20. Chapter 20
Andre was still awake when the knock came, a sharp, insistent rap that echoed through the quiet apartment.
It was late, far too late for casual visitors, and the unexpected sound sent a jolt of adrenaline through his veins.
He was on his feet before he'd fully registered the sound, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
It was the only reason he answered it without checking first.
Marcus. Standing on the landing in the same clothes he'd had on that morning, looking like a man who'd forgotten he was capable of getting tired.
His eyes were shadowed and his jaw set in a grim line, his usual air of calm control replaced by a palpable tension that seemed to radiate off him in waves.
"Is everyone okay?" The words tumbled out of Andre's mouth before he could stop them, his mind already racing to the worst possible scenarios. "Elijah. Jack. Is it them?"
"Everyone's fine." Marcus's response was immediate, his words sharp and precise as if he'd anticipated Andre's fear and was ready to quell it. "Nobody's hurt. I need five minutes. Maybe less."
Andre stepped back to let him in, because there wasn't a version of tonight where he didn't, and only understood what he'd just done once Marcus was actually standing in his kitchen. The sight of him there, in this space that was so distinctly Andre's, felt surreal after all this time.
Six years. Marcus Whitfield had never once been inside anywhere Andre had lived since the apartment on Alter Road. Now here he was, filling up the doorway to a kitchen Andre had never once pictured him in, taking it in carefully, trying not to look like he was looking.
There wasn't much to see. Andre knew that. A couch that had come with the place. A shelf with more case files on it than books. The kind of apartment a man kept when some part of him had never fully unpacked, six years running.
"We found her," Marcus said, before Andre could ask, before the silence could do anything worse. "The leak. Ghost and one of Bell's people tore the whole network open tonight."
Andre's whole body went still around one question. "Who?"
"Priya Okafor." The name fell from Marcus's lips like a verdict, heavy with implications Andre was still struggling to comprehend.
The name hit Andre like a punch to the gut, and then kept hitting, wave after wave of shock rolling over him.
Priya Okafor. The Coast Guard liaison. The woman who'd called him days ago, her voice a mask of professionalism as she questioned everything he'd said about the shipment.
She had seemed competent, trustworthy. He'd handed her the truth, and she'd betrayed him.
Forty people moved out of a warehouse before a raid that should have worked.
"She's done," Marcus said, his voice hard and unyielding. "Ghost has everything. Everyone she's ever touched is coming down with her."
"Okay." Andre's voice sounded distant to his own ears, as if he was hearing it from far away. "Okay."
Marcus didn't move from where he stood, just inside the door, as if he was unsure whether he'd earned the right to come any further into the room.
Andre watched him, his heart pounding in his chest, and understood that the leak wasn't actually what had put that haunted look on Marcus's face. Or at least, it wasn't all of it.
"That's not why you drove out here at two in the morning," Andre said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
Marcus didn't answer right away. When he did, his eyes weren't on Andre anymore; they'd gone somewhere distant, somewhere that had nothing to do with Okafor or the warehouse or any of it.
"I need to tell you something." His jaw clenched and unclenched once. "I should have told you a long time ago. I kept not doing it. I don't have a good reason for that anymore, so I'm just going to say it."
"Marcus, you're scaring me a little," Andre admitted, his heart pounding in his chest.
"Your mother's lawn." Marcus said it like he'd rehearsed it and the rehearsal had failed him anyway. "The snow on her walk every winter. Somebody's had a service doing it for years. Cheap, reliable, always shows up before she calls."
Andre didn't understand, and then, all at once with Marcus filling up the doorway, he did.
"That was you."
"Every winter. Every spring, the flower beds.
I never let it come from a company with my name anywhere near the paperwork.
" Marcus's voice had gone very quiet, very even.
"Flowers on Deon's grave too. Every year, on the day.
No card. I didn't want her to have to feel anything about it.
I just wanted to make sure it got done."
Andre's throat had closed around something he couldn't name yet.
"Three years," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. "You've been doing this for three years and you never once told me."
