Love's Changes Page 7

  “And now you can?” Bryan’s words were quiet, but the question shook him from the inside out making Justice’s body twitch with nervous energy.

  No.

  The small word bounced off the inside of his head and made its way to his hollow heart. This was killing him. Letting go of the only man he’d loved, relinquishing his claim on Bryan, was breaking him.

  “What happened while I was in that coma to make you give up on us, Justice? Why are you so hell-bent on giving up now?” The mixture of frustration and pain in Bryan’s voice was nearly choking Justice. “For five fucking years I pushed to end our marriage and you refused. You fought for us, even when I couldn’t. And now that I can finally see what a fool I was you want to bounce? What made this happen, Justice?”

  “I just got tired of being the only one fighting for us. After watching you nearly die, I didn’t have the energy to come back to us fighting about these same issues. Your fear to live in the light as a gay man has been slowly killing us for years,” Justice offered. “I’m just finally giving you the freedom to live as you’ve always wanted, in the shadows.”

  Justice heard an audible breath cross Bryan’s lips. Its heavy sound pulling his gaze from their current position on the floor to his husband’s face.

  He expected to find the sadness he’d been avoiding, but instead he found Bryan’s features twisted into an angry scowl.

  “You know what Justice…fuck you.’

  Chapter 11

  Bryan brushed past Justice and pulled out a pair of boxer briefs from his drawer. Arguing while naked with his dick swinging freely wasn’t going to help him win this debate, so he quickly pulled them on and threw the now-damp towel on the nearby weight bench.

  “You don’t know shit about why I asked for the separation,” Bryan continued.

  “I know before you got on the phone with your hateful mother, we were grieving the fresh loss of our daughter together. Five minutes after a phone conversation with her and you were telling me you wanted to separate.

  “She told you God was punishing you for attempting to bring a child into our supposed sin and your response to that bullshit was to leave me. What else am I supposed to assume? You left because she shamed you into believing we were wrong for loving each other.”

  Bryan didn’t need a reminder of that conversation. His mother’s hateful words made her as cold and dead as their daughter was as far as Bryan was concerned.

  That one conversation had cost Bryan everything: the love of his husband, the right to grieve their daughter, and the hope that one day his family would be able to evolve beyond their hate and love him for who he really was.

  All of it was gone. Broken. Destroyed.

  “It didn’t have anything to do with being ashamed of us, Justice. I was never ashamed to be your husband,” Bryan growled, attempting to keep his anger in check. He pulled his wallet off of the dresser and slapped it against Justice’s chest. “Would a man who was ashamed of you do this? No, I don’t walk around with a rainbow flag stamped across my forehead, but that doesn’t mean that I cower in shame about my sexuality or the man I love either.”

  Bryan moved quickly, the fitted cotton of his boxer briefs laying low on his hips briefly distracting Justice from the conversation they were in the middle of. Maybe he should have thought better of picking this fight while his man was naked save for the slight piece of material covering his nudity.

  Once he refocused on their conversation, Justice slowly opened the wallet and looked down at his husband’s driver’s license. The picture was familiar, the same one he remembered Bryan taking all those years ago when he’d moved to New York after he left the Marines. The only difference between this and the original was the name, Bryan Amare.

  “When did you change your name? Why would you change it? I asked you to carry my name before we married and you said no, said it would be too much of a hassle to change all of your documents over.”

  Bryan kept his hands fixed on his hips, making the broad expanse of his chest tighten as the muscles beneath moved. It might’ve been a mark of his frustration, but the only purpose it was serving for Justice was stoking his desire for the man.

  “I changed my name almost as soon as we got married. I just never changed it at the department. By the time I was ready, you and I were going through so much shit that I didn’t think you’d want me to carry your name. Then I decided that I didn’t even care if you did, that loving you had made me just as much an Amare as those of you born into the name. So there,” Bryan challenged. “There goes your theory that I ran because I was ashamed of you, of us. Whatcha got now?”

  Nothing, he had exactly nothing. Justice stood there in silence as he processed what Bryan was saying to him.

  “Then what? What the hell was it all about?” Justice demanded.

  Just thinking back on that time hurt. They were in the process of burying their precious daughter. Life seemed like an endless black hole of pain and the only thing Justice had anchoring him was Bryan and their love for one another. He’d reached out to Bryan to pull him up out of the mire and his husband had pulled his hand back and walked away.

  After five years of begging Bryan to piece his heart back together, Justice was done. He was finished with this entire scenario. If Bryan couldn’t shake off his homophobic family’s hold on him, then Justice would walk away and live his life alone and free.

  Bryan stood directly in front of him, forcing Justice to meet his gaze.

  “I’m gonna do you a favor, Justice. This is the same favor your cousin Heart did for me when I first suggested we take a breather. She stood up, and told me when I was being an unnecessary asshole. I’m going to do that for you now. Don’t fuck up a good thing just because you think you’re being righteous. Stop being a self-sacrificing bitch. Man up and fight for your goddamn man. I’m not ashamed of us Justice, I never have been.”

  “Bryan, you didn’t want folks on the job to know who you were. I did not imagine that shit. I didn’t imagine you using my cousin as your beard for years in the department.”

