Safeword (34 page)

Kittridge had been humble when I’d tendered my resignation the second the cases on the murders of Arnold Stevenson, Douglas Halloran, John Ditmar, and Janice Aldrich were closed. He’d grudgingly accepted it only because I gave him no choice in the matter, telling him I didn’t care if he agreed to it or set it on fire. I wasn’t coming back. He did talk me into retiring with disability, keeping me eligible for benefits and allowing early disbursements from my pension. It was enough money that I didn’t necessarily have to find another job right away. If it weren’t for living with my parents, it would have been nice.

Ben’s house was a total loss, and insurance was held up due to the arson investigation, which looked to be open and shut since there were multiple police officers who’d heard Alex Dennan confess to being responsible. But the cogs of justice turned slowly, and the evidence analysis had to be completed before a cause was filed. Insurance wouldn’t pay out until the criminal investigation was closed. So we waited. At my parents’ house. It was... yeah.

My mother forced enough food down our throats to feed a third-world country, and I seriously debated wearing the new corset Ben had gotten me at every meal, just to get her used to me not stuffing myself silly. If I didn’t watch it, I wouldn’t be able to fit into the damned thing anymore.

Being a new man-of-leisure, I could spend my free time apartment hunting. Ben and I needed our privacy, now more than ever. So much had changed, and there were times I needed him to anchor me, take away the uncertainty, and leave me no choice but to give over to him my control—a feat nearly impossible, crammed as we were into the guest room with its tiny double bed and walls thin enough to hear when my father farted... three rooms away. That idea Ben had about talking me to climax without touching me? It worked. And it became our saving grace sometimes.

But every day we woke up together—wrapped in each other’s arms, not only out of love but self-preservation to keep from falling out of bed—was a day to be cherished. Mortality loved to follow me around, and this time, instead of ignoring it and pretending it didn’t exist, I chose to thumb my nose at it, defying it, taunting it, whispering,
You didn’t get me today, reaper-man.
It would whisper back,
You’re right, I didn’t, but there’s always tomorrow.

Indeed. I looked forward to a whole lifetime of tomorrows. As long as I had Ben.

“I’ll get that,” I said to Ben, who was elbow deep in stuffing jumbo pasta shells with meat, cheese, green chilies, and tomato, all mixed with enchilada sauce. It was messy and it looked like a bomb had gone off in our new kitchen. Well, our new old kitchen.

I traipsed to the front door and smiled to see my parents and Shawn and Chrissy standing on the porch. They greeted me enthusiastically and walked in as I stood aside, taking the diaper bag from Chrissy’s shoulder as she set the car seat with the baby down to shrug out of her jacket. The late October air was crisp and cool, but the sun was still burnished gold, sinking behind the trees. One week before we had to change the clocks and batten down for winter.

“This looks great, Gavin!” Ma gushed, handing me her jacket while gawking in awe at our rebuilt home.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m still getting used to what the decorator did.”

“Well, it’s beautiful,” Ma said, kissing me on the cheek. I finished hanging their jackets in the foyer closet and turned back to them, laughing as Shawn and Dad shoved bottles of wine at me, both bearing jaunty bows.

“Happy housewarming,” Shawn rumbled, a quirky smile turning up the corner of his mouth. “I hope this bottle’s good enough for Ben’s liking. I know nothing about wine.”

“Which is why he sent me to a winery to get it,” Chrissy explained. “The person doing the tasting was really helpful, since I don’t know anything about wine either. If it’s swill, don’t feel bad about pitching it.” I kissed Chrissy on the cheek.

“We’ll do no such thing,” Ben said, emerging from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dishtowel. He inspected both bottles, declaring them excellent choices.

“Do we get a tour?” Mason asked.

“Good lord, I didn’t even know you were here!” Ma declared.

“The couches kind of swallow you up,” Mason said, struggling to extract himself from the furniture in question.

“Why do you want a tour of a house that’s the exact same layout of the one we lost?” I asked.

“Because,” Myah answered, emerging from the hallway that led to the back of the house and one of the bedrooms we’d decided to turn into a small theater, indulging ourselves. “It’s not exactly the same. I don’t think I’ll ever see my fiancée again, thanks to that building-sized TV you’ve got in there. We’ll have to move in, and you’ll have to tell him the cable’s out or something to get him to the church next month.”

I opened my arms and smiled magnanimously. “The more the merrier.”

Myah looked at me sideways. “Naaaah,” we said in unison.

