"Everyone should be blessed with parents who behave like teenagers on a prom date," I said.
He scowled at me. "You try it sometime and see how you like it."
"I'd love to, but my mother died when I was eight."
"Jesus, Anita, you have a worse story for everything."
"Tomas," Mercedes said, as if warning him to be nice.
"It's okay," I said. "I do have a bad story for almost any occasion."
"I didn't mean it that way," he said.
"What way did you mean?" I asked.
He sighed, frowned, and slumped in the wheelchair even more than he had been, as if he was suddenly tired. "I'll do my PT."
"And hit the gym," I said.
He scowled at me. "You are pushy, do you know that?"
"I do know that," I said, smiling.
"Tomas," his sister said again, in that tone that older siblings and parents seem to have.
"This isn't Anita being pushy," Micah said.
"Not even close," Nathaniel added.
I glanced up at them. "Thanks a lot, loves of my life."
They smiled at me from the couch. "Argue with us if you can," Micah said.
I tried to frown at them but ended up smiling, too. "I can't, so point taken, or made."
Tomas was watching us, like he was filing it away for later use. "So if I do PT and hit the gym, then what?"
"Then you stop having to use a wheelchair ever and you get off crutches. You relearn how to walk, and then run."
"Doctors won't promise me I'll run as fast as I could before."
"I've told you, Tomas, the doctors can't promise that, there are too many variables," Mercedes said.
"If you work hard you'll be able to run and you won't be on crutches, which is a pretty good thing, right?" I said.
"Yeah," he said, the sullen tone seeping back into his voice.
"So that's worth working for all on its own, right?"
He frowned at me. "I guess so."
"But for all you know, if you hit the gym harder than ever, you may get faster, and I know you'll get stronger."
"You think I could run faster than before."
"I don't know, but I do know if you don't do the work, you might end up on crutches for the rest of your life or in a chair like this forever."
He looked up at his sister. "Is that true, could I end up like this forever?"
"If you don't do the PT and gym, I don't know, Tomas, and that's the truth, but it could be as bad as Anita is saying. That is one possibility if you don't work to help us help you."
"None of this help us to help you crap," I said. "You're thirteen, that's old enough to help yourself, if you're ever going to."
"What does that mean, 'if I'm ever going to'?"
"This is your moment of choice, Tomas. You can be a stand-up guy, and do your best to help yourself, or you can feel sorry for yourself, do nothing, and by the time Mercedes marries you can wheel yourself down the aisle. Maybe Manny can get you one of those sport wheelchairs."
"You're going to scare him," Mercedes said.
"Good, he should be scared." I leaned in so I could give him very direct eye contact. "You have a choice, Tomas; it's your life. You can cripple yourself for the rest of your life, or you can fight to run again, but don't blame it on the guy who shot you if you don't do the PT and the gym workout, because if you don't work to get better, then it's all on you."
"He shot me!" He sounded outraged.
"Yeah, but you get to decide if you're his victim or not."
"What do you mean? I am his victim. He shot me."
"He shot you, but he didn't kill you. He didn't take your life, which means you still have a chance to have everything you had before, and more. But if you don't put the effort into helping yourself out of this, then the bad guy wins forever, Tomas. He will win if you give up, but if you fight back, then you win, because you take back everything he tried to take from you. He loses if you try, but if you don't even try, then you are his victim, forever and ever."
"I'm not a victim," he said, back to angry again.
"Prove it: Go to PT, go to the gym when your doctors say you can, or should. Work hard at getting better, because that's how you take back your life; that's how you go from victim to survivor."
"I prefer the word thriver, because I'm not just surviving, I'm thriving," Micah said.
"What do you mean? You're like the king of shapeshifters almost, and you've got Anita."
I wasn't sure how I liked being listed as just one more accomplishment, or how Nathaniel liked not being listed at all.
"Now, but when I was eighteen I was attacked by a lycanthrope, a wereleopard. He killed my uncle and cousin and left me for dead. If two doctors hadn't been out hunting on the same mountain and found me almost immediately, I wouldn't be with Anita and Nathaniel, or head of the Coalition for Better Understanding Between Human and Lycanthrope Communities--I wouldn't be anything, just one more victim of the bastard who killed my uncle and cousin."
