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3. The Grace I've Known Ch. 01-03

By: inspirixis1



CHAPTER ONE

FALL, FRESHMAN YEAR

Nicholas woke suddenly. His phone was ringing. What the fuck? It was... 11:02 pm, who was calling him this late? 

He fumbled in the darkness, groping towards the LCD screen glowing neon through the darkness. 'Grace', said the caller ID. What was Grace doing calling him so late on a Tuesday? He hadn't heard from her in weeks and now she wanted to talk in the middle of the night?

"Hello?" He answered making sure that the annoyance was audible in his voice. 

There was no response. He was going to be so mad if she was drunk dialing. 

He sighed. "Grace? Hello?"

"Kolya?"

He sat bolt upright in bed, suddenly alert. Grace never called him Kolya anymore, she hadn't since they were about ten. Her voice was barely above a whisper and it wavered, she sounded scared. 

"Grace? What's the matter?"

"Kolya?"

"Yes, it's me. Where are you? What's wrong?" 

"Kolya I... I..." 

She was crying, he could hear the sharpness of her breath. 

"Where are you?" 

"Under... under an overpass." 

Fuck. Nicholas' heart was racing. He could only think of bad reasons why she would be crying under an overpass in the middle of the night.

"Okay, just calm down. Which overpass?" He was out of bed now, stumbling around his dorm room, trying to hit the light switch. 

"I don't know... by the river." She was still talking softly, just barely above a whisper. 

"Near school?"

"I think so." 

He'd found the light and was pulling clothes on as quickly as he could. 

"Okay, I'm coming to get you. All you have to do is wait for me. I'm going to call a cab and then call you straight back okay?" 

He didn't want to hang up on her but there was no other option. 

Luckily he got a cabbie that knew the area well. He'd only been in Boston for a few weeks and he'd spent most of his time on the Cambridge side of the river, he had no idea where overpasses by the river near Boston University were. 

"Ask if she can see the Citgo sign," the cabbie said. When Nicholas replied "No," he said, "Ask if there is traffic on both sides or just one." There was traffic on both sides and the cabbie took him straight to her. Well, as close as he could stop, it was a huge intersection. 

Nicholas' heart was in his throat as he jogged across the road and under the overpass. 

"Grace?" He called out. He was still on the phone to her and he heard his own echo through the ear piece. 

"Nicholas?" 

He followed her voice. It was dark under there, very dark. 

"Grace where are you? I can't see you."

"Nicholas?" She was crying again, hiccupping uncontrollably. He stumbled towards the sound, his eyes adjusting slowly to the darkness. 

It stank under there, like piss and trash and something else, something acrid. He could see her now, at least her silhouette. She was huddled with her arms around her legs, shaking. 

"Grace, it's Nicholas. I'm here now, it's okay," he tried to reassure her even as his own heart hammered rapidly in his chest. 

He touched her and she flinched. She wasn't looking at him, she had her head turned away, her shoulders lurching from her uneven breathing. 

"Grace, look at me." He brought his hand to her jaw and turned her face towards him. He gasped. Even in the darkness of the overpass he could see the swollen flesh, the dried blood, but that wasn't the worst. Her face was encrusted with something pale. It was the smell that was immediately identifiable. She smelled like semen. 

Nicholas felt nauseous. Bile pushed upwards from his stomach, and heat passed over his forehead. His palms prickled. He stood up and made it just three steps away from her before he hurled. Pure stomach acid burned his esophagus and ignited a flame behind his nose. It made his eyes water. He dry heaved a few more times but there was nothing else to bring up. 

Fuck. His head was spinning. What should he do? What was the next thing to do? He got his phone back out and dialed 911. He asked for the police and an ambulance and then he went back to Grace. 

He sat down beside her in the cold damp dirt and put his arms around her. She stank but he pulled her into his embrace. That was when he realized she wasn't wearing any pants. She was naked from the waist down. 

"Hush milaya," he murmured his dad's pet name for her to try and calm her down, and if he were honest with himself, to calm himself down too. "It's okay Gracie, I'm here now. I'll take care of you." 

"Please don't tell anyone Kolya," her voice was weak and crackly.

"Shh, don't think about that now."

"Please?"

"Okay milaya, I wont tell." Honestly he would have told her anything she wanted to hear at that moment. She could of asked him to assassinate the president and he would have murmured his agreement. 

"I'm serious Kolya, promise me you wont tell." 

He looked down at her familiar face, so small and broken and beaten to shit. "I promise Grace. I wont tell anyone."

The police were there before long, and then the ambulance. He rode with her to the hospital. He held her hand gently, it was scratched and cut up and had dirt ground into the wounds. He tried to look at her face. He knew he needed to look her in the eye but he couldn't help himself from looking away. She was so badly damaged. 

