by Rhys Ford
Still, the food was good, cheap, and plentiful, something a family of five men appreciated even after being conned into running down the hill to get it.
“I got you a carnitas burrito with green sauce and sour cream. Yes, extra cheese.” Mace set the tray of food down in front of Ivo. “She’s going to bring out the Orange Bang in a bit.”
Ivo unwrapped his burrito, carefully peeling back the tortilla and exposing the shredded pork inside. Sweeping a fork back and forth to spread the dollops of sour cream around, he kept his eyes down. Mace was good at ferreting out things, digging in with a few choice words and a stubborn refusal to leave things alone. Ivo needed time to weed through the conflicting emotions burbling up in his brain and also to decide if he wanted to add more hot sauce to his burrito.
Sometimes the burn of a vinegary spiciness helped kick his mind into gear.
Ivo was still dosing his burrito when one of the kitchen workers dropped off their drinks. The creamy orange punch worked well with the carnitas, good for cutting through the heat he’d laid down on the meat. Rolling his tortilla back in tight, he folded the ends in, then tucked everything together, much to Mace’s amusement.
“You should work here if that tattoo thing of yours doesn’t pan out,” his older brother teased. “Although I suppose those degrees you’ve got in art are something to fall back on.”
“I want to get a doctorate someday if I can find a place that will let me do one on tattoos.” Again with confessing his secrets to Mace, and Ivo winced when his brother nodded, a smug look on his face. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
The others clashed with Mace more than he did. Except for Bear. Mace didn’t jab and dig at their oldest, but if anyone didn’t need motivation to move forward, it was Barrett “Bear” Jackson. He’d dragged them all up from the gutter himself, carrying most of the load until they learned how to walk and then run. Ivo hadn’t made it easy for them, and there were times when he was certain the other four would toss him out. But he’d been wrong. And now their second-in-command wanted answers to questions Ivo wasn’t sure he wanted to ask himself.
“Talk to me about the cop,” Mace said around a mouthful of carne asada and fries. “I know it’s that cop who came to the door and dropped you off that night when you snuck out.”
“I snuck out a lot of nights. That was just the only time shit went down and a cop had to bring me home.” He took a bite, then sucked the spill of juices from the side of his hand. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“Rob says otherwise.” Mace helped himself to one of Ivo’s pickled hot carrots.
“Rob should mind his own fucking business,” Ivo replied, waiting for his brother’s reaction to the unseen-to-him slice of habanero hitchhiking on the carrot he’d just tucked into his mouth. A heartbeat later, Mace was reaching for his drink. “That’s karma for getting into my shit.”
“I’m always going to get into your shit, so either you and I talk about it or I go hunt down that cop.” His older brother sucked in mouthfuls of air, trying to cool off the heat he’d ingested. “Detective Ruan Nicholls. I’ve got his card, remember? Rob said the guy hurt you. That he didn’t want to be seen with you in heels. That true?”
“Would you believe me if I told you your boyfriend’s lying?”
“Not really, because Rob not only likes you, but he respects you. He’s also got no reason to lie to me about this.” Mace chanced another carrot, examining it before biting into it. “Do I need to go break this guy’s legs?”
Ivo sighed. That was the reason he never felt comfortable bringing anyone home. There’d been others he’d flirted with, wondering if they would stick around long enough for his family to get attached to, but they’d always slid away for one reason or another. He hadn’t been ready to introduce Ruan to his clan, and now not only was the cat out of the bag, it was also on fire and his brothers were stumbling over one another to put it out.
He could talk to Mace. There was a trust between them that went in a different direction than with the others. He’d confessed many things to Mace, secret things he couldn’t tell Gus or Bear because they would want to carry his pain, and he sure as hell couldn’t talk to Luke about it for fear their quiet-but-dangerous brother would want to fix things.
Even when something just couldn’t be fixed.
“I like him. Ruan, I mean,” Ivo murmured. “I don’t know why, but he calms me. All of the noise and prickly shit inside of me calms down when I’m around him. I know he’s not perfect and he’s got shit he has to deal with, but I felt like I could breathe around him.”
