Page 51 of Romeo vs Romeo

Maybe, I thought to myself, holding Roman close for support,just maybe, Cedric’s sacrifice will be enough. And his didn’t hurt nearly as much as mine would.

I held Roman even closer, not wanting us to part, and we watched Cedric’s siblings voice their support for their brothers. “Gay people exist everywhere, even if you choose not to see it. And it’s precisely those who are not seen that need a place like Neon Nights,” Sophia Montclair said.

Maximilian, a tall and slender guy with a mischievous streak that faded away when he spoke up, said that it broke his heart that his brother had had to seek acceptance elsewhere but that he was grateful to Mama Viv, Neon Nights, and the bar’s patrons for giving Cedric what his family should have given him sooner.

“Thanks for making me come,” I whispered into Roman’s ear.

He looked up at me, knowing well how much all those words had meant to me, and smiled. He tilted his head toward the door to his building, which was just a few paces down the street. “The show won’t start until tonight,” Roman said. “Why don’t we hang out at my place?”

He didn’t need to have his face flush or cheeks turn a little pink for me to leap at the opportunity to be alone with him.

Without another word, I took his hand and led the way to the entrance.

They would all be just fine without us. And me? All that I could ever need was right here in this person. In his heart was all that I had ever desired.

CHAPTER 12

Nights and Days

Everett

The wanderer found a home.The hater found love. The coward found courage.

As October days shortened and leaves turned brown, with thickening mist gathering in the chilly New York nights, I lived two lives, but my heart beat only for one of them.

So many years had gone by where I was the side character of my own story. So many mornings went by while I slept with my curtains drawn and the world existing only as something that was out there but never in here.

I lived for my current self, but I also lived for the boy who hadn’t. He was still somewhere in me, I hoped.

My days revolved around my father’s work. Each morning, while my mother grew quieter and more distant, I joined my father on his mission to reshape the heart of Hudson Burrow. I watched him commission research that would prove beyond any doubt that a ragtag group’s home was a waste of space and that his luxury hotel would make the neighborhood proper. I watched him as he called, treated, bargained, and bribed his way to the near certainty of victory.

“Yes, but they are filing the motion to declare this place a landmark, Mr. Langley. The judge has ruled…”

“Show me the judge,” my father snapped once.

Day by day by day, Harold Langley was less of a tame man who only wanted to eat his toast in silence without bothering anyone or being bothered in return, and he was more the monster that the rest of this great city said he was.

When you get old enough to see your parents for all the things they are not, you need to decide whether you can love them or not.But the decision was made for me. He didn’t love me. Oh, he might have loved the idea of me, the person I had pretended to be so I would remain in his favor, but he didn’t love the real me.

I had seen him a week after Prince Cedric Montclair spoke in support of Neon Nights fuming and foaming about the gays. “They think they rule the world,” he spat. “We used to have men in this country. Is this all that’s left?”

The real troubles for my father were the whispers of bribery. Someone spoke to a respected journalist of a national newspaper and alleged that the lightning speed at which Neon Nights was declared necessary for the good of the public had all the clear marks of foul play. It had almost given my father a fit of rage. It had set him on this course for good. He couldn’t pull out without losing face and basically admitting that they were right. This was no longer a business project but an all-out war to save his skin.

And the person who leaked it? He was the heart that pumped life into my nights.

Nearly every evening, I left our penthouse in favor of a worn-out couch against the bare brick wall of Neon Nights and the company of Roman Cross and his friends. My only problem was the constant flood of curious visitors who wanted to see His Royal Highness in the bar, and I was not ready to have my photographs fly around the web for everyone to discover me.

But Roman’s Peeling Palace offered us the privacy we needed. His roommates were rarely around. Lane was an active guy, playing for an amateur football team, so he had practice and outdoor activities on most evenings. Oakley, the nerdy guy with a feisty streak, was more often at the library than inside. Tristan either worked or spent his time at Cedric’s place a few blocks away. And Madison’s room was so far from Roman’s that it was hard to tell whether he was there or not.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said one evening, lying on my back, holding Roman in the fold of my right arm. We were only loosely covered by a comforter over the middle, and sweat was cooling on our torsos. Roman’s body was hot like a furnace, and I dreamed of spending entire nights with him. The longing to be near him forever was stronger each day. “When it’s all over, what then?”

Roman knew everything about me. He knew how I had grown up and what my parents were like. He knew just as well as I that once he was revealed, my father would face immediate detention and questioning, lawsuits of gigantic proportions, criminal charges, loss of his wealth that was tied so tightly to his company, and possibly prison time. He would be ousted from the company, I had no doubt, but that wouldn’t save the board from the plummeting stock value. And all that would happen by my choice.

“We’ll figure it out together,” Roman said. And, with an almost naive hopefulness, he added, “Maybe it won’t come to that.”

On one end, I faced the same fate as Joseph Burton, being excluded from my family and the society that had shaped me my entire life, left out of all the wills, and cut off from family money. On the other, it was all the same, but I would bring them down with me and save Neon Nights in the same breath.

I shifted and turned on my side so I could be face-to-face with Roman. I had never told him this for the simple reason it had never mattered. Until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t questioned my steady access to my family’s wealth. “When I was six, Dad…” I halted. Calling him that felt wrong. Dads were supposed to cheer for their sons. But I shoved those thoughts away. “He set up a trust fund for me. It’s north of twelve million, Rome.”

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