Anteros laughed. “You two wouldn’t make it out of the building.”
“Alcide lowered the gun. I remember the way his entire body was coiled, fingers white against the handle of the gun. He couldn’t look at his lover. His eyes were trained on the ground.”
“You don’t have to tell me any more,” Frankie said.
“I need to get this out.” Now that the spigot was opened, he had to get it all out, every last drop.
“If you don’t shoot him, I’ll call Big O and Little O down here to tear him apart slowly,” Anteros said. “Your choices are mercy or pain.”
Shaking, Crazy A lifted the gun back up. He pointed it at the man, leveled it at his forehead.
There were only a few drops left inside that Anteros had to spill. Frankie waited patiently, not pressing him. The candle was dying, shadows sputtering across the floor in schizophrenic spurts. After a few minutes, Anteros stood up straight and turned around, facing Frankie.
“Alcide mouthed something to the man I didn’t catch and pulled the trigger.”
“Oh my God.” Frankie sounded horrified, and he couldn’t blame her. “That’s what happened? You made him shoot the love of his life because he was gay?” Anteros wanted to shout that he had been a slave, that he didn’t get to break the rules if he wanted to make them one day. They had been so close to getting everything they wanted and Crazy A’s affair would have killed everything they built, even Crazy A himself.
Now Anteros knew that to be a lie.
“I thought I was doing it for both of us,” Anteros explained. “I realize now it was only for myself.” He dragged a hand through his hair, raking nails across his skull.
“That’s really awful.” Frankie shook her head. “No wonder he hated me so much.”
“He didn’t hate you, he hated what you represented.”
“Same fucking thing.” She placed her hands uncomfortably in her lap. “I don’t know what to think. Are you homophobic?”
His eyes were sharp. “What the fuck do you think?”
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair of me.”
He kept running his hands through his hair, messing it up, wishing it would clear his thoughts. This wasn’t just his biggest secret, it was his biggest shame. Anteros wasn’t a man to hold on to shame or regret. He wasn’t even one to feel those things, but suddenly after having Frankie, Crazy A had been a weight.
He couldn’t go back in time.
He couldn’t fix it.
So it just weighed on him. He didn’t know what the fuck to do about it. Now having Frankie look at him that way, it was just too fucking much. Her pained, creased brow matched the wrinkled stain on his soul. Anteros had lived his life thinking he did things only for himself, and that because it was just for himself, his actions were justified.
He didn’t share the Family’s views, but he’d climbed the ranks exploiting them. Frankie woke him up to how little power there was in that. She made him realize that by building an empire using someone else’s bricks, he’d made a castle he could never call home.
Suddenly Frankie hopped off the barstool and walked over to him, placing her hand on his bicep. He eyed it uncertainly.
“I don’t mean to judge you,” she said. “I really don’t. I just never thought I would feel sorry for him.”
“I wonder if I should have seen it coming,” Anteros said, voicing the thing that had been haunting him for years. “If I could have stopped it.”
Frankie shook her head slowly, eyes closing in a slow, sympathetic blink. “You can’t choose who you love. Even if you were trying to prepare for it every day of your life, you still couldn’t. I knew I was falling in love with you, I tried to stop it, but couldn’t.”
Whether she’d meant to or not, her words branded him. Grasping the back of her skull, Anteros pulled her into a quick, rough embrace. When the kiss ended, Anteros kept his grip at the back of her neck, kept their foreheads touching. Her eyelids flickered, her tongue swept across her upper lip, and Anteros documented her slow return to reality.
“Man, this Family is so fucked up,” Frankie said after a few moments, voice low. “My parents are brother and sister, but being gay is bad. When we take over, everyone can love whoever the fuck they want—except siblings. I feel like that should definitely be a hard limit.”
“You still want to be in this world?” After everything that had happened, Anteros assumed she would be done. He was willing to run with her, willing to travel the world and show her the places on her wall.
“I mean…I just…” She tried to pull away, but he kept his grip firm, pulling her closer.
“Frankie, do you want to be in this world?” He searched her eyes, his own brow shadowing.