WHEN STEVE AND Chenco returned home late that night, they found everyone still up and sitting in the kitchen, grim and sober. Crabtree was there too, and Steve knew where this was going before anyone told him.
“Gordy ran away from the party,” Randy said when the silence went on too long. “We tried to chase him down, but he got away.”
“I have reprimanded my staff for letting him go—twice now.” Crabtree’s voice was tight, as if each word were painful to get past his lips. “I am deeply sorry for my failure, and I assure you I’ll do everything I can to correct it.”
Steve nodded, not sure how to respond. In fact, he felt strangely numb about it all. He didn’t feel guilty, which seemed strange, but good. At least he thought it was good.
Tired, that’s what he was. Very, very tired.
When Chenco led him to bed, he didn’t fight. His soul was weary, but his body hummed with remembered pleasure, of the needles Chenco had given him, of those Chenco had taken. As they spooned together naked in their bed, his hand stole down to feel the butt of the plug his boy still wore for him, and the heaviness inside him eased. He fell at once into a deep, peaceful sleep, where his dreams were nothing more than floating on a soft, sweet cloud with Chenco snuggled sweetly in his arms.
He stayed there, happily ensconced, until the shouting started.
By the time he stumbled into sweatpants and headed into the hall, everyone else was awake and stumbling out too. When he tried to follow Randy and Mitch down the stairs, though, Chenco stopped him with a tug on his arm.
“Don’t.” Chenco stared over the railing toward the front door. “It’s him, and this isn’t going to be pretty.”
“The police are on their way,” Ethan said from the bottom of the stairs, a cordless phone in his hand. “So is Crabtree.”
“Stevie, come out here right fucking now, or I swear to God, I’ll kill myself.”
Bile rising in his throat, Steve gripped the railing and shut his eyes. “He will,” he bit off when Chenco’s arms went around his waist. “He’s not bluffing. He’ll do it. As soon as the police or Crabtree’s men get here, he will.”
“Then let him.”
Chenco’s words made the hair on Steve’s arms stand up. The grit in his lover’s tone, the complete and utter lack of mercy—it startled him, yes, but it made him shudder, not in fear, but in a bone-deep sense of relief.
Immediately, guilt washed that release away. “Chenco—” he began, but his lover cut him off with the same steel he’d faced Steve down with in the driveway the night before.
“If he’s that far gone, if he truly will go to that kind of length to manipulate you, then let him go.” When Steve’s knees began to buckle, Chenco pressed him to the wall and held him up by his shoulders, staring him squarely in the eye. “This isn’t your fault, Papi. This is all on him.”
“I can’t—”
Chenco kept tight hold of Steve. “You can. You must.”
“Stevie!” The anguish in Gordy’s tone tore at Steve, made him want to push Chenco aside and tear down the stairs, to go out the front door and make it stop. He didn’t though. He only clung to his lover, as if he could draw strength into his body through the contact.
“Hush.” Chenco pulled Steve’s head down on his shoulder. “It’s going to be all right.”
Steve sank into him. “How?”
“Whatever happens, it’s nothing you did. You’re going forward, not backward. The choices he makes are not your responsibility, and at the end of the day, no matter what we promise to be to one another, no matter how much we want to save the ones we love, we can only ever save ourselves.” Chenco kissed Steve’s hair. “Save yourself, Papi. Save yourself.”
Steve swallowed around the truth, willing it to go down, not choke the life out of him. “That’s hard.”
“Tough love, baby. It’s the most painful, wonderful kind there is.” He drew Steve closer. “Just let him go. Stay here with me, keep yourself safe. Let him go.”
Steve stared at Chenco, wanting to argue. But the steel he saw in his lover’s face wouldn’t allow him to say a word, didn’t give him space to run away. I see you, Chenco said without uttering a breath. I see you, Steve Vance. Your weakness and your strength.
I see you, beyond all your walls, and I love you.
Steve exhaled a shuddering breath and buried himself into Chenco’s embrace.
As if he could hear and see Steve’s surrender, Gordy’s frustrated scream rent the air. “You fucker. You’re choosing him over me? A goddamned fence fairy?” There was a pause, and Gordy’s next shout was tearful, desperate. “Come on, Stevie. Come on. Don’t leave it like this. Come out, please, and talk to me. Don’t leave it like this.”
“Don’t you dare let him get to you.” Chenco held Steve so tight he could barely breathe.
Steve was going to be sick. His guts churned. He buried his face in Chenco’s shoulder, nipping at Chenco’s bare skin because he couldn’t take it, couldn’t bear this. He wasn’t strong enough for this.
“I’ve got you, Papi,” Chenco promised, his teeth grazing Steve’s ear. I’ll be strong enough for you.
“He’s going to do it,” Steve whispered, choking on the words. “He’s not making it up. He’ll do it.”
“I’ll hold you the whole time. I won’t let you go.” Chenco kissed Steve gently on the temple as another incoherent cry came up from the drive. “You cry all you want, boy. I can hold all your pain.”
Tears streaming down his cheeks, Steve clung to Chenco and waited, Gordy’s cries shaking him to his soul.
When the crack of a gunshot cut through the night, he jolted and the tears came faster, but he didn’t move, only kept holding on. The door opened, and Steve could hear others talking with the police—shaking, he didn’t look up, didn’t open his eyes, just kept holding to his rock, his solace, his only safe space in the world. In the distance someone spoke to him, but he didn’t listen, didn’t acknowledge anything but the beautiful thud-thud of Chenco’s heartbeat, the soft whooshes of his breath.
My boy. My Chenco. My Crescencio. My Caramela, my queen.
Steve clung to them all, to the man who was so young but so wise and so, so strong, the only one in the world who could have ever carried him past this dragon.
When Chenco brushed his lips to his ear and whispered, “He’s gone,” Steve wept.
Right there on the stairs, where anyone could see, he sobbed like a baby, bleeding out all the pain he had carried for so, so long. Every frame of the movie of his life with Gordy, the good and the bad, the sacred and terrible, the wonders and the mistakes—he lived them all, and he bled for the friend he had loved, who had chosen to go away. Steve let it all flow, every ugly, awful drop, gave every last bit of his sorrows over to his beloved, to Chenco. Because he’d said he could bear it.
Because Steve knew he could.
There at the top of the stairs, Steve Vance let go. To the man who had come to save him. To the love he had for Chenco. To the sorrow of what he hadn’t been strong enough to stop. To the hope they had, together, for the future. He let go and he listened as Chenco repeated, over and over, that this was not Steve’s fault.
He couldn’t believe in the words by themselves, but he could believe in Chenco. He could follow him anywhere, and he would, as long as his boy would allow him. Maybe Chenco only sometimes needed him, but Steve needed Chenco every minute of every hour of every single day.
As the last of his burdens fell away, as Chenco expertly scooped them up and insisted he could take even more, Steve followed the promise of hope, of happiness, of joy.
He followed his heart up the stairs as his lover enfolded him in his arms, Chenco’s strength bearing him up, carrying the pain.
With Chenco there to keep him safe, Steve let himself be loved.