Page 47 of Burn this City

“I needed what was in your head. To protect my people.”

“And destroy mine,” Jack shot back.

“Your people? The same people who’d kill you and chop you up if they knew you fuck men? Fucking listen to yourself.” Now he did walk up to Jack, who sat up straighter to offset at least some of the height advantage.

“And how’s that different from what you’re going to do?” Jack’s face softened and he rubbed his temple with one hand. “Besides, I don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“I don’t … fuck men.” He moved his lips like it was a sharp word that hurt his tongue. “Or let them fuck me. I don’t.”

What? None of that made sense. “Explain.”

“Well, you know everything else now, so why hide it?.” Jack swallowed visibly. “I never … I don’t have hook-ups. Nothing … casual or committed. When I realized what I am, I decided to never take that risk. Because I might decide it was worth dying for, or lose everything because I couldn’t control the temptation. It didn’t seem worth it.”

Fuck.And I called you a monk.“Are you telling me you’ve never had sex? I mean, sex involving another person? You’re, what, in your forties?”

Jack hesitated for a long time. “I’m just not like that. I’m different.”

“Different in what way?”

“I just don’t constantly look at people pondering whether I want to have sex with them. That seems to be the normal way? From what I’ve observed about others. I try not to think about it too much. I’m busy with other things.”

“Okay. I … I think I get that. But you get turned on.”

“Yes. It’s …” Jack sighed and shook his head again. “And you’re the first person in the world I’m talking to about this. It’s not constant, like it seems to be for others. I’m still … when I’m into something it’s … men, but I’m not constantly into something or someone.”

Okay, those were some unusual wires, but Sal had learned to take pretty much all sexualities in stride, from Catia’s “anything goes with anybody” to Enzo’s submissive flexibility and his own fantasies and kinks. When he initially met up with one of his couples, the conversation invariably turned to what everybody was into, and Sal was happy to play along with pretty much everything that came up. He’d quickly learned to go to those meetings with a mind so wide open it was more of a landscape.

“You were okay with what we did, though?”

“It confirmed what I suspected.” Jack looked up with a crooked little smile. “That, yes, I’d take unreasonable risks for it, and that maybe I made the wrong decision to keep it all locked away. I …” Another deep breath. “I can’t help but wonder what it might have been like.”

Might have been.He was thinking about death again. Sal tried to imagine a life without touch, whether sexual or intimate, and couldn’t. Being a consigliere was already a burden because of the responsibility and the power that came with the job. While it made Jack less vulnerable to attack since he didn’t have the weakness of a partner—like Sal had with Catia—who could betray him to his enemies or sell him to the Feds in return for WITSEC, it also meant he’d never had anybody to lean on, nobody to trust on that most fundamental level.

Did that make Jack Barsanti the most resilient man Sal knew? To get where he had without support or avenue for release, was unimaginable. He certainly had to be the loneliest fucking man on the planet.

25

Considering how quickly Sal Rausa bristled and how volatile he was, it was strange to see him calmly take in what Jack had confessed. Because it was a confession—if he was going to die, that wasn’t something he wanted to take with him wherever he’d go, if there was a place to go to. Better to leave it all behind with the one man who’d wrestled all his other secrets from him. Sal hadn’t been after these private secrets, but it seemed only fitting that he should have this one too. It was too heavy for Beth.

And it was nice to not be judged for his choices or for what he was. He could see easily how Rausa had maintained his position at the top. That kind of acceptance went a long way toward building loyalty among people. Made men were as complex, fallible, and weak as the rest of the population, so giving them support and not sweating the small stuff helped making it all work. In every way, Sal was the direct opposite to Andrea.

Jack finished the protein shake and capped the bottle again. He was already feeling less queasy, though the headache was lingering.

“Can I ask a question?”

Sal sat down on the same couch and nodded. “Sure.”

“Did your wife know about you?”

Sal’s eyes darkened, but his smile was soft and tinged with sadness. “She made me the man I am. Emotionally. Sexually. Before her, I figured the best sex was wild and passionate and hot and wherever and as often as possible, and only with women. I was probably compensating for the stuff I was suppressing, though my method was different from yours.” He absentmindedly rubbed his chest. “She was bi, like me. Kinky, like me. Man, she could take you apart and put you back together without all the shit you were carrying. She could make you stronger. Better. She wouldn’t accept lies … and gave you the courage to figure out who you were, sexually. As a person. I miss her every day.”

That raw emotion was in his voice and face again, a mix of love, pain, fondness and longing. Jack understood the yearning, though his was different. His was for something he’d never had, and he envied Sal that he’d known those emotions. And now Jack would never have a chance to feel the same. He reached out and touched Sal’s arm. “She sounds very special.”

“She was my best friend. My advisor. My soul. My heart. I’d have died for her in an instant. I didn’t think love like that was even possible. Until her I was nothing but a boy dabbling in crushes. I had no idea how close you can become to a person. That thing they tell you in church? About becoming one flesh? Having and holding each other? She taught me that that’s the truth and the goal.” Sal’s eyes filled with tears, but he blinked them away, and he cleared his throat. “And since then … I’ve made do. I’ve had my hook-ups. I try to be honest with my lovers, all of them, and act in a way that she would have approved of. Those lessons can’t be unlearned. I’m not like her at all—I’m not leaving my lovers better than they were before, but I do my best.”

Jack reeled at the sheer amount of vulnerability Sal displayed, and his heart hurt, imagining what it might have been like, having something like that and then losing it. So young, so unnecessarily. He’d seen and felt the anger, but this was what fueled it. That intense pain, from an inseparably deep, apparently selfless love. “I’m truly sorry for your loss.”

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