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My hand shot out, my fingers falling on his lips. His eyes widened at me but he didn’t have to keep saying he was sorry. He never had to apologize. They had reasons, and I understood.
As if I needed pink carpet.
“It’s amazing,” I said.
His mouth shifted into a smile against my fingers. “Still not done,” he mumbled. He nudged me toward the platform.
I started crawling. Now that there was light, I could tell the beam had been taken out. There were carpeted steps built up against the opening.
When I got close, I half stood. Another two-person beanbag chair, like the ones at Kota’s, filled the space. This one, though, was mostly black, but the top part to sit in was pink.
I turned slightly, looking back at Victor, who had followed me.
“Go ahead,” he said, prodding me on the leg.
I climbed the steps that allowed easier access to getting up and into the beanbag chair. I crawled in on my knees, intending to move out of the way so Victor could join me.
I stopped short. A gasp caught in my throat.
The lighting continued around my head, the rose sconces making a circle above me. The walls had the same dark padding.
Attached to the walls was a collection of photographs.
There they were. All of the boys’ beautiful faces. Some were individual portrait shots. Some were taken in places I didn’t know, bedrooms and dining rooms of I assumed the boys’ homes I’d yet to visit.
Some photos had me in the shots. There was the one North had taken with his phone while I was on his back. There was one of me being flung into the pool by Nathan. There was one with Kota brushing my teeth. There were dozens more of us at school. There were even some of Dr. Green and Mr. Blackbourne.
My smile caught again and again as I discovered a new photo. There were so many, I didn’t know where to start and I kept going back to look at different ones to make sure I didn’t miss any.
Victor was partially standing on the stairs. His head tucked in, and he studied at the display. “Pretty nice, huh?”
I slid over on the chair to give him room.
He smirked, flopping down into place next to me. I drew my legs up, but he hooked a hand over my knees, drawing them into his lap. Our bodies leaned in together. Victor wrapped an arm around my shoulders. I tucked my head next to his, gazing around us at the lights, the photos, at the beautiful work the boys had done.
“I can’t believe you guys did this,” I whispered.
His free hand dropped onto my knee, his fingers tracing along the kneecap. “We need to keep you safe, Sang. You needed a place to call us.” He nuzzled me with his face, cheek and chin pressing to the top of my head. “And we wanted to.”
“You didn’t have to,” I said, taking in a deep breath to swallow back the trembling in my voice. “You’ve already done so much for me, even before the clothes and everything from this weekend...”
His cheek bunched up as he smiled against my head. “Not quite done yet.”
I stiffened against him. What else could there be? I was overwhelmed as it was. I was like a little kid who just got way too many gifts at Christmas and didn’t know where to start.
He leaned against me, reaching around to his back pocket, and pulled out a set of keys. The collection varied, from house keys with different colored covers on the top, to a couple that looked like car keys. There was a single keychain, a black and pink plastic heart with a white skull and crossbones in the center.
“They didn’t have a prettier pink one,” he said, holding up the set in front of me, the keys rearranging as he flipped it over to reveal more of the keychain. “But Gabriel thought you’d like it. Skull and crossbones for Trouble.”
I partly knew the answer before I asked, but I asked anyway. “Where do the keys go?”
Victor shifted to pull his arm out from around me and to arrange the keys. “Pink is your house key, green is Kota’s house, red for Nathan, dark blue for Silas, white for mine, the baby blue is for Luke and North’s house, orange for Gabriel’s. And not that you need them yet, but the black key is to North’s Jeep, the green car key for Kota’s, blue for Silas’, gray for mine.” He lifted my palm until it was facing up and dropped the keys into my hand. He closed my fingers around the set.
I had keys to their houses and their cars. “I can’t drive,” I said in a quiet voice.
“Not yet. Soon.”
I couldn’t wrap my brain around that right now. My fingers massaged one of the keys in my hands. “You’d let me have keys? Kota said I’d probably just get his and Nathan’s.”
“When Kota gave the order to North to make keys for you, North did the right thing and made one of everyone’s. Kota had to be kidding to think we wouldn’t give you one.”
A smile teased my lips. “I’ve never been to your house, but I’ve got a key to it.”
He stretched back again to wrap his arm around my shoulders. “Any time you want, Sang. I mean it.”
I tucked my head into his shoulder and dropped the keys into my lap so I could put a palm against his chest. “I don’t know what to say,” I said. “Victor...”
“One more thing,” he whispered. “Last one, I promise.”
My body rattled against him. I wasn’t sure I could handle any more. “What’s that?”
He leaned away slightly, and with his free hand he stretched toward a spot on the wall. There was a click and the lights around us snapped off.
The darkness swallowed us up, but not completely.
Hundreds of stars started to glow. Stars lit up between the photographs, above our heads on the ceiling, in every crevice. There were enough to cast a gentle, eerie green glow on our faces.
“North thought you might like it,” Victor whispered.
I sat up and away from him, dazzled by all the stars. Some weren’t stars at all, there were heart shapes mixed in. I counted the hearts. Ten. One for all of us, including Mr. Blackbourne and Dr. Green. Our new family.
I extended my fingers to touch one heart painted next to a photograph, giving Gabriel’s smile a ghostly illumination. “Victor...”
Victor shifted on the chair, he leaned over to where I was looking, pressing his cheek to the top of my head. “Yes?”
My breath was gone and so was my ability to formulate what I wanted to say. I let go of the star to bring the finger to my lips, pressing to my teeth. “I don’t... I can’t,” I floundered. I mumbled more, but only syllables.
Victor caught my hand at my mouth. He held it, his fingers warming around mine.
I turned, catching the spark of his eyes in the dark.
“You’re not alone, Sang. With us, you’ll never have to be. Not anymore.”
My fingers trembled inside his hand. Finding the words was only slightly easier in the dark. “I don’t know how to thank you. I don’t know how to... how could I ever...”
He settled back into the chair, drawing me along with him. This time, he pulled me against him in an embrace. My palms pressed against his chest as my head dropped over his heart, the beating nearly matching my own. His hand brushed through my hair, fingers entwining through the strands. His cheek pressed against the top of my head again. “Promise to stay with us, Sang. It’s all we can ask.”
Stay? Were they kidding? “What do you mean stay?” I whispered, closing my eyes and breathing in the opulent berries of his cologne. The crease of his polo shirt folded against my cheek. My fingertips traced the angles of his chest, as if to smooth out his shirt. “Did you think I would leave?”
“You always have the choice,” he said. “I’ve seen it in your eyes. That desire to not burden anyone else with problems, and thinking the best way would be to go home and never talk to anyone again. I did that, too, for a long time.”
“You did?”
He sucked in a breath, and let it out slow before he began. “My father has always been very demanding of me,” he said. His fingers traced along the edge of my jaw. “He didn’t hit me, but
he’d curse and scream. A wrong note during a recital, a misused fork at a dinner party, any small thing would set him off. He’d wait until we got home and spend an hour calling me an ‘ungrateful prick who never did anything right’. And that was probably one of the nicest things he ever said.”
My fingers clutched at the material of his shirt. “Victor... that’s awful.”
“I didn’t tell the guys, even after we’d joined the Academy. They had pretty horrible things to deal with, so I felt like my own problems weren’t that bad.”
I had no idea. If that was how Victor was treated, I couldn’t imagine what the others must have gone through. “You said was,” I said. “Do you mean he doesn’t do it anymore?”
Victor’s head shifted from side to side against me. “No,” he whispered. “No, he doesn’t. When Kota and the others found out, they helped me.”
“How?”