"Family only," they told him at the hospital.

"She's my cousin," he replied, and they seemed to accept that. Why shouldn't they? It was close enough to the truth. 

She didn't want him in the exam room so he waited in the hallway outside. Women in colorful scrubs came and went from the room. Someone asked him about insurance. 

"She goes to BU, she's on whatever plan they have there."

It took hours. He stood and stood and stood and then he sat, leaning against the wall. The woman who had asked about insurance wanted to talk to him. She was tall and slim. When she sat down beside him in the hallway her knees were taller than his.

"There is a problem," she said in a tone gentle yet efficient. 

"What?" What more problems could there possibly be? 

"We had to put her under, she was too distressed. It looks like there was more than one man."

Nicholas dropped his head into his hands. How could this have happened?

"We need some information. Do you know if she takes an oral contraceptive?"

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"What about other medications or recreational drugs? Does she take anything, or is she allergic to anything?"

"She's allergic to walnuts and pecans. I don't think she takes any drugs."

"Okay." She wrote some notes down on a chart. "She needs medication immediately, an antiretroviral cocktail so that if any of them were infected with HIV or Hep. B it wont transmit to her. It's called Post Exposure Prophylaxis, it is very effective if administered immediately."

"So give it to her." Nicholas didn't understand why there was even a question about it. 

"I can't. The insurance company say they need to review the request, they can't give an answer for three days."

"Three days? But you said she needs it now."

The nurse nodded, intensity burning in her eyes. "Exactly. She needs it now. The sooner the better."

"How much is it?" 

"It's thirty-two hundred dollars." 

"Thirty-two hundred? Like three thousand two hundred?" He was shocked. 

"I'm afraid so. I can't tell you how important it is that she gets it right away. Is there any way you can get the money?"

Fuck. There was no way he could come up with money like that on his own. He was going to have to call his dad. "Yeah, I can get it."

"Okay, I'll start the paperwork." She got up and left. 

Nicholas pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and looked at the display. It was almost 4 am, it would be close to 2 am in Denver. What was he going to say? Grace had made him promise not to tell anyone. 

He got online on his phone and transferred all of the money he had in his savings account into his checking account. He had twenty-one hundred dollars, he only needed another eleven hundred. He'd just have to ask his dad to trust him. He scrolled down to his number and hit send.

It rang a few times and then he heard his voice. "Nicholas?"

"Hey dad, are you awake?"

"What's wrong? Why are you calling in the middle of the night?"

"I need a favor." A big favor, he thought. 

"What is it? Is it an emergency? Are you okay?" There was urgency in his voice.

"I'm fine. It is an emergency though, I need money."

"What? Money? What have you gotten yourself into?" Now he sounded suspicious. 

"I can't tell you. I promised I wouldn't tell anyone. I need eleven hundred dollars and I need it now."

"What the fuck Nicholas? Is this some sort of sick joke? Are you high?"

He could hear his mom in the background, asking what the problem was. 

"No. I need you to trust me dad. Please... you could save somebody's life." 

There was no response. 

"Please dad, you know me," he begged, "I haven't done anything wrong. It is for someone else. You could save their life." 

There was still no response. He decided to play the only card he had. 

"Please don't make me call granddad Hari, because I will. I will call him if you say no." It was a sly move and he didn't like doing it. His dad didn't get along with his granddad Hari and grandma Priya.

He heard a long sigh on the other end of the phone and then the tap of a keyboard. 

"Eleven hundred?"

"Yeah." 

"Okay, it's done." 

"Thanks dad. One day I might be able to tell you what it is for and you will thank me. Trust me on that."

"I'm doing a lot of trusting tonight Nicholas."

"I know." He saw the insurance lady walking towards him with a clipboard stacked with papers. "I've got to go now. Thank you."

He hung up. He hung up on his dad after he had just sent him a shit ton of money in the middle of the night without knowing what it was for. Nicholas felt shitty on levels he didn't even know existed. 

"Do you have the funds?" She asked. 

Nicholas navigated back to his checking account page on his phone and hit refresh. The money was there, just like his dad had said. 

They kept Grace for the rest of the night. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't stay but he didn't want to leave. In the end he slept fitfully in the corner chair in the waiting room. 

When he decided it was late enough to get up and enquire after her he had a major headache and every muscle in his body was tense and sore. 

She had to sit through a counseling session before they would discharge her, so she would know what medicine to take and when. He sat beside her and listened and in the end asked for a pen and paper. She was on so many different medicines that all required strict adherence, and he didn't want to risk forgetting something or mixing them up. Some of them were so toxic that they could kill her if they were taken improperly.

