Page 49 of Vanish Into Light

Gallo bit back a sigh. “Would that have changed anything?” When Tris started to protest again, he turned to him, and said, “Gavin made his choice – a stupid one. You and I aren’t on that table, are we?”

Tris’s jaw worked a moment beneath the close grain of his beard, then he glanced away, toward Gavin, brow furrowed.

“We were on an op,” Gallo said. “We were there to work, and instead of keeping a watchful eye out, Gavin decided to get laid. This is his fault, not Beck’s.”

“Oh, so, you’re joining his fan club too, then?” Tris asked, bristling, shoulders drawing up. His nostrils flared on every breath – for him, it was a significant display of anger and agitation.

Gallo didn’t suppose he ought to be surprised. In a careful voice, he said, “This isn’t about Gavin, is it? We’ve always known he was a horny dumbass. This is about Lance.”

Tris thumped his mug down on the table, soup slopping over the rim, and turned to him, expression a livid marble mask. One that Gallo knew was hiding a fair amount of hurt, and doubt, and maybe even fear. “And where is Lance right now? Hm? Is he here watching over his guy? Strategizing? Being the leader of this fucking company? Nah.” He sneered. “His upstairs bending over for that horned fucker.”

Gallo said, “We don’t know–”

“Open your goddamn eyes. When does he check out early? When does he go to bed before we do? Never. Not until some fucking spawn of Satan convinced him he liked dick–”

“Tristan.”

“Francis,” Tris shot back. “Don’t play naïve on this one. You know what’s going on.”

Gallo frowned. He did know – or at least suspected. Had seen a side of his lieutenant that he’d glimpsed only in relation to Rose before. It made a kind of sense: Rose loved Beck, and Lance loved Rose. It was bound to get tangled from the first, from the moment Lance entertained the idea of bringing Beck back. And, truthfully, it wasn’t panicking him, the way it was clearly panicking Tris. Lance was a good lieutenant – but he was human, too. Was a man like all of them, prone to temptation, to wants, to needs; struggling through this muddled hell on earth the same as anyone. Gallo didn’t need him to perfect, or to have all the answers all the time.

He said, “I can’t believeyouof all people are throwing ‘liking dick’ around as an insult.”

Tris’s expression couldn’t get any sterner, so it blanked with shock a moment. “Wait–”

Gallo didn’t smile smugly, because that would just be mean, but he did take a certain inner pleasure in having, by this point, learned to read his boyfriend in a way that no one else could. “Whatever they’ve got going on, that’s none of our business. We’re trying to end this war: that’s what I care about. Ending it, and keeping all of us safe. If Lance is a little adrift right now, and Beck’s stepping up to take his place, then so be it.”

Slowly, Tris’s glare returned. “I don’t envy your optimism.”

“Yes, you do,” Gallo said, sighing. He faced Gavin again, and rested his head on Tris’s shoulder.

After a beat Tris’s arm went around his waist. “Yeah,” he muttered, “sometimes I do.”

~*~

Rose expected to find Lance on the other side when she opened the door, but she didn’t expect to find him so vulnerable. He stood with shoulders slumped, and head bowed, one hand still held suspended from knocking, and the other curling into and out of a fist at his side, flexing again and again. He smelled of soap, and humidity clung to him; glued his t-shirt to his chest in damp patches. When he lifted his head, finally, his gaze was full of defeat. Long gone was all the determination and insistence he’d shown her for five years, before Beck returned, when he’d been set on saving her from her own grief; when he’d thought that he was helping.

And hehadbeen helping. She could acknowledge that now, though it was long overdue. Seeing him like this now, unsure of himself and feeling like he’d failed, somehow, in wanting this, stirred an ache in her chest.

He was too good to feel this bad, and Rose found it unacceptable.

The low, humming note Beck issued somewhere behind her, deeper in the room, echoed her sentiments.

She took a light grip on the hem of Lance’s shirt and tugged. “Come here.” Her voice was so soft she barely recognized it – and it surprised Lance, too, if the quick jump of his brows was anything to go by.

He resisted, just a second, hand catching at the door frame. “I don’t know if…” he started, and trailed off, throat jerking in a painful-looking way as he swallowed.

Rose tugged again. Asked, “Do you want this? Us?”

Lance breathed through his mouth a moment, as he studied her, and then his gaze flitted up over her shoulder, caught on Beck – and held. He swallowed again. “Yes.”

“Then it’s that simple,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.” She touched his face with her other hand, gratified by the way he leaned into her palm right away, by the faint scrape of stubble on his jaw. “If you want to stop, then say stop.” Slowly, telegraphing her movements, she stood up on her toes and stretched to kiss him.

Again, he hesitated – but then his chest swelled against hers as he inhaled, and his exhale shivered against her mouth. And then, with a quiet, pained sound in his throat, too soft to have heard if they weren’t touching, he gathered up her damp hair in both hands and kissed her back.

Heat crackled in the back of her neck, and went zinging all the way down her back, pooling there at the small of it in a way that left her wanting to twitch her hips forward and press closer against him. She wanted to melt, and she wanted to touch. He was avery goodkisser – always had been. He devoted himself to it the way he did everything, and she’d enjoyed it, because how could she not? His kiss – his touch, the heat and heaviness of his body over hers – had been her succor, her respite. Had distracted her from her heartache.

And wasn’t that terrible? That it had taken Beck coming back for her to realize that Lance was not, and had never been a distraction; that she loved him, but that she’d punished herself, held herself back from him, because the world had seemed so much crueler without Beck in it.

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