Rebel E-Book

Rhys Ford

• Herausgeber: Dreamspinner Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 427

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

415 Ink: Book One The hardest thing a rebel can do isn't standing up for something—it's standing up for himself. Life takes delight in stabbing Gus Scott in the back when he least expects it. After Gus spends years running from his past, present, and the dismal future every social worker predicted for him, karma delivers the one thing Gus could never—would never—turn his back on: a son from a one-night stand he'd had after a devastating breakup a few years ago. Returning to San Francisco and to 415 Ink, his family's tattoo shop, gave him the perfect shelter to battle his personal demons and get himself together… until the firefighter who'd broken him walked back into Gus's life. For Rey Montenegro, tattoo artist Gus Scott was an elusive brass ring, a glittering prize he hadn't the strength or flexibility to hold on to. Severing his relationship with the mercurial tattoo artist hurt, but Gus hadn't wanted the kind of domestic life Rey craved, leaving Rey with an aching chasm in his soul. When Gus's life and world starts to unravel, Rey helps him pick up the pieces, and Gus wonders if that forever Rey wants is more than just a dream.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Blurb

Dedication

Acknowledgments

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

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Copyright

Rebel

By Rhys Ford

The hardest thing a rebel can do isn’t standing up for something—it’s standing up for himself.

Life takes delight in stabbing Gus Scott in the back when he least expects it. After Gus spends years running from his past, present, and the dismal future every social worker predicted for him, karma delivers the one thing Gus could never—would never—turn his back on: a son from a one-night stand he’d had after a devastating breakup a few years ago.

Returning to San Francisco and to 415 Ink, his family’s tattoo shop, gave him the perfect shelter to battle his personal demons and get himself together… until the firefighter who’d broken him walked back into Gus’s life.

For Rey Montenegro, tattoo artist Gus Scott was an elusive brass ring, a glittering prize he hadn’t the strength or flexibility to hold on to. Severing his relationship with the mercurial tattoo artist hurt, but Gus hadn’t wanted the kind of domestic life Rey craved, leaving Rey with an aching chasm in his soul.

When Gus’s life and world starts to unravel, Rey helps him pick up the pieces, and Gus wonders if that forever Rey wants is more than just a dream.

This book is dedicated to Rob Benavides and Micah Caudle of Flying Panther Tattoos in San Diego. You guys are two of the nicest, damned fucking talented tattoo artists I know, and it is always a pleasure going under the needle with you.

I also want to remember the fiercest of divas, Halle, a Cairn among cairns and a demanding but loving despot who held a firm grip over the Five and Steve. She never met a toast corner or piece of bacon she didn’t like and probably would have tolerated a tiara if only it didn’t rumple her ears.

And lastly, to Tamlyn, aka Tam the Cat. You, sir, were the finest of gentlemen and the gentlest feline ever. You did not want much, nor did you want for much. The eighteen years you spent by my side were a comfort and at times, a delight. I am sorry mice did not come with lasers to entice you, but really, could you have at least lifted up your head when the kangaroo rat literally ran over your sprawled-out body? May your Heaven be filled of Greek yogurt cups and kalua pig. Kiss your sister, Neko, for us, and say hello to Opala, Motlow, and Aramis. You all are sorely missed.

Acknowledgments

TO MY beloved Five—Penn, Tamm, Lea, and Jenn. Through thick and thin and through dangers untold, you are my one true constant stars. Kind of like a constellation… but with more bickering about tea and someone losing their knickers.

And so much love to my other sisters who bring me such joy—Ren, Ree, Mary, and Lisa.

Thanks will always go to Dreamspinner—Elizabeth, Lynn, Grace and her team, Naomi (who I drive insane), and everyone else who makes me look good. Thank you. Thank you. I owe you all cookies.

Finally, a shout-out to anyone who gets ink. It is a form of expression, a form of free speech, a way to connect a part of who you are inside to your skin, or in some cases, a mistake made during a moment of blurred thinking, whiskey, and a-not-so-good idea. May all the art you wear on your body be significant, and may the inker who put it there do so gently.

One

SCREAMS SPLINTERED the night, pulling Rey from his sleep.

He was sleepy, and the last thing he wanted was to deal with his dad, especially since there was school to go to in the morning, a high school nightmare of numbers and words jumbled into a mess he struggled to make sense out of. But the screams, they were… unsettling… different… a high-pitched whine, then a rough, raw malevolent crinkle.

So very different from how his mother usually sounded.

Then he began to cough.

He couldn’t stop, not long enough to catch a full breath. Then Rey caught the smell of charred something in his lungs and worked to clear what felt like sandpaper in his throat and nose. There were more screeches, loud, horrific shrieks coming from somewhere, and the noise sent him trembling beneath his blankets. His chest hurt where his father struck it that evening, a lash of anger he didn’t see coming, but it was a day like any other, a tightrope walk between time dripping slowly in anticipation of his dad’s temper flaring and the tick-tick-tick of the seconds hurriedly falling off of the clock toward his bedtime.

Tonight had been bad, and he’d stepped in between the terrifying hail of fists and his mother, taking the brunt of his father’s rage. His eye was tight, lashes gummy and sticking, and he’d played with the cut on his lip long enough to make it taste like silver whenever he ran his tongue over it. Now he’d begun coughing again, massive wretched spasms long and hard enough to make his ribs hurt even more than they already did.

