Not the Tristan who had so much but still felt like something was missing.
I’d asked my fathers not to let on to the family the real reason I was coming home. I suspected they might have told a few of the adults in our family, but they’d clearly respected my wishes because I doubted Brennan would have kept it to himself if he’d known. I wasn’t really disappointed that my time at Julliard had been cut short, since I hadn’t particularly enjoyed the program. Maybe it was the competitiveness of it all, I wasn’t really sure. Music had always been an escape for me and I’d never felt the need to prove it to be anything more than that. Yes, I wanted music to be a permanent part of my life, but I couldn’t see myself traveling the world giving performances. I couldn’t see turning music into something that someday might become a burden or an obligation and that was exactly what school had started to feel like. And while others had said I had a gift, to me my music was just another extension of me. I had brown hair, I was on the shorter side, I played the piano…that was it. No muss, no fuss.
I’d debated with whether or not to keep pursuing music as part of my education, but had finally settled on combining something I loved with something I thought I could easily fall in love with.
Teaching.
It wasn’t something I’d ever even given much thought to until the day I’d been at JFK airport in New York waiting for my flight home for the Christmas break. They’d had a piano near my gate and I’d sat down on a whim to play. I’d managed to gather a nice little crowd of people around me who’d started asking me to play various Christmas carols, but it wasn’t until a little girl who couldn’t have been more than nine or ten had told me she wanted to learn to play that I’d finally found something that had made sense to me. I’d spent twenty minutes teaching her a simple tune and I’d loved every second of it.
I’d talked to my fathers about the possibility of giving up a career as a professional pianist over the holiday. I’d been worried they wouldn’t support the decision since teaching music carried none of the prestige or paychecks that being a well-known pianist did. But I’d underestimated the men who’d raised me, who’d saved me. Because they hadn’t even hesitated for a second to tell me they’d support me in whatever career path I chose that would make me happiest.
Before Logan and Dom had found me, I’d often wondered what I had done to deserve the life I’d been given…to have a mother who wasn’t even aware of me half the time and a father I’d never met. I’d actually thought myself the luckiest kid in the world when I’d ended up in the group home because I’d finally been clean and had had food to eat that hadn’t been half spoiled. And then it had just gotten better because Zane had entered my life and had found me the family I hadn’t even known I’d wanted.
Of course, I hadn’t known that when I’d met the man and I also hadn’t known I’d been sick. It had taken the state and Zane a while to figure out that I’d actually been tested for HIV when I was a toddler and had been started on an antiretroviral therapy program early on while my mother had still been living with her mother. I had no memory of my maternal grandmother, but from what Zane had told me, she’d died when I was eight or nine and my mom had turned back to doing drugs, something she’d been doing beforeshe’d gotten pregnant with me and how she herself had become infected.
After the state had diagnosed me for the second time, I’d been put back on the medication and Zane had started the process of trying to find a family member to take me in. I learned later that there’d only been a paternal great-aunt and she’d had no interest in taking on the burden of caring for a kid, let alone an HIV-positive one. With the prospects of being adopted growing slimmer and slimmer as each day had gone by, I’d been facing a future bouncing around the foster-care system until I aged out at eighteen. And then Logan and Dom had happened.
I hadn’t made it easy for them. Not even a little bit.
It wasn’t that I’d outwardly fought them since that wasn’t my way of doing things. No, I’d shut down. Absolutely and completely. I hadn’t spoken to them for the first three months they’d taken me home. And that had been the least troublesome side of my behavior. In addition to hoarding food and hiding it in my closet until it had become a rotting pile of filth, I’d stolen money so I would have enough to buy food if they’d decided to stop feeding me. I’d refused to take my medication and had often become sick as a result. If the men angered me in any kind of way, I’d retaliated by destroying things of value, but I’d done it in such a way that I could pretend it was an accident. I’d broken pictures, knocked over knickknacks, dropped dishes...and then I’d waited for them to prove that I couldn’t trust them by punishing me or sending me back to the group home.