He took her home to his dorm room. She had a room mate who she didn't want to face and he wanted to make sure that she took the right medicine at the right time, so there wasn't an argument. 

She stayed there for a whole month. He brought her food and force-fed her the pills. He went to the local Ace Hardware and bought a bucket for her to vomit into which he cleaned out as often as he could without being too obvious. Luckily he lived in a co-ed dorm so apart from the fact that she was beaten to shit, Grace didn't stand out too much. Still, he wasn't supposed to have other people staying in his room and he didn't want people to start asking too many questions. 

He spoke to her professors. He told them that she had a bad flu and he got notes and lecture slides from them and did her homework for her. He called her coach on the crew team and told him about how badly she had the flu. 

Grace's life consisted of taking pills, lying on his bed, showering, vomiting and going to medical appointments. She showered in the middle of the night and he stood outside the door guarding her. She took very long showers. 

After the second time back at the hospital a nurse recommended psychological counseling and support groups. He signed her up and took her to each session. Just like the shower, he waited outside the door and tried to imagine a less fucked-up world, one where Grace was still the fiery little sparkplug that he'd grown up beside. 

He had no idea if the sessions were helping or not. She still looked like a zombie when she came out the door. Her cuts and bruises were healing, her black eye turned purple then green then yellow and finally faded, but she was still broken inside. 

When her mom or dad called he spoke to them. He told them the same old story. 

"She has the flu really bad, I've taken her to the hospital and they say it is just a bad season and it will probably take a few weeks to get over." 

He felt bad lying to Uncle Sam and Aunt Emma but what could he do? She had made him promise. When they asked to speak with her she would croak out a few words and then hang up. 

If they thought it was strange that he was always there when they called they didn't say anything. He and Grace hadn't always been friends, they were never enemies, they just weren't friends. They were different. Grace was the sort of person that people gravitated towards, she was witty and vivacious and fun. Nicholas was not. He was a nerd and she was cool, they just didn't mix in the same circles. 

He tried to convince her to tell her parents what had happened, or at least to let him tell his parents, but it was no use. She just couldn't deal with it. Each time she would break down in tears. 

"But you promised me Nicholas, you said you wouldn't tell." 

Tears would roll down her cheeks and drop onto her shirt. He didn't have the heart to make her do it. 

Once she was finally done with the medications she packed the clothes that he had bought for her and went back to her own dorm room across the river at BU. She called her coach and told him that she would be back at practice the next morning. She went to classes for the first time in four weeks. He thought she was doing okay until that night. 

She called him at 9 pm. She was in the library. She was afraid, she didn't want to go home alone. He got on the train, switched onto the green line and picked her up from the library. 

"Thanks Kolya," she said. She was crying again. 

"Don't thank me Gracie, let's just go home." 

He took her to her dorm room but she didn't want to stay there. She grabbed a bag and threw clothes in it and followed him out the door and back over the river to his place. 

She wanted to shower when they got there. As usual he waited outside the bathroom door. Every now and then someone would walk by and give him a funny look, like he was some sort of freak hanging out outside the women's shower, but he didn't give a shit, it made Grace feel better to have him wait there and that's all that mattered. 

But she didn't look better when she emerged that night. She looked raw. 

"Gracie what did you do?" He asked. "Your skin is all red." 

She was crying again. "I can't get it off me Kolya. It's all over me, it wont come off." She looked around desperately. "We need to wash the sheets again."

"Okay. We can do that." Nicholas had bought several spare sets of sheets, since this seemed to have become a preoccupation of hers. She wanted fresh sheets daily, she seemed to feel like she was contaminating them by laying on them. 

The ritual of changing the sheets wasn't calming her down tonight. When they were done he put the old sheets in the laundry hamper and sat beside her on the bed.

"Milaya, what do you think is on you?"

"It's their... stuff. I can feel it on me. I'm all dirty."

"No. Gracie, look at me,' he said gently. 

She looked up at him, her big honey brown eyes rimmed with red and full of shame. 

"Gracie, why do you think I got you all of those drugs to take?"

"So I wouldn't get AIDS," she said meekly. 

"Yes, that's right but do you know why they made you so sick?"

"No."

"Because they were cleaning you out Grace." It was a blatant lie, but Nicholas was at a loss to know what else to tell her. 

"Really?" There was almost a note of hopefulness in her voice.

"Yeah, all those times that you threw up, all those times you had to run to the bathroom, the drugs were cleaning all of the nastiness out of you."

"Really?" She looked up at him from under her long dark eyelashes. 

He nodded his head. "It's all gone Grace. The only thing left now is you. Just Gracie."

She looked unsure, like she wanted to believe him but she wasn't convinced. "But my skin... it feels like it's on my skin."

