by Rhys Ford
“Yeah, you know where I’d like to put those for you?” Angel exhaled, somehow folding in on himself. He blinked, fighting the shimmer in his eyes. “I don’t need this, West. I can’t fight you. I don’t have the money to fight you. And I’m too busy trying to figure out who the hell is trying to fuck me over, and the only name I’m coming up with is yours. So yeah, I kind of would like to know what the hell you’re doing here because you’re the last person I want to see right now.”
“I can make this go away, Ange.” West swore, his mind racing. He had no idea what Angel was talking about, but a few phone calls—reaching out to a couple key people—and he could change everything for Angel. “Just give me some time. Half an hour, tops, and I can fix so much of this.”
“I don’t know if I trust you, Harris.” Angel wiped at his face with his sleeve. The tears were more evident now, heavy on his lashes, but not yet fallen. He wiped again, catching them this time. “Fuck.”
It hurt to see the pain in Angel’s eyes. The anguish dug its claws into West’s throat, and he reached out to touch Angel, to hold him, to do something to fix every broken thing in his life, maybe even Angel himself. West’s fingers barely brushed the other’s shoulder when Angel jerked back, putting some distance between them.
“Don’t.”
It sounded more like a prayer than a curse, needy but strong, but Angel’s strangled plea broke West apart, shattering him with a single hot shot to his heart.
“Finish up here and let me use your phone.” West leaned heavily on his cane, silently cursing the doubt in Angel’s face. “Trust me. By the time you come up for air, I’ll have everything fixed.”
ANGEL WORKED his last batch of batter, a cinnamon-and-nutmeg-spiced acorn-squash muffin he’d planned for his baker to fill with caramel and mascarpone. He’d already written out the instructions for the morning crew and was trying not to listen to West’s soft baritone through the kitchen door. Stalling wasn’t going to do him any good. Running away never solved anything. He knew that. If he hadn’t learned that from watching his father burn every bridge behind them, he certainly understood once he’d taken Roman in.
A final swipe of a wet towel on the counter, a locked back door, and Angel was ready to face the demons waiting for him in the front of the bakery.
One demon, to be exact. A blue-eyed, sharp-featured wickedness he could still taste on his tongue, even after two days of anger and soured feelings.
“Fucking asshole,” Angel spat, throwing the towel into the sink. “And fuck you for showing up here. Easier being pissed off at you if I can’t see you. Asshole.”
With the soft lights from the dining room’s chandeliers dimmed and the rolling shades stretched down across the storefront windows, the space went from a cheery place to have a cup of coffee to something more… intimate.
He did not need intimate. What he needed was a pot of coffee, maybe some actual food, and to kick West Harris’s ass.
But he’d settle for the coffee.
“You want some?” Angel held a cup up for West to see, but the man was elsewhere, lost in a sea of buzzwords and low rumblings.
One arm slung over the back of the velvet couch and his button-up gray shirt undone to his chest, West looked more like an ad to sell fine imported whiskey than the boy he’d made laugh hard enough to squirt orange soda out his nose. The West Harris he’d known back then never wore jeans, didn’t own a T-shirt, and had never eaten a hot dog slathered with mustard while sitting on the beach. By the end of the summer, Angel’d lost half of his wardrobe to the lanky young man he’d fallen for and all of his heart.
He’d gotten back most of his T-shirts, but his heart seemed lost forever.
“Harris, you’re such a dick,” Angel muttered at the banged-up French press he’d pulled out from under the countertop. “I don’t even know if he drinks coffee. Probably needs to be the kind you pick out of cat shit.”
It’d been a little over an hour since West took the bakery’s phone over, hardly enough time to do anything, or so Angel thought. Tomorrow morning would be the first time they’d fire up the oven, and he’d promised to be at the back door if his baking crew needed him, but there’d been little sleep over the past couple of days, and he didn’t think he’d last until Roman came home from the movies, much less wake up at 3:00 a.m. Extra strong coffee seemed like his best bet, and a shot of sweetened condensed milk wasn’t going to hurt either.