“Until yesterday?” Mace asked, resting his elbows on the table, his food forgotten for a moment.
“Do you want to know what pissed me off yesterday? It wasn’t that he was uncomfortable about the heels. It was because I was going to say ‘Yeah, sure, I can wear the sneakers.’” Ivo blinked, caught off guard by the well of tears in his eyes. “It was like, just for a moment, but I was going to fold over, like who I am wasn’t as important as making sure Ruan felt comfortable. And I didn’t like that about myself. I was more pissed off about that than anything else because I was willing to do that.
“I get where he’s coming from. I do. I know the shit you got from some of the guys in your first house, and I don’t think it’s any different being a cop. Maybe it’s even worse. Probably? I don’t know,” he continued, picking at a shred of pork poking out of his burrito. “I told him to come back and talk to me once he figures out why he thought it was okay to tell me not to change my shoes, but mostly, I need some fucking time to get my head on straight. You and I both know people don’t just show up in your life perfect. If that were the case, then our family would’ve been a lot quieter and had a lot less fights.”
“God, that’s the truth,” Mace rumbled, grinning across the table at Ivo. “We’ve had some massive fights.”
“You guys kept telling me that sometimes you can argue and it’s okay to have those fights if you’re also fighting to get past it,” Ivo said, returning Mace’s smile. “I have to give him that chance to grow, just like you guys did for me. And I want you to listen to me really carefully here, okay? Because I need you to hear me, Mace.”
“Sure.” His brother nodded. “Whatever you need, Ivo.”
“I need the four of you to trust me. I need you to trust me that if things start to get too tight around me, I’m going to reach out for you and ask for help. I don’t think I’m going to need it with Ruan, but I don’t know.” The future was always shaky. Ivo knew that. He’d been steady on his feet for months, but sometimes the creeping darkness inside of him took over and he found himself staring back up at the sky from the bottom of a very deep pit. “I’ve already promised Bear and now I’m going to promise you—I’m not going to go upside down on this, so you don’t have to worry about me hurting myself. But if I do stumble, I’m going to tell you, okay?”
“I’m going to hold you to that, kid.” Mace looked away for a moment, but Ivo knew his brother well enough to see Mace needed to take a breath as well. Nodding again, Mace reached over, grasping Ivo’s wrist with his strong grip, and said, “Because we can’t—I can’t—lose you again. And if this Ruan guy is going to be around you, you’re going to have to tell him about the shit you’ve been through, because as strong as you are, as healthy as you are, you and I both know sometimes it sneaks up and grabs you. And if he gets past this uncomfortable thing, then he’s also going to have to be there for you when you need him. Because if he’s not, we’re going to chew him up and spit him out.”
Eleven
MONDAY MORNINGS were hard enough without nursing a slight hangover and nearly drowning himself walking out of the parking garage during a heavy rain, but Ivo pulled the short straw and was tagged to open the shop because Missy had come down with the flu. He liked getting in early. It meant a full pot of hot coffee brewed as strong as he liked and having the music blasting through the place as he readied the shop to be opened.
415 Ink was h
is second home. He’d done schoolwork in its office and learned the tricks of the trade in its art room from men and women who’d spent their entire lives inking skin. If anything, the shop was as much his baby as it was Bear’s, and he was fiercely protective of who worked there and anyone who’d come in to get a piece of their souls put on their body.
“Still,” he said to himself as he reveled in the emptiness of the space, “it’s damned fucking nice to be in here by myself.”
Halfway through stocking the paper towels, he caught his heel on a bubble in the concrete floor. It was stupid. He knew it was there. He’d tripped on it at least five times in a single week, but normally he caught his sneaker on the bump. Snagging a thin stiletto was a different story, and Ivo flailed to catch his balance. Years of walking in stilettos probably saved him, but Ivo was inclined to believe the rock-steady stall walls Bear built years before had more to do with him not falling on his ass or face than any skill on his part.
