Chapter 7
Benji woke up to a light but insistent knocking on his bedroom door.
He pushed himself up groggily. His hole hurt, his throat ached. He felt tender and well-used and deeply satisfied.
There was a thermos of tea on the nightstand. Benji smiled at it, then got up to tug on a pair of boxers and answer the door, expecting to see Max looking annoyed.
“This had better be good,” he called as he walked for the door.
“I don’t think it’s great,” came a muffled voice.
Benji frowned. That wasn’t Max. That wasn’t even Henrietta, the maid who sometimes had questions about where to put Benji’s art supplies.
He swung open the door to see Tia standing in the hallway, fiddling with her sparkly glasses.
“Uh,” Benji said. “What’s up? Is Noah okay?”
“Noah’s fine!” Tia smiled awkwardly. “He’s, um. Busy with someone at the door. It’s getting pretty loud.”
Benji stared at her. His brain was still fuzzy, and it was hard to process anything right now.
“Pants,” he said finally.
“Pants,” Tia agreed.
One pair of pants and a hoodie later, Benji headed for the front door, Tia at his heels.
Whatever was happening, it was pretty damn loud. Noah’s voice came floating down the hall, his usual calmness straining as his voice rose.
Another voice joined it. Loud and inflammatory and so familiar that Benji stopped, frozen in the middle of the hallway.
Tia paused. “Benji? Are you alright?”
Benji didn’t respond. He swallowed hard, wishing he had taken a sip from that thermos of honey tea. If he had to do some screaming, he didn’t want to do it with a sore throat.
He charged up to the front door. “Dad. How the fuck did you get up here?”
“Oh,” Tia said quietly behind him. “Yikes.”
Chet faltered. He was wearing yet another suit, which fit him better than anything Benji had ever seen on him. He was clean-shaven and didn’t look even a little high. If Benji saw him in the street, he might not have recognized him.
Noah touched Benji’s shoulder. “He was just leaving. Chet?”
“Respectfully,” Chet said, voice carrying far and wide down the hall, “Like hell am I going to leave without knowing my son is okay!”
“How sweet,” Benji snarled. “But I’m fine. Max is doing great, not that you’d—”
He stopped. There were two men behind him, younger and dressed much more normally, all beanies and jeans. They both had cameras pointing at the three men clustered around the doorway.
Benji was suddenly warm with fury. That was why Chet was being so loud. He was speaking up for the cameras.
“Chet,” Noah repeated, his voice deep and full of warning. “You should go. Security is on its way.”
“You money-grubbing, stupid, little fuck,” Benji breathed.
All eyes turned to him. The cameras did too, and even through his fury, Benji had the distant thought that this probably wasn’t great PR.
But he couldn’t stop the words falling out of his mouth.
“You’re just doing this to get rich and famous,” Benji seethed. “Same as always! Is it Mikey? Please tell me it’s Mikey, that sounds like just his flavor of bullshit.”
“Don’t try to change the subject,” Chet barked. “I want to see my son!”
“You want what you’ve always wanted! Money and attention, you pathetic, bottom-feeding asshole!
” Benji yelled. “You stand there with your nice fucking coat and your tie, and you think people will buy that shit? You’re the same old grifter as you were when you ditched your kids to go sell stolen cars! ”
One of the cameramen behind him sniggered.
“Alright,” Noah said quietly.
He surged forward. Chet tried to grab him, but Noah shoved him with such force that Chet stumbled back.
“Hey,” Benji said sharply.
“Ooooh shit,” Tia squeaked behind him.
Benji ignored her. He took a step toward Chet, his shoulders braced and his hands shaking. Chet always preferred to run from fights, but he would make an exception if he got to put on a show. And if Chet ran at Noah, Benji would run at Chet.
Noah grabbed the phone from the first cameraman. Then he reached for the second, who tried to wrestle it out of his grip. Noah twisted his wrist with such force that the phone dropped to the ground.
Noah stomped on it. The second phone vanished into his pocket, and he gave the cameramen such a hard glare that they both stepped back.
Benji’s heart thudded. Part of him was relieved that the evidence of his “bad PR” was gone. Another part was ashamed that Noah had to take care of Benji’s own mess for him. But the biggest part of him was annoyingly focused on how hot Noah looked when he crushed that phone.
Chet straightened, jeering at Noah. “You can’t do that! We have freedom of speech, ever heard of it?”