Nathaniel leaned into Micah, putting his arm around the other man's waist. Micah put his arm across Nathaniel's shoulders and let himself be held, but he kept his green-gold gaze on the boy in the chair.
Tomas looked shocked, the sullen cool that he'd tried to rebuild falling apart as he fought to deal with what Micah had said. His eyes flicked to the men holding each other, and it bothered him, but he tried to regain his cool, or his anger, something to use against the truth. He looked at Nathaniel and managed to sound disdainful as he asked, "And what's your sad story?"
"Tomas, you are being rude," Mercedes said.
"No, it's okay, I remember being thirteen," Nathaniel said.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Tomas said, trying for angry.
Nathaniel hugged Micah a little tighter but kept calm, lavender eyes on the boy. "When I was seven my stepfather beat my older brother, Nicholas, to death in front of me with a baseball bat. Nicholas told me to run, and I did, all the way to the streets. By ten I was selling myself for food, shelter, survival; by your age I was a junkie, selling myself to whoever would pay. Gabriel, who was head of the local wereleopards then, saw me on the street. I was seventeen. He was running a high-class male escort service that specialized in shapeshifters to very special clientele. They wouldn't sleep with a street whore and junkie, so he cleaned me up, forced me into rehab, got me sober, and waited to see if I'd stay that way. I'd turned eighteen before he finally made me a wereleopard, because he wouldn't do it until he knew I'd stay clean. It was the same year he took me to Jean-Claude for lessons in how to dress, what fork to use at fancy dinners, so that I could escort anyone to anywhere and not embarrass them. Jean-Claude taught me how to dance on stage at Guilty Pleasures, not just shake my junk, but dance, seduce, and promise things I didn't have to deliver. He wouldn't let any of his dancers find johns, or janes, at work. We were just strippers, not whores. I still went to certain very special clients through Gabriel, but never at the club. That was separate."
Tomas stared at Nathaniel as if he'd sprouted a second, ugly head. He had nothing to offer to such a list of disaster and pain. Who did?
Mercedes found a chair and sat down heavily in it. I glanced at her and she looked shaken, too, but the main show was Nathaniel and Tomas, with Micah sitting solid and holding him. I would have gone to them, but there was a weight to the three of them, the men and the boy. This was between them, until they needed or asked for me.
"I was still just nineteen when one of the clients tried to kill me. I don't know if he thought I'd heal, or if he just didn't care. Gabriel was dead by then, so I didn't have anyone to protect me. I went to the hospital and met Anita. She made me give up the escort business, but that was okay. I was making good money at Guilty Pleasures, I didn't need to do the other anymore, and I'd stopped enjoying it, so it was easy to give up."
I kept quiet, but I didn't remember the story quite that way. I hadn't actually demanded he give up being an escort, I'd just shut down the business as a whole, so n
one of the wereleopards could do it anymore. It also hadn't been love at first sight for me with Nathaniel, and the story seemed to imply that, but . . . I kept my mouth shut, because it wasn't my story. The story is never about the prince who rescues the princess, it's always the princess's story, and in this version that was Nathaniel. I was okay with that; princess was never really my style.
"I'd say you're kidding, but . . ." Tomas just stopped, staring at the floor as if trying to figure out what to say.
Nathaniel figured it out for him. "But if I were going to make up a story, that wouldn't be it."
Tomas looked up and nodded. "Yeah, that."
"We've all been hurt, Tomas," Micah said, "but what made the difference is that we all three fought to have a life and not let the bad things that happened to us define who we are, and what our life would be."
Tomas licked his lips. He wasn't trying to be cool anymore, or angry. He had nothing to put up as a shield against all that truth and pain. "What do you want me to do?" he asked, finally.
"Do your PT," Nathaniel said.
"Hit the gym when the doctors say you can," Micah said.
"Work hard at both," I said.
Tomas looked at me, and then back to the men. He licked his lips again, nodding more to himself than to us. "I will."
"Promise," I said.
He looked at me then, and there was a determination that hadn't been there before; the anger was in there and would be for a while, but there were better things in his dark eyes now, things that would help him more than they hurt him. "I promise," he said, and I believed him.
Nathaniel added, "And if the doctors think counseling will help, don't just say no."
Tomas scowled at him. "I'm fine, I don't need counseling."
