by Rhys Ford
“Aim for the wall!” Angel made room for Justin to get in beside him so the redhead could hit the flames with retardant from the fire extinguisher. “Cover anything you can reach.”
His throat hurt, crackled from the smoke, and when he swallowed, trying to wet his gullet, it felt as if he’d swallowed handfuls of glass. One of the heavy planks connecting the porch to the bakery gave under Angel’s shovel. Digging the tool’s tip under the crack, Angel strained to break it. It cracked, and his shoulders ached from the effort. His hands were torn open, leaving bloody streaks on the shovel’s sunbaked wooden handle.
Sirens circled in the air, piercing audibles dipping and rising in the night. Angel couldn’t tell if the klaxons were cops or firemen. He didn’t care who arrived, so long as they brought help. He was caught on a dual edge, his body worn down from a long day and stress, but his nerves jangled, flushing the metallic taint of panicked energy through his blood.
Another swing of the shovel, and the sky lit up with flashing lights, a macabre disco promising salvation as it painted the roiling dark smoke with blue and red swathes. The roar of heavy vehicles hit the tight street, and a long blast of a deep horn sent cars scrambling to let the long trucks through.
The air was ashy, a filmy veil of sticky white flakes soft enough to feather over Angel’s face with a touch more tender and delicate than any lover he’d ever had. He’d tried wiping it away, smearing it into his chin, and his sweat turned the gray dust into paste, caking over his skin. He took a second to breathe, then went back in. They were still fighting to drag the porch from its moorings when the fire trucks arrived, smashing at the rails and hooking the garden tools into the slats to yank the overhang down.
Someone was shouting directions from the parking truck. Its brakes squealed, and the rig rocked as the fire crew poured out. The wave of voices nearly drowned out the crackle of the fire, and Angel dug in again, bumping his elbow into a stern-faced man who’d come across the street to help them. He couldn’t see West, but Angel could hear his rolling authoritative voice urging Justin to coat the side of the building with water.
“Back up, back up!” A fireman Angel didn’t recognize shouted at them as he hooked a wrench on the cap of a hydrant a few feet away from the bakery. Dragging a hose around the squat steel fixture, he worked fast, keeping one eye on the fire behind him. “I’ll be needing all of you to clear out.”
“Give me an all clear!” Someone from the truck—a woman—yelled through the din. “And get everyone else back. We’re going to go at this!”
It seemed like forever and a day before the steely-eyed firefighter with a slather of Irish tapped through the hydrant. Then the world bent around a gush of pressurized water and prayers. Someone’d pulled Angel back, strong arms wrapped around his waist and dragging him from the bakery’s front wall. He didn’t fight the embrace, but his feet were reluctant to move. There was a niggling kernel of alarm digging into Angel’s thoughts, and he resisted being dragged away. He saw something dark moving behind a curtain in the front room, a shadow or a trick of the light from the lamps lining the historic walk, but in the consuming flames, Angel’s heart skipped and stalled when he thought he saw a face in the smoke.
“God, Rome!” A fear—a stupid, irrational fear—took over his brain, seizing up every last dreg of energy he had in him and ramping it up until it burned like lightning through his blood. “Where’s Rome! He’s not inside there, right? Is someone in there? Is someone inside?”
“Marzo’s got him, Ange,” West murmured into his ear, barely audible in the slush of noises surrounding him. “He’s okay. This is going to be okay. There’s no one inside.”
“I just saw….” He twisted about in West’s arms, refusing to be led away. “God, I don’t know what I’m going to do. We’re… fuck, we’re going to lose everything.”
“It’s just the front of the bakery—”
“They’re going to shut me down.” Angel’s terror settled, and a cold, hard bite of reality took its place. “They’re going to have to. Everything inside… I can’t serve it. Even if they save the Shack, I can’t fucking use the damned building. Fucking everything—”
“I’ll handle this. We can handle this, Angel.” West turned him around, and Angel stared into West’s determined, handsome face. “We’ll figure something out and deal with it, but this is not going to take you out, okay? I’ve fought worse things than a damned fire. You are not going to lose this.”
