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“It’s late,” I told him. “Why don’t you just sleep in your room? …Or wherever,” I said welcoming him into my bed.
“I shouldn’t,” he said, his eyes tormented.
“Why not?” I dared to brush his forearm, hoping to draw him closer.
“Because I don’t trust myself,” he said with a tortured smile.
“Because he didn’t trust himself,” I said aloud remembering his words.
What did that mean? For the past four years, I had chosen to believe that it meant he wanted me. That he liked me back.
After replaying it in my mind for months, I declared that he had either said it because of our age gap or because he was scared that he would shift and his wolf would kill me. So, he was just being protective of me.
The next time I saw him, I tried to tell him that I trusted him and that our ages didn’t matter. But either he didn’t understand, or he didn’t want to, because it didn’t change anything.
Now, as the pain from every heartbeat threatens to bring me to my knees, I understand that I had gotten the most romantic evening of my life all wrong. Remy had only come that night because of a security alert. And our citywide ice cream tour had only been about his love for the dessert.
Having spent a million dollars on a shop of his own, he obviously really loved the stuff. None of it was ever about him having feelings for me. I had always been nothing more than his family’s charity case.
For a long time, I had thought that I wasn’t special. I was just someone that a rich family had considered a convenient playmate for their gay son. The only thing that differentiated me from everyone else was luck. My mother was luckily assigned to the Lyons as their housekeeper. And their gay son was luckily my age and lonely.
But couldn’t there be more to my story than that? The vampire had said that his master had instructed him to make my mother believe she was pregnant. That meant that she wasn’t pregnant. Didn’t that also mean that I wasn’t my mother’s son?
If that were true, couldn’t my mother’s assignment to the Lyons have also been planned? Was every step of my life a part of some elaborate plot that I had no control over?
Feeling myself start to spiral, I looked out the subway window at the setting sun. I needed help figuring out what was going on. Remy was still my best option.
I had no doubt that Eris hated me. Even as she looked at Remy, I could see her wolf watching my every move. It could sense the feelings I had for Remy even if Eris couldn’t. Or maybe she did. She had suggested putting my head on a plate.
Despite feeling Eris’s wolf about to pounce, and knowing he didn’t feel the same way about me, I still needed Remy. I needed to tell him about the Vampire and it didn’t feel like something I could bring up over Japanese crepes.
‘Oh, by the way, the man I thought was my father is a member of the undead. And I think I might be a monster planted with my mother to destroy your family or maybe the world. Can you pass me a napkin?’
No, I had to work my way up to telling him. That meant we needed to spend more time together. And wasn’t his idea about opening a community center a good one? It was generous and thoughtful. Whether it was destined or not, I couldn’t forget that it was only because of his family’s generosity that I was a year away from graduating from college.
If Remy was now offering to be as generous to others as his family had been to me, didn’t I owe it to the kids like me who would never get what I had gotten? Wouldn’t that be the human thing to do? Wouldn’t that prove that I wasn’t a monster?
For the next few days, I didn’t go into the office. Instead, I put my self-interest on hold and did what Remy had suggested. Walking the boroughs, I considered a suitable location for his community outreach center.
Eventually, my wandering led me back to the projects in Brownsville. It was where I was born and where Mom and I lived before she got her job with the Lyons.
As I strolled through the area, I ran into a group of guys I hadn’t seen since elementary school. They were hanging around in front of the building drinking beers with their shirts off. It was the middle of a weekday. My heart clenched thinking, in other circumstances, I could have been where they are.
Recognizing me, their faces lit up. After friendly greetings and brief small talk, I continued on.
Another of the privileges I received from the Lyons was not having to hide who I was. Considering how little I could hide being gay, I might have been eaten alive if I had stayed here. As a kid, I had heard about guys being beaten to an inch of their lives for flirting with the wrong guy. Remy’s family had rescued me from that.
As I continued my walk through the old neighborhood, my senses were overwhelmed by the area’s harsh realities. The faded signs, the echoing engines from narrow streets, the smell of full trash bins. It was day and night compared to where I now lived in New Jersey, much less Remy’s neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Continuing down Pitkin Avenue, my thoughts flashed back to the challenges Mom had faced raising me single-handedly. I could never stop the anger from boiling up whenever I thought about this. It shouldn’t have had to be that way. And as I thought more about it, I realized exactly where Remy should put his community center.
With the decision made, a wave of anxiety washed over me. Not only was I going to have to tell Remy where and why, but he would expect me to work with him to build it. I had mixed feelings about that.
On one hand, it would allow me to ask him for his help. On the other, the thought of working that closely with him, smelling his manly leather scent every day, made me weak in the knees. Just thinking about it was like a vise gripped around my heart.
But I had to put my feelings aside. Past everything else, this outreach center was more important than whatever I was experiencing. I owed it to kids like me. Living in this harsh environment, they deserved the same opportunities the Lyons gave me. So with a newfound determination, I vowed to fight through my selfish pain and face Remy with my proposal for his center.
The next day, I stormed into Remy’s office powered by anxiety and resolve. Determined not to get distracted by feelings, I immediately was. For a moment I had forgotten what he looked like in a crisp white dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves. Did the man have to show off his tattooed forearms like that? No one deserved to be that sexy. It wasn’t fair.