“I don’t think you quite understand what I am telling you.” Tucking the phone into the crook of his neck, West took the cup Angel offered him with a tight smile and a nod at the seat next to him, as if giving Angel permission to sit down. Grimacing when Angel flipped him off, he listened for a moment to the person on the line, then sighed heavily. “Let me explain this to you. If that lawsuit hasn’t been pulled by the time I wake up tomorrow morning, someone else’s name is going to be on your office door. I’m going to set my alarm for 8:00 a.m., and I’ll be on the phone with you at… let’s say eight-oh-five so I have time to brush my teeth. Do we understand one another?”
West took a sip of the coffee, then gagged, shooting Angel a filthy look. “What is this, Daniels? Satan’s breast milk? No… no… I’m not talking to you. Just get this taken care of and make sure you get back to me about the weapon. Or better yet, if you can’t get a hold of me, talk to Marzo. Just get someone on it. I’ll touch base with you in the morning.”
“Can’t handle the coffee?” Angel said as West shoved the phone at him, then headed behind the counter with his cup. “Need to water it down?”
“This isn’t coffee. It’s… dear God, it’s on my tongue. I can’t get it off.” West poured some of the coffee down the sink, then eyed the industrial coffee machine on the counter. “Does this hot water spigot work?”
“Yes.” Angel shook his head, then took a sip. “Wimp.”
The brew was potent, syrupy, and despite the creamy milk he’d added, much darker than he normally made it. The zing hit a second later, and he sighed, slouching down into the couch. West came back around the counter, stepped over Angel’s outstretched legs, then settled back into his seat. He had the decency to wait until Angel was a quarter way through his coffee before he cleared his throat.
“The suit’s going to be pulled—”
“Yeah, I heard you threatening that guy.” Angel’s stomach rumbled, a sour mess of tension. “You can’t threaten people who work for you. Makes you kind of an asshole, and they’re just doing what they’ve been told to do. The question is, who told them to sue me?”
“That is a question I have no answer for, but I have an idea.” West put his cup down on a table. “You and I… we need to talk.”
“About a whole bunch of shit,” he agreed. “I just don’t know if I want to. Or even where to start.”
“Do you want to talk about now?” West’s sharp inhale startled Angel. “Or then?”
“Now would be quicker.” Angel looked into his cup. “I don’t know if there’s enough coffee in the world for then.”
“Now is pretty easy,” West said, leaning forward until he filled Angel’s view. “I’m getting the lawsuit dropped. That I can do now. I have to look into the plans for the motel. I’ve been letting Derry drive that development because… you and I? We’re complicated. I can’t have complications between me and business.”
“Seems like that’s a common thing with you.” Angel was surprised at how the bitterness in him drowned out the bite of coffee lingering on his tongue. “That’s what I was to you? Back then? Just another complication?”
He could still hear the cold in West’s young voice when he’d been tossed aside, his lifeline to a normal existence snapped away with a careless thrust of words and disdain. He’d been waiting for that moment when he could reach out and grab West’s hand, needing so desperately for West to yank him back to Half Moon Bay. It’d been the only thing he’d ever dreamed of asking someone, the only time he’d trusted someone to save him.
The one
instance in his entire life when Angel’d placed his heart and soul into someone else’s hands, only to find himself swinging in the wind, his neck ripped to shreds by a noose of his own making.
“You want to start that, then?” The overhead lights caught the blue in West’s inky hair, doing strange things to his hawkish face. “Because we can, if you want. I can hold off on everything about the cops and that damned gun they think belongs to you and just start that discussion we should have had back at the house before some asshole shot up my front porch.”
“Yeah, let’s do that, then.” Angel hoped he didn’t throw up every drop of coffee he’d pounded down that day or if he did, at least aim for West’s custom-tailored pants. “Why don’t we start with you telling me to fuck off? Right when I needed you the most. Because after you hung up on me and walked away from us, my father fucked me up so bad, it took five months before I even remembered you existed.”