  “I have never told anyone that Heart and I were anything more than friends and colleagues,” Bryan answered.

  Justice folded his arms across his chest. Yeah, that might have been technically true, but they both knew Bryan hadn’t done anything to disabuse people of that notion either. It wasn’t until Heart met and married her husband, Kenneth Searlington, that folks realized Bryan and Heart weren’t together.

  “I have never allowed anyone to believe I was with anyone but you, Bryan,” Justice stated. “I don’t feel the need to make folks comfortable about my goddamned life.”

  “You know what, Justice? It’s real easy to live freely when you don’t have to worry about the reprisal that comes later.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I’m a Marine. You think being gay and serving in the Corps is all about the fun times?” Justice rolled his eyes, his annoyance evident in his posture.

  “Your daddy is a four-star General,” Bryan added. “You really think folks saw you for who you were and accepted it? They knew fucking with you essentially meant fucking with their careers. I work on the fucking streets. If my fellow cops don’t have my fucking back, my life isn’t worth shit when I’m out there. I wasn’t ashamed of us, Justice; only afraid of the assholes in my department doing me like they did Madison. The risk is too great to my fucking life.”

  Justice leaned against the dresser for needed support as Bryan’s revelation pressed against the center of his chest. Justice worked hard in his career to get to where he was. Making Colonel in the Marines as an enlisted man in twenty-one years was almost an impossibility. But he’d sacrificed so much and made it happen.

  Although he’d worked hard, he wasn’t stupid; he knew the fact that he was a General’s kid had benefited him. It might not have facilitated his rise in the ranks, but as an out gay man in the military, it definitely helped to keep some of the bigots in their place.

  Bryan
didn’t have that in the NYPD. There was no one there making certain Bryan’s ability to succeed on his own merit wasn’t fucked with. Other than Heart, Bryan didn’t have anyone there to protect his life.

  “Then why did you ask for the separation? I know it had something to do with your family. You were different after that conversation with your mother,” Justice entreated.

  He watched some of the ire seep out of Bryan as he stepped back and returned to his perch at the end of their bed.

  “Meeting you saved me, Justice,” Bryan’s admission both warmed and pained Justice.

  Justice remembered what Bryan was like in the early days of their relationship. Hurt, fragile, angry, and convicted, so broken that Justice often worried he’d never be able to love, let alone allow Justice to love him.

  “In so many different ways I was snatched from the clutches of death when I fell in love with you, Justice. I was exiled for the great sin of being gay, abandoned by everyone that was supposed to love me. But you found me, loved me, and then brought me to a family that would love me.

  “You gave me everything, Justice. Everything I ever wanted was part of my reality because you loved me and graced me with it. Up until the moment we decided to expand our family I had nothing to give you in return. When you said you wanted a baby, I knew I had to be the one to give it to you. It was the only thing that would measure up to how much love you’d blessed me with.

  Bryan’s voice trembled on that last word. He pulled his eyes away from Justice’s for a brief moment, as if looking at Justice wore on the thin veil of control Bryan was gingerly holding on to.

  “I knew if I could give you that, I’d be deserving of your love. I’d truly be your partner.”

  Justice’s soul ached at how small Bryan’s voice sounded. How long had his husband felt like this, as if he’d had nothing of significance to offer Justice except for a child?

  “When she died, it broke me. But it wasn’t until my mother said those hateful things to me that I began to believe she was right. God was punishing me, not for being gay, but for being me. He must have hated me; I was so broken, so worthless, that he allowed my blood to be the thing that killed our child, killed us.”

  “Bryan, you did nothing wrong. It was a recessive trait, a freak of nature; no one could have predicted it. You did all of the genetic counseling, it never showed up in any of the tests you underwent before we began the artificial insemination process. You couldn’t have blamed yourself for this all this time?”

  But he was, and apparently he had. His slumped shoulders and bowed head were proof of his burden. Bryan was a man in pain, a man weighed down by guilt.

  “She was the one thing you wanted, and the one thing I couldn’t give you. After you’d saved me, I was so fucked up inside I couldn’t give you the gift you wanted most. I couldn’t keep you in a marriage knowing I couldn’t give you the child you’d asked me for.”

  Justice took the few steps between them and kneeled down between Bryan’s legs. He ran a gentle hand over Bryan’s cropped, dark curls and let it travel until it met the wet warmth of his tear-dampened cheek.

  “You were all I needed, all I wanted. Honor…she…” Justice struggled to speak through the thick pain cutting through him. They hadn’t spoken her name since the day they put her in the ground.

  Justice remembered the day they’d chosen her name. Bryan insisted they would keep with the Amare tradition of naming their children for the virtues they hoped the child would embrace.

  She will be a daughter of Justice, she must be Honor.

  The name was perfect and so was she, too perfect for the ugly world they inhabited.

  “I didn’t want a child, Bryan, I wanted your child. I wanted Honor because she was part of you. She was to be the result of growth in our relationship. Honor was not meant to complete, or bear the weight of our relationship. Her end should not have meant our end. We should have grabbed on to one another when she died, not run to our separate corners. I didn’t blame you then, and I don’t blame you now.”