“Fuck. I better change my shoes before I kill myself,” Ivo grumbled. “Or with my luck, Bear will show up and catch me in them.”
He dragged out his old pair of Converses he’d stashed in his station and carefully limped over to the couch in the waiting area, trying not to think of Ruan and what had gone down between them the last time he’d worn a pair of shop sneakers. His ankle was a bit tender, but it didn’t feel too out of line, nothing a couple of hours of babying it wouldn’t cure. He’d just tossed the Converses onto the couch so he could sit and put them on when a loud knock rattled the front door of the shop.
It was the cop.
His cop. After going a full weekend without hearing a peep from the smoky-eyed, handsome detective, Nicholls was at his front door.
The shock of seeing Nicholls framed in the doorway wiped away any thought of the ache in Ivo’s ankle. Instead, other parts of his body clenched, uncomfortable and unsure. But at the same time, an electrifying excitement crackled through him.
Ruan had a few days of beard growth on his strong jaw, and the rain had dampened his dark brown hair and turned it almost black. He had on an ebony peacoat over a deep-gray button-down shirt, his coat collar turned up to protect his neck from the cold, biting wind, and his jeans were dark in spots from where the fabric soaked up a bit of water. Ivo couldn’t see his feet, but he guessed the cop was wearing the same pair of cowboy boots he’d seen him in before. His gray-green eyes were stormy, flinty hard, and his mouth was set into a firm straight line. His jaw tightened as he met Ivo’s gaze and he knocked on the door again.
“Open up,” the detective growled, pointing through the glass toward the doorknob. “I want to talk to you.”
“The shop doesn’t open until noon. You want to make an appointment, call and leave a message on the answering machine and somebody will get back to you as soon as we can,” Ivo replied as he took slow, deliberate strides toward the front door, his treacherous heels tapping on the floor. “I don’t know what everyone’s schedule looks like, but mine’s full up, so you’re going to have to go to somebody else.”
“I don’t want anybody else. Just you,” Ruan snarled at him through the glass pane and then glanced down at Ivo’s feet. “And answer me this, what the hell is it with you and those shoes?”
“I’m not going to open up if you’re going to yell at me.” Ivo leaned in to shout through the crack between the door and the jamb. “You sound pissed off. I don’t open the door for pissed off.”
“I’m not pissed off.” Ruan shivered, pulling the lapels of his coat closer together. “I just wanted to see you before I had to go to work.”
“Then stop using your cop voice,” he cautioned. Ivo unlocked and opened the door, then stepped aside to let Ruan in. “And don’t give me any shit. I’ve got to get the shop ready and do a long session in a couple of hours. I don’t need my head fucked up.”
The detective looked as if he was about to argue but thought better of it. He was hard to read, shuttered down and pinned up tight. Ruan didn’t come to the door with just his cop voice. He wore his authority and badge on his face and in his stride. There was very little of the man Ivo shared dinner with standing on the other side of that door, but when he looked closely, Ivo spotted a flicker of contrite apology in Ruan’s expression.
“I’m sorry.” Those words battled to get out past Ruan’s pride. Ivo didn’t have to be a mind reader to see that, but he was familiar with that kind of struggle. “This is hard. I knew you were going to be here, but I wasn’t sure if I was welcome.”
“Let me guess—you called the shop over the weekend and asked for the schedule,” he drawled, closing the door behind Ruan. “Remind me to beat the day shift about handing out information.”
“Don’t be too hard on them.” Ruan’s fingers brushed across Ivo’s thigh as he went by, leaving a subtle electrical spark behind. “I came by on Sunday morning, and I might have flashed a badge. I also might have intimated I needed to talk to you but didn’t want you to know I would be by.”
“Definitely beatings.” Ivo chuckled. “They’re supposed to take your name and number. We don’t give out people’s schedules even if the guy has a badge. You never know what crazy shit might go down.”
“Well, considering it was your brother Mace that I talked to, you might want to put on a few more pounds before you try to take him down.”
