had just been lucky. This time the cops cleared for him as he made his way up to Fabiola, who was standing, angry and resentful, as two cops talked to each other next to her. The baby was doing that shudder cry thing, and Dex put his arms out for her so imperiously that Lola handed the little girl over without a qualm.
“Why’d he do that?” she demanded as Dex checked her over.
“She’s got a bruise over half her face!” Dex snapped. “Did you see it?”
“Hector hit her,” Fabiola said, that resentment still there. “We were fighting and she wouldn’t stop crying! And Carlos had to go try and stop him, and now Hector’s going to jail! He needs me to go bail him out!”
Dex looked at her, completely without words. All he could think of was business, so he went with that. “If you go down to get Hector out of jail, you’re leaving the baby with me, and I’m not giving her back. If you leave the baby with me, Kane is kicking you out. In two days, we’ll have all your shit on the lawn, and the baby’s shit will be at my place, and since you didn’t bother to forward his fucking mail, I’ll wager you don’t know where it is.”
For a moment, Fabiola just gaped at him. “You can’t do that!” she said, reaching out her arms, and Dex pulled back automatically.
“I’m taking her to the hospital,” he said, making sure the officers heard him. They had suddenly become very interested in what Fabiola was doing, and Dex thought he’d make that work for him.
“They’re not going to let you keep a baby!” Fabiola said, her voice rising. “You’re nasty! You and my brother and those movies—”
“We’re not in the movies anymore, Lola. Kane’s out of that life, so am I. And I own part of a business, and Carlos is in school. And he owns this house, and if you go down and bail Hector out, you can’t live here anymore. And we’re taking the baby.”
Lola turned her back. “Whatever!” she snapped. “You take her—you go make sure she’s healthy.” She ran into the house and came out with the car seat and a diaper bag full of clothes. “Here. You have her car seat, and her stuff—”
“You got a porta-crib?” Dex asked, and Lola ran inside to get that too. He wasn’t sure she realized the situation yet. He was taking her child, and he was going to make it legal. Kane actually had a copy of her insurance card in his pocket, and Dex knew a really good frickin’ lawyer. This baby wasn’t going anywhere with the guy who’d tried to cave Kane’s skull in, Dex was making damned sure of it.
While Lola was getting the porta-crib, Dex turned to the two officers. “Did you call the social worker?” he asked, and they looked at the baby and shook their heads.
“We didn’t even know he’d had a crack at the kid—we just saw your boyfriend there on the lawn.” The officer very gently looked at Frances, who was huddling into Dex’s arms, and Dex turned her face to the light. The guy nodded then. “Yeah, you’re right. It doesn’t look hard, but she caught one in the face. Poor kid.” The cop looked up and said, “We can call the social worker—it’ll take one about an hour to get here. Do you want them to meet you at the hospital?”
Dex nodded. “Would you be willing to put it somewhere official? That she was ready to leave the baby with me while she bailed that abusive fucker out of jail?”
The cop nodded and then said almost confidentially, “She can’t, you know. Once the social worker establishes that the baby was hit, those charges have to be pressed. And we saw the guy whaling on your boyfriend—he’s going to have to have a hearing before he gets released, and bail is going to be pretty high.”
Dex shook his head. “She’s not going back into that home,” he said fervently. “Kane paid too goddamned much for her to have to live with that.”
The cop nodded. He even helped Dex put the car seat in the truck while his partner called for the social worker, and then he and his partner carried the diaper bag and the porta-crib and loaded them in the extended cab.
Frances was asleep in the back of the cab before he pulled up in front of the hospital, and he knew enough to bring the diaper bag and the blanket to wrap over her in her little pink footy pajamas.
First there was the nightmare of the ER—but he told the doc what had happened, and after Frances got a brief examination, the doctor said she’d be fine as long as she got some rest and some calm in the next few weeks. Dex told him that there was a social worker on the way to make sure that happened, and told the doc he’d be in Kane’s room once he got directions.
He finally found the room and his breath caught. Kane was wearing one of those old cloth gowns, and it clung to all of his hard muscles, but that didn’t stop him from looking young and helpless when Kane had never looked young and helpless. He had a bandage over his eye and his cheek, and some of the blood was still seeping through. His shoulder was bandaged, and his forearm, and there was even a patch over his eye, because it had probably been bruised too. He was sleeping, and Dex pulled up the chair next to him and sat down in it with the baby on his chest, suddenly so weary he could barely move. He had to move, he reminded himself. He had to.
There weren’t any cell phone prohibitions anymore, which was a good thing because Dex had to pull the phone out and leave like six messages before he could rest. First there was the lawyer he’d recommended to Chase and Tommy, and it was a good thing Dex had his personal number because that guy was important. Then there was Kelsey and Ethan to make sure they were okay, and then there was Chase and Tommy, to see if they could help move Lola’s stuff out the next day and box it up. Then there was social services, to see if they could forward him custody papers in the morning, and then, finally, there was quiet.