Eight
OUTSIDE, NIGHT tapped at the bakery’s windows, her dark veil settling a lacework of shadows and blues over the front room. The dark was comforting, muting the glare of light probing through Angel’s heart. He didn’t want to breach the fractures he’d spackled over. It was going to hurt. There never seemed to be enough time to heal, to dig out the rot inside of him and let his ravaged soul scar over.
Damn West Harris for opening that door, on a night when he’d not been ready to lose his mind over a pair of blue eyes and a wicked mouth he used to love teasing smiles out of. That mouth looked rusted over, bereft of kisses and joys, and strangely, Angel was more afraid of wanting those lips to curve up, of needing to taste West every morning and each evening until the night no longer slithered off the horizon and both of them turned into ash.
It was the high end of stupid to want a man just because they’d loved as boys. It was a stupid Angel couldn’t afford, not with Roman, and certainly not with his frantic, parched life, but Angel knew he’d embrace whatever shit storm came his way if West gave him even the slightest of nods.
“Talk to me, Angel,” West whispered. “What happened? Between us. Because of us. Something happened.”
It was like the years between them never happened and they were once again on the sands, staring out at a glassy sea and murmuring secret dreams neither ever whispered softly to themselves, frightened to death of the overwhelming hunger they had inside of them. Despite their past, Angel’s heart opened, and the sewage he’d mucked in came pouring out, drowning him in the stink of faded pain and torn time.
“He broke me… my dad.” His whisper slammed into the silence, pounding at its flatness until it shattered under the bleakness in his voice. “He tried to beat me to death that night. Or close to it. Right after you hung up on me. I think… he would have killed me… if his friends hadn’t stopped him.”
The velvet under Angel’s clenched fists rubbed at his knuckles, rasping at his skin. His heart broke a little with each beat, his body aching with the memory of the beating he’d gotten that day. He could still hear the crack of his jaw as it gave way under his father’s fists, the crinkle of his hand when he’d thrown it up to shield his face, only for his father to grab his wrist, hold his arm against the filthy, cheap motel carpet, then stomp on it with his heavy boot.
The beating came at him during the oddest of times. The crackle of a plastic tub echoed the breaking of his collarbone, and his body would jerk, recalling the shock of bright, sharp pain along his chest. Swallowing the thick glut of his own blood for seemingly endless hours made it difficult to taste the batters, the smooth texture a mocking parody of the bitter metal taint he’d had on his tongue for months afterward. The violence was nothing new, but that night—that singular night—the occasional slap or punch to his face or ribs became a horrifying storm of startling, brutal anguish.
“My dad was angry because….” It was hard to find the words from that maelstrom so many years ago. So many things were shouted, hateful and hurtful spits of rage nearly as damaging as the fists tearing him open. “Hell, West, I can’t even—I was crying so damned hard. I hurt so much, and when I turned around, it was like he had to make my body feel what I felt inside of me.”
“Did he know you were gay?” West ventured. “Before then? I can’t stand that he hurt you, Angel. I can’t. God….”
Angel couldn’t look at him. There was something raw in West’s voice, something trembling on a razor’s edge, and if he was going to get through what he needed to be said, Angel knew he couldn’t look at West. Not if he was going to hold himself together. The lump in his throat didn’t get any smaller when Angel swallowed.
“No, not before then. Maybe? He sure as hell knew then.” It was a fog of pain and memory brambles, too many confusing lines to follow out of the labyrinth of his father’s rage. He’d been hit before he could figure out what his father’d been shouting at him. In the end, the why of the pain didn’t matter. He’d only wanted it to stop. “Dad didn’t give a shit who fucked what. Shit, he’d been trying to hook me up with… anyone… before you. Said I was old enough to party with them. A couple of guys, a few women. Fresh meat, he’d say like it was a joke when they were all drinking, but you could tell, some of them were serious. He was serious. Like he’d make a score if I slept with someone.”
“You were a kid.” Horror and shock did a quick battle in West’s expression before indignation wiped it all away. “You were a goddamned kid. And his kid. You were innocent, damn it. We didn’t even do anything.”
