The taxi got caught in traffic, some kind of accident. And Adem sweated the final minutes, then threw some money at the driver and jumped out, hoofing it the last few blocks to the long hill up to the Consulate General’s compound. Along the way he had a chance to gulp some air, to prep himself for the sight of the happy family, all together again. By the time he’d breached the hill, he could hear the music, a plaintive mournful melody played, held, repeated by a fresh set of strings. He swallowed hard and pushed the gate open.
Straightening his tie, he made his way through the front courtyard, just as the tip of the piece hit the violins, striking him in the chest like a dagger. He spotted Caleb standing in front of a much thinner version of Emre brushing at the man’s lapel. Adem swallowed hard at the look in Caleb’s eyes but kept himself hidden, unwilling to interrupt. He set his jaw, and followed them in as they turned the corner around the building. He hung back then heard what sounded like hiccups somewhere behind and to his left. When he realized they were sobs, he took a few steps back, trying to figure out who was crying. Lale. She’d seen him, too. Her brother. He reached out, pulled her close. “Shh…don’t mess up your dress. Here.” He handed her a fresh hanky. She hugged him.
“We missed you, you know. He missed you.” He nodded over her shoulder, catching sight of the two men again, standing together, heads close. Caleb had his hand on the back of Tarkan’s neck. Adem gulped. God, he hoped he wasn’t too late. That Caleb hadn’t already forgotten him.
Tarkan tried like hell not to panic. He had been a fool to let Caleb talk him into this. He’d regretted it the moment he walked through the gate. The soft string music oozed over the top of the huge building where his mother had grown up. He gasped for air, pulled at his collar, looked over his shoulder, thought up about five million reasons to bolt. This was Lale’s day, not his. He’d spoil it for certain. He should wait. When he saw him—Caleb—Tarkan’s heart pounded even harder. Tarkan walked up to him, keeping his voice low. “Hey, handsome.”
They made their way around the building. Caleb checked his phone once more. Tarkan stopped him before they could enter the tent and all hell broke loose. His heart pounded a million miles a minute. He was almost breathless with nervous panic. A piano riff began and the crowed rustled. A woman came forward and sang. Tarkan barely registered it. He focused on Caleb’s face. As he leaned in and touched their foreheads together, Caleb gripped the back of his neck, whispered to him. “It will be fine. Relax.”
Tarkan took a deep breath and said what he came here to say. “I release you.”
Caleb frowned. Tarkan brushed his lips against Caleb’s smooth cheek and kept talking. “I love you. Go. I release you.” Tarkan nodded over Caleb’s shoulder, indicating the man with the long black hair pulled back, his sharp features as compelling up close as they’d been from afar standing and watching them.
“It’s not that easy.” Tears shone in Caleb’s eyes as he stared at him with a single question in his eyes. “You can’t. I…won’t be released, ever.”
Anger rose in Tarkan’s chest. He stepped back. “You and I, we were happy, Caleb. Then shit went bad. I went bad. I’m not…I’ll never be the same man I was. I can’t even look at you and not get furious.” He clenched his jaw. “That’s right. Furious.” He crossed his arms, uncrossed them, scratched his jaw, moved from foot to foot. “You forgot me, once.” A few people in the back of the tent turned their heads. Caleb led him away to a grove of ancient trees, out of earshot. Tarkan yanked his arm away. “Now, do it again God dammit. I’m not who I was, and I won’t be—I can’t be! I’m….” His thigh thrummed with residual pain from the bullet. His chest burned, and his brain rattled full of images—sights, sounds, smells, tastes that he would never be without and that he could never make anyone else understand. “I’m fucked. Damaged, I—” He turned away, tried to catch his breath. When the hand settled on his shoulder, his instincts from the past two years kicked in and wheeled around knocking the arm away and putting his hand on Caleb’s neck. His fingers clenched involuntarily around his beloved’s strong throat. But the other man’s face remained calm, unworried. “See! See what I am now? I can’t be trusted. And you deserve better.”
He looked up to see Adem, the man who’d sent him the text message two weeks ago, standing by Caleb’s side, his body tensed for a fight. He had a firm grip on Tarkan’s wrist. The three men stood, frozen by unspoken emotion. “Drop your hand now.” His voice was as beautiful as his face, English accented by multiple languages. Tarkan did, turned and walked away from them, tears blurring his vision.
