Bitter Taffy (17 page)

With that, he reached behind him and hauled Clopper back inside, leaving Derek to slam the door in their faces.

T
HE
MINUTE
Rico let go, Clopper bounded for the bedroom, whining and scratching at the door when nobody opened it.

Rico and Derek sagged back against the front door in relief.

“That was…,” Derek began delicately.

“Awful,” Rico supplied, letting him off the hook. “Fucking awful. God. Adam. He had to carry Finn away. They were so awful, Finn almost jumped them. Can you imagine that?” His voice shook, and so did his hand as he wiped it over his mouth.

God. Family confrontations. He’d been the good boy his whole life so he didn’t have to live with people being ugly to him. And he’d just
done
that.

Suddenly Derek’s body warmed his space, and Derek embraced him, pushing him against the door in an effort to get closer to his skin.

Rico clung to him for a second for support, for care, realizing he might not have had the strength to do what he’d just done if he hadn’t known he had people when it was over.

“Finn really attacked them?” Derek asked.

Rico nodded into his shoulder. “Grandma Macias spit at Adam. Finn lost his shit.”

Derek let out a low whistle, and in the silence that followed, they could hear Finn sobbing through the bedroom door. “God. Poor Adam.”

Rico looked up and smiled crookedly. “Poor
you
. You were pretty awesome, you know?” He pulled away, reluctant to leave Derek’s heat. “Let me go check on them.” He sighed, thinking about the suppressed excitement in the apartment ten minutes before. “They were going dancing—I’m thinking not so much now.”

He walked down the quiet hall and rapped softly on the door. After a pause, Adam opened the door a crack, his face set in stoic lines. No, Adam wouldn’t cry, not after that.

Clopper, seeing his opportunity, whined and pushed inside the bedroom, and Rico got a glimpse of Finn lying in the middle of the bed, face buried in a pillow.

“They gone?” Adam asked gruffly.

Rico shrugged. “If they’re not when we leave, I’ll call the cops myself,” he said. “You guys don’t need to talk to them again.”

Adam squinted. “We?”

“Derek showed up. He was awesome. Apparently all the white people speak Spanish better than we do.”

Adam grunted. “That’s something I did not expect. So, you guys taking off?”

Rico swallowed, unhappy about just leaving it at that. “You know, Finn had the right of it,” he said seriously. “They shouldn’t have said those things about you. They should
never
have said those things about you. Those women—my mami included—they had no right to make you what was wrong with their lives. I’m almost glad Grandma kicked you out. They’ll leave you alone now. I’d
pay
them to leave me alone.”

For the first time, a crack appeared in Adam’s stoic façade, and he threw a glance over his shoulder at Finn. “He, uhm… it hurts him when people aren’t good to me,” he said apologetically.

“It’s okay if it hurts you too,” Rico said. Maybe before they’d roomed together for a month, he would have felt self-conscious about the kiss he placed on his cousin’s forehead, but he didn’t, not now. “You’re a good person. It should hurt when people are awful.” Rico stepped back and looked down the hall to where Derek was watching compassionately.

“You go,” Adam said softly. “Thanks, Rico. I’m sorry for you too. You’ve always been the good boy. You didn’t deserve that.”

He closed the door, and Rico was left staring at what used to be his bedroom door.

“You’ve always been the good boy too.” He left then. Adam had Finn, and Derek was waiting.

G
IVEN
THE
subdued mood when he grabbed his overnight bag and they got into the car, Rico was surprised Derek didn’t just drive him to his mysterious house near his office.

Instead, he braved the Friday evening traffic to take him to Rick’s Bakery, and Rico found himself sat down in front of a giant helping of tiramisu before he could even mention that they hadn’t had dinner.

“Is this your way of saying the weekend’s off?” he asked suspiciously when they were settled on the patio. The place had patisserie ambiance—white-painted wrought iron tables, pink napkins, a giant slice of chocolate cake in the window. It was the kind of place that made you crave carbs, and Rico was surprised that the man who ate chicken and sprouts every day for lunch would even know where it was.

Derek recoiled. “What? Oh no.
Hell
no. This is my way of saying sometimes you need your dessert before your dinner. This qualifies as one of those times.”