"You're not fine, but it's okay not to be fine. If you don't need counseling, then that's great, but if you do need it, that's okay, too. My therapist has helped me a lot."
"I've had therapy," Micah said.
"Me, too," I said.
Tomas looked from one to the other of us. "I don't need it." His voice was very firm, and back to angry.
"We didn't say you did, just that if you do, it can help," Micah said.
The sullen look was back, so I said, "Work your physical therapy and leave the rest for later, or never. Body first, and sometimes the rest takes care of itself."
Something flickered through his eyes; maybe it was doubt. "Really?" he asked, managing to sound both suspicious and a tiny bit scared, which let me know that he'd already wondered about the other kind of therapy even if he didn't want to admit it.
"Really, a lot of people treat the mind and body like one is more important than the other, but they're too interconnected to ignore one for the other. Physical stuff can help the rest a whole lot."
He studied my face for a second, and again I saw that unease or small fear peeking out. "PT first, then."
I nodded. "Yeah, PT first."
I liked that he left it open for other things later, if he needed them. It made me hopeful.
Mercedes took Tomas back out to the wedding reception. The three of us took a moment to hold each other, and kiss enough that I had to redo my lipstick in the small mirror on the wall. Then a cooler energy slid over my skin, and I watched the two of them shiver at the touch of it, too. It was finally dark enough for the vampires to join us.
We went back out to the party and found a crowd at the doors. Whispers spilled out from there and into the rest of the crowd. Mrs. Conroy and a few others might not approve, but the excited buzz in the room said clearly that having Jean-Claude, the first vampire king of America, as a guest was a serious social coup.
We went to him hand in hand, me in the middle of the other two men, because Jean-Claude had his own sad stories to tell, and we knew that the thin scars on his back were whip marks from when he was a live human boy, younger than Tomas. He was king of all the vampires in America now, but he had been a survivor long before and, like us, learned how to thrive.
He was all long black curls, white lace shirt, and black jacket, so that the shirt and his own pale skin made a dramatic contrast. It was his usual colors, and no one seemed to mind that he'd worn black to the wedding reception. He had to be wearing heeled boots, because he was taller than the bodyguards that flanked him, and I knew they were six feet, but in the heels he was taller.
His long black curls melted into the shoulders of his black jacket, the high white collar of his shirt setting off the paleness of his skin, but there was a flush of color to all that pallor, like a hint of healthy blush, which meant he'd fed on someone before he came to the wedding. It didn't take much blood at a feeding for a vampire to be "full." The movies that made out that a vamp had to drain a person dry to feed were just using fearmongering or dramatic license. Feeding meant that when he took Rosita's hand to raise it against his lips, his skin was warm against hers. Making sure your skin wasn't ice cold used to be a way to pass as human; now it was just a politeness.
Rosita's dark skin blushed even darker. She was tall, only a few inches shorter than Jean-Claude, and though her daughters had gotten her to exercise with them she would always be a big woman, as she was meant to be, but she simpered and flustered as if she were the most delicate teenager.
Micah laughed. "That's something I never thought I'd see."
We laughed with him.
"The first time Rosita met us, she was afraid to shake hands, because she thought she could catch lycanthropy from just touching us," Nathaniel said.
"We've all come a long way," I said. I put an arm around both their waists and enjoyed the moment that let Jean-Claude be invited to the reception and be an honored guest.
He looked up over the crowd and I met his gaze. It wasn't vampire powers that made me catch my breath, my body tightening as if it were far more than just a look that passed between us. It was just him. If that was magic, it was the same kind that made me react to Nathaniel and Micah, but then love is a kind of magic, after all.
Micah laughed, and moved away so he could take my hand. "Let's go greet him, so you can touch him without thinking that hard."
I blushed and hated that I still did that, but Micah started leading me forward, and Nathaniel took my other hand so it was like a very slow game of crack the whip.