The burning smell had to be coming from the kitchen, probably his mother leaving a plastic dish in the oven and turning it on to heat up food for his father’s breakfast. It was something thoughtless she’d done a lot, stumbling from her bedroom down the hall, tired from working a double shift but awake enough to preheat the oven.

His eye wouldn’t open enough to see the clock, so all Rey could make out was a thin slice of red light, a blur of numbers through the dark. He’d lived in the room for ten years, and even after all that time, the space was hard to maneuver at night. Without an outside window, the only ambient light he had was from under the door, a sliver of orange-gold leaking out around the ill-fitting wood.

The hacking hit again, and he thumped his chest to stop it. He rattled on, caught in a vicious cycle of trying to breathe around the soreness in his nose and the need to relieve the heaviness under his sternum. His tongue felt swollen, and he couldn’t seem to pull up any moisture, no matter how hard he tried to hawk through the thickness in his mouth. His throat was raw, a scraped-open tenderness he wasn’t able to clear with what little spit he could get out.

Blinking with his one eye, he hunted around for his glasses, knocking over everything on his nightstand, but they weren’t where he could find them. The smell from the oven clung to the inside of his nose, and Rey stumbled off of his bed and straight into hell.

The light was stronger now, uneven and thick, clotted with gray puffs. Horror edged into Rey’s growing concern when the switch he’d hit didn’t turn on the lamp hanging in a corner of his bedroom. Rubbing at his face, he winced at the pain in his swollen eye.

It was hard to miss the roaring crackle now, and there was smoke pouring under his door, or at least he thought it was smoke. It was hard to tell… too hard to see, but the smell of it—the putrid rankness he’d come to associate with his mother’s forgetfulness—permeated his closed-in room, stealing the air from his lungs. It was difficult to breathe, and Rey struggled to catch a whiff of fresh air, trying to remember what he’d been taught in school, but nothing was coming to him. His brain was shutting down into a ripe panic, and he shuffled along the wall, trying to find the door.

The knob was hot, and he screamed when it seared his palm. His cry came out weak, a watery croak of flecked spit and sand; then the wall behind him crumbled, falling forward to strike his back.

Rey didn’t know how long he lay under the heavy debris. Time wasn’t something he could count anymore, and what little he saw was filled with stinging ash, followed by the flash of flames eating through the rest of the room. There was a voice—somewhere—and he tried to call out, screaming at the top of his lungs, but the fetid air in his chest choked out any sound he could make, and he ended up coughing, sucking in more smoke.

“Oh….” Grandma always told him to pray, but he couldn’t find the words… the faith… not with the heaviness pressing down on his legs and back. His throat hurt too much, and it felt like he’d swallowed his tongue, because he couldn’t get any air past it. Shifting didn’t help, and something gouged into his back, slicing his skin. Hiccupping, he fought his tears, refusing to give in to the helplessness swaddling him.

“Hey, I’ve got you now.” A voice filtered through the crash of the fire and the walls falling. “Stay still. Got to get you out, dude. Let me know if something hurts too bad.”

There were hands on his arms. Rey could feel them, even with the pressure on his back and legs, he could feel those hands, and he started crying, a snotty, ugly sobbing he’d have been ashamed of if he hadn’t been buried beneath the wall. The hands stroked at his shoulders, and the voice, rough and dipping deep with every other word, reassured him things would be okay… he would be okay.

He was too scared to be okay, his lungs too full of razor blades and glass, and when he caught enough air in his chest, he wanted to cry out for his mother, ashamed at the terror the flames brought out in him.

“Hold on, need to do this. Bear told me I had to cover your nose and mouth if I could. Just stay calm,” the guy half yelled at Rey. After a dig under Rey’s chin, he pulled Rey’s shirt up over his nose, blocking out some of the air, and Rey panicked, struggling to clear his mouth of the fabric. His rescuer patted him on the shoulders, then said, “It’ll keep the smoke out. I’m going to do the same thing. Just… breathe through your shirt. Okay, kid?”

The fire was getting nearer, catching on the pieces of wood sticking out of the remaining walls. His door crumbled, blackening at the edges. Then the frame burst into a line of red, angry flames, but the shadow at his side continued to work, his hands digging into the mess pinning Rey down. The heat was getting to be unbearable, and he turned his head, the collar of his T-shirt cutting across his face. Staring at the guy’s red Converses, Rey coughed, and his body took up the spasm, tightening down on his breathing.

“Almost there,” the owner of the Converses said. “Give me… a second.”

The weight was gone, a sudden heave of boards and sticky, crumbling drywall, and then Rey was free. The young man’s arms were under him, turning him over, then carefully lifting him up from the cheap rug Rey’s mom laid down in his room, but the pain, the agony of his bruised muscles was too much, and Rey screamed, louder than the sirens wailing in the distance. Bits of the rug stuck to Rey’s hands and arms, melted fibers clinging to his skin where the slag touched him, and he sobbed, scared he’d pissed himself or worse when he’d been yanked out from under the house’s remains.

They went a few yards or maybe even miles, he couldn’t tell which, but it seemed like forever before they stopped. Everything hurt. His chest ached, and his already swollen eye was sticky with grit. A streetlamp threw down some light, and he tried to move in his rescuer’s arms, twisting around to see his engulfed house topple inward.

“My mom!” Rey caught a hint of fresh air. A cold rush hit his lungs when his shirt fell from his face as the young man carefully laid him down on Mrs. Brockington’s plush green lawn. He doubled over in pain when his body knotted up around his spine. “I’ve got to get….”