Rico smiled at him, a line of tension between his shoulders and down his spine loosening. “So what’s for dinner?” he asked, delicately cutting into his dessert and then taking a bite.

“Hamburgers,” Derek said pragmatically. “I mixed the meat and the seasoning and left it in the fridge. I thought we could sort of build our own.”

Rico let the dessert dissolve on his tongue while he shuddered in ecstasy. Oh great heavens, that hit the spot! “That sounds great,” he said sincerely. “And I’m gonna really need the protein in about an hour.” He opened his eyes reluctantly and moved his knee to brush Derek’s. “But this was a nice idea. Thanks.”

“So, you and Adam?” Derek asked, and Rico realized he might want a better explanation. Maybe
deserved
one.

“See, Grandma Macias watched us after school when we were growing up. Adam’s mom had him out of wedlock, and… they were awful. They fought constantly about it, and Adam… God. He spent most of his time under the bed. Just this sensitive little kid—I mean, you can’t tell now because he never talks, but he’s got this heart….” Rico shook his head. “And my mom… well, she graduated from college and met a rich Mexican Catholic who never talked and thought children should be seen and not heard.”

Derek sucked in a breath between his teeth. “Wow—that’s the first time you’ve ever really talked about your father.” He sounded a little stunned.

“Well, that could be the first time there was something to mention,” Rico replied, hopefully with dignity.

“That’s a lie by omission, Rico, and you know it,” Derek told him, and for the first time since Rico had met him, he actually sounded a little hurt.

“What’s wrong?” Rico took another bite of his dessert, hoping for another rush of joy that had eased some of the awfulness of the harpy tribunal he’d just kicked off his doorstep.

“Just….” Derek shook his head and bit his lip, looking away. “Just, I’ve heard more about your old boss than I have about your father. And… you just… I don’t know. You never complain about your ex—”

“I thought that was bad form?” Rico said, looking up. He seemed to recall
that
much from dating.

“It is!” Derek assured him. “It’s just… I don’t know. I hope… you know… if we ever break up, I’ve made a bigger impression on you.”

Rico’s mouth fell open, and for a moment he seemed to see clear through Derek—and for the first
real
time, he saw that for all his confidence, Derek was just as susceptible to self-doubt as any other human being on the planet.

Maybe even more so.

“Derek, I… the way I feel about you is
nothing
like I felt for Ezra. I mean, Ezra was sweet, but he was…. God, he was transient, you know? Nothing about us—about
him
—was fully formed. He was looking for someone who could save him, and he wasn’t ready to save himself. I….” Rico smiled. “God—do you
know
how happy I am to come to work each day? How happy I am to see you? You get such
joy
out of things. Playing softball, watching a game, petting my cousin’s big stupid dog—”

“I thought it was yours!” Derek said, looking bemused.

“Yeah, well, the dog decided different. Anyway, you’re just so much
bigger
than that. So much more real. God, Derek, how could you not know I feel so much more for you?”

Derek smiled crookedly. “Maybe because your dad was never there, and you don’t know how to tell me?” he said, sounding uncharacteristically like a slightly lost child.

“Oh,” Rico said softly, looking into those wild blue eyes. The lashes were a little spiky, and his lower lip was red from worrying. Rico reached out and eased it with his thumb. “Okay. So I can tell you now. You’re really fucking important to me. You….” Rico smiled a little. “You sort of just blazed into my life, you know? I needed… I don’t know… a star to follow, and you were just so bright. But you’re human now. I think….” He blushed and looked away.

Derek captured his hand. “Think what?” he asked, the urgency in his voice giving him away.

“I think you’re more beautiful that way,” Rico confessed shyly.

He looked up, and Derek was biting his lip again, just as shy. “Yeah?”

“Oh yeah.”

Derek nodded like he’d expected it all along, breaking the mood by clapping his hands in glee. “Oh yeah. I’m getting some tonight!”

Rico laughed and took another bite of tiramisu, then held it up for Derek to take a bite.

Derek did, his eyes sparkling as he savored and swallowed.