“Fucking meddling asshole,” he muttered, heading back to the couch. “And I can take Mace. He might be strong and fast, but I’ve got cunning and ruthlessness on my side. If you’re going to come in to talk, you might as well talk to me while I work.”
Ruan paced to cross the floor, seemingly drawn to the sneakers lying on the couch. A quick glance down at Ivo’s feet and his scowl turned into a grimace. Shaking his head, he inched his way between the couch and the coffee table, about to sit down. Then he hovered, a question in his eyes.
“Can this thing take my weight?” He nodded toward the table.
“Shit, I’ve had eight drunk housewives dancing on it. I’m pretty sure it can take your bony ass,” Ivo snorted. His ankle felt okay, but he wasn’t going to chance things, especially since the rain would mean slick wet floor and he’d learned that lesson a long time ago. Settling back down on the couch, he slipped off one of his heels and reached for his shoes. “Why are you here?”
“I wanted to talk about the other day, or at least start talking about it,” Ruan confessed softly.
He’d perched himself on the edge of the table, his elbows resting on his thighs and his hands clasped between his slightly spread knees. Ruan smelled too damned good for Ivo’s liking. There was so much about the world that overwhelmed him, and there were also things he gravitated to in order to peel off the frenetic energy he built up inside of himself. Citrus was definitely his weakness, and the detective came in smelling like fresh zest and the storm.
“So start talking.” He mildly regretted taking home the black sneakers and bringing in the red, mostly because he’d forgotten to swap out their laces. There was a knot at one end and he had to work hard to loosen it. “I’ve got stuff to do, and I haven’t had enough coffee.”
“Do you want me to get you some?” Ruan offered.
“No, because no matter what you say, you’re not going to stay long after it,” Ivo replied, softening his voice. “Because I’m going to need some time to think about things.”
“Fair enough,” the detective said, inclining his head. Ivo had to give Ruan credit because he met Ivo’s gaze straight on, not breaking eye contact as he continued. “I’m going to start off with an apology, but it’s for not stopping and thinking about what I said, not why I said it. I’m going to ask that you just listen and maybe I can explain where I was.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that.” Ivo sat back on the couch, his bare feet flat on the rug spread out beneath the table, his shoes forgotten by his side. “Am I really going to need that coffee?”
“Wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Ruan replied, picking up one of Ivo’s Converses.
“Why don’t you put these on and I’ll go get some from the back. I’m guessing there’s a fresh pot, because I can smell it from here.”
“Yeah, two creams and two sugars for me,” Ivo responded, working at the knot again. “You can use any mug except for the sippy cup. That’s Chris’s, and he’ll shiv anyone who uses it. Meanest fucking almost-four-year-old on the block. You don’t want to cross him.”
“Duly noted,” Ruan said with a smile. “I’ll be right back.”
THE COFFEE was damned perfect, and the silken glide of its sweet, creamy heat down his throat nearly made Ivo purr. It looked like Ruan took his black, something Ivo filed away in case he needed it for the future. He’d never really paid attention to how another man took his coffee. That was like expecting to wake up next to him in the morning, pouring out some brew to travel mugs while shoveling down a breakfast burrito before heading to work. It was too domestic, too treacly and happy for Ivo to contemplate. Still, he leaned over and sniffed at Ruan’s mug, trying to guess if he added sugar.
“What?” Ruan pulled back, then brought the coffee cup up to his nose. “It smells okay.”
“I was just wondering if you took sugar.” He held up his own mug, saluting the cop. “It depends on my mood, but this is usually good.”
“I’ll make a note of that. You take it like my partner, Maite. Although there are some days when she literally pours half a cow and ten pounds of sugar into it,” he said, then took a sip. Then he took another, savoring the brew. “This is a lot better than the stuff we have at the station.”
“I get it from a family plantation in Puna. I wanted something a little bit more than what I usually do today. Mondays sometimes suck.” Cradling his cup, Ivo said, “Thanks for grabbing the coffee, and now I’ve got my shoes on, so let’s do this.”