“My brother got her out on the other side of the house. He got her. I know he did. He can’t…. Bear had to have gotten her out.” He moved to where Rey could see him. “I need you to stay still, okay? Someone’s coming to look at you—”

Rey wasn’t listening anymore. He let the young man’s rumbling voice roll over him, and he stretched out as much as he could on a lawn he’d never dared put a foot on at any other time in his life. He tried to speak, find the words to say thank you, but he couldn’t find them any more than he could the prayers he’d needed a few moments ago.

Blinking his one good eye, Rey couldn’t hold on to his focus. The night was fracturing around the edges, turning everything into prisms, and when he turned over, his legs refused to work. He could hear his mom crying—he knew the sound of his mother’s crying—and he wanted to reassure her, to stroke her hair and tell her everything would be okay, just like he’d been told he would be okay, but he couldn’t get his tongue to work either.

“Mason! You got the kid, yeah?” Another voice, this one husky and rough, carried over the roaring fire. “I got his mom out. It’s just the two of them.”

Rey lifted his head, straining his neck, and the blond man got up from the lawn, wiping his dirty hands on his torn jeans. Smoke pouring from the burning house swept an acrid veil over the street, and the ash carried over on the breeze stung Rey’s eye. He was massive, blocking out the orange glow, and it took a second before Rey saw his mother clinging to the man’s side, his arm tucked around her waist to lift her up onto the curb.

“Dad… he….” Rey pushed himself up, then collapsed back into the grass, his hands smarting too much to hold his weight. There were stinging welts along his arms, sprays of red streaks rising along his filthy skin. His lungs were still too tight, and each shuddering breath left him wanting more. The neighbors were starting to pour out of their homes, taking to the streets in an alarmed shuffle, but he couldn’t see his father in the thickening crowd. “I don’t know where Dad is.”

“Stay here. You’re hurt.” The blond who’d pulled him out—Mason—spoke with a hint of authority, firm and unyielding. “Just breathe in slow. Bear’s got your mom. She said it was only two of you inside. Maybe he left for something, okay?”

There was a third guy, a kid about his age, running ahead of the older man half carrying his mother. Coltish, his young man’s long legs ate up the distance between the street and Mrs. Brockington’s lush front lawn. The white streetlights did funny things to the teen’s hair, turning it nearly opaque gray, but there were flashes of gold and russet tucked into the strands, and when he turned to look at Rey, his eyes were a rich silver, a shimmering color he’d only seen in the moon.

If Rey hadn’t already had problems pulling air in, the starlight-eyed lanky teen would have stolen his breath away.

Cocky—his brain whispered—the kind of too-fucking-gorgeous guy he hated in school, but damn if he didn’t want to lose his first kiss to that smirking mouth. A dimple played coy on his cheek, a flash of a smile nearly as bright as his eyes, and Rey’s hand curled into a fist, tightening at the tickle of something he couldn’t understand forming in his belly. The fist didn’t last long, unable to hold when the burned skin on his palm stretched and cracked open, leaving his flesh raw and weeping. Gasping, he fell into another hacking spasm, and the teen frowned.

“Gus, go tell the ambulance to come around.” If Mason carried a thread of authority in his voice, the wide-shouldered man who gently set Rey’s mother down wore his strength and confidence like a suit of battle-tested armor. Up close the guy went from massive to alarming, his dark hair pulled back from a harsh, strong face with a scar cutting through his right eyebrow. “Now, kid. Not later.”

“Okay.” Moving out of the way for the large man, the kid dropped an unopened bottle of water on the ground next to Rey’s side. Then he was gone, swallowed up by the cloud of flecked smoke and the milling crowd.

The sirens were louder this time, but he could still hear his mother when she sobbed as she grabbed at his shirt, knotting her fingers into the fabric, then the murmur of the saviors someone—a saint or God—sent to pull him free from the inferno eating through his life. There were reassurances, different phrases than he would have used, but they seemed to quiet her, and she lay on the grass next to him, curling around him as if they were on the couch, watching an old movie she’d found on one of the free cable stations.

“Thank God. You’re okay. Thank God they… oh God,” his mother finally whispered, her face as wet as Rey’s, but she let her tears fall, creating odd lines through the soot on her cheeks. “I don’t even know how they… I don’t know their names.”

“It’s Gus, Mom,” Rey mumbled around the ash in his mouth. “Mason, Bear, and Gus.”

“JESUS CHRIST, that hurts,” Rey playfully bitched at the purple-haired younger man bent over his side. “You sure you know how to use that thing?”

No one threw a withering stare like Ivo, Mason’s youngest blood brother, and Rey was amused when the inker’s dark blue eyes narrowed. A chuckle from the next stall broke through the stinging silence, and Rey joined in, no longer trying to keep still under the stylus of vibrating needles held a few inches above his bared hip.

“He can take it, Ivo,” Tokugawa called out from his spot in 415 Ink’s guest stall, a midshop spot usually reserved for masters in the industry and directly across from a stall Rey refused to even glance at. “I’ve given him worse.”

“Challenge accepted,” the maligned artist mumbled, rolling his shoulders back, then resting his elbow on the massage table Rey’d stretched out on nearly half an hour before. “Remember, Montenegro, just because you’re Mace’s best friend, doesn’t mean you’re mine.”

