Chapter Eighteen #2
He hadn’t forgotten. Even happiness couldn’t make him forget what things had been like before.
He knew exactly what it would feel like to wake up without him, and with the full knowledge of just how many times he’d have to repeat that pattern.
But Eli would be safe. There was only one last night to get through, and then he’d deliver him into the most trustworthy set of arms in the world.
There was a tug, and Eli was done with his hand. The man’s next words were pressed into his jaw. “My appetite’s already gone. I’ll be wasted away by the time you’re out. You won’t even recognize me.”
“I’ll recognize you.”
Eli’s hands were framing his face, those warm fingers sunk snugly into his hair, and the teasing had already fallen away. Eli’s eyes were dark magnets, pulling at all his edges, every loose thread and breath. “Samuel.”
He had to shut his eyes to it. “Don’t.” He couldn’t tear himself away from that warmth, and he wouldn’t. There was so little time left. His hands closed tightly over Eli to keep him exactly where he was.
Eli’s breath was tight, and so was the hold on his face, and Samuel almost faltered.
There were so many pleas crammed into the back of his throat.
I can’t be without you. Not for a year—not for a day.
Don’t leave me. But then Eli took another breath, and his grip loosened enough to slip around to the back of his head.
“All right, puppy,” he said, and pulled his face into his neck. “All right. ”
He didn’t think he’d sleep that night. And they didn’t, at first. They lay on their sides, facing each other in that too small bunk, and Samuel brushed his thumb down that velvet cheek over and over, locking the feeling of it inside him as deep as it would go.
He had no fear of forgetting, but one didn’t need fear to carve his beloved’s face into every thought and memory.
“What if something happens to you?” Eli finally asked after keeping the question in his eyes all day.
Not for the first time, Samuel was glad for the dimmers, and not because it made it easier to track predators. He could see Eli this way. His face. His chest and stomach. Those lovely melon biceps. He let his thumb slide from Eli’s cheek to his jaw.
“I can’t guarantee my safety,” he admitted.
He'd never been one to lie to Eli, and that was doubly true of their final night together. “But I’ve learned a lot over the years, and I have more motivation than ever to protect myself.” And he would in cases of true self-defense, but internally he was already transitioning from Ice Queen to Buddha.
No way was he going to risk added time with so much waiting for him on the outside.
He leaned in and pressed his lips to Eli’s collarbone.
He’d been urging himself to do it for almost ten minutes and felt a spurt of adrenaline and satisfaction with the completion of the act.
Eli touched his smile—an entirely involuntary one. “You’re getting braver.”
Really, it was the pressure of the disappearing time that was helping him initiate more. But he liked Eli’s theory better. “Are you afraid?”
“For you?” Eli asked. “I’ll have three new ulcers by the morning.”
He shook his head. “Of getting out.”
But Eli already knew what he was asking and was considering it.
“I’m not looking forward to my new status as an ex-con, even if your father can prove I was framed.”
He will , he felt the need to say, but Eli had already heard those promises. He waited.
“I know people will look at me differently. Mostly, they won’t be important people, and I’ve gotten plenty of practice with sidelong stares thanks to my illustrious career as a huge black guy, so it’s not a major worry.
But there are other things. How will Hailey be treated by her teachers?
Her classmates? I know she’s already suffering from that, and I doubt my getting out will help her.
And then there’s Nathaniel, who assures me he couldn’t give two flying farts about tenure, but I want that for him.
I really want that for him. He deserves it more than anyone else at that school, and he’s already too sacrificing by nature. ”
His hand tightened around Eli’s face, reacting to the pain in his voice. “He’d choose you. Over any and every hardship, he’d choose you and consider it the deal of a lifetime.”
But Eli already knew that too. “That doesn’t make it easier, like I’m rewarding loyalty with punishment.
” The man pushed a smile back onto his face.
“But I should know better than to sulk. I’ll do my best to rebuild my practice and my place in the community.