Micah actually reached him first. We'd worked out the logistics of who kissed who first a while ago, especially important in public, because any confusion was seen as a sign that things weren't working well between us all. Jean-Claude was the public face for American vampires, Micah was the same for the shapeshifters, I was in the news often as a zombie expert and for some of the more newsworthy U.S. Marshal cases, and Nathaniel as his stripper alias had his own Internet fan sites--in one way or another, we were all celebrities, which meant sometimes total strangers took things they saw, heard, or made up and turned them into rumors. We'd learned that one stumbled kiss, or Jean-Claude not greeting both the men, or a dozen different things, caused the rumor mill to grind faster. I never thought that famous people needed to discuss and then practice how to interact with their lovers in public to keep the craziness down, but if we did, then some of the people who were in the news a hell of a lot more than we were had to do it, too. Or maybe they didn't, and that was why they were in the news so much more. It was weird to be famous, weirder to date someone famous, and weirder still to deal with the public about it.
Jean-Claude bent over Micah, and it looked for a moment as if they would kiss for real, but just as their lips would have touched, Micah turned his head slightly to the side and Jean-Claude brushed his lips against his cheek. The only man that Micah kissed for real was Nathaniel. Micah turned his head a little more to the side and Jean-Claude ended with his mouth against the curve of Micah's neck, kissing just over that warm, pulsing point where the blood ran hot and close to the surface of the skin. It had become something of a signature greeting for them. What the people who thought it was so intimate didn't realize was that it was also a way of Je
an-Claude asserting dominance every time he touched Micah publicly, because among vampires, whoever gave up their blood was admitting they were less dominant, and among the lycanthropes there were versions of offering your neck to a leader that were a way of saying you're dominant to me without having to argue about it.
The men had started doing the greeting after the vampires started talking about Micah being the true power behind Jean-Claude's throne. This was an easy way to fix that rumor, and the human media loved it. "So intimate, so sensual," they wrote. If they only knew it was purely political, they'd be so disappointed.
I was in Jean-Claude's arms then, my hands sliding underneath the short jacket to knead and caress over the cool smoothness of his shirt. He'd won me over to the feel of cloth that was not only washed often, but ironed. It gave a sensation that was smoother, crisper, cleaner, and all of it covering the solidness of his back. He'd once told me that he knew his near-obsession with clean, fresh clothing came from starting life in a peasant home with a dirt floor, and spending centuries either in the lap of luxury or broke. When he could afford nice things he wanted them, and he could afford pretty much anything he wanted at this point.
I went up on tiptoe to meet his lips with mine. His arms wrapped around me, smoothing down my back and hesitating at my waist, not because of the gun that he knew was there, but more like he was wanting to touch my ass and wouldn't do it in public. It meant he really liked the new red skirt and how I looked in it. I could carry concealed, and Jean-Claude liked the way my ass looked in it almost enough to forget himself--serious bonus points!
It had been a careful kiss in many ways--one, so my red lipstick didn't smear like clown makeup, and two, so I didn't nick my lips on the delicate points of his fangs as I pressed my mouth against his.
Jean-Claude drew back with a sigh. "Ma petite, you quite undo a man pressing so much of yourself against him in this dress."
I grinned up at him as I went back to being as flat-footed as my heels would allow. "It's not often that I can get this reaction from you in public. I like it."
He leaned in and whispered against my hair, "As do I."
Nathaniel came up beside us, sliding an arm around both our waists, which made us look at him. Jean-Claude raised a speculative eyebrow. I saw the mischief in Nathaniel's eyes and knew that he was about to do something that I might regret, or it might be really fun. Either way, we were in public, and mischief didn't always translate well in the rumor mill. St. Louis was actually getting mentioned regularly on some of the celebrity gossip shows thanks to Jean-Claude. The rest of us usually got mentioned only in reference to him. I was good with that; the big engagement announcement had moved me up the professional gossip food chain a bit, and I wasn't good with that. Speculation seemed to be, "Would Anita Blake, infamous for playing the field, really commit to even the most beautiful vampire on the planet?" People were terribly invested in the princess (apparently that was me in this version) picking just one prince, or picking the prince (which was definitely Jean-Claude), because happily-ever-after couldn't include more than one prince, not even in the twenty-first century. Since I would have married all three of the men legally if I could have, the idea, even certainty, in the press that I'd marry Jean-Claude and we'd both become happily monogamous was the same kind of thinking that made people who were bisexual think that marrying one sex would make them magically not be attracted to the other half of the population. It had taken me years to own the fact that it just didn't work that neatly. The rest of the world was still looking for love to be simple, like a fairy tale. Why did most people want love to fit inside a child's story? Why wouldn't they let true love grow up and be real?
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