“There are some things ready to munch on, though not all of it’s fully ready yet,” Ben announced. “Since I didn’t do a whole big dinner, I figured we could just graze all night, so anything you see, help yourselves.” I rolled my eyes at him, acting all casual about the amount of effort he’d put into making the hors d’oeuvres for our housewarming party. He’d spent the last week shopping for the glut of different ingredients that stuffed our fridge, so much I had to move the beer out to the fridge in the outdoor kitchen. Then, two full days, he’d spent mixing, combining ingredients, measuring and storing everything so this morning, all he had to do was begin assembly. Multiple times, I asked him why he didn’t just hire a caterer.

“Please,” he’d scoffed, dotting my nose with cream cheese. “I’m not pretentious like that. And this is a big deal to me, our house being finished and everything back to normal.”

Several people moved to the breakfast bar, where he’d laid out everything from prosciutto crostini with pineapple slaw, shrimp skewers with mango salsa, bacon-wrapped red bell pepper chips with goat cheese. The bacon-wrapped apricots with a sage leaf looked like little boats to me, like the kind you’d see in a cartoon Annalise had been watching, where mice rode around rivers on leaves with dragonflies named Evinruud to power them. The stuffed shells were coming soon, as were small bagel pizzas he figured would be good for Annalise and Marcie, who eyed some of their choices with obvious suspicion.

There had been some debate over who to invite, given that Ben’s friends from work would differ from my work colleagues, who were all different from those we spent time with at Collared. Not to mention my family. But I warned Ben I would not go through another bout of What Is This Strange Food so we could keep the guests segregated in their compartments in our lives. The result was an interesting mix of people, from Dr. Ribaldi and her Dom, a couple of my professor friends, Jared Nunn and his sub, and even the Schofields, though Marshall had been as difficult to extract from the theater as my brother.

Ben had tentatively suggested extending the invitation to Trent, who’d woken up after a two-week coma a broken man. I felt bad for him, but after much soul searching, I’d decided against including him. He was prone to violent fits of temper borne out of frustration at having to relearn walking, writing, and holding a fork. His brain injury had devastated his fine motor skills, and without a support system, he’d become a virtual shut-in. Victoria’s absence had been a major blow, and despite the months passing, he made it clear he hated everyone, accepting no help other than the visiting nurses and therapists supplied by the department for his ongoing treatment. I only kept in contact with him out of a sense of duty. He usually ignored me anyway, not that I blamed him. But I was the one person besides the detached medical professionals he would even see.

There were some experiences people just couldn’t understand without having lived through them, and while I wished my ordeal with Lane on no one, it had changed me. Trent’s was still changing him, and I was surprised I was the one he marginally tolerated. He’d not said as much, but I suspected one day, he would want to talk about it. One could look at the world and see nothing but pain, loss, and despair, much like young Alex Dennan had, and what Trent and Marshall still struggled with. Or one could realize that, beneath the pain, there was triumph in learning walking with a cane was better than crutches or a wheelchair. Beneath the loss, there was renewal in the face of a sleeping baby. And beyond the despair, there could be love, if you opened up to it. This room, rowdy and crowded and full of conversation, was a testament to that.

Myah had finally managed to drag Cole and Marshall from out of their sci-fi haven and into the party. Marshall stood beside me, and I was glad to see his plate heaped with food. He’d dropped a lot of weight since losing Alex. He’d taken to calling me when he was overwhelmed, even adopting my periodic table trick to avoid panic attacks. Recognizing the connection he felt to me, Mr. and Mrs. Schofield had arranged monthly visits in the hopes Marshall would find a positive influence he could trust. They’d even consulted with Ben about the prospect of admitting Marshall to an inpatient psychiatric program for treatment, but Ben had dissuaded them. Confinement was not a good idea for Marshall, and Ben had extended the offer of counseling via video conferencing several times a week. Two months into it, and Marshall seemed to have stopped his downward spiral.

“Your theater room is awesome,” he said, shoving most of a bagel pizza in his mouth.

“You’re welcome to it any time you’re in town. You may have to boot my brother out, but my money’s on you any day. He’s a wimp.”

Marshall chuckled, the closest he’d come to a laugh that I’d heard. After swallowing, he leaned close, speaking low. “Can I ask you a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Do you think you could go somewhere with me tomorrow?”

“Sure,” I said. “I think we’re skipping the family brunch since everyone’s here tonight. Where do you want to go?”

He took a moment to answer, and when he did, he kept his eyes trained on his plate. “I want to visit Alex.”