He turned the phone off and sighed. He’d had just enough battery to make it through all that. He checked on Frances, who was breathing softly against his chest with her fat little mouth open. God, she was tiny. She should be bigger at three, but she wasn’t. That’s why Kane probably still thought of her as a baby. Dex, though, had seen kids grow, had seen his niece and nephew and his little sister and little brother. He knew she wasn’t a baby anymore. She needed a home that didn’t scare her, and she needed preschool, and she needed people who would listen to her, and she needed…
She needed what he needed. She needed Kane.
Dex adjusted h
er in his arms and moved the chair so the back was to the wall by Kane’s head and they would be the first thing Kane could see out of his good eye.
“’Kay, Frances,” he murmured. “Maybe a rest for all of us, what do you think?”
She woke up as he moved her, and sighed. “Unca Carlos?”
“Him too,” Dex said and made sure the blanket was wrapped around her shoulders and her head. “How ’bout you, ladybug? You want to come over to your Unca Carlos’s house and live with us?”
“Pets?” she asked hopefully, and Dex laughed.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe we’ll even get us a bunny.”
Around them was the whir of the hospital, but here, now that he was in the same room with Kane again, that curious bubble, the one that had covered them in the ambulance, that happened again. It felt like they’d worked really hard to make that bubble of peace, but damn, after this night? Dex felt like he and Frances and Kane really fucking needed that benefit. In fact, he was just going to close his eyes and listen to Kane’s breathing and have a little faith that the bubble would last.
The social worker woke him up gently, a sweet-faced young man in jeans and a sweatshirt who looked like he might want to help. Since Kane was still asleep, Dex stood up and put Frances down on the empty bed next to him, making sure her blanket was tucked around her shoulders and the stuffed bunny he’d bought her the week before—he’d found it in the diaper bag—was cuddled up under her chin.
They got outside the room and started to talk about the time Brent Cavanaugh, the lawyer, walked up. Brent was a solid looking Mid-Westerner with a long face and a reassuring smile, and together, Dex, the social worker and the lawyer, they had themselves a little powwow.
The social worker was looking a little bit hesitant by the time Dex was done, but Brent was looking fierce and excited. “She’s down at the jail now, right? Trying to bail him out?”
Dex shrugged, unutterably tired. “Yeah. As far as I know. Can you believe that?” he asked bitterly, because he still couldn’t. “She left me the baby. I was just wondering how I was going to persuade her, and suddenly she’s throwing shit out the front door and saying she’d get the baby back after she got Hector.” Dex remembered his own father backhanding him in the kitchen and telling him to get out. “How do you just do that to your kid? Do you think you get second chances?” Dex Williams hadn’t. They’d thought they’d have other chances to get it right, but they hadn’t. They’d only had the one, and it had been a good one, they’d made it count, but how many of those had they missed out on because they’d been afraid to make a move? How many perfect things did God give you in a lifetime? Dex had seen the fucked-up ones—he’d slept with the fucked-up chances. How many perfect ones did you really fucking get?
Gerry, the social worker, was still a little green. “Porn stars? Two gay porn stars?”
“Not anymore,” Dex said seriously. “We’re not shooting videos anymore. We still work for the company, but not like that.”
Gerry backed off and started mumbling, then looked up. “How do I make that look good for a judge?” he asked a little desperately, and Dex kept his temper.
“Tell the judge that Kane paid for the baby’s medical expenses with that job. Tell the judge that he supported his sister for the last six months with that job. Tell the judge that Kane moved out of his own house so Fabiola could have a safe place to live with the baby, and that Lola fucked it up by seeing Hector again. Tell the judge that Kane just got his ass beat with a crowbar to keep Hector from going inside and hurting the baby. You tell him what you got to, but you make the guy see that Kane and me, we got a home. That boy can take care of iguanas and snakes and shit you ain’t never thought of loving, and he can make them human. He can give that baby more love and more joy than she’s had in her entire life. He’s already paid his dues for her. Did you see the fucking bandages? Did you?”
Dex scrubbed at his face with both hands and wished Kane was awake and in there with him. Kane might not have said anything real important to the lawyer and the social worker, but he would have put his hand on the back of Dex’s neck and shaken him a little and said, “Take it easy. We’ll make this work.”
“Don’t you see?” he said into the sudden silence. “I know it’s hard, because his muscles are the size of a fucking building, but hasn’t he done enough good to look into his heart?”
Brent nodded. “I’m going to go try and find the sister. If she can sign the baby’s custody over, there isn’t going to be a hearing, and this will be moot. Can we do that, Gerry?”