  He wrapped strong arms around Bryan’s shaking shoulders and surrounded him in love. It was what Bryan needed, what he’d always needed. Five years lost because he was too foolish to ask the right questions, and Bryan was too guilty to let Justice help bear the weight of his pain.

  He’d been so unwise, so wrapped up in his need to sacrifice himself and his heart that Justice hadn’t realized the man he loved was sinking in despair. He’d blamed Bryan for their brokenness, instead of seeing the truth. Bryan was shattered and in need of being pieced back together.

  Believing Bryan was ashamed of their love gave Justice the ability to latch on to his moral superiority with both hands. The high ground, it was his favorite place to be. And now sitting here, facing the sickening truth of his ignorance, Justice felt ill.

  His man had been suffering and Justice’s only concern was being pissed off because he thought Bryan couldn’t bear to free himself from his closet. If he’d paid half as much attention to Bryan’s heart as he had his anger and indignation, maybe they could’ve spent these broken years mending their marriage and each other together.

  It was too late for maybes. Justice wouldn’t allow another moment to be lost to uncertainty. Bryan needed him. If it was the only thing he ever did, Justice would be there for his husband, make this right.

  Five years lost to Justice’s arrogance. The only thing he had to show for it was useless pain. And the truth was he deserved that.

  Chapter 12

  Justice leaned in and chased Bryan’s tears with warm kisses.

  “I failed you, I failed her,” Bryan’s words were so faint Justice could barely make them out.

  “You loved us.” Justice pressed firm lips against Bryan’s mouth. “That’s all either of us ever required of you.”

  Justice traced strong fingers along the line of Bryan’s jaw, down his neck, across his shoulders and down to his chest where the healed scar marked the exit of a near-fatal bullet. If things had gone differently, he might have lost Bryan that day, might have never had the opportunity to know how haunted his husband had really been.

  “I’m sorry for not seeing all of your pain, Bryan, for not understanding how much you really needed me. I promise I will never let you down like that again.”

  Justice meant those words, needed Bryan to understand how truly honest he was being. Bryan had sacrificed so much, and he’d done it alone. Never again would Justice allow either of them to suffer in silence.

  Justice replaced his fingers with a soft kiss, worshiping the visible sign of his husband’s mortality. He let his tongue taste the scar, reveling in the heat and flavor of fresh skin. He smoothed his hands against Bryan’s shoulders and pushed him back toward the bed, never breaking their contact, falling on top of him, keeping their bodies touching at multiple points.

  He trailed hot kisses down the ridges of Bryan’s solid chest and abs. He might not have liked Herrera working with his husband, but he had to give the man credit where due. Bryan looked and felt just like Justice liked him, solid and hot as fuck.

  He slid his hand down Bryan’s torso taking a direct path to Bryan’s straining cock. As his fingers slid beneath the elastic waistband of his underwear, Justice laughed. Within a few moments of Bryan putting them on they were already spotted with pre-cum and on their way off of his body and on to the floor.

  Justice kept his mouth locked on Bryan’s, tasting him, sipping from him. It had been too long since he felt this connected to his man; he didn’t want to let that go, not even for the temptation of tasting the heavy cock filling his palm.

  This was about more than sex. All throughout their separation, Justice and Bryan never lost their physical love for one another. Thinking back on it, they’d spent just as much time sexing throughout the five years they’d been separated as they had their first sixteen years together. Granted, Justice was away for months at a time in the Marine Corps, but whenever they met, no matter how hurt or angry they were,
no matter how insistent Bryan was that there would be no reconciliation, they’d never lost their desire for one another.

  Sex was the easy part, after all their years together, they knew what the other wanted. Their bodies pretty much ran on autopilot. But in all that time they hadn’t been able to reach each other’s hearts.

  Tonight, Justice felt Bryan deep down in his heart, through every tiny vessel of his being. Bryan was there, in his blood, spreading through his system like a warm elixir, rejuvenating his spirit, chasing the echoes away from his soul.

  Bryan broke away from the desperate kiss, concern shadowing the love in his eyes.

  “Are you all right? We don’t have to do this.”

  Justice tightened his hand around Bryan’s cock and savored the slow mewl that escaped his lips.

  “I think we do,” Justice countered.

  Bryan closed his eyes. Justice could see the effect of his ministrations etched into the tight lines of Bryan’s taut and trembling body.

  “I think you know what I mean, Jussy.”

  He did. They’d said so much, revealed more in the last fifteen minutes than they had in the last five years. The rational thing to do would have been to keep the dialogue going, or at least allow some time to pass while everything settled in.

  To hell with rational.

  They’d spent too much time lost in a haze of misunderstanding. Now that they’d found this moment where they’d rediscovered their foundation, the thing that brought them together in the first place, their love for one another was the only thing Justice would allow either of them to focus on right now.

  “Everything I need is right here.” Justice flattened his lips to Bryan’s. “You good with that?”

  A wide grin pulled at the edges of Bryan’s mouth. It was full and bright and it matched the sparkle growing in Bryan’s eyes. This was how his man should always look. Loved…hopeful.