Mafia Heir Turns Me Gay novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: The Gloves

Mickey took the note out of Santino's hand and read it again.

Thirty days is a long time.

Under it, a little smiley face.

That was what did it.

Not the missing drive. Not the overwritten log. The smiley face.

"He drew a face," Mickey said.

"Mickey."

"He poisoned your father with my name on the glass, and he drew a little face."

His voice was getting loud in a room full of humming machines.

Santino put the panel back on, screw by screw, and stood.

"Not here," he said.

They went out the way Santino had come in.

He wiped the push bar with his sleeve.

In the elevator Mickey didn't stand at the back.

He stood in the middle, arms folded, watching the numbers climb.

Santino watched him in the mirror.

"Say it," Santino said.

"Say what?"

"Whatever you're holding in your teeth."

The doors opened on fifty-two.

Mickey walked out ahead of him into the dark living room.

The city was going grey at the edges. Five in the morning.

He turned around.

"I'm tired of being scared," he said.

Santino stopped by the kitchen island.

"Every day for a week I've woken up scared. Of your cousin. Of the table. Of a guy in a doctor's coat."

"Of me making a noise on your terrace."

Santino's eyes changed.

"I've been pretending this is a deal," Mickey said. "Separate rooms. Ask first. Fake."

"I stood in a ceiling tonight thinking that if I fell through it and broke my neck, I'd never have found out."

"Found out what?"

Mickey crossed the room.

"Whether I'm what Kelli said. Just a bartender. Or whether I'm something else, and it's been you the whole time."

Santino didn't move.

Mickey got close enough to smell the cedar in his hair.

"I'm not asking you for anything tonight," Santino said. His voice wasn't steady. "You don't owe me a thing for the drive."

"I know."

"You're angry."

"I'm angry and I'm alive. And I'm not drunk, and I'm not in shock, and I'm asking."

Mickey put his hand flat on Santino's chest.

Santino's heart was slamming.

"Stay," Mickey said. "In my room. With me. Tonight."

For a long second Santino only looked at him.

Then he said, very quietly, "Ask me again."

"Stay with me, Santino."

Santino shut his eyes.

When he opened them, he lifted his right hand between them.

The black glove.

In five years, Mickey had never seen him without it.

Not to sign a check. Not to shake a hand. Not to hold a glass.

"If I stay," Santino said, "you'll see this."

"I want to."

"It isn't pretty."

"I didn't ask for pretty."

Santino pulled at the fingertips, one at a time.

The leather came away slowly.

His hand was scarred from the wrist to the knuckles.

Shiny, puckered skin, pink in places and white in others, pulled tight over the bones. The two smallest fingers didn't quite straighten.

He took off the left one.

It was worse.

He held both hands out to Mickey in the grey light, palms up.

"The car caught fire on Lake Street," he said. "My mother was in the passenger seat. The door was jammed."

"I pulled it open. I pulled her out."

"She died anyway. Two days later."

"I was twenty-four. I've worn these ever since."

Mickey took his hands.

The skin was warm and strange, ridged under Mickey's thumbs.

Santino flinched, then held still.

"Does it hurt?"

"Not anymore. Some places I can't feel."

"Which places?"

Santino showed him. The heel of his left hand. The back of two fingers.

Mickey lifted that hand and kissed the place Santino couldn't feel.

Then the place next to it, where he could.

Santino made a sound like the one on the terrace.

Something cracking.

"Mickey," he said. "If I come into that room with you, I'm not leaving it until morning."

"I don't want you to leave it."

"Then say yes."

"Yes."

Santino put his bare hand on Mickey's jaw.

The same place the glove had gone that first night in the dark office.

It felt nothing like the glove.

Santino's bare hand lay on Mickey's jaw.

The city through the window had gone the color of old nickels.

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