Making Promises (28 page)

There was an amused, tired snort at the other end of the line. “Jesus, honey—given that résumé, ten years ago I would have been dating you myself.”

Ten years ago I was a junkie whore living in Russia, assaulting my
mother so I could get back out on the streets.
“Ten years ago I was fifteen.”

Again that dry, amused sound. “Well, maybe not.”

“I don’t want to meet Deacon,” Mikhail murmured, almost to himself again. “Meeting Deacon means I really will have to live up to something.”

“Well, yeah,” Jeff said, blowing out a breath. He sounded tired and he sounded worried, and Mikhail had a sudden thought that he should probably not dump his same terrified bullshit on this nice man. “Honey, if you want to be the guy someone calls during an emergency, that sort of comes with the territory.”

“Where is he? Which hospital?” Mikhail asked, because he didn’t want to think about that right now.

“U.C. Davis,” Jeff told him, and then told him the room number.

“It’s the intensive care unit—but he might be moved tomorrow if he’s out of danger.”

“Oh God, I hope so,” Mikhail muttered. “I will be there tomorrow,” he said. “If… if he asks for me, tell him. Tell him I said it was a promise.”

“I’ll do that. You going to be okay now?” Oh God. Even this man with his dry, amused voice was nice to him.

“Yes. I will go home and make plans to be there tomorrow. I can do that.” U.C. Davis Med Center was a two-hour bus ride, and his mother had Making Promises

chemo the next day. He also had classes to teach in the afternoon. He would, indeed, have to make plans to keep this promise.

He rang off numbly, then stood up and managed to make it out of the dance studio without forgetting anything like his shoes or whether or not to lock up.

The walk home was a blur of Christmas lights on wet pavement, and most of it happened in Mikhail’s head. He was actually surprised to open the door to his apartment, and it was only his mother’s voice, hoarse and weak, that brought him to reality.

“You are late,
lubime.
Is Shane with you?” Mikhail froze at the door. For a moment he thought that he would not tell his mother. He would tell her that Shane had left him, had bailed, had decided not to pursue the relationship. It would hurt her, but it would not worry her. He opened his mouth to do just that, when he heard his own shaking voice.

“He was injured at work, Mutti. He… he is coming out of surgery.

I… they think he will be… okay….” His voice broke, and he was not sure of when he moved across the small apartment, but there he was, his head in his mother’s lap as though he were a child and his mother’s hands were smoothing through his hair. She whispered to him in Russian for a little while, and then, when he was starting to realize how foolish he felt, she spoke to him crisply.

“Well, call Olga Divacz, then, and she can take me to the doctor’s tomorrow. You need to visit him, yes?”

Mikhail looked at his mother and nodded. “Yes. He has many people there already, though. He may not even notice me.” His mother’s disgusted expression was reassuring. “Phfaw!

Nonsense,
mal’chik.
Your face will be the first one he looks for.” He took a deep breath and sat up completely, wiping his cheeks with the heel of his hand. “Thank you, Mutti. I am afraid I am being very foolish… here. I’ll go get us some dinner.”

But Ylena didn’t let go of his hand. “Don’t feel foolish, Mikhail.

Please….” He tried to get up. “Please don’t feel foolish. You’ve let this man into your heart—I was afraid you would let no one into your heart, and you’ve let him in. I… I am pleased.”

Mikhail turned to her and tried for his usual arch expression. “Even if he is not a girl who will cook for me?”

Ylena laughed and ruffled his hair. “I am afraid that you are the girl who will cook for him,
mal’chik,
but he is a nice man, so I do not mind so much.”

THE next day it took three bus transfers and most of his morning to get from Citrus Heights to Stockton Boulevard in Sacramento, but he did it with his usual self-sufficiency. He was tired and fretful by the time he asked the nurse for directions to the hospital room and pattered his way down the hall. As he neared the room, he passed two men—one of them very tall and the other one extremely beautiful and wearing a cowboy hat—muttering to each other about a damned fucking stubborn man, and Mikhail’s heart leapt for no particular reason.

It sounded like Shane.