“I can’t lose it. I lose the bakery and I’ve got—nothing again. They shut me down and I’m done, West.”
The tears came, long, sudden, jagged, too heavy for Angel to hold back. He didn’t have a name for the emotional stew drowning him. It ran the gamut from terror to resignation, with everything else in between. It wasn’t going to end well for them. He’d lived through too many failed hustles and broken dreams to think it would turn out any better than any other time he’d failed.
“They’re not going to shut you down,” West assured him, dragging Angel into cooler air. “You’re going to be okay.”
“I can’t keep my… family together…. Roman… if I fall.” Angel couldn’t stop crying. His chest shook with every draw of air, but Angel couldn’t seem to catch his breath. “They’re going to take Rome from me, and I cannot lose him. Haven’t I already lost so fucking much? How much more do I have to give before something goes right?”
He sagged.
Deep inside of where Angel kept every single one of his doubts and trepidations, the walls he’d been shoring up to hold himself together finally gave way, and he tumbled forward, dragged down by the weight of everything resting on him. West caught him, a stile he’d forgotten he’d buried in the tall grasses of his unkempt life.
The cacophony faded, and Angel closed his eyes, wishing for a peace he could never seem to see much less grasp. Tears were the least of his worries. The hot slag of salty water stinging his lashes couldn’t compete against the crumbling ruins of his life. He’d dumped everything he had into the bakery, learned everything he could to make it a success, and stretched every dollar until it bled, and still they’d been beaten into the ground.
For a single moment, Angel wanted the luxury of being able to sit down in the middle of the road and simply stop moving, to not hustle and steal bits of time from every day to manage every thread of life being cast off of the Fates’ chaotic spindle.
“Fuck it. I’ll just take Roman and we’ll run,” Angel gasped, searching for any lick of fresh air in the smoke choking him. “Not like we don’t know how to do that.”
Running seemed like his only option—the only viable one—especially since the paint was bubbling off the Shack’s outer walls and the burly Irish fireman was now joined by what looked like a sea of men and women in heavy gear, their feet digging into the asphalt and smoking grass to hold on to the massive hoses pouring foamy water everywhere.
The van he’d leave for Justin, since the SUV was better suited for long hauls. He’d have to hide Rome someplace safe, deep in the folds of Seattle or somewhere else he could get his hands on his brother’s medication. They weren’t leaving much. He’d never succumbed to Rome’s begging for a dog or a cat. They’d have to tighten in, closing in on each other until Rome was old enough, adult enough to be safe from CPS’s intrusive reach.
A brush of a mouth on his and Angel’s plans shattered, a glass pane made of panic and dread crushed under a whisper of hope, a slender beat of a stitched-together heart too tired of bleeding out, its mewling throbs begging for the touch of the man pulling Angel free of the fire’s harsh smoke.
“I’m not going to let you run, Daniels.” West drew Angel in close. “Not when I’ve got you back. Not when you haven’t given me my second chance to piss you off and love you. I’ll be fucking damned if I let you run out on me now, love.”
His arms were steel, locking Angel into an embrace he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to break out of. It was so tempting to simply give in, to fold himself into We
st’s control and let the blue-eyed devil who’d haunted his dreams take over.
No one’s going to take care of you, Angel, his damaged brain reminded him. West wants—
Angel slammed his thoughts down, burying them under years of anger and betrayal. The whispering digs in his mind were mines placed in a field his father’d sowed. There were people he’d come to depend on, people he loved and in turn, felt love from. Justin was as close to a brother as he could get, and they’d both embraced Roman into the fucked-up little family living at the Moonrise Motel.
He’d spent long evenings cooking holiday dinners on burners in five different rooms to eat at an off-kilter picnic table set up in the parking lot. From stringing garlands over the road-exhaust suffocated palms planted around the dead swimming pool to hiding plastic Easter eggs in the stairwells for everyone to find after the pancake drive at the church down the street, Angel’d found the place he needed to be.
