“He should be,” Caleb says.Relief knocks the wind out of me a little.Cassius said so when he called, but he lives in a world whereshouldseems to be a flimsy word, and hearing it echoed helps.
“Does he text or call you while he’s away?”escapes before I can tuck it in.
“Yes,” Atlas says, and Adrian and Caleb both tilt their heads at him like disapproving owls.Whoops.
“He checks on you all day,” Adrian adds.
“And all night,” Atlas groans, but he doesn’t sound angry.
“But, won’t call me?”I hate how small that sounds.He promised honesty and faithfulness, not a bedtime routine.
“You should tell him you’d like calls,” Adrian says.“He’s afraid to spook you.”
“Spook me?”
“If he’s too much too soon, you’ll run.Or something along those lines,” Adrian says.
“So just tell him that regular calls and texts won’t spook me?”
“Precisely,” all three brothers say together.If it wasn’t so unnerving, I’d laugh.
We eat breakfast together, and I ask a lot of questions.So many, that at one point Adrian threatens never to speak another word as long as he lives.I push anyway because the alternative is ignorance and the ghosts are loud today.One stands by the threshold.He’s dripping, furious, mouth forming the wordbathtubwithout a voice.I look away, press my thumbnail to my ring finger to ground myself.I also want to know these brothers.I want to love them in the way Cassius does.They’re loyalty to one another is inspiring.I can’t think of a single person that I’d die for.Cassius.Now.If it came to it, I’d rather die than live in a world without him.
“I need to know things,” I whine.“I don’t know how to be his wife.”
“It’s not our job to teach you,” Caleb says.
“It will be if he keeps leaving,” I say, swallowing my sadness.“I wasn’t raised in this.I don’t know how I fit.I don’t want to disappoint him.”
“He wouldn’t choose to leave you,” Adrian says.“He has to.”
“I know that.”I swallow again before continuing so I don’t cry.“I need to know how to act, what to do.”
“You just act like you,” Caleb says.“If anything goes sideways, you don’t know anything.”
“I truly don’t know anything.”
“Not right now,” Adrian says.“But someday you might.If the day ever comes where you’re being questioned, repeatedly ask for Eland, our cousin.He’s a lawyer.”
“And what about people who aren’t in law enforcement?”I ask.
“No one will touch you,” Atlas says.“If they’re stupid enough to try, they’ll die.”
“I don’t think I can do this.”
“You will do this,” Adrian says.“You will figure it out.Don’t worry if it doesn’t happen overnight.”
“I don’t know if Iwantto do this.I want to be with Cassius, but I don’t want all the bad to taint what I see when I look at him.I don’t want the fear.I don’t want to start liking the way it feels to live in the dark.”
“He’ll carry the dark,” Caleb says.“He always has.”
My fingers square the napkin under my coffee, edge to edge.“What about what he needs?”From the look on their faces, the question surprises them as much as me.“Doesn’t he need somewhere to set it down?Someone to be soft with him?He said I make him weak.”I count five in, five out.“Maybe I’m supposed to be the place whereweakisn’t a sin.”
“Yes, be that.He needs that.He needsyou,” Adrian says, without hesitating, and not an ounce of doubt in his voice.
I line my mug with the table’s grout, let the words settle.Being with a man like Cassius, I’m learning, is made of two things: saying yes, and surviving the spaces between.
The brothers hang out after breakfast and after Logan arrives they move to leave as one.Mugs in the sink, chairs nudged back into line, a last look passed between them like a wordless benediction.Leather and citrus, sugar and coffee, and the faint tick of Adrian’s cane on tile.The front door opens and all three step out at the same time, gone in a single wingbeat.
