Page 90 of Always Be True: Tino
Tino shrugged. “It is what it is. As things turned out, getting thrown into the foster system at that point was the best thing that could have happened to me. My relatives didn’t want me, but Joe and Marlene did. They’d already found Jack, and it wasn’t too long afterward that Mikhail moved in with us.
“You’ve met Jack and know we don’t look a thing alike. Mikhail has blond hair, blue eyes, and looks like some damn Viking who just parked a dragon-ship out in the Sound.” Tino’s expression turned fierce. “We don’t share the same DNA, but we’re still brothers down to the bone. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for them, and that road goes both ways.”
She believed him. In fact, she was a little jealous. As an only child, she’d always wanted a brother or sister of her own. “It was easy to tell that you and Jack are close.”
“Yeah, we are. He’s four months older than me. Mikhail is six months younger than me and the baby of the family.”
Natalie tried to picture having three sons all so close in age. “Your poor mother! I bet the three of you were a handful.”
Tino didn’t bother denying it. “Yeah, I’m guessing we each gave her a few gray hairs along the way, but Marlene was up to the job. Besides, Joe made damn sure we showed her the respect she deserved.”
“He sounds like an amazing man.”
She figured he had to be. After all, look how his sons had turned out. The one she was most interested in had drifted back to staring at the fire. “We all went into the military because of him. He said the army had been the making of him, and we all wanted to be the same kind of man he was.”
After a slight hesitation, he added, “But that wasn’t enough for me. I actually wanted tobehim.”
“And that was a problem?”
“Yeah, because if I couldn’t be Joe, I didn’t know who I really was.”
With that blunt statement, Tino paced the length of the room before returning to the same spot by the fireplace. After a few seconds, he started talking again. “When my parents were alive, I knew who and what I was—the absolute center of their universe. After they died, I lost my identity. My relatives didn’t want me at all, but they did want the small trust fund my parents left for me. I have no idea how they got full access to it, but they burned through the money pretty damn quickly.”
His smile was bitter. “I tried so damn hard to fit in, to make them accept me as just another one of their family. I acted like their kids, talked like them, even deliberately failed in class just like them. In the end, all that gained me was a bad school record and an even worse attitude. How pathetic was that?”
This strong man looked so darned lost and alone that she could no longer sit still. She joined Tino in front of the fireplace and leaned against him, offering what comfort she could. “But all that changed when you moved in with Joe and Marlene.”
“Yeah, it did. Joe gave me what came to be known as The Talk, outlining their expectations of me and what I would get in return.” His arm slid around her shoulders as he pulled her in closer. “I’ve never once regretted accepting the deal he offered me.”
He laughed just a little. “In fact, Jack offered those exact terms to the teenager he and his wife adopted. Since we were already in our teens by the time Joe and Marlene formally adopted the three of us, they thought we should keep our original last names. However, Jack didn’t give Ricky that choice. His mother and stepfather didn’t want the kid, so we made him ours instead.”
Her heart hurt for Ricky, but also for the man standing next to her. “I’ll never understand some people.”
“Me, either. Which brings me to why I’ve been missing in action. As my mother has kept reminding me, it’s past time for me to decide what I want the rest of my life to look like. I’ve been working on figuring that out.”
The flickering light from the fire revealed the lines of exhaustion that bracketed his stern mouth. She would support his decision whatever it was, but she was almost afraid to hear what he had to say if it had been such a hard one for him. “And have you?”
“Yeah, I have.”
“Okay, Gianelli, lay it all out for me.” She aimed for bright and cheery but wasn’t at all sure she’d succeeded.
“See, the problem was I’ve always made a habit of trying to fit the image of whatever it was I thought people expected me to be. For my folks, I was the perfect son. For my relatives, I was a pain in the ass, just like their kids. For Marlene and Joe, I cast myself in the role of being just like Joe.” He stopped for a second. “In my defense, we all three did that to some degree. We all went into the military to honor the man who had given each of us a second chance.”
“I’m sure Joe was just as proud of his three sons as they were of him.”
“I really hope so. But now I’ve left the military behind, and there’s no one telling me who I should be next. Hell, I even considered turning myself into another Benton. You know, so I could fit into your world. As it turned out, I couldn’t stand the thought of being such a selfish prick even if I totally rocked that tuxedo.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have laughed, but she did. “You’re right about the tux, but I shudder at the thought of there being two of him in this world. So if you’re not going to be Benton the Second, what did you decide to try next?”
Natalie held her breath as she waited for him to answer. If he had reenlisted, she would support his decision even if she couldn’t stand the thought of him leaving Seattle to serve in some dangerous place on the other side of the world.
“I enrolled in college this past week. I had to take a bunch of tests and get the transcripts from the online classes I’ve taken over the years to figure out where I’ll be starting out.”
“That’s great!” Especially because it meant he’d be remaining in the area. “What are you going to major in?”
“A few things happened to point me in the right direction. The first one was coaching the team with Jay. The second was working with those kids to fix up the basketball court, and the last was when those three idiots attacked you in the parking lot at the center. Two of them are being treated as adults, but the third one is a juvenile. I want to help kids like him get a fresh start on life, and maybe help others keep from getting into trouble in the first place.”
All of that came out in a rush, as if he wasn’t sure how she’d react. “That’s perfect, Tino. It’s clear that you have a way with kids. And because of your own background, you also have a far better understanding of what at-risk kids are going through.”