Gerry looked troubled, but he nodded. “Do you two have commitment papers signed?” he asked suddenly, and Dex blinked.
“Like a wedding?”
“Just the papers. They make it legal. If you’ve got that, it will look better.”
Dex floundered for a minute, and Brent looked at him and smiled. “I can draw them up for you if you want, Dex. Were you two heading that way?”
“Heading that way?” Dex asked, touching his ring with his thumb. “We were there! We just… Carlos and me, we don’t do anything like the rule books, you know?”
Brent nodded like he’d figured this out. “I’ll draw those up, then. You can sign them when you sign the custody agreement, and that way, if anyone challenges it, you’re solid. Think Kane will go for that?”
Dex thought of Kane breaking that old cot at his parents’ house. “I think Kane would be perfectly fine with that,” he said seriously, and that seemed to be that. Dex shook their hands and went back into the room with Kane. It was two in the morning. He just wanted to put his head down for a minute. Just a minute. The space on the bed next to Kane’s body looked bright and shining, the grail from a quest, and he sank down into the chair next to the bed and folded his arms there to rest his head and felt like maybe, just maybe, all of his planning and his details and his ways to make the world right had finally, finally succeeded.
Kane
THE nurses kept waking him up, which sucked, but they were real considerate of Dex sleeping next to him. Being able to put his hand on the back of Dex’s neck and just hold him there was the one thing that let him feel comfortable in the hospital.
“Hey,” Dex said, turning his head in his arms but looking too tired and out of it to straighten up. “How you feeling?”
“Like I got hit with a fucking crowbar,” Kane grunted. “What in the fuck did they give me?”
Dex shrugged. “I have no idea, but you were out.” Suddenly he smiled—just a quick lip twitch, but it made Kane feel better to see it. “Maybe it was just a sugar crash from all that cookie dough.”
Kane smiled at him, thinking he was cute when he was funny. “Those were some awesome cookies. Hey—they’re still in the car; do you think they’re good?”
Dex kept his smile. “They’re still in front of your house. I don’t think we’ll find out.”
Kane wrinkled his nose. “Naw, you can go get ’em. Bring ’em back to the house for when I get out.”
“When are you getting out?”
Oh God, shaking his head hurt. “I don’t know. The nurse said they were going to wake me up every hour for the night—you didn’t even wake up the first three times she came by.”
That made Dex sit up and rub his eyes. “Oh God,” he mumbled. “So much to do.”
Kane reached out and grabbed his neck again. “Don’t go running off now, Dexter. Please?”
Dex’s attempt to go all busy seemed to melt, and he nodded and relaxed into Kane’s grip. Good. Dex knew how to make Kane feel in control. “Just trying to make sure our home’s in order, is that okay?”
“What’s to put in order?”
“Well, we’re moving Frances into it, for one thing, and I think that means that Ethan and Kelsey are gonna start paying rent on your place, because my place is too small and Scott knows where Kelsey lives, which means she’s gotta move.”
Kane squinted for a minute. “What about Lola?” he asked, and Dex sighed.
>
“I wish I could build a big old glass cage for your heart,” he said, and Kane opened and closed his eyes again and tried to wrap his head around that.
Dex took pity on him and explained it. “I don’t want you to get hurt, baby. This is gonna hurt. She was trying to bail Hector out. She can’t live there anymore. And Hector hit his own kid, and she let him. She doesn’t get Frances either. I’m sorry, Carlos. I called the lawyer and the social worker and everybody. If we can, we’re taking her home with us, and we’ll keep her. We can do that, right? I’m almost out of school, and we can get day care and shit. Something. She’ll be ours.”
Kane swallowed and nodded. Oh wow. Lola. His sister. He didn’t want to think about that pain yet. But Frances? Frances could come live with them? She could be safe, and Kane could see her every day? That part was good. That part was great. He felt an overwhelming gratitude then, because Dex didn’t have to do any of that, but he’d gone the extra mile again, just like when he’d made that special room for Tomas and the lizards.
“Yeah. ’Kay. Why are you doing this again?”
“Because I love you.”
Kane closed his eyes. He hated words. They were never enough. “I love you back.”
“Good, ’cause we’re having a commitment ceremony in a week.”
Kane’s eyes shot open. “As in the loony bin? Which one of us is going?”
Dex’s laugh sounded off somehow, but his grip on Kane’s hand was firm. “Me, if you ever pull that hero shit again. But no, this is like, the closest thing gay men get to married. We have a commitment ceremony and sign papers. I think we can have the ceremony at, like, a justice of the peace or something. Anyway, we’ll have legal papers signed and maybe have a big cake made, and people can come eat it at our house, and you know. Make a big deal out of it.”
Kane was trying to look really perplexed, in spite of the bandages and shit. “Why we doing that?”
One side of Dex’s mouth curled up. “You don’t want to do that?”