And here I was nearly ten years later with the best family a person could have asked for. Even after my younger brother and sister - both my fathers’ biological children - had come along, I’d never once doubted how much my fathers loved me. Add in the extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins and I had everything I could have dreamed of and more.
Except one thing.
Not thing…person.
The same person who I was pretty sure had just run off to hook-up with someone else.
Not that I could blame Brennan. It wasn’t like he didn’t have a slew of men and women available to him. I actually hadn’t known Brennan was bisexual until he’d been talking about his new boyfriend a couple of years earlier when he was home on break. I’d only known him to ever date women…well, one woman – a girl he’d been with during his last couple of years in high school. So I’d made the assumption he was straight. But the news that he liked men as well had floored me and then it had done something else entirely.
It had made me want him even more than I already had.
I’d been sixteen at the time and still coming to the realization that I was gay. But just as suddenly as the hope had flared to life inside of me, it had been snuffed out just as quickly. Because I had nothing to offer the older, mature and so very beautiful Brennan Devereaux. I wasn’t some strapping, gorgeous guy, I was utterly lacking in any kind of sophistication, and there was of course, the gigantic elephant in the room.
Although everyone in my family knew I was HIV-positive and it was something I’d never been made to feel ashamed of, it was different with Brennan. Maybe because there’d always been this sliver of hope that he’d someday see me as something more than his childhood friend or a younger brother. But as I’d gotten older and truly understood what my condition meant, I’d started to realize that it would be a major obstacle in any future relationships I might have. My fathers and my doctor had reassured me many times that I could still have all the things other people did, including sex, a family, a career…all of it. That had given me hope, but not enough that I’d considered telling Brennan that what I felt for him went way beyond friendship. Because for all the reassurances I’d gotten, there was always that looming fear that not only would my disease put him at risk physically, it would be something he or any other man might someday have to slowly watch steal my life away.
So I’d remained silent and reveled in any affection Brennan showed me and then been miserable afterwards that morsels were all I’d ever get. But I’d made the right decision. New York had been proof of that. Because there’d been a guy I’d finally decided to take a chance with. He’d been the reason I’d tattooed the permanentreminder on my wrist that I was my disease first and a person second.
I sighed as I studied the dozens of boxes stacked up in one corner of the spacious room. Agreeing to room with Brennan while I began my studies to teach music and he pursued his MBA probably hadn’t been the smartest move, but I couldn’t help but feel a little glad, too. Because even just being around Brennan was comforting. My experiences in New York had made me wary that maybe the people closest to me weren’t as unconcerned about being around me as they’d let on, but Brennan had been proof that maybe I could go back to living in the safe, protective bubble my fathers and extended family had created for me. Maybe it wasn’t the bravest thing in the world, but the wounds I now carried were evidence that out there I wasn’t Tristan Barretti who also happened to be HIV-positive. No, out there I was someone people were afraid of or I was invisible.
Or I was someone who made poor choices.
Even the memory of what had happened my last few weeks in New York was enough to have me bypassing the boxes and crawling into bed. I turned the 3-way lamp on my nightstand on its lowest setting and then turned on the app that played soothing classical music that I hoped would eventually help lull me to sleep. But as soon as I closed my eyes, all I saw was Brennan and his faceless lover.
And I knew that come tomorrow when I saw Brennan again, that would be all I saw.
Chapter 8
MEMPHIS
I didn’t even letBrennan get a word out after I opened the door to let him into the hotel room. And it wasn’t just because I needed to taste him so badly again. No, I was worried that he’d start asking questions.
Questions I didn’t have the answers to.
Questions I didn’t want toknowthe answers to.
Luckily, Brennan didn’t seem to care because he was kissing me back eagerly and he was the one who had enough foresight to slam the door shut before wrapping his arms around my waist. I had a hold of his face to keep him still for the kiss I took from him, but that didn’t prevent him from kissing me back just as forcefully and it definitely didn’t stop him from sliding one of his hands down to my groin to search out my cock.