“You have the freedom to get the hell out of my face before I slap you with a restraining order,” Noah said, his usually even voice crackling with anger.
Chet sneered. He was obviously weighing him up, seeing if he should take a swing. But Noah was taller and stronger, and there were no cameras on them anymore—and the cameramen weren’t exactly going to help him with a fight.
The elevator doors swished open. Security guards poured out, heading straight toward them.
Chet glanced back at them and swore, then turned back to Noah.
“They’re my kids,” Chet hissed. “What the hell is my youngest doing living with you, anyway? Benjamin must’ve done something special to deserve that. Must be a real professional.”
“Fuck you,” Benji spat.
Chet laughed. “Funny! ‘Cause it sounds like you’re the one getting—”
Chet’s words choked off as Noah grabbed him by the front of his ironed shirt.
“I don’t care how much my brother is paying you,” Noah said, voice low as security got closer.
“Anybody who tries to screw with my people deals with me. And you bet your ass that includes Max. If you keep this up, you will find out what I do to anyone who messes with my people. Whatever reward Mikey can give you, it’s not worth what I’ll do to you. ”
Chet’s jaw clicked shut. His gaze flickered over to Benji, surprised and confused. Like he hadn’t expected Noah to stick up for them so much.
Noah pushed Chet into a security guard, who grabbed Chet and forced his arms behind his back.
Chet immediately started struggling, like he’d been waiting for his line in a play.
“You’ll never hold me back from my kid,” he yelled, which would have been hilarious if it didn’t fill Benji with a senseless betrayed rage. His dad was finally fighting for his kid… and it wasn’t even real. Even if it was, it wasn’t him. He was trying to protect his kid from Benji.
Noah turned Benji around so he wasn’t watching Chet get dragged anymore. “Hey. Look at me.”
“I’m looking at you,” Benji said. But he wasn’t. He was staring somewhere near Noah’s head, then back in the apartment where Tia was awkwardly pretending not to watch. “How’d he get up here? I thought security was watching the lobby.”
“Mikey will have his way. We’ll—” Noah went quiet, his gaze flickering over Benji’s shoulder.
Behind him, Chet gasped. “Max! My boy!”
Benji turned, hot with protective rage.
Max was standing at the end of the hall, propping the stairwell door open.
Like he’d taken one step into the hall and then stopped so suddenly that the door couldn’t close.
He was staring at Chet being dragged away with a shockingly uncertain expression.
Benji had been expecting disgust, maybe exasperation.
But Max was shrinking into his shoulders, shying away.
“Max,” Chet called, straining to lean out of the elevator the security guys were shoving him into. “Hey! It’s me!”
“Okay,” Max mumbled. He folded his arms tightly over his chest, looking like he wanted to vanish back into the stairwell.
Chet kept trying to call out to him, straining out of the elevator.
“Get him out,” Noah commanded.
One of the security guards grabbed Chet’s face and pulled it back just before the elevator doors could close on it.
Benji had a moment to think about how funny that would have been.
Then the elevator doors closed, and he was left with an eerily silent hallway, Max shifting uncomfortably at the end of it.
“So,” Benji tried. “How do you feel about a restraining order?”
He meant it to be a joke. But Max’s face twisted up, avoiding Benji’s eyes.
“I don’t care what happens as long as we don’t have to talk to him,” Max admitted. “That was really weird.”
“It was,” Benji said quietly.
He watched Max stand there in the stairwell doorway, arms crossed so tightly over his chest he might as well have been hugging himself.
Benji’s heart sank. He hated talking about things. But now might be one of those times he couldn’t avoid it.
He ushered Max into the living room. Noah was talking to security on the phone in the other room, and Tia had just left with the awkward wave of someone who had just intruded on some deeply intimate family business she had no part in.
Max sat on the couch, legs swinging, tapping anxiously on the glass of orange juice Benji had brought him. Full pulp, because Max was a weirdo like that. It was one of the first things he’d requested when Noah told him he didn’t have to worry about grocery bills anymore.
“That was super fucking weird,” Benji admitted as he sat down next to him with a normal glass of orange juice. “But you don’t have to worry about seeing him again. We won’t let him get near you.”
Max’s nose scrunched. He hadn’t looked at Benji since they sat down. “Dude, you make it sound like he hit me or something. I’m not afraid of him. It’s just… really weird seeing him again!”