I know that’s the best way to heal things. And time, of course. Work and time.”
“Not too much work,” Samuel said and put mock severity into his voice. “You’d better not think of keeping the kind of hours you had here. Nobody likes a workaholic, and anyway you owe Nat a thousand blowjobs, so that’s at least an hour of every day blocked out on a repayment schedule.”
Eli’s laugh spilled over them both, the small space crowding it up around them. “A thousand, huh? That’s about three per day if I want to settle my debt in a timely manner. Seems manageable.”
He shook his head again. He could feel the flush in his cheeks and the uptick in his heart rate, but it was becoming easier to make that kind of comment.
Maybe he really was getting braver. “That’s on top of the two daily you already owe him just for him being your husband.
And then there’s compounding interest, of course. ”
“Interest?”
“Debt always has interest. And blowjob debt isn’t like mortgage debt. You’re looking at credit card rates, and there’s no refinancing.”
Eli’s next laugh was caught up in his mouth as he kissed him.
“God, puppy.” And his eyes were bright with pain and pleasure and Samuel’s stomach clenched so hard he thought he might vomit.
How was he going to be without this man?
How could he possibly go back to the life of before?
Phone calls , he reminded himself. Letters.
“Maybe I shouldn’t,” Eli said. His voice had dropped some more. “Touch him, I mean. Until you get out.”
He blinked. Then he shot up onto his elbows, nearly cracking his head on the underside of the bunk. “Eli, you can’t. You have to. Nathaniel needs—”
Eli put a hand in his hair. “Hush,” he said. “I know.” But then his lips thinned out with the pressure he was putting on them, and his forehead cracked with lines. “It won’t feel right. Not without you. Knowing I’ve left you behind. Samuel—”
He kissed him. He didn’t know what else to do.
He couldn’t have Eli falling apart now. The man’s courage was the only thing keeping him together.
And he’d promised not to cry. “Make love to him. Every day if you can. If I know that—if I can picture you together—I’ll be able to breathe. Please, Eli.”
And he knew Eli would see how much he needed it. The way Eli could always see him now. Every thought. Every feeling. He was more open to Eli than he could ever be to himself.
They skipped breakfast the next morning.
The moment the lights came on, they went to the closet and kept their arms around each other until it was time to go.
He knew it was time because Rat came to the door to tell them so.
And he thought, as he climbed to his feet, that he was helping Eli up.
But then his hand wouldn’t let go. He willed it to.
Then he thought of peeling it free manually. But he didn’t. He couldn’t.
“I wish it was you going.” Eli’s voice was splintering wood. “I wish I was stronger than this. I wish I knew how to—”
He shook his head. “No.” And then, to give himself strength, “Nat.” And forced himself to let go.
He made Rat take Eli to the gate. It had to be Rat, because Bee had been transferred, and Rat was better anyway.
He always knew what was needed, and what to say.
He could be trusted to complete the handoff.
And Samuel did trust him. He knew that now.
But his competence wasn’t the point. It wasn’t Rat’s duty to do this.
Samuel should have been the one doing it.
He knew it was what Nat was expecting, and what he deserved.
But making his hand let go—just that one almost invisible gesture—had been the sum total of his courage.
“ Eli. ”
His voice didn’t have any sound, and he couldn’t hear it. The name was just a shape. A thing inside him that couldn’t be the warmth he needed.
He stayed in the closet all that day. People came to the door and tried to say things to him.
Messages maybe. He knew he had to open the door.
Had to get up. Had to call Jenny. He wasn’t allowed to miss a day, or she’d think something had happened to him.
But he didn’t get up. He kept thinking he would.
He’d go in just a moment. One more moment.
He fell asleep at some point, because he woke up to Mathews banging on the door. “Back to the dorm. Lights out.”
He knew if he waited a few minutes Mathews would call for backup and then they’d drag him to his bunk.