The first time Rey Montenegro went under the machine, it was to sublimate one of the scars on his side. He’d worn the smeared tangle of flesh for nearly ten years before he decided he was done carrying around his father’s handiwork. It’d been Bear who’d taken the keloid and buried it beneath a Japanese-style tiger leaping up from his thigh to his hip, blending away white-gray streaks and pale pink patches until Rey no longer saw the marks of his father’s abandonment on his skin. There were other tats after that, but the first one—that tiger—pushed him in ways he hadn’t even understood at the time.

And now it was time to finish the dragon on his other hip, to put himself under the vibrating needles again and own a little bit more of his own body.

He’d found a spot for his convertible in the parking structure a few blocks down from the shop, a monstrous cement thing meant to suck up the congestion on Jefferson Street, but nothing could stop the traffic along the piers’ main thoroughfare. After dropping a couple of bucks into the tip cup belonging to a cowboy-hat-wearing guitarist slung against a pub’s post, Rey dashed across the busy street, dodging bodies in the stream of tourists hustling to hit Fisherman’s Wharf before the rain clouds broke open. A light drizzle ghosted over him, catching on his lashes, and he had a brief flash of regret in leaving the top of his car up when he left, since he was sick of being cooped up. After having spent the past few days either in the firehouse or on one of the trucks, heading into the flames or leaving covered in doubt and soot, the water-kissed San Francisco wind was nice to feel on his skin, even if he’d last about a second under its icy bite.

415 Ink shouldered itself into a spot between a souvenir shop bristling with T-shirts and cups bearing witty slogans and poorly drawn San Francisco landmarks and a fairly tame champagne lounge chasing after naughty-minded Midwestern tourists looking for a semi-risqué time amid the shirtless waiters, nacho fries, and two-dollar tacos. The tattoo shop was in a sweet location across the pier, the result of some deal Bear made with the owner of the building nearly ten years before. There’d been some mutterings from the owner of the champagne lounge, sour-grapes rumors spread when Bear first opened, but they quieted down after Bear had a talk with him.

Now the man avoided Bear and the rest of the staff like the plague, something that seemed to suit everyone just fine.

Rey didn’t know the details or even want to know what was said. Very few people crossed Barrett “Bear” Jackson, and those that had usually were nowhere to be found afterward. In the years since he’d known Bear and his oddball family, Rey had only heard the man raise his voice once, and that was one time too many. Still, when he’d walked into the shop earlier that afternoon, Rey only had a wide grin for the broad-shouldered man standing behind 415 Ink’s front counter and bit back a pained grunt when Bear reached over and slapped him on the arm in a hearty hello. His arm still stung from the slap after half an hour, but he wasn’t going to mention it, especially not to Ivo.

One didn’t show weakness to any of the 415 Ink blood brothers, not unless a guy was willing to hear about it for the rest of his life.

He hadn’t been in the shop in a while, but not much had changed. There was a new artist in the space next to Missy, one of the shop’s full-timers, and at some point, the poured concrete floor got a coat of something shiny on it, but the long shotgun-style space still sported a high ceiling painted black and creamy walls covered in various sketches, colored-in drawings, and the occasional photo. The shop’s eight half-wall stalls with their tied-back opaque-white curtains reminded Rey of a stable, but he was thankful for the privacy, especially since he was lying on his side with his ass half out while Ivo worked on him. The stalls were large, giving an inker space to not only maneuver around a broad massage table and worktable but left enough room for a couple of chairs or one massive, shaggy mutt named Earl, who’d only wander out from behind the reception area to visit people he liked.

Rey took a secret delight at Earl, sprawled out close enough to him to scratch at the dog’s ears.

“Okay, love,” Tokugawa murmured from the next stall. “We’re done here. Let me clean you off and you can take a look at it in the mirror.”

The familiar scent of astringent cleaner drifted over to Rey, and he lifted his head, catching a glimpse of the watercolor lotus tattoo, a spray of rich, soothing pinks, purples, and greens over a traditional Asian outline on an expanse of pale skin. The newly inked young woman met Rey’s eyes around the partially open curtain and smiled, twisting around while holding the strap of her tank top under her arm. The piece covered a broad section on her chest near her right collarbone, draping tendrils of color and connective black lines up over her shoulder.

Holding a mirror up in front of her, Tokugawa asked, “What do you think, Steph? It’s a blend, no? Henna-like outline but watercolor effect.”

She stood breathless, a curvaceous blonde with sweet face, then exhaled slowly, her voice a rough, awed whisper, “Oh man, Ichi, it’s… perfect.”

“Good, let me wrap you up and you can get dressed.” He cocked his head, a quirky smile lightening the seriousness of his Japanese features. “Well, not that you’re naked, but it is cold outside, and you don’t want any of this on your leather jacket.”

“Down, Montenegro.” Ivo tapped the back of Rey’s head, a light rap of knuckles only softened by Rey’s thick hair. “You’re fucking with my canvas.”

“Where’s the dog?” Bear called out from the front, and Earl lifted his head, sniffing at the air. “Earl!”

“Better go, dude,” Ivo murmured, scritching the dog with the toe of his red heels. His pleated black kilt shifted, exposing more of his lean, muscled shin. “Don’t want Bear to come looking for you.”