“Okay. Does your mom and dad know?” He said nothing, which was answer enough. “We don’t have to tell them we’re going to his grave if you don’t want, but you do have to let them know you’ll be out with me.”

“Yeah, I can do that.”

“You sure about this?”

One of the frequent topics of conversation during our phone calls was his desire to visit the man who’d been his friend, and protector during the worst events of his life. He was afraid his parents wouldn’t approve, and like any teenager, he was concerned about what others thought of him. He’d lamented many times his confusion at still caring for someone who’d turned into such a monster and worried people wouldn’t understand. I’d told him as many times as he needed to hear it his feelings were valid, that Alex hadn’t been himself at the end. Marshall was allowed to remember the boy he’d loved as a brother and still hate the things Alex had done.

“Yeah, I’m sure. I have some things I want to tell him.” He fell silent, and then looked at me through his eyelashes, almost bashful. “Do you want to know?”

“Only if you want me to.” I carefully put a comforting hand on his shoulder, letting him see me coming in time to shy away if he needed to. “But it’s okay if you want to keep it between you and him.”

He thought about that for a long moment, then gave a falsely indifferent shrug and popped a meatball in his mouth. “Maybe I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

Before I could reply, Myah tapped her wine glass with a fork and got everyone’s attention.

The room quieted expectantly, my father standing behind my seated mother with his hands on her shoulders. Shawn swayed side to side with the baby while he fed her, and Chrissy popped a pepper in his mouth from her plate now and then. Ben had snuck back into the kitchen to try to make headway on the dishes, but I knew what was coming and dragged him back into the land of the living. He wrapped his arms around my shoulders, his taller frame comfortably against my back, his lips pressed into my hair. Mason and Sandra were somewhere in the crowd. And Cole stood before us all, beside his fiancée like a deer in the road with a tractor trailer bearing down on him.

Myah smiled, looking radiant. “As many of us know, the last couple years have been rough on the DeGrassi family. Hospital stays, fires, bullets. When this family does drama, we go all the way. There are no sissy little
heart attacks
here.” Everyone laughed. “No, we take serial killers down, and we eat glass for breakfast.” More laughter. “I also know that, technically, until next month, I’m not legally part of this family yet. But I have been in my heart for a long time, since I was first assigned to Gavin as his partner, and then swept totally off my feet by Cole shortly after.

“But family isn’t about legal stuff, or bets on who can arrest more criminals in a week, or who’s seen the grossest crime scene. And by the way.” She raised her hand. “I win that one, hands down.” Cole started to protest, but she gave him a playful sneer. “None of you have worked Homicide in Chicago. It’s worse up there.”

At the mention of St. Louis’ arch enemy, Chi-town, being worse, the guests laughed and clapped their appreciation. Cole raised his voice above the noise. “It didn’t take me long to convert her, did it?”

Myah went on when the room quieted once more. “Family is about choice. Who you want at your back when you’re going into a dangerous situation, guns drawn and scared out of your mind someone will get hurt.” She nodded to me. “Or who you’ll fight for to get your state to finally,
finally
adopt equal marriage laws,” she said with a nod to Ben. There were wolf-whistles, but that fight was still in progress. “So when I agreed to marry Cole, I chose you to be my family. All of you, because related or not, we’ve been through some shit, people, and after the last couple years, it can only get better, right?”

This was met with the loudest applause yet. Myah raised her hand again to go on, waiting the few seconds it took to be heard again.

“I promise I’m not totally hijacking Ben and Gavin’s housewarming party—and really, your home is as gorgeous now as it was before the fire, and all the more gorgeous for the two of you in it.” I couldn’t help the cheesy smile on my face as Ben squeezed me, and I made a mental note to tease her about how sappy she was getting. I did give her a good natured get-on-with-it gesture, which also earned a few chuckles. “Anyway, I just want to say I’m glad I chose you. I’m glad you chose me, and really, you’re lucky you already made that choice, because Cole and I, we sort of jumped the gun a little.” My brother couldn’t contain his grin or the smug expression that crossed his face. “So, while technically, I’m not legally a DeGrassi, I am now by blood. I’m pregnant. You’re all stuck with me.”

“A toast!” I shouted over the cheers and claps and my mother getting up to hug Myah fiercely, then demanding to know why she was drinking. “Calm down, Ma. I poured her sparkling cider myself,” I said, rescuing the woman I would always think of as my partner. Everyone raised their glasses and fell quiet. “To the next years being not about what we’ve suffered, but what we’ve overcome, those we have by our sides to share it, and everything we can do to make it better.”

Everyone murmured agreement and drank to that.

THE END