He’d made himself a spot, a patchwork oasis of misfits and glitches, and he’d regret giving it up. More than he regretted giving up on West. Or at least damned close to it.
“Whatever happens, Angel….” West’s whisper tickled his ear. “We’ll fix it. Okay?”
It took everything for Angel to find his voice. It was buried under ash, terror, and life-honed razor blades. The wind no longer played with his hair, and the rush of water no longer battered the bakery. There were still yellow-jacketed firemen crawling over the building, and he’d lost track of the blue-eyed Irish man who’d first doused the shack, but the fire with its terrible, hungry flames smoldered across the rubble of the detached overhang, its crumpled sides spread out over the sidewalk to be picked through for embers.
“Go find Rome, love.” West’s arms loosened, letting Angel go. Wiping at the wet on Angel’s cheeks with his thumbs, West laughed. “God, I’m making a mess here.”
“I’m always a mess,” he replied softly. A hiccup caught Angel unaware, and he ducked his head, attempting to force the bubble of air in his stomach out. “Fuck, aren’t I always a mess? You sure you want to take this on? There’s a lot of… crap in my life. A lot of shitty, shitty things.”
“I’ve already taken on flying bullets and now a fire for you,” he said, shrugging. “Bring it on. Go check on Rome. Then we’ll see what the firemen say. They’ll probably want to talk to you. After that, it’s time I got you home.”
“I live across the parking lot, Harris.” Angel smirked. “Not a far walk.”
“Yeah, you’re only going to be there long enough to pack some clothes.” West kissed the corner of his mouth. “Stray bullet notwithstanding, the safest place I can think of is my house… especially since Marzo’s going to take up residence in the guest quarters. I’m not going to be able to sleep unless I know you’re okay. So go grab some things and your little brother, Daniels, so we can go home.”
THE HOT shower felt good. Almost as good as the numbness of the painkiller kicking in nearly as soon as West collapsed onto the couch in his living room. Armed with an icepack for his knee and a glass of iced tea, he stared out into the night, catching the barest hint of his own reflection cast back at him in the living room’s enormous windows.
Marzo’d taken the apartment over the garage as his home base, accessible through a flight of stairs off the kitchen, and the bodyguard did a circuit of the property before heading to bed. Perched on a rise in the cliff, the house was approachable from the front and sides, which were apparently too many options for Marzo’s liking. Grumbling about a lack of electric fences, guard dogs, and gun turrets, he hadn’t been too pleased with West pointing out none of those could have stopped the bullet shot through the open front door.
His intense scowl was enough to tickle West’s humor long past the time Marzo stomped outside to do recon.
There’d been laughter upstairs as the two brothers playfully fought about baths, pajamas, and school attendance. Listening to the Danielses chatter, West found a small ache in his chest pulse, deepening with each guffaw and mocking outrageous accusation. He’d never had that kind of relationship with Lang. Their childhood was a fleeting blur of grayness, lessons, and rigid coldness. He couldn’t recall a single time he’d laughed with Lang. Not with the unfettered glee Roman belted out with his older brother.
“Grandmother’s house. Those summers,” West murmured to himself, shifting the pack over his slightly swollen knee. “When we were at her house. Did we laugh, Lang? Did we do anything together?”
They laughed now. A bit. Teased and jabbed in a way West felt was almost comfortable, but the awkwardness remained, his driving, controlling personality butting up against his twin’s easygoing nature. At some point, West became their father’s echo, and as he contemplated the ruins of his life, he didn’t like what he saw.
“Going to have to rebuild, Harris.” Toasting himself in the glass, West chuckled. “And this time, you’re going to have to get it right.”
“What are you planning on getting right?” Angel appeared behind him in the window, his vivid coloring muted to grays and browns with a hint of red from the shirt he’d pulled on over his hewn chest.
West drank him in, stared at the window and let himself enjoy the sight of Angel standing behind him, then leaned his head back to see Angel smiling down at him.
“You, love,” he whispered softly. “Well, us, really. I’m hoping that this time, I can get us right.”