He knew Caleb had warned everyone, had smoothed the way for him so the day wouldn’t be one long “Oh My God You’re Alive” fest. But he still wanted to leave, to escape, and never face these people again. He ducked into a small tent and ran straight into his sister, staring into the middle distance, tears running down her cheeks. The sight made him smile, forget his fear. He knelt in front of her, kissed her hands, and held them to his heart. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him so tight he thought he might suffocate, but he didn’t care. He was home. “Well, show me this Greek, little sister. I don’t know if I approve yet.”
***
The sun was setting as Adem and Caleb stood, side by side, frozen, watching Tarkan’s retreating back. The breeze stirred the ends of Adem’s hair. Caleb turned to him and took his lover’s face between his hands. “I love you, Adem Broussard. Don’t ever leave me again.” He sighed and kissed him, tenderly, his tongue just parting the other man’s lips.
“Caleb.” Adem broke the kiss, looked away. “I’m glad for you.”
Caleb put an arm around Adem’s shoulders. “Yes, be glad for me.” He whispered into his lover’s ear, tucking a strand of silky black hair behind it. “He is safe. And I’m free.” He took a deep breath. “But I can’t do this, not anymore.” Adem tilted his head and stared deep into Caleb’s eyes. “Not to you. Not to him. I’m…I’m going home the day after tomorrow. Tarkan needs time with his family. I need time to get my life back together. And you…you….” Caleb stopped talking. How in God’s name could he suggest it? That they both be his? It was patently ridiculous. Neither man would want it, no matter what Tarkan had said last night. His behavior today proved it. He had to let them go. It might fucking kill him. But it was the only fair thing.
Adem turned his face to Caleb’s. His scalp tingled. What did he mean? But the feel of his one love close again kept him from speaking. He just wanted this, proximity, if nothing else, and was afraid he’d never be able to live without it. “Caleb,” he said, as they watched the smaller tent and waited for Lale and Tarkan to emerge. “I was thinking, well, maybe we, I mean….” Adem took a deep breath. He stood in front of the tall blond man who had fulfilled his every need for such a short time. But in a way that made Adem feel he’d known him forever. “I think we should all be together.”
Caleb looked up at the sky. “You’re just saying that because you think I want it. You don’t.”
A small flame of anger flared in Adem’s chest. “Really. And what makes you think you know what I want?” He put a hand on Caleb’s shoulder. “I love you. I want you. I want you to be happy. He….” Adem gestured to the small tent. “He
is
your happiness. What you were missing, even while we were together. Why couldn’t we?”
“You don’t know him. He’s not the same. He just said so himself.”
“He’s deflecting, Caleb. Trying to
make
you reject him. I can tell. I know what’s in his eyes when he looks at you. It’s the same thing I see in the mirror every God damned morning of my life.” Caleb stared at him. “I’ll try. If you will.” Adem stuffed his hands into his suit pockets just as Tarkan’s head poked out through the opening. He frowned and jerked his chin at Caleb.
“Come with me.” Caleb took Adem’s hand and led him across the lawn. “Seems like we’re needed.” They ducked inside to find Lale still standing, seemingly frozen in place and Tarkan, whispering to her. She nodded, bit her lip, but didn’t move.
Caleb cleared his throat, and she looked up. Adem expected histrionics, more tears from her or at least comforting words, but Caleb merely gestured to the man next to her instead. “Tarkan. Allow me to introduce Adem.” Tarkan lifted his face from his sister’s ear. The smile started small, but as it grew, Adem’s heart expanded exponentially along with it.
The eerie resemblance to Emre shot through him until he got a good look at Tarkan’s eyes and saw the difference there. He stepped forward, hand held out. Tarkan took it, used his other hand to grip Adem’s elbow and pull him close. The embrace startled Adem but he relaxed. At that moment he realized what it was about this man that had shattered everyone when he was believed lost. He took a deep breath and put his arms around Tarkan’s whip thin waist. It seemed, somehow, amazingly right. When Caleb wrapped his arms around them both, Adem had never in his entire life felt more complete.
