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Harris insisted they maintain the image of devoted spouses in public. Rian had to always show up at the airport and greet him with a smile. In a way, keeping up appearances was as bad as the beatings. Smiling and pretending to be happy to see his torturer was like dismissing his own suffering. The violence he endured at home, was delegated to part of the performance. It was inconsequential to the bigger picture but served its purpose to push his husband's agenda to keep Rian subdued and willing to keep his mouth shut.
The bruise on Rian’s jaw, on the right side of his face, has begun to fade. The ghost print of fingers digging into his throat is barely visible if he leaves his hair down.
Rian has everything ready to go, only returning to the house, and making his way to the bedroom one last time to take the photo album that contains some of his childhood photos of him and his brother.
He hears the angry voice of his husband and in the few seconds it would have taken him to turn on his heel and quietly make his way to the garage and run while he still could, a tiny whimper nails him to the floor. A plea. A call.
Wait. Don’t go. Don’t leave without me.
Rian’s heart hammers heavily in his chest. The pull is inexplicable, monumental, earth shifting. The sudden tug drags him back to his volatile marriage. He gives it not a second thought. His whole being is carried by this urgent need to gather the tiny voice to himself. To be closer. To shield. To protect. His very soul responds like a lighthouse searching for the small human calling out to him.
Luckily, he has enough sense left in him to take his jacket off and roll it into a ball and throw it into one of the coat closets on his way to the bedroom.
Rian stops at the door. Harris is pacing the room like an agitated caged animal. He is talking on the phone, more like screaming really at his lawyer. Although his loud voice normally brings Rian into a complete state of stupor, today it quickly fades away in the background of the most important day of Rian’s life.
On the bed, swaddled in a thin blanket, is a tiny baby, no more than a week old, whimpering and mewling pitifully. The child is so small, that its protests are barely audible at first.
Rian feels them in his bones, nonetheless.
He is needed.
He is called upon.
From the moment Rian zeros in on the child, everything in the room pales away. He walks over to the bed and gently picks up the small bundle. One small whimper. Then a sweet sigh of relief. Ri tucks the baby into his chest, feeling the racing heartbeat of the little one reverberating through his entire body, locking onto him for the rest of his life. Tiny mocha-colored fingers, with the most delicate nails Rian has ever seen, circle his index finger and hold on tight.
The baby’s dark fine lips smack together, and the child cries out urging Rian to look around the room for something, anything to suggest this isn’t some insane hallucination he is having.
His eyes land on his furious husband. Harris glares at him, hissing, holding his phone to his chest. “Put it down! Don’t touch it!”
For the first time, Rian defies him to his face by holding the small bundle closer to his chest.
Never.
It’s as simple as that. He will never let this child be at the mercy of Harris Kelly. His fate won’t be written by this monster.
His heart is racing. His whole body is damp with cold sweat and his stomach churns at the promise the eyes of his husband hold – that he would pay for this, and it would be worse than anything he could imagine. Worse than anything Harris has done to him thus far.
Rian knows Harris will make good on this wordless promise. Over, and over, and over again. But it wouldn’t be nearly enough to make Rian regret his defiance, as it has given him this exceptional moment.
His husband looks away after a tense moment and continues his conversation, allowing Rian to focus his attention on the baby. The tiny hat he is wearing has one of those iron-on name stickers, suggesting his name is “Brandon”. He is dressed in a blue-and-white striped onesie, swaddled in an old cotton blanket that might have been yellow or green once upon a time. It was a worn, tattered old thing, that appeared gray in the harsh bright light of their bedroom.
The delicate dark eyelids, adorned with thick black lashes, flutter then crack wide open to reveal dark brown eyes that look at Rian inquisitively.
Brandon’s eyes are intensely beautiful, burning bright in defiance and soul-deep anger. Looking down at him, Rian smiles at the tiny force of nature. A tiny fierce warrior, he thinks to himself as his smile grows wider despite how much his jaw still hurts from the beating he’s received last week. The first living thing to refuse to quiet down in the presence of Harris Kelly.
Suddenly, Harris is standing next to him, glaring down at the little one. Rian forces calm to take over and patiently waits for his husband to explain what’s going on. He resists the urge to step away, as that would have been a clear provocation in his husband’s books, but he does angle his body in such a way that Bran would be out of reach.
Harris grunts and says with disgust, “He’s my nephew. My sister, that whore Cynthia, I told you about, had him a week ago. I get a fucking call at the airport that she’s left him in the hospital, then shortly after was found in the parking lot passed out. She had supposedly overdosed. Yet again! I’m listed as her next of kin. I couldn’t fucking believe it. That bitch! After all the money I paid her last time to stay the fuck away from me. The hospital knew who I was. I had to fucking go in there and then they shoved this little shit into my arms! There were reporters there fucking waiting for me! The hospital had no clue where she had been residing until the birth of this little bastard or who the father is. I can’t fucking believe this shit!”
He walks away and then kicks his travel case against the wall until it cracks in two. The loud noise startles baby Bran, and he cries out. Rian shushes him, pressing him closer to his chest, but Harris has already turned his attention back to them. He is panting, staring at them from the other end of the room looking angry, sweat dripping down his flushed face.
Rian waits anxiously, not daring to say a single thing to his husband. Out of sheer habit, Rian lowers his eyes, trying to avoid aggravating Harris. Normally he’d stare at the carpet and zone out, disappearing into his head, ignoring the angry outbursts and even the violence that would follow shortly after. This time though, Rian’s eyes lock onto the child. Instead of getting lost in his thoughts, his mind feverishly works to concoct a way to protect the little one. To keep him.
When Harris finally catches his breath he says, “My lawyer just called me. She’s dead. The father is unknown. Either I take him, or he goes to foster care.”
His parents had passed away some time ago. Rian was unsure about the rest of the relatives, as that family dynamic had always been tense and confusing to him, to say the least. They hated Harris for being openly gay but loved his mountains of money and his ever-growing political and business connections. The fragile equilibrium of passive-aggressive mutually beneficial interactions occurred every now and then, but Rian had never taken part in those transactions. Because that was all Harris Kelly had in his life – people he did business with – no meaningful or personal relationships.
Rian’s heart is painfully constricted by the spiraling uncertainty of this brand-new situation. He holds his breath, willing his mind to find a solution to this impossible conundrum without further infuriating his husband. Harris is not charitable in any version of reality, so he hopes there is something else that could force him to keep baby Brandon. Ri would do anything to convince him to keep Bran. Anything.