“It wasn’t like I was a virgin when we met, you know? I did some things, West, things I don’t want to do again, but I knew what I was getting into. Not everyone can say that.”
It was too hard to talk. There were too many things he’d simply done because he had to, too many people and lies Angel tried to bury. Roman standing on his doorstep with bruises on his face and shadows in his eyes brought it all back to life.
And West feeling remorse oddly wasn’t helping Angel hold himself together.
“So they pulled him off of you?” West moved closer, chasing away the numb coldness seeping into Angel’s limbs. “Why did he do it? Did he tell you that? If he didn’t care about you liking guys, why did he hurt you?”
“Dad—he needed me back then. Needed me for his cons, for his deals. Some things are easier to work if there’s two people. Better if it’s a kid because no one thinks a kid’s going to rip them off. There was no chance in hell he was going to let me go. I knew that, but… I needed to get out of there.” Angel stretched his legs out, feeling the hitch in his hip where it hurt sometimes if it was cold. “He was pissed off I fell in love. Maybe scared because I was planning on leaving. I don’t think he gave a shit if you had a dick or not. I was trying to get out. I needed to get out because he was getting pretty bad. I just didn’t know how bad he was going to get.”
“No one should have to go through that,” West growled. “Shit. Angel, I’m… sorry.”
“I woke up angry, you know?” Angel felt… small… again. Folded up inside of himself and broken, the spark of pain he’d tried to extinguish since he’d woken up still tasting his blood and the powdery grit of bone on his tongue. “In that hospital bed. No fricking clue where I was or how I got there, but I was angry.
“It took me a few months—five, maybe—to finally remember who I was so mad at.” He sucked in the room’s spiced air, a far cry from the icy wind he’d been standing in the day he recalled West’s hard young voice clipping the thread connecting them. “It wasn’t like I didn’t remember everything. More like I was in a fog. Then I’d blink, and it’d be a few weeks later. Everything moved weird, but the one thing I knew for sure, it hurt to remember you. I kept seeing your face, and I knew I loved you. Then one day I heard a click and everything came back to me. The call. How I felt. Everything.”
“Your father….” West’s anger sparked, a hot outrage flaring to life in his eyes. It caught along his body, stiffening his bones and muscles until he thrummed, a rigid statue of cold beauty and se
aring rage. “Angel, I didn’t—”
“You wanted to know, West, then you’ve got to listen.” He cocked his head, warning West off when he reached to hold Angel’s hand. “If I feel you on me, I’m going to break apart, so… don’t. Because that’s what you’ve done to me. I’m… thin… like sugar or glass. So just… for right now, okay?”
His words hung between them, flightless lead balloons tossed up in the hopes a zephyr would pick them up and make them fly. Angel knew they’d plummet to the ground and shatter. Like he’d done, like he still was doing, but this time West caught them up and held his words—held him—with a soft smile and a graceful nod.
“Okay.” West nodded, holding his hands up. “But where did you go? Why didn’t you try to call me again? What did the cops do?”
“What do you mean where? I went back to my dad. Where else was I going to go?” Angel canted his head, studying West’s expression. The cluelessness in his ocean-blue eyes was nearly as funny as the question he’d asked. The space between them, how they’d grown up and who they’d become, stretched out, the deep gap becoming a chasm. “There were no cops, dude. There was no one to take me somewhere else. It was an ER, an IV, and a story my dad wove about how I’d been jumped outside of a bar looking for a guy to fuck me.
“Only reason he took me in was because he could score some pills out of the deal—don’t look at me like that. It’s a pretty common con. A couple of punches to my face and a trip to Urgent Care usually could score about two hundred bucks in drugs.” Angel’s side ached, reminding him he needed to stretch out a bit. “What he did to me? He scored off of that for months.”
“That’s—”
“Wrong? Sick? Fucked-up?” Angel completed for him, shrugging off West’s disgusted grimace. “Up until I met you, I really didn’t think there was anything else but that. People were something to bleed out. Hell, the first time I walked into your grandma’s house, all I could see was the stuff I could pick up and shove in my pockets.
