Leave it to Mateo to only mention things for other people. “What will you do for yourself?” Josiah asked, because those were things he already would have done. If he really was serious about this, there would be changes for himself as well.

“Take pictures... It’s not really shit, but who knows, maybe it can be something, someday. Maybe they can mean somethin’ to someone else like they do me.”  He shrugged. “Not freak out when shit happens, like this move. Be on the right side of the law. I can’t...I can’t do that shit anymore. Ever. It’s eatin’ me up inside.”

“Sounds like a good plan.” Tristan leaned forward and kissed Teo’s forehead, and damned if that little movement wasn’t a symbol of so much more. If it wasn’t everything to Josiah.

“I spent some time with your madre today. She said I could go back. That cool with you?” There was a slight pleading spark in Teo’s eyes. It said he needed to go back, and he needed Tristan to be okay with it.

There was a long pause before Tristan replied, but Josiah wasn’t nervous.

“I would be honored,” Tristan finally told him. “Come on. Let’s go home. I want you both.”

As Josiah walked out of what would soon be their new home, with his two men, he felt the hope he’d seen in Teo earlier. It had been a long shot, sending Elliot to Tristan and leaving Teo with Rhonda, but it worked, and maybe, just maybe, it would keep them on the right path. Maybe his men would find the peace in themselves Josiah found in them. That’s what he wanted for them and he’d continue to do whatever he had to do to give his men what they needed.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Tristan

“You know this doesn’t work if you don’t speak, right? This is our third week and you haven’t said much of anything. Is it Josiah? You know what we say is confidential. I could recommend someone else if—”

“No.” Tristan cut Elliot off before he went any farther. He already felt on display walking with the man, and he knew him. He couldn’t do this with anyone else. He couldn’t trust anyone else. Not that he completely trusted Elliot, but Josiah trusted him, and Tristan trusted Josiah.

So now he had to open his mouth and make himself speak. A bird dipped in front of them, then kept flying. As ridiculous as it was, he wondered if it was looking for Josiah, the man who would always make time to feed them.

The man Mateo was working to get better for. Mateo once told him when they were younger that he felt like two people—Josiah’s Mateo and the real one. Now he was working to be Josiah’s Mateo for good. Tristan needed to become Josiah’s Tristan as well—the man Josiah saw in him.

“You’ll never know it all,” Tristan told Elliot.

“No one knows everything about another person. In fact, I wonder if we even know all there is to know about ourselves. I just need you to tell me what you can.”

Tristan stalled, slowed his steps as they made their way down what he considered his, Josiah’s, and Mateo’s path. There was a slight chill in the air, fall descending on them.

He wanted time to speed up, wanted these talks over, and summer to show its face. Mateo would be done with his PO, and by then maybe everything would fully be behind them. “I just want to be okay for them,” he managed to say.

“What about you? Don’t you want to be okay for you as well?”

He wasn’t sure that would ever happen. As soon as that thought crawled through his head, there was a pang in Tristan’s chest. He wanted that, he realized. He wanted to be okay for himself, too. There was only one way he knew how to do that...

“Yes, I do.” Time and wind moved around them. “I have a friend named Ben. Did Josiah ever tell you about him?” Ben was the safest topic he could think of, but one he also felt lost in.

“No, he didn’t.”

That was all Elliot planned to say? Shouldn’t he ask Tristan a question? Steer him in the right direction so he knew what to say? “We’ve known each other since college. We were in law school together. We were...intimate, but I could never give him more. I didn’t realize how much more he wanted until recently...and even after I knew, I went to him for things, favors, that I shouldn’t have. I knew he’d ask questions eventually, and that the answers would hurt him. That didn’t stop me from asking.”

Elliot had promised him he wouldn’t write anything Tristan told him down, and he’d been sincere in that. Not that he’d had much chance since this was the first Tristan had spoken to him.

“So, Ben knows now? And he’s hurt? What did you do to fix it?”