It was the path he would have chosen—it sounded easier than walking.
But his promise was there, pinching and pulling.
He wasn’t allowed to be stupid. No fights.
No nights in solitary. But the words “extra time” didn’t mean much to him right then.
What was the difference between one year and one thousand when just a single moment stretched wide into a blackness with no edges?
But he’d promised, and it was pinching him, so he got to his feet.
It was the thought of Eli’s scent that got each step out of him. One foot in front of the other and then it would be Eli’s sheets. Eli’s pillow. If he wrapped them around himself tight enough, it would almost be like arms.
It didn’t take long to notice. A bare mattress always looked like a bare mattress.
But his brain didn’t attach meaning to it right away.
He looked around himself. He wouldn’t have been surprised to have accidentally gotten the wrong dormitory with the state he was in.
But it was the right room. The right bed. Eli’s sheets were gone.
“No.”
Of course they were gone. They would have been stripped off within the hour of his release along with everything else going down to laundry for the day.
“No, no .”
If he hadn’t been so weak. If he’d forced himself to get up sooner… He scrambled up onto the bed and pressed his face into it, but the mattress was a thing wrapped in plastic. It didn’t retain smells. It didn’t retain anything.
His hand went to his hair. To grab hold of it, tear at it, maybe rip it all directly from the scalp.
But then something was pushed at him. And there was urgency in the voice giving it, as if it knew exactly what those hands were capable of.
“Here. I took it. From his bag. Here .” And he knew it from the scent.
Eli’s shirt. Rescued before it could be purged.
He pressed his face into it and inhaled deep, glad for that air in his lungs again. Rat pushed him down onto the bed. “Go to sleep,” and he sounded exhausted. “Just go to sleep.”
He vowed to do better the next morning. He had a hold of himself, or would have it soon, he figured.
Until then he just had to give himself over to habit.
His body knew what it had to do. The shower wasn’t so difficult.
He made it cold so he wouldn’t have time to think about what was missing.
And breakfast was easy too, because Rat got it for him and all he had to focus on was clearing the tray.
He didn’t want to eat, even with the hunger pulling at him.
But he ate, mostly to make Rat take the tray away faster so he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.
And then he was in the library, and that was better than the dorm or the cafeteria.
Eli hadn’t been able to spend so much time in the library because of his work detail.
But there were still memories. Too many memories.
There was also paper and his typewriter and the story of the baby lemurs he was supposed to be illustrating, so he did that, drawing just to make his pencil move.
“Is that a monkey in a tutu?”
He didn’t look up. “Go away.” He knew Rat was being good to him— very good to him. But he couldn’t afford to break his concentration when something was finally distracting him.
“Right. I’ll just tell him you’re too busy doodling. I’m sure he’ll understand.”
He gave that a half-grunt, a clear dismissal, but Rat was only halfway to the door before the words connected. “Tell who?”
“Who do you think?”
Samuel was already through the door.
He’d told himself not to expect it. Eli had just gotten out and the family would be busy settling him in.
There were so many things that needed to be done for him.
Paperwork and shopping and Samuel had told himself not to expect anyone for a week.
Had even prepared himself not to see them at all, despite the assurances.
It was too early in the day for Nat to come, and Jenny would still be at work.
Don’t think! His brain shouted, a last-ditch effort to save himself from disappointment.
But he was already hoping, already calling, shouting that name before he was in the final hallway, much less at the gate.
He shouted it with all his breath, wasting what should have gone into his legs, but still he ran. No one could have stopped him.
It wasn’t the lack of orange, but the jeans he noticed first. Jeans and a crisp shirt as white as his teeth.
The man knew how good he looked. That was clear from the way he was leaning against the table, somehow not toppling it over despite all that weight.
“Hey, puppy,” Eli said, a smile like a thousand stars.
End of The Care of Broken Things
Continued in the extended epilogue Boyfriend on Parole