“So that’s what love looks like.” Trey’s voice trembled. He held out the picture to me. I took it in shaking fingers.
For the first time since Deborah had told me about Mom’s past, I looked into the eyes of the woman in the picture and I saw her, trulysawher. She had fled hell itself and carved out a life with me in this place. And maybe to people like Trey and Quinn, our life looked like a nightmare, but it truly wasn’t. She made it wonderful.
She did everything for me.
Quinn handed me another picture.And here’s Dante. He’d been a part of our lives since I was five years old. In and out of foster homes, used by adults for money, for drugs, he felt safe with us, and there were very few places where Dante was safe.Mom was broken and Dante was broken, and both of them were desperate for love, for belonging. Mom had so much love to give.
And although I wasn’t privy to this secret between them until it was too late, I could see how it had happened – in the moments around me, where I was too focused on being strong, on believing that I didn’t need anyone. They were both falling – why should they not crash into each other?
I shoved the pictures into my pocket and picked my way around the perimeter, taking in the details. It was less than a year since I’d watched this building burn, but it felt like forever, like another lifetime. No one had cleaned up the site after the fire. Looters would already have picked through the debris for anything of value – I could see the faint shapes of bootprints impressed in the ash. But other things, useless things, stuck out of the ruins – bits of broken crockery from the mismatched mugs in our kitchen. The aerial from our shitty little TV. Mom’s jazz records melted into a puddle of strange shapes.
My fingers slid through the ash, pulling out something that made my breath catch.
A drawing.
Coated in dirt, crumpled and torn at the corner, but intact. How it had survived fire and rain and looters, I didn’t know. It had found its way back to me.
I remembered the image like I’d seen it only yesterday. It was the first thing Dante ever drew for me, when he was about ten. He was a great artist even then. I hung this over my bed and it stayed there until the fire.
Three stray cats sat on top of a rusting swing set – one black, one tabby, one slinky and grey. All rendered in colored pencils. The grey one held a mouse by its tail between her teeth, while the other two batted at it with tiny paws, their tails curled over each other, forming a heart.
Mom. Dante. Me.
Family.
Ayaz took the image from my fingers and held it up to the dim light. “He had talent.”
I nodded. I knew if I tried to speak, I’d burst into tears.
I lay the picture flat on the backseat of the car, and we picked our way down the slope at the rear of the property, which led to the rusting playground where I swung and slid, and later, Dante and I laid in the treehouse and smoked weed and wished on the stars to be anywhere but here.
Careful what you wish for.
The treehouse was still there. Rough wood jabbed my skin as I flung myself up the ladder and slumped into a dark corner. I held my head in my hands, trying to force back the memories. It was too much, coming at me like a freight train.How am I supposed to deal with this?
A face appeared in the doorway. My mind saw Dante – I was so used to his face that I couldn’t fix on anyone else.
But it was Ayaz. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. He climbed up beside me, his back resting against the wall. He stretched out his legs and stared at his shoes.
“I’m sorry we destroyed your journal,” he said.
That journal the Kings stole from me and tore up was ancient history, but those words… they opened the waterworks.
Tears fell thick and fast. I cried for all the things I hadn’t yet cried for. Because I missed my mother. Because I missed my best friend. Because in a moment of weakness I’d lost them both. And I was about to lose my Kings, too.
Warm lips pressed against my eyelids, kissing the tears away. “Hazy, what can we do?”
My eyes flew open. Without me noticing, Quinn and Trey had climbed up into the treehouse. Quinn knelt in front of me, studying my face with a mixture of awe and concern. Trey bent his body awkwardly around the door, his long legs dangling outside.
They didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to.
Quinn bent forward, his lips brushing mine. “I know we can’t take the pain away,” he whispered. “But can we at least give you another happy memory of this place?”
I had promised myself that the night of the party was my last taste of them. I had to make a clean slate so when the time came, I could say goodbye. But as Trey kissed a line of fire along my collarbone and Quinn’s hands slid between my thighs, I didn’t have the strength to refuse.
Ayaz bent my face to his, and his lips sought mine. This kiss wasn’t one of hunger – it was something deeper. Ayaz understood things about me the others never could. He’d been a stranger to their world at first, as I’d been a stranger when I first came to Derleth Academy. He had his own locked box of mixed memories that would take a whole lifetime to sift through.
Three Kings propped me up as I confronted my past. I wanted to be there with them when they faced theirs, as they would again and again in their new lives. I wanted it more than I’d wanted anything ever before.
