Page 64 of Beau and the Beast

Beau nodded.

"Tell me about them, if you want," Wolfram offered. "What happened?"

Fifteen minutes turned into an afternoon as Beau talked him through the house fire that had robbed them of their home and their happy childhood when Beau was nine and Noah was seven. Bad things were no longer contained in stories, theoretical and malleable but never real enough to reach them.

He told Wolfram about Noah’s burns and how they had changed his life forever—the pain they still caused him from nerve damage and the myriad ways the burns made him different in other people’s eyes. Noah’s easy childhood had changed even more dramatically than Beau’s as his life became a frightening litany of surgeries and hospital rooms and follow-ups.

He told Wolfram about the turbulence in the year afterward, when the two brothers had been shuffled between extended family members who were completely incapable of caring for them, young men and women who either had their own families to contend with or simply had no understanding of what it took to look after two young boys—one of whom they could barely stand to look at.

Beau reached the part, then, that he hated most: those seven awful years when Beau and his brother had entered the foster system—made terrible not because of the people who looked after them, but because of the instability, the ever-present threat that they would be separated. Fear was a constant in their lives during those years.

"Everyone kept telling me how lucky we were to be able to stay together," Beau said, "how unusual it was for two brothers to be able to be kept together in the system, especially when one of them had ‘special needs.’ But I couldn't imagine a fate worse than being separated from Noah. He needed me, Wolf. Even when I was just eleven, I know I would've moved the earth if it meant that we would be able to be together."

Wolfram had listened patiently, taking it all in, asking questions sometimes about what it had been like, who they had stayed with.

Beau cried on and off as he told the stories—not because he was acutely upset but because he hadn't visited that time in so long.

The first time tears welled up in his eyes, he'd apologized, wiping his face with his sleeve and feeling like a child.

"Nonsense," Wolfram said, passing him a cloth napkin. "It's your life. Of course you feel moved in recounting it—in revisiting a time when you had nothing but passion and love and emotion inside of you. Isn't that what childhood is? We don’t protect ourselves yet, and as a consequence, feel everything with every ounce of ourselves."

Beau had laughed at that, dabbing at his eyes.

"I've never heard you so eloquent," he teased. "Maybe I should cry during our interviews more often."

"I'm moved," Wolfram said, pulling himself up, smoothing the tufted end of his tail, and seeming suddenly self-conscious. "I'm imagining what life was like for you, and I can feel it—some of it, the way you must have felt during those years. Please go on."

No one ever wanted to hear about those years. Not people who dated Beau for years, not friends that he'd picked up along the way, and certainly not colleagues. Nobody wanted to hear about his tragedies and struggles—and especially not if it was going to make him cry. What was more awkward than a man telling you about his dead parents and then blubbering on about it afterward?

But he never felt a moment of awkwardness with Wolfram that afternoon. He was able to lay his whole experience bare, losing track entirely of the time, telling him every detail about how they had finally broken free from the system, how Beau had gained custody of Noah and moved them tothe big city, to New Whitby, where it seemed like anything could happen.

"I was hoping for a miracle when I moved here ten years ago," Beau admitted. "And now it's finally happened."

Chapter Thirteen

On the fifteenthday of Beau’s captivity, he made a decision. There were two difficult conversations that he needed to have, and he’d been putting them both off.

Things had been goingtoo wellat the penthouse for Beau.

It was as if in the two weeks that he'd spent with Wolfram and the staff, he'd forgotten about the fact that he had a life to go back to after all of this.

He'd let himself fall into the mindless daily pattern of organizing his notes, mornings interviewing Wolfram, working on his manuscript, more time with Wolfram, and then the meal together with the staff.

When he was alone in his room, Beau sketched the faces of the staff, worked on his recipes, read books of poetry and philosophy that Wolfram loaned him. Beau was acting like he was at some writer's retreat—not the hostage of a group of people who would eventually pay him and be done with him forever.

The world was still spinning without him out there. Noah was still out there, probably making bad decision after bad decision without anyone to check his poor plotting. Probably forgetting to pay their bills. Beau would feel much better if someone could give him confirmation that Noah was still doing well—but they’d made it impossible for him to know one way or the other.

Beyond Noah, there was the problem of Wolfram. The man sipped tea and quoted Nietzsche, sure, but he also apparently rampaged within the walls of the penthouse. He’d destroyed his own guestroom.

It didn’t make sense—didn’t jive with Beau’s understanding of the other man.

So there were two problems Beau had been allowing himself to ignore: his fears about Noah and the hidden side of Wolfram he hadn’t met yet. Beau had learned years ago that ignoring problems gave fuel to fear and doubt. On Friday, he set his jaw and decided to resolve the issues.

* * *

"There'sa question I've been wanting to ask you since the first day I met you, but I've held it back every day since."

Wolfram looked at Beau. The topic change had been abrupt, but if Beau was holding back a question, Wolfram certainly wanted to know more.

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