Page 15 of The Evening Wolves

The basement lights were on. Luggage rested at the bottom of the steps—a Reebok duffle next to a Louis Vuitton roller bag. North and Shaw, of course. Emery made his way to the weight bench. He leaned against it. The steel felt oiled under his palm, like his hand would slide right off it. Something tightened around his chest, and he couldn’t breathe. John in handcuffs on their porch. The look on Colt’s face. The empty bed awash in the light coming off the snow. The arraignment, every jibe, every snigger. John’s face half-paneled in light as he read that word marking their home.

The noise screwdrivered out of him, and he stepped back and kicked the bench. It rocked. He kicked it again, and again, and the bench passed its tipping point and began to fall. He kept kicking it as it went over, the bar crashing against the floor first, then the bench. He kicked until black spots swam in his vision. Those steel bands around his chest contracted, and he could hear his own sick, panting breaths as he slumped against the overturned bench.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there before he noticed Tean. The vet sat on the bottommost step, arms wrapped around his knees, watching.

Emery warred with himself before he finally managed, “I’d like to be alone.”

Tean nodded.

As Emery’s heartbeat faded from his ears, he realized the house had fallen silent. He rested his head in his hands for only a moment. Then he said, “How bad was it?”

“Not bad.” Then, as though hearing the unasked question, he added, “I’m not sure Evie and Lana even heard.”

“But Colt did.”

“He’s worried about you, but we agreed it might be better if you had a chance to talk to someone else first.”

“So I could scream at someone who wasn’t my son, you mean.”

What might have been a smile laced Tean’s voice. “If it makes you feel any better, Shaw volunteered himself as tribute. Theo and North seemed to think you’d be less reactive if it were me, though.”

“North didn’t say reactive.”

The amusement was definitely there. “I believe his word was ‘murderous.’”

A smile cut the corner of Emery’s mouth, but it faded quickly. He listened to the silence for what felt like a long time. “John?”

“He’ll be alright, Emery. Jem is—I don’t know how much Jem has told you, and I don’t want to speak out of turn. But Jem knows what it’s like. A little, anyway. He’ll know what to say.”

Emery listened to the words, heard them. A part of him wanted to follow that thread about Jem. But another part of him felt exhausted as his adrenaline ebbed and the last twenty-four hours caught up with him. And yet another part of him was remembering what it had felt like, all those years ago after he’d come out. The whispers when he walked into a room. Or, worse, sudden silence. And he remembered, today, the arraignment. The way people he knew had turned their faces away. They’re doing it again, he thought. They’re doing it to John.

The thought galvanized him. He got to his feet, cleared the bar, and grabbed the bench. He didn’t hear Tean cross the basement, but he was there, taking the other end and helping Emery set it upright. Emery got the bar, the knurled steel familiar under his hands, and Tean gathered the fallen plates. It took them a few minutes to restore everything to order. It was always like that. The damage done in an instant, he thought through the fog, might take a lifetime to repair. Or might not ever be fixed, not completely.

“I’m sorry, Emery,” Tean said. “For all of this. It’s horrible, and it’s not fair, and it’s wrong, and I’m so sorry.”

Emery nodded. His eyes followed the light wrapping itself around the steel.

“It’s going to be ok.” Tean closed the last few feet between them and hugged him.

It was the first time that the tears had threatened to come, and it took a surprisingly long time to fight them down.

When he was sure of his voice again, Emery asked, “How awful is this for you?”

“Only moderately.”

John’s voice came from the stairs. “Am I interrupting?”

“Of course not,” Emery said, squeezing Tean’s shoulder as he stepped back. He took a moment to consider his husband: the same shadows around his eyes, the same pallor that the golden complexion couldn’t hide. But something was different.

“Tean, could I speak to Emery for a moment?”

Tean smiled for some reason as he passed John on the stairs.

Then they were alone.

“How are you—” Emery stopped, his mouth twisting. “Do you know, I believe I have an above-average vocabulary, but I’m having a difficult time asking how you are without phrasing it in a way you’ve probably heard a hundred times already today.”

Laughing quietly, John came down the stairs. He crossed toward Emery, and for an instant, Emery was a boy again, watching this creature of beauty and grace orbit him, always within sight, forever out of reach. It had been torture, in its own way. Wanting him. Not being able to have him. Worse than any of the cruelties John and his friends had dreamed up. Wanting him in spite of the bullying. Unable to separate, in the tangle of feelings, hatred and desire. And then, one day, they had collided. No more orbiting—no more distance. And the real John, it had turned out, was quite different from the one who had haunted Emery’s boyhood.

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