Heaving to his feet, Earl sighed, then shuffled off to the front of the shop. His toenails clicked on the floor, an echoing castanet chorus, before ending in a groaning thump of seventy-five pounds of dog slumping down on a covered piece of memory foam. Ivo’s bark of laughter was subdued but sharp enough to hook Rey’s curiosity.

Then the needles hit and Rey forgot all about the dog, Ivo’s knees, or his fuck-me red pumps.

“Shit, a little warning, bitch,” he grumbled around the pain.

“Oh, by the way, Montenegro”—Ivo’s gleeful mutter tickled Rey’s spine—“you’re going to get a tattoo now. In this tattoo shop. You know, that place that does tattoos.”

“Fuck you, kid,” Rey shot back, then gasped when Ivo did something that felt like a lick of fire along his hip bone. “Fuck you for that too.”

“Yeah, I’m not the brother you want to fuck,” the younger man replied softly. “And speaking of the prodigal son, he’s back, you know?”

Playing dumb with Ivo never worked, but Rey tried it anyway. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Gus.” Another stinging tap of needles then Ivo scooted closer, settling in to work. “He’s back home, Montenegro. Got in this morning, and from what I hear, you’re all he’s been talking about since he got off of his damned Harley.”

Two

“HEY, SLACKER.” A nudge, hard and firm, jostled Gus out of his doze. “Get the fuck up or you’re going to get eaten alive by mosquitoes.”

There was no arguing with that voice. Well, at least not with the man attached to it. If Bear wanted to, Gus was pretty sure his older mostly-brother could pick him up by the head and fling him around as easily as Earl did the flat raccoon toy he’d gotten last Christmas, and there wasn’t enough room in the Lower Ashbury house’s backyard to swing a cat, much less a full-grown Gus.

“Not sleeping,” he grumbled, shoving his hands to his sides to resist scrubbing at his eyes. He kept them closed, refusing to give in to Bear’s prodding. “Just… thinking.”

“Dog’s been licking your foot for the past five minutes, kid.” Bear gave another bone-rattling tap to Gus’s shoulder, then from the sounds of his footsteps on the back patio’s pavers, moved over to the other sofa they’d dragged out to the covered patio. “Get up. I want to talk to you.”

So not the words Gus wanted to hear after a long haul back into the city on a misfiring Harley. Especially after it began to rain and he discovered there wasn’t as much life left on his back tire as he’d thought. It’d been enough to keep him from dying, but that wasn’t something he was going to toss out in front of Bear. Not if he wanted to stay in one piece.

And damn it, his bare foot was soaking wet, sporting a sticky damp coat from Earl’s aggressive tongue.

Opening his eyes and sitting up was of a mistake. He hurt a bit from the tumble he took when a heavy city-owned garbage truck tapped his rear end when they were coming off the freeway and into the turn. He’d gone down, not as hard as he had before, but his leathers were shot, and the helmet he’d sworn to replace a few months ago was now scraped to shit and unusable. A piece of duct tape held the damned thing—and a few of the bike’s parts—together long enough for him to limp it home, but stashing the Harley at the rear of the house hadn’t worked out as he’d planned. From the rough scrape in Bear’s tone, there was going to be a lecture.

Maybe even two scoldings, because the first would be about him getting hurt and the second because he hadn’t planned on bringing it up to his older brother. If there was one thing Bear didn’t like, it was finding out about shit all on his own.

“City’s going to pay for everything. Helmet, leathers… bike too.” Leaping into a conversation with an offensive thrust was usually the best way to circumvent Bear. The problem—as most of Gus’s problems turned out to be—he’d chosen the wrong offensive angle, because Bear’s thick black eyebrows pulled in tight over his slightly skewed nose. Not a good sign. Finally succumbing to the scratch of grit on his lashes, Gus rubbed at them then peered out at his brother. “What?”

“What the fuck happened to your bike?” The frown moved from curious to raging fury in the time it took Gus to blink.

He should have known better. Bear’d lost his parents in a bus crash, and Gus didn’t have to be psychic to know his older brother probably panicked at the Harley’s mangled carcass. It’d been touch-and-go with CPS about Bear joining their family, but Gus’s mother—Bear’s aunt—had cleaned up long enough to give the social worker hope it would work out.

She’d been wrong, but Gus didn’t blame her for thinking Melanie’d gone straight. If there was one thing his mother had been good at, it was lying to get her way. She’d fought hard to get custody of Bear, only to discover the money he’d been awarded for his parents’ death was locked down until he was an adult.

After that, any pretense about being a good mother and role model went right out the window.

“Shit, the bike.” Gus winced. “I can explain.”

There was no yelling. Bear didn’t yell. If anything, he got quieter, a low rumble of intensity most sane people tried to avoid triggering. Gus had no such luck. Everything he said or did seemed to trip Bear’s simmering ire—or worse—set off the flat stillness of Bear’s disappointment. God knew Gus had saved up cupfuls of Bear’s quiet, damning disappointment, all ready to for the time when he wanted to mortar himself into a hole and die.

Oh, opening his eyes was a mistake. Sitting up was worse. Nothing like staring into Bear’s not-so-gentle face and finding tenderness in his strained expression.

So Gus shifted his attention to the backyard and the milky clouds obscuring the night sky.

It was late. Had to be because Bear would have stayed until 415 Ink closed, especially since Ichi was taking up a guest stall. Ivo—the only one of the brothers who was his actual sibling—was probably out prowling, doing whatever it was insane artists did on a weeknight. Or a Saturday, in which case there were places Gus could have been if only his bike wasn’t a rattling mess of duct-taped pieces alongside his helmet.