“Ahem. Excuse me?” Lale’s sniffly voice interrupted them. “Now that I finally got you assholes all together where you belong, do you mind? My man is waiting for me in the other tent.” They looked at her. “I’m supposed to have an escort you know.” She looked straight at Adem. “Well? What about it?” Caleb took one of her arms, Tarkan the other and Adem led the way across the lawn to their future.
Epilogue
One year later
Istanbul
Tarkan emerged from the back office, rubbing his eyes. He’d spent the last six months trying to make heads or tails of his father’s overall financial structure. With Emre’s help, they had figured out a way to divest a few of the tourist trap stores, consolidate the rug shops, and capitalize on the building boom going on all over the city. He smiled at the busy office, threw a stack of charts on his secretary’s desk, and headed out into the night.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped to the curb, confident his driver would be there. He climbed into the back seat. “Take me home please.”
Smiling at the new pictures of Lale and Andreas’s twins on an incoming text the tension of the day slipped away leaving him exhausted. A boy and girl: Maddie and Jeff, named for two American Presidents after long heated arguments about whose heritage to reflect. It had been a little touch and go at first. Lale had hung up the phone after getting the news that her father had died, quietly and at home, surrounded by his wife, mother and sons a mere six months after her wedding, and had gone into pre-term labor. Tarkan had flown to Las Vegas immediately, held both Madison Constance and Jefferson Levent for hours at a time, their amazing small bodies warm and real in his arms. The text that accompanied the photo made him laugh. “
Andreas was coaxed back to work by the new UNLV Prez. Thank the dear Lord in heaven. If he stayed home another day fussing around, I was going to murder him in his sleep
.”
He grabbed the bag of pre-cooked food he’d bought during his lunch hour and nodded to the doorman at the tall, all glass building near the city’s center. His heart pounded. Riding elevators still made him nervous, but he was getting over it. Along with a lot of other shit. Like sleeping in the dark. And being alone. Thanks to hours of group and individual therapy for soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder he’d come a long way towards dealing with the guilt as well.
The elevator opened into a sparse, quiet space. Adem was still in France, but they’d all be together again in about a week. Caleb spent six months of each year here, with him, working with Elle from their old offices downtown. The company had indeed agreed to her terms and offered them to her indefinitely as long as she stayed at the helm a few more years. Adem made a point to be there with them as much as he could, given the huge success of his new place in Cannes. Tarkan sighed and held down the looming panic at being alone. He had to learn this. Just a few more days.
The gleaming pots, pans, and appliances in the kitchen mocked him with their professionalism as he ate standing up, watching a soccer match on the flat screen mounted into the refrigerator. He finished about half of it, drank the water he could never seem to get enough of, and wandered out into the large living room, dominated by floor to ceiling windows. He smiled, running a hand over the photo that been taken at Lale’s wedding of the three of them. Caleb in the middle, his strong arms around the other two. The photographer had caught a perfect moment of candid laughter they had shared. It was Tarkan’s favorite picture.
Suddenly bone tired from loneliness and the strength it still sometimes took not to cringe at every sound, and jump at every shadow, he settled onto the couch, the photo on his chest. His dreams were foggy, indistinct, but as always included her face, her dark eyes and the child he would never hold.
He rolled over, brushed whatever was on his face away. It was still there. Tarkan frowned in his sleep, kept swatting at his face. A familiar scent filled his dream-state—a rich combination of allspice, saffron, and…his eyes flew open and he grinned, pulling Adem into his arms.
Their kiss was urgent, needy. After he was alone for long periods, Tarkan was nearly insatiable, Adem and Caleb knew it. Adem yanked the man’s zipper down and stroked him, keeping his lips and tongue busy with Tarkan’s full, delicious ones. He shifted, so Tarkan could reach his own bulging trouser front.
“Take everything off,” he whispered. “I need to feel you.” He tugged his own jacket, shirt and jeans off and tossed them aside, his gaze never leaving the newly strong and taut body of his lover. Tarkan sat back, hand on his cock. Adem licked his lips and leaned in for another kiss then trailed his lips and tongue down Tarkan’s neck to his nipples, and further still, until he lapped at the beaded moisture at the tip of the other man’s rock hard shaft. Tarkan clutched his hair, threaded his fingers through it.
“I want you to come, my love. I know you need it.” He fisted the base of Tarkan’s thickness, cupped his balls with his other hand and smiled up at Tarkan’s wicked grin.