He found the room number and looked in hesitantly. There was a dark-haired man wearing a very trendy sweater and shiny shoes sitting at the end of the bed and fidgeting with a book in his hand. He was talking irritably to Shane.

“Of course they’re pissed,” he said, and Mikhail knew him by his voice. “You scare the shit out of all of us, and all you can ask us to do is feed your animals? Come on, man—take them up on the real food, for fuck’s sake.”

“I’m not hungry,” Shane muttered from the hospital bed, “and I don’t want to be a bother.”

“Oh Jesus—you’re worse than Deacon!” Jeff protested with a laugh, and Shane gave a tired smile.

“No one’s worse than Deacon.” His dark hair was oily and sticking out all over his head, and his fine, broad body was draped in a white gown.

There was a bandage wrapped around his chest, and he was unbearably pale. He was beautiful.

“Yeah—you need to just admit you feel like shit and you don’t want food. We’d understand that. This ‘Don’t put yourself out’ shit makes us want to strangle you.”

“Please?” Shane muttered. “Because the truth is I feel like shit, and I don’t think I can eat much more than soup.”

Jeff perked up. “Soup! Excellent. I’ll go outside and call them so they can send some with Benny!”

“Jeff….”

But Jeff was already heading out the door. He almost brushed completely past Mikhail, but he stopped just in time.

“Hey,” he said tentatively, “you wouldn’t be…?”

“Yes.” Mikhail bobbed his head nervously. “You were very kind yesterday. I should thank you.”

“I’m glad you made it, sweet thing,” Jeff said crisply. “He’s been asking for his cell phone, and I told him you were coming. You caught me by surprise last night—you know we’re not supposed to use those things in the hospital.”

Mikhail nodded. “Yes. I… thank you again.” And still he hesitated there at the doorway. His Shane—except not his, not here. Here he had a family, and they were worried and anxious and in his business. He felt superfluous. Suddenly he felt Jeff’s hard, capable hands on his shoulders, shoving him through the door.

Shane looked up and spotted him, and his entire face lit up the drab little room.

“Mickey! You made it!”

Mikhail took three steps to his bedside and found he could summon some mock irritation, because it was a better alternative to falling all over himself to make sure Shane would be all right. “You miserable, irritating man. You make plans with me and then get stabbed?
Stabbed?
It is like you make up bad pastimes just to avoid our date. I’m really very pissed, you realize that, yes?”

He couldn’t even look at Shane as he said it. He found he was picking at the coverlet next to Shane’s big hand, and as he finished his little speech he saw the big ugly bruises that were there from the IV

needle, and he stroked them softly with his thumb, avoiding the needle that was still in his flesh.

Shane grabbed his hand and murmured, “Mickey, I’m going to be fine,” but Mikhail still couldn’t look him in the face.

“Could they have been any clumsier when they put this in? My mother weighs ninety pounds and gets poison pumped through her veins three times a week. She has less bruising than this.”

“Mickey, look at me.”

Mikhail shook his head, and Shane sighed.

“Please?”

Mikhail’s eyes blurred, but, well, hell. It could be the first thing Shane had actually asked of him, ever, and he was going to turn him down now?

Shane looked tired, and very pale, and his brown eyes seemed half-focused with pain medication, but he was smiling, and Mikhail sighed.

“You look like shit,” he said, but his voice wobbled and he was not very convincing.

“Well, you look wonderful,” Shane said, and his smile widened. “I guess we’re about like we always are, right?”

Mikhail shook his head. “No. No we’re not. I am… I am not okay. I don’t see how you can lay there and smile when… what were you thinking? I don’t even know what you were doing when this happened, and I’m still so incredibly angry with you for getting hurt. You cannot…

you cannot promise me you will be there and then let this shit happen….”

“Amen to that!” Mikhail turned and saw a skinny young man in a tan policeman’s uniform walk in, and he suddenly had a more appropriate focus for his anger.

“And where were you?” he asked bitterly. “He is supposed to have help. You did not just let him get smashed this time, like a pink brick?