If only Bear wasn’t staring him down.

Because no one could make him feel anything like his cousin Barrett.

Home felt good around him. Even as complicated and fucked up as their lives—his life—was, the house Bear bought back when a phalanx of lawyers handed him the insurance money from his parents’ death was Gus’s home. He’d known other places, lived in a few, slept in a few cars. They all had, but the ramshackle, screwed-up, kind of wonky old three-story house on the hill was home.

His brothers who broke skin and bones to rebuild the house—brothers in both blood and something more—were the only family Gus had. Five souls, thrown together by a cracked system intent on driving its clients into death, jail, or insanity and the hard-nosed badass who’d pulled them out.

With the five of them contained in its walls, the house came alive, a vibrant stew of noise, laughter, and a bit of bickering. They’d been drawn to one another through blood and bonding over being gay or bi in a system already intolerant of anything outside of the norm. The worn-around-the-edges house was their safe place, a home where they could be who they’d meant to be, a place for their boisterous, ramshackle family, with its cobbled together connections and fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants rules.

“Tell me about the bike,” said the badass who’d done the pulling and, in Gus’s case, still yanked on his chain more often than Gus liked. He’d settled down on the longer couch they’d put against the back wall, under the kitchen’s windows, angling the shorter couch into an L to its left. Earl slumped down on Bear’s foot, gnawing at a piece of antler. “How bad are you hurt? What happened?”

Bear sat hunched over, about half a foot too big for the couch big enough to fit the rest of them. He wasn’t the tallest since Mace hit Bear’s height about the moment he’d become a fireman, but he was certainly the broadest and the fucking bossiest. But there was something comforting about having someone pushing you from behind, because when it was all said and done, it also meant they had your back.

“Garbage truck did a hydro and clipped me.” He shrugged, trying to pass it off as nothing, but there were aches along his spine, aggravated by falling asleep on a not-nearly-wide-enough couch while the cold night crept in over the city. “I’m okay. The city guy they sent over said they’d pay for everything. Popped a leak in my back tire and fucked up my front rim a little bit. I’ll get Marco to take a look at it and write up a bill. I’m fine. Pulled in here and figured I’d just sit back and wait before heading down to the shop but… well, shit, couches happen.”

“You weren’t picking up. I was going to head out to find you but I saw your phone on the counter so I figured you were here.” Bear shook his head. “Forget all the shit I’ve given you about that Hello Kitty cover you’ve got on it.”

“Yeah, I had to plug it in. Deader than a Norwegian Blue,” Gus explained, chuckling at Bear’s slight grimace. “Don’t give me that shit. They’re brilliant.”

“One step above Benny Hill. Blackadder. All the way,” Bear retorted, falling into a familiar argument they’d started years ago.

“Please, you keep trotting out Benny Hill like it was filth. You know you laughed. Shit, even Mom laughed.” Ivo’d been too young, and Puck always… Gus shut down that thought before he could fall into the darkness it promised, like he shut down every thought he had of before. His mother rarely laughed, especially after his cousin Bear joined them, straining the household further. Money was tight—it was always tight—and the state hadn’t seen fit to cough up much when they went from three kids to four. Rubbing at the five-pointed star on his wrist, he glanced toward the house, spotting the light in the kitchen window. “Is Ivo here?”

“No, he went out with Ichi and his husband. I figured you’d be here, so I wanted to come home.” His brother-cousin scratched at the dog’s ear, getting Earl to thump the pavers with a massive foot. “Got some chili in the freezer. I can toss that into the microwave. We can have it for dinner after you get a shower in. You’re kind of ripe, kid.”

“Let me unplug my phone first. Don’t want to fry it while you’re doing the chili thing.” Trying to stand up took effort, and Gus nearly bit through his cheek stifling the pained groan his throat coughed up from the moment he leaned forward. He made it halfway, then finally let go of a quiet, hard “Fuck.”

Bear tsked. “Did you go to Urgent Care? They—”

“Fuck off, okay?” The unsettled feeling in his belly snapped out, lashing at Bear, the dog, and the universe. Bear brought his shoulders up, and Gus sucked in air through his teeth, then exhaled. “Look, I’m sorry. I just… fucking hell, Bear. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing right now. It’s all just so damned… it’s too fucking big.”

“Well, first things first, You go get into the shower and get the stink off of you. Your phone’s going to be okay. Got the house rewired, so nothing’s going to pop.” Bear paused, then hooked his hand under Gus’s armpit and pulled him gently up. “Or catch on fire. Hot water will loosen you up. I’ll get you some ibuprofen.”

“Thanks.” Too small of a word for… everything Bear gave him, everything Bear ever did for him, but it was the only one he could find in his small, closed-off mind at the moment. “I’ll come down after I get cleaned up.”

“You do that.” Bear patted him on the back, gentler than before, but the ache grabbed on to the smack and held on for dear life, reverberating into Gus’s bones. “While we’re eating, we can talk about what you’re going to do, including getting some hours in at the shop. Oh, and I almost forgot. You’re not going to guess who came in today.”

“Do I get three choices, or are you going to be nice and just tell me so I can get under the hot water?”