"Nope, it's all new skin. Did you know that it takes 28 days for your skin to completely replace itself?"

"No."

"Uh-huh. This is all new skin, nothing gross has ever touched it." He said as he rubbed his hands up and down her arms. 

"But what about..." Her brow furrowed, she struggled, unable to say it.

"Even down there Grace, it's all new skin." 

She pouted her bottom lip out, like she was thinking about it. "The drugs... cleaned me out?" She said hopefully. 

"Yes. I am 100% sure of it. That's why I made you take all of them milaya, just to be absolutely positive that it was all gone."

She looked at him for long seconds. "You're sure Nicholas?" 

He took both of her hands in his. "Grace I believe with all of my heart that you are as pure as the day you were born." And that wasn't a lie. 

They slept head to toe, the same way they had when they were little kids. His dorm room had come with a twin-sized bed, it was small but they both fit on it pretty easily. Grace was tiny and Nicholas was pretty average, maybe a little bit smaller than average. 

The next morning he got up at 4:30 and jogged with her down to the boathouse, it wasn't far, maybe a mile and a half. She was nervous on the run there. She had been jogging when she was jumped. She kept on looking around. Checking behind her. That afternoon, after she was done with her classes, she caught the train over to Cambridge and met him at Harvard Square. They ate, went to the library, and then went back to his room. 

And that's the way it went. Grace was living with him. She was too frightened to live on her own, or with a roommate she didn't know. She still woke up crying and babbling in the night. Almost every night he would wake to her cries of distress. He would take her in his arms and try to calm her down.

"Hush milaya, it's just Nicholas. I'm here, you're safe."

Sometimes she would calm down but sometimes she was too caught up in her dream and she would lash out at him, not realizing whom he was. He had more than one split lip that semester. 

A few weeks after she came off the drugs she had a big rowing race. Her dad came out for it. He was pretty proud that she had decided to play a sport at college, Sam had been a swimmer and he thought it was a good experience to be on a team, 'character building,' he called it. Nicholas was glad that his dad didn't give him any of that team-player character-building crap. 

The Head of the Charles was a huge event, there were thousands of people milling around despite the cold grey weather. He took her dad to watch from the Weeks Footbridge, where they would get a good view and be able to see her navigate through one of the tricky turns on the course. Nicholas pushed his way to the front so that he could see. Sam didn't need to, he was so tall that he could see no matter where he stood. 

The flow of boats was pretty much continuous, oars and unitards of every color combination possible wrenched and pulled their way under the bridge. Nicholas was no expert on rowing, in fact he knew almost nothing about it, but he thought Grace's crew looked good. He spotted them from a fair distance and pointed them out to Sam.

When they rowed under the bridge he could hear her voice through the microphone system in the boat. 


3. The Grace I've Known Ch. 01-03



"Port side I need you to haul for three on my call... ready... now... Two... And Three. Nice. Two seat keep those hands up at the catch..."

She sounded calm and authoritative. She steered them through the turn without even a hint of a problem, unlike some of the other boats. 

They walked back to the boathouse to meet her. Nicholas dropped her off here every morning but he had never been inside. It was cavernous. Huge racks stacked with long sleek boats with wide corridors between them made up the ground floor. Above were an enormous gymnasium with locker rooms, offices and a huge deck that overlooked the river and the dock below. He and Sam waited on the deck and watched the boats pass by.

Sam looked at home here. He was among his peers; men of unusual size and impossibly perfect physique. Nicholas felt like the weedy nerd that he was. 

Grace pulled her boat into the dock and ordered the men around. Telling them what to do was her job and she was good at it. She had eight enormous men waiting for her to make her will known. She climbed out of the cockpit of the boat with her microphone box in hand. Her long dark brown curly hair battled against the red and white woolen shapka that she had pulled over her head. She hugged her arms around her as she stood on the dock and issued orders, she looked cold. Maybe he would get her a proper ushanka for Christmas. 

Once she got inside and warmed up she seemed happy. She looked relaxed. She and her crew had a team huddle with the coach when they got off the water, she did most of the talking. Nicholas couldn't hear what she was saying but she was gesticulating and nodding and smiling. She pointed to different members of the crew and spoke to them individually. They smiled at her. 

When they broke up she brought her coach over to meet Sam.

"This is my dad Sam," she said, "and this is my cousin Nicholas."

Nicholas could see the confusion in her coach's eyes. Gracie was a tiny little Hispanic girl, Sam was an enormous blonde haired blue-eyed white dude and Nicholas was a pretty average Indian-looking guy. How they could all be related was a not immediately obvious. Nicholas thought of his dad's favorite saying, 'Family is not delineated by blood'.

Sam and