“You know what?” Rico said, smiling as the tension and the sadness melted away like sugar. “You might be right.”

Rico’s cell phone started buzzing then—it was his mother. He texted Adam to get in touch with him through Derek and turned his phone off, winking cannily at Derek as they stood up to leave.

“You sure you want to do that?” Derek asked, some of his confidence back in place. “What man in the twenty-first century wants to live without his cell phone?”

Rico’s stomach rumbled, protesting the sugar overload, and he laughed. “A hungry man who doesn’t want to talk to his mother!”

“Ooh—
sexeh
!”

God, Rico hoped so. He had to have
something
to offer after the debacle on his doorstep.

D
EREK
LIVED
in a small brick house about two blocks from his office. It sat, out of place among all of the Victorians in various stages of refurbishment, squat and red and charming as a gingerbread domicile in a European country.

“That house is….”

“Hot as fuck in the summer,” Derek supplied glumly. “The first thing I did was put misters on the front and back porches so a cross breeze would actually cool it down.”

Rico grinned at him, a little relieved. “I was going to say too cute for words.”

Apparently Derek had made use of his own gardening services—the neatly maintained brick flowerbeds along the walkway were planted with daisies, pansies, and tea roses, and the effect was cheerful and colorful at once.

Derek laughed. “Yeah, my mom—she saw those beds and decided she was absolutely not going to rest until I lived in the cottage of the three bears.”

Oh, damn. Well, there went a whole other preconception. “So, did she do the decorating too?”

Derek led the way into the neatly swept alcove and opened the wooden front door with etched stained glass at the top. “Uhm, no,” he murmured, stepping aside so Rico could go first. “I, uhm, did that.”

Rico paused in the small foyer and looked around, whistling lowly. “Well done!”

Derek’s choices were unapologetically male—low-pile berber carpeting and comfy leather furniture. The space was small, with low ceilings, but he’d made the best of it. He’d kept the walls crème colored but used dark wood frames around the picture windows and the sliding glass door leading to the small backyard. The effect was like stepping into a natural space of shadows and light. The brightness of early June lit up the green space of the backyard and what looked to be a small concrete patio, complete with barbecue and a picnic table.

Rico could even see flowers.

He half laughed. “This… this is
really
nice,” he said. “You… damn.”

He thought of his apartment, which he’d always considered crappy. Finn and Adam had made it into an appealing space, and Rico? Rico had drifted to New York, hoping someday he’d find a place.

Derek had made himself a place.

God, who wouldn’t be impressed by that.

Derek shrugged as he shut the door behind them, looking pleased. Rico thought he might even be blushing. “Yeah. Well, my mom keeps reminding me that it needs color. I’d like to commission your cousin to make me something, but I’m afraid Finn might rip my balls out through my spleen.”

Rico laughed, because Finn really was that jealous. “Not if you and me are a thing,” he said. “You know, you could settle.”

In the close space of the entryway, Rico could actually
smell
the warmth of the flush that rolled off Derek. “You think I’m settling?” he asked seriously.

Rico shrugged. “I mean, you did hit on Adam first.”

“And then I met you,” Derek said, moving into his space. “And I realized that you were the best guy for me. I mean, would you want me if I
hadn’t
noticed Adam?”

Rico had to smile, and the feel of Derek’s hands at his waist eased the little jumps of jealousy. “We look a lot alike,” he admitted, because excluding the tattoos and the toughness and Adam’s habitually taciturn expression, yes, they really did.

“You’re the metro version,” Derek said, eyes twinkling. He slid his hands under Rico’s tight T-shirt, digging his fingers slightly into the muscles of his back. “And since I’m sort of the metro guy….”

Rico couldn’t help it. His smile stretched his face and he leaned forward to press lips, to taste. Derek opened his mouth and Rico fell into him, groaning as Derek palmed his back, his shoulder blades, his shoulders, skin on skin, in the cool dark of the entryway.

The kiss grew hungrier, and Rico’s overnight bag slid down from his shoulder and landed on the floor with a plop. He brought his hand up to cup Derek’s neck, sliding the other hand around toward his backside. He squeezed, and Derek tensed, bucking his hips into Rico’s.