We got held up. Maybe go check on Rhonda for Tristan. We’ll be there in about an hour.

Nerves pricked at his skin. As cool as Rhonda had been to him, every time Mateo saw her, he still felt out of his element. She was his man’s madre...one of his men. What the fuck kind of guy joined an already established couple the way he did?

Still, Mateo typed an ok to Jay before taking the elevator down a floor. He knocked, and a minute later, Rhonda opened the door. She looked better than she had when he found her between those buildings, but there was still an emptiness in her eyes that hadn’t been there the night he met her.

“Hey...Jay said I could come hang out with you while I wait for him and Tristan to get here. I mean, hello. Not hey, that’s—”

“Fine is what it is. You can say ‘hey’ to me. And you’re not here to hang out with me, you’re here to check on me. Good thing I like you and I’m okay with that.”

Mateo’s eyes darted toward her, held her. She didn’t even know him, not really, yet when she said she liked him, he believed her. He’d known it the first night they met.

He shrugged. “They worry. We’re gonna drive you bat shit crazy when we move in.”

Rhonda laughed and stepped aside for him to go in, which Mateo did. “At least you’re honest with me. I appreciate that. Both Josiah and Tristan would have pretended they weren’t here to check on me.”

He followed her into the living room. “They woulda’ meant well, though.” Mateo sat down and put his feet on the coffee table, before dropping them to the floor. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

Again, Rhonda laughed. “You don’t have to be sorry. Put your feet up, Teo.”

The name settled into his chest. Yeah, Josiah called him Teo all the time, but it made his chest feel full that Tristan’s mom would.

“Sorry, Josiah calls you that. I just...”

“No, it’s cool,” he told her. “He was nervous about it the first time he called me Teo.” The past steamrolled its way into his head as he saw Jay, young and scared, looking at him like he really fucking mattered when no one ever had before.

“How old were you guys when you met?” Rhonda asked him.

“He was sixteen. I’m a year older. My dad just got locked up, and they sent me to the same home he was at.” Once the words passed his lips, Teo shook his head. Did he really want to go down that road with her? Tell her shit about his past when he already felt like he didn’t deserve to sit in this apartment with her?

Rhonda didn’t comment on the fact that his dad was in prison. She just smiled, and he noticed she had the same one as Tristan. “It’s funny how life works sometimes, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?” Teo asked her.

“Everything, really. When you spend your whole life locked away in your house, it gives you time to think. You could have gone anywhere, yet you ended up with Josiah. I don’t know your story, and I won’t pretend to but I’m assuming you two really needed each other when you met.”

She shifted in her seat, her eyes never leaving Mateo. “I don’t know what happened with you guys, but I know whatever it was, it brought him to my Tristan. Hundreds of cities they could have ended up in, and yet they both came here, and they both ended up by the water at the same time. They needed each other when they found one another as well... and then you. You came back to Josiah, and you found my Tristan at the same time.”

Mateo had to fight to open his lips, fight to talk and not walk out or get sick. “You don’t care? I know it’s fucked up, me bein’ with them. You can’t want that for him.”

Rhonda shook her head. “I’ve seen enough ugly in this world to ever have a problem with the beautiful. It doesn’t matter if people understand it or if it’s different. It makes my boy happy for the first time in his life. Tristan let all that ugly fill him up for years. All the ugly I brought into his life. You and Josiah give him something beautiful, and you gave me my son back. That’s all I care about.”

“I...” Mateo paused, thought, not sure what he could really say to that. He wondered if his mom would have been as understanding. If she would have just seen that they loved each other, or if she would have been like his father. Hated him because he was weak. Because he wanted men.

“Can I tell you something?” Rhonda asked. When Mateo nodded, she stood, walked over, and sat next to him on the couch. “I told you, the world is a funny place. I think you were supposed to meet Josiah, and you were both supposed to meet Tristan, but I also think you were supposed to be the one to find me. We’ve both seen a lot of the ugly on the streets. Tristan, too, but I can’t talk to him about it. And I know he won’t talk to me. Despite all the bad, we’ve seen a few miracles in our lives, all four of us. Don’t discount them because of the past. The three of you together are a miracle. You finding me was one, also.”