“Going to be nice, because man, you reek.” Bear grumbled playfully, wiping his hand on the back of Gus’s shirt. “And the guy who came by? Rey Montenegro. Ivo’s laying a dragon over his other side for him, so… he’s going to be in the shop sometime when you’re there, and when he is, I’m going to expect you to play nice.”

THE LAST person Gus wanted to think about when he climbed into the shower was Rey Montenegro, but there he was, a ghost standing next to him, a memory of a kiss he’d never have again, of hands on his body and the chill of fingers sliding off his back, never to return.

“Son of a fucking bitch. Fuck him. Just… bathe, eat, and crash.” He smeared a dollop of shampoo into his hair, scrubbing at the long sun-streaked tangle until suds tickled his lashes. Rinsing the mass seemed to take longer than usual, and Gus had a serious thought of taking a clipper to it, shearing himself as bald as he’d been in the sixth grade when they’d all gotten lice.

“You’d hate it,” he scolded himself. “Your damned head’ll rattle around in the helmet and drive you nuts. It’s hair. Just fricking wash it.”

He was mostly done combing conditioner through his mane when he heard a flush, and before Gus could plaster himself against the shower’s far wall, the water went hot, scalding his chest and stomach. Screaming at the top of his lungs only made the culprit burst into a hearty peal of laughter, and Gus pounded on the shower’s frosted glass door, cursing out the colorful blob sitting on the old dresser they’d converted into a vanity counter.

In seconds the water balanced out when the toilet finished churning, and Gus sighed, turning down the hot water until a tepid flow cooled his skin off. “God, I’m going to fucking kill you when I get out, Ivo.”

The promise was a weak one. He might have outweighed his baby brother by twenty pounds, but Ivo fought dirty, a gouging fury with nothing to lose and willing to break a tooth if it meant he took a guy’s nut sack with him. Gus taught him everything he knew to do in a fight, but Ivo always went a little further, latching on to the insanity their mother left in their genes and dishing up a beating to anyone who pushed him too far.

“Yeah, sitting right here, asshole. Bring it,” his baby brother called out. There was a thumping noise, probably Ivo swinging his feet into the dresser’s drawers. “Bear told me you laid your bike down. See what happens when you get old? You can’t handle a bike anymore. Maybe you should get a minivan. You know, so you can drive really slow through the neighborhood and yell at kids walking on the street.”

“I didn’t lay it down. It was laid down for me, but I caught it up before I hit the road. God, why do I always wash my hair first? I can’t see a fucking thing now.” He shoved his hair away from his face, then reached for the bar of soap sitting on the ledge. “Really, Irish Spring?”

“Hey, you haven’t been home in six months. Be fucking glad there’s soap in there for you to use.” Ivo’s bare foot made a quick impression on the glass when he kicked it lightly. “That’s probably leftover from Mace. I’ve got some Dreamcatcher in there if you want.”

“Found it.” He unscrewed the large brown container he found nestled next to a tube of violet-tinted conditioner. A punch of curry, cinnamon, and coffee hit his sinuses, and Gus wrinkled his nose at its strength. “I use this and someone’s going to take a bite out of me. Smells more like an Indian food truck than soap.”

“You’re welcome, dick.”

“I was going to say thank you, asshole. Give me a chance, for fuck’s sake.” The soap lathered up nicely, and Gus scrubbed at his tender spots, hissing when the rough-textured plastic sheet found a burr of scraped skin. “Okay, mostly didn’t hit the road. Caught some hedge, though. That hurt.”

If Bear made him feel comfortable and cozy, Ivo was… it was hard to say what Ivo was, other than his weird little brother who wore what he wanted, did as he pleased, and could carve an image out of nothing but his mind, a scrap of paper, and anything he could lay his hands on to scribble with. Gus knew he was good. He could draw and ink circles around practically anyone. No ego. Not a boast. He knew it. So did everyone else.

But Ivo… his freaky, odd, hyperfocused baby brother could blow him away.

There were times when Gus could have cheerfully smothered Ivo with a pillow. But mostly—and he’d never admit it—he’d sooner take a bullet for him.

“Hey, inked Rey today. Well, started some of the base color,” Ivo shouted at him over the water. “Told him you were back in town. He didn’t seem impressed, but then we didn’t talk about you much.”

“Yeah, Bear told me,” he replied. Playing it cool wasn’t going to do him any good, since Ivo could find every single one of his buttons in the dark. Still, he wasn’t going to hand the kid any ammunition. “He’s the one who walked. Not me. And why are you still here? Aren’t you done pissing?”

“Hurry the fuck up, will ya? I’m hungry, and you know Bear won’t let us eat until we’re all there. Oh, might have lied a bit about not talking to Rey about you, but you know, since you didn’t show up at the shop, I figured anything went,” Ivo shot back, flushing the toilet again, leaving Gus standing under a blast of nearly-too-hot water. “And, welcome home, dick.”

THEY’D EATEN in near silence, mostly with Ivo bouncing his leg in time to whatever voices he heard singing to him in his skull. Bear gave him a cutting look when the thumping got to be louder than Earl’s snores, and he quieted down for a few minutes, then started up again.

It was late. Or early. Depending on how he looked at the clock. Every aching part of Gus’s body begged to fall over into a soft bed, seducing his will with the promise of a feather pillow, but his mind wasn’t having any of it. Instead it raced about, rifling through his memories and pulling up things he’d sooner leave buried.

Like Rey Montenegro.