"I almost came." Marcus's words were a sudden rush, as if he hoped speed would lessen the sting of the revelation.
"The day he died. Your mother called me.
She still had the number, I never changed it.
" He paused, his gaze dropping to the worn kitchen tiles before he continued.
"You were unreachable, lost somewhere in your grief.
She was alone in that house. She didn't know who else to call. She called me. I picked up."
His voice wavered, a tremor of regret seeping through.
"I sat in my car outside the funeral home for two hours.
I couldn't bring myself to go in. It wasn't my place anymore, and I didn't have the right to make his funeral about the two of us.
So I sat there." He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing with the effort.
"Then I drove home. I've been taking care of her yard ever since because it was the only piece of taking care of you I still had permission to do. "
The kitchen was steeped in silence, the hum of the refrigerator and the distant tick-tock of the wall clock the only sounds punctuating the heavy quiet.
"You picked up," Andre echoed, his voice a hollow echo of disbelief. "Six years, and the one time it actually mattered, you picked up."
"I always would have picked up. For that.
For you." Marcus finally looked at him, his eyes raw and vulnerable in a way Andre had seen maybe twice in his life.
"I just never had a way to tell you without it sounding like I wanted credit for it, and I didn't. I don't. I'm telling you now because I'm tired of it being something I hide from you.
And because tomorrow, I might not get another chance to. "
"Don't." Andre's voice was a sharp command, cutting through the tension. He crossed the kitchen in three long strides, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. "Don't finish that."
He reached out, his hands cradling Marcus's face, forcing him to hold still, to meet his gaze instead of retreating into himself.
"Three years," Andre murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. "You've been taking care of my mother in secret for three years because you didn't think you'd earned the right to be seen."
"I didn't think I had the right to do any of it when my choices destroyed us."
"You didn't. I'm… I'm the one who couldn't love all of you, trust you when you asked me." Andre's thumbs traced the sharp lines of Marcus's cheekbones, brushing away an unshed tear that clung stubbornly to his lashes. "You've been right the whole time. I was just too much of a coward to admit it."
Marcus made a sound that wasn't quite a word, a choked-off syllable that spoke volumes.
Andre kissed him then, before either of them could shrink this moment into something smaller than it was.
Marcus made a sound against his mouth, a low, guttural groan that Andre had never once heard him make.
It was raw and wrecked, a sound that seemed to bypass the filters of self-control and spill out unbidden.
It was a sound that spoke of surrender, of a man teetering on the edge of something profound.
Andre didn't let up. He walked him backward through his own kitchen, both hands still cradling his face.
The counter caught Marcus's hip. He grabbed for it, missed, his hand flailing in the air before it found purchase on Andre instead.
His fingers dug into Andre's shirt, holding on as if he were a lifeline.
"Bedroom," Andre murmured against his jaw, the words more of a command than a question.
"Wherever you want me." Marcus's voice was ragged, the words tumbling out in a breathless rush. The vulnerability in his voice nearly undid Andre right there.
With a firm grip on Marcus's hand, Andre led him down the short hall, past the case files stacked neatly on the shelves.
He was suddenly grateful for the unread spines, for the secrets they held that no one would have time to discover tonight.
They entered the one room in the apartment he'd actually bothered to make into somewhere a person could live.
Marcus stopped just inside the door, his eyes wide and searching.
"What?" Andre's question hung in the air between them.
"Nothing." Marcus's eyes moved over the room slowly, drinking in every detail with an intensity that made Andre's heart clench.
It was as if he were memorizing something precious, something he feared he might only get to see once.
"I just never let myself picture this. Any of it.
Seemed like asking for something I didn't have a right to. "
"You have the right." Andre's voice was firm, leaving no room for argument. He slid his hands under Marcus's jacket, pushing it off his shoulders. The fabric fell to the floor in a forgotten heap. "Always have.I believe we covered that part already."
"Andre." Marcus's voice was a plea, a single word carrying a world of emotion.
Andre cut him off before he could finish. "You want to keep talking, or you want to come here?"