Page 10 of A Cure for Recovery

“Okay. Well. Sleep tight, boys.”

“Night, Mom.”

“Night.”

They sit in silence while her slippered footfalls retreat back down the hall, Lawson playing with Tommy’s hair.

When he thinks the coast is clear, Tommy wriggles to sit up higher on his lap, so they’re face-to-face. “I’m sorry.”

Lawson’s smile is crooked and sad. He reaches up to push Tommy’s hair off his face; it’s longer than it used to be, more of his natural curls showing these days. “You already said that.”

“I know. Jerk. I’m saying it formally. This is my formal apology, okay, so take it seriously.”

Lawson sits up straight, expression going mock-stern. “Sir, yes, sir.”

Tommy pinches his nipple through his shirt until he twists away, laughing and yelping. “Okay, okay. You’re serious.” He softens. “I get it.”

“Do you, though?” Tommy places both hands on his chest. Even in the most serious of moments, when sex is the farthest thing from his mind, Tommy can’t help but marvel at the breadth of him. It will never not be a turn-on. “I spent twenty years trying to get back to you, and I promised myself I’d do everything I could to make a life for us. To make you happy.”

Lawson blinks, and his eyes glimmer with welling tears. “Yeah.” His voice goes raspy. “I read your letters.”

He did, didn’t he? So he knows Tommy’s heart, inside and out. And yet Tommy’s wasted all this time being a stubborn shithead.

He presses his fingertips into Lawson’s pecs, willing him to understand. “I wanted it to be perfect.”

Lawson smiles so wide, even as a tear escapes his eye and slides down the side of his nose. “Baby.” He pulls him in and kisses him, firm and sweet. “You have met me, right?” he asks, when he draws back. “You understand that if you wanted perfect, you should have picked out a Leo of your own, right?”

“Shut up.” Tommy puts his arms around his neck and hugs him. As he does, he realizes they don’t do it nearly enough. Lawson always has an arm around his waist, or his shoulders. They hold hands; they hook arms. Lie tangled in bed, or on the couch. But they don’t hug, and it’s the balm that Tommy needs in the moment, chest-to-chest, heartbeat-to-heartbeat.

Lawson needs it too, judging by the way he wraps him up tight and hugs him back.

“Dr. Wilson gave me some stuff to read,” Tommy says, after a few minutes.

Lawson hums encouragingly.

“She said it might be helpful if you read it, too.”

“Okay. I’ll read it.”

Tommy squeezes him even tighter, and Lawson cups his head, and rocks them again, and it’s okay. They’re okay.

3

Tommy wrote his first letter to Lawson the night he left Eastman. He wrote it in the back of a car, tears coursing down his cheeks, using a handheld book light to see the notebook, and snapping furiously at Noah when he asked what he was doing. Noah found out, because he was bound to, the two of living in close quarters: as teens, as young adults, as recruits, as rookies, as newly minted officers.

He was twenty-one when Frank found out about the letters.

He and Noah shared a shitty second-floor walk-up with one bedroom and one bathroom. Because Noah was larger – and damn if that knowledge didn’t chafe every day – Tommy slept on the fold-out couch. He used the tiny kitchen island as a desk, and was working on his latest letter before he got a call from the desk sergeant about a shift that needed covering, and he went to shower.

He was in the shower, rinsing, when he heard a muffled shout of, “Boys?” from the living room. Frank’s voice was unmistakeable, even through a door and the hiss of falling water.

“Out in a minute!” Tommy called, and finished up.

When he emerged a few minutes later, clad in nothing but sweats, and toweling his wet hair, he saw Frank standing at the island, thumbing through the notebook there, and his guts turned to lead.

Frank turned toward him slowly, clutching a handful of looseleaf pages. His brows were up, his eyes big in a pointed, aggressive way. “What,” he said, slowly, lifting the pages, and rattling them, “the fuck. Is this?”

Tommy started across the room – and Frank lifted the paper overhead, a childish play at keep away, his face adult and severe in its rage.

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