Because that is intolerable—”

He did not see Shane wince behind him, but he did hear the sucking sound of wind through his teeth and watched as the young man wrinkled his nose and mouthed the words “pink brick” as though he had no idea what Mikhail was talking about. He was still stuck on that when Jeff walked in behind him, having apparently heard everything.

“That’s a good question, actually,” he said, his voice hard. “Aren’t you his partner?”

“Calvin, this is Mikhail and Jeff. Mikhail and Jeff, this is Calvin,” Shane said, his voice dry. “And you two, leave the poor kid alone. It Making Promises

wasn’t his fault. He was the one who arrived with the cavalry, and I was the dumbshit who just had to get a closer look before he got there. How’re those kids, since you’re here, Calvin?”

Calvin looked furtively at Mikhail and Jeff in a way that told them he was going to dodge that question if he could.

“Why would you think I wouldn’t come and back him up?” Calvin asked, obviously buying time while he figured out “pink brick.” “He’s a cop, same as me. He just went in for a closer look and it bit him on the…

well, in the kidneys, I guess.” He smiled a little uncertainly at Shane, and Shane smiled reassuringly back.

“Well, it’s not like you people have a great track record where Shane is concerned, you know?” Jeff snapped, and Shane’s smile fell, and he made a faint moan in his throat.

Mikhail blinked and watched a truly painful realization cross over young Calvin’s face. First he said the words “pink brick” under his breath—then he mouthed “you people.”

Then he looked at Mikhail’s hand, which had never left Shane’s, and took in their obvious proximity.

And then the light bulb went on.

“Oh my God! You all think I… no! I would
never
! I don’t care who a guy sleeps with, I’m not going to leave someone with dogs just flapping in the breeze like that!”

“Oh shit,” Mikhail said faintly, and then Jeff blinked, and he said

“Oh shit,” and Shane’s helpless, pained chuckle was the only sound in the room.

“Mickey?” he said after a terrible silence had fallen. “Mickey—you wouldn’t want to go get me some ice cream with Jeff, would you? I need to talk to Calvin. Just come back in a few, and we can have this conversation all over again.”

Mikhail sighed. “I would, but I should probably go.”

“You just got here!” Jeff protested, and Mikhail looked at him miserably.

“It takes a long time by bus. I work in three hours—my bus leaves in ten minutes.”

Jeff looked at him with surprise and more than a little admiration.

“Where do you work, Mikhail? If it means you can stay for a little longer, I’ll drop you off myself.”

Mikhail smiled gratefully. “That would be wonderful. Thank you.” Then he turned to Shane after taking a distrustful glance at the still stunned Calvin.

“I think I have just done a terrible thing,
lubime.
I don’t see how I can make it better.”

Shane’s smile was tired—and sweet. “No worries. Calvin’s a big boy. He can take a little bit of truth, can’t you, Calvin?”

“I just hope you can,” Calvin muttered, and Shane’s face fell. He squeezed Mikhail’s hand and caught Jeff’s eye.

“Guys—go get friendly. Jeff, if you call him any names I’ll kick your lily ass.”

“Oh honey, why would I pick on your little friend here when you’re
such
a better target? Do you want any ice cream, you big weird bastard?”

“He is not weird!” Mikhail said unhappily, and was rewarded with another squeeze of his hand.

Jeff’s look at him was surprisingly gentle. “Of course not, baby. My bad. Come on—I could really use some fucking ice cream.” Mikhail turned unhappily to Shane. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, and Shane smiled again. That plain, earnest smile was suddenly the most important thing in Mikhail’s life. Oh God—to think he might never have seen it again.

“Well, Mickey, since you just outed me to my job, the least you could do is gimme a little kiss before you go.” Shane’s words were starting to slur, and Mikhail wondered what was so urgent that he had to talk to his cop friend before he fell asleep. That didn’t stop him from bending over and running his lips lightly along Shane’s, and treasuring the feel of his lean mouth quirking up at the sides.

“We will talk when I get back,” he told Shane sincerely, and Shane smiled again, his eyes half closed.

“Best part of my day.”