Eleven
“GOT YOUR brother all settled?” West kept his tone as casual as he could, but his body thrummed in response to Angel’s light touch on his shoulder.
“Yeah, Rome passed out before I turned the light off. Pablo’s going to be at Joey’s in the morning to bake up those batters they cleared for use. I should go down there and help him—”
“You’re going to run yourself into the ground, Daniels.” West shook his head. “If Pablo can do it by himself, let him. Take it from someone who has to control everything, you need to let some things go.”
“And you shouldn’t have jumped in to fight the fire, but that didn’t stop you.” Angel slipped around the end of the couch, then eased onto the cushion beside West. “You’ve screwed up your knee again. Shit, between the car, bullets, and firefighting, you’re going to be dead before the end of next week.”
“The knee was because I slipped badly off the asphalt… again. I’d injured my ankle in the car accident.” He shifted to give Angel room, leaning against him once they got settled. “I’m trying to take preventative measures to keep the bruising down. Or at least that’s what I’m going to tell the doctor.”
“Somehow I don’t think that helps you out there, Harris. You’ve got to stop trying to die on me.”
“Wasn’t planning on it. Not unless we fuck each other to death.” West shifted the ice pack around. The burning sensation on his skin grew intolerable, and his rolled-up sweatpants were getting damp. “Because really, that’s how I’m planning on dying. In bed, a smile on my face, and possibly a few shots of good whiskey in my belly. And bacon. There should have been mass consumption of bacon.”
“And we go straight into talking about fucking?”
“That I planned on. Or at least hoped for. Maybe not tonight but… at some point.” He studied Angel’s expression, wanting to dig past the wariness he saw there. “Not originally. Certainly not with Marzo and Roman sitting in the car with us, but afterwards, in the shower… I had thoughts.”
“Interesting.” Angel’s eyes stormed, roiling thunderous gray behind his long lashes. “So you didn’t say something to Justin?”
“Like what?” He tilted his head, fascinated by the heat in Angel’s glance. “Mostly pointing out hot spots to him, but other than that I might have said good job or something afterwards. Why?”
“He threw clothes into a bag for me while I was getting Rome’s stuff, and for some reason, he felt I needed a couple of handfuls of condoms and a large tube of something called Ease-In. Scented and self-heating, of course, for someone’s pleas
ure.”
“As you do when you’re packing a friend’s bag.” West chuckled. “I honestly debated having Marzo grab some on the way to the bakery but thought he’d kill me for it. There’s only so much you can ask a man to do.”
“You, Harris, have got to start participating in your own goddamned life.” Angel twisted around, pushing on West’s shoulder to lean him forward. Pulling his knee up, Angel ordered, “Move so we can sit sideways.”
They’d sat chest to back at least hundreds of times when they were younger, but that’d been before… everything, and West eyed Angel skeptically, then shifted over. After a too-long day of emotional savaging, then an exhausting fight to save Angel’s livelihood, he should be dropping off to sleep. Instead, Angel’s beautiful long body left him… energized, his skin aching to be touched.
Dipping his shoulders down, West moved back, sliding into a spot he hadn’t lain in years. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d leaned against Angel’s chest, and he regretted not having that moment to hold onto. It was easy to recall the first time. They’d been mostly drunk on a bottle of cheap wine and sitting on the cold sand, watching the stars push their light through the stretch of cobalt-black night sky.
Their bodies seemed to remember the planes and dips of the other, because when West leaned back into Angel, it was like… coming home.
The feeling of Angel around him was both familiar and strange. West knew the scent of the man against him, and his skin warmed with the touch of Angel’s hands on his arms. Their legs remained almost the same length, Angel’s thighs and calves thicker than West’s, but his feet were still smaller, his right pinky toe scarred from the fishing hook West accidentally lodged into it. It was odd finding their adult bodies fit into one another. Odder still when West slid down a bit against Angel’s chest and leaned his head back, the ridge at the back of his skull once again nestling in the crook of Angel’s neck as if they’d once been a single stone split in two and cast far apart, only finding one another on the same shore because of a mercurial tide.