Sleep did not come, and Gus prowled downstairs, only to catch his knee on a Queen Anne table that hadn’t been there six months ago. His tongue took the brunt of the damage, mostly because he bit down on it to stop from screaming a hearty fuck through the house. Dawn was a few hours off—if that—and both of his brothers would be up in a bit, or at least Bear would, opening 415 Ink before the clock ticked over to noon. The place should have been empty, but a flicker of light from the back of the house grabbed Gus’s attention.

Expecting Ivo, he was surprised to find Mason sprawled across a corner of the sectional in the family room, nursing a beer while a wall-mounted large-screen television played out a muted Korean drama, its subtitles scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

The floor creaked when Gus stepped into the room, as did most of the house. The place was in much better shape than when Bear first purchased it, but there were still quirks and quibbles left to chase after. Square and watertight was all they’d hoped for in the first few months, especially since the mostly Craftsman-style row house sat on a sloping corner. Gus’d been one of the first to move in, culled from the system by Bear’s insistent pounding on social workers and the courts, but Mason quickly followed, hot on the heels of the Bear who’d protected him while they’d done time in one of the shittier foster homes the city had to offer.

Lucas and Ivo came months later after prolonged battles, and the house grew cramped, its three bedrooms and attic bursting at the seams, but they’d made do and fixed things along the way. Not always as good as it could be, Gus thought, running his hand over a wonky built-in bookcase they’d torn the back off to open up the air flow between the family room and the front hall, but it was home.

Mason shouldn’t have been there… unless more than just a table had been moved into the house. He had his own place now, one he shared with Gus’s biggest mistake. So unless that had changed since the last time he’d talked with Bear, Mason shouldn’t have be in the living room.

But there he was, eating something out of a bag and staring at the TV screen.

Only the light from the television illuminated the largest room in the house, an ever-changing palette of beiges, blues, and golds. They were good colors on Mason’s face, catching on his craggy good looks and the long stretch of his body, and the artist in Gus’s soul itched to sketch him, if only to piss Mace off. Another squeak caught Mason’s attention, and he shifted his piercing gaze to Gus’s face, giving him the barest hint of a nod when he padded in.

The family room was where they spent most of their time, huddled together on the couch to play or watch a game. It’d been the place the band of brothers first found their footing, sitting shoulder to shoulder on ever-changing couch configurations, eating off of paper plates while catching up on each other’s day. It’d become their gathering place, a space to scream at the top of their lungs and sometimes hand out a shove or two before Bear stepped in. The room was where nearly all of them broke the no-intimacy-of-any-kind-in-a-shared-family-space rule and then got caught, because that was just how life turned out when the oldest brother of the clan had super-radar hearing and a sixth sense about when to make a surprise appearance.

He’d kissed Rey Montenegro to celebrate his graduation in the brothers’ kitchen, pressing Mason’s best friend against one of the counters and sucking on his lower lip as the newly sworn-in fireman halfheartedly protested, but it’d been the family room where he’d been handed his walking papers by the guy Mason’d pulled out of a fire and Gus lusted after since the moment he’d laid eyes on him.

“Thought you had your own place.” Not much of a greeting, but it was going to be the best Mason got from him. They’d ended things not badly but prickly when he’d taken off, and from the slanted look he got in return, not much had changed. “Bear know you’re drinking his beer?”

“Pretty sure Bear knows I’m good for it.” Mace snorted, then took a sip from the bottle, his eyes returning to the screen.

“That a dig at saying I’m not?” Starting a fight with Mace probably wasn’t the best idea Gus ever had. Not with the damage he’d already done to his body from the bike spill, but he was itching for something.

“You said it, not me. And yeah, I have my own place, but I crash here sometimes. Which you’d know… if you were here,” he replied, saluting Gus with his beer. “’Sides, I brought more over. Grab one if you want.”

Fucker. The offer took the wind out of Gus’s tattered sails, and he was torn between telling Mason to go fuck himself and grabbing one of the beers and joining him on the massive U-shaped couch. Beer won out, a promise of a bit of numbness, and while pretty Asian boys casting longing looks at either each other or at the one young girl in the cast wasn’t porn, they were better than watching baseball.

Gus snagged a beer, then took up the opposite corner of the sectional, resting his feet on the rectangular ottoman. The brew was good, potent on his tongue. It hit his stomach, easing away the aches in his bones a hell of a lot better than the handful of ibuprofen Bear shoved at him. A few sips in and the pretty boys lost his interest. He liked his men a bit tougher, a scrape of beard and large hands—preferably a bit rough—and willing to walk away when he was done with them.

Just like Rey.

Except he hadn’t been the one to walk, and for some reason, that dug into Gus’s soul, festering with a resentment he wanted to scoop out and slather over Mason’s face.

“Spit it out, August,” Mason remarked softly, his eyes never leaving the screen. “Or do you want me to start?”

“Why don’t you start? Bear hasn’t taken a good crack at me yet. You’ve got lots of uncharted territory.” He took a hefty swig, rolling the foamy brew in his mouth. “You go first, then when he’s done, we can compare what a crappy job you did at making me feel like shit.”

Mason said nothing. He just sat there, one arm slung over the back of the couch, his long legs stretched out on the cushions, and just looked at Gus, his handsome face devoid of any discernible expression. He’d been Bear’s confidant, a slightly older, serious-minded teenaged boy Gus almost hated as soon as he’d come into the fourth or fifth crappy foster home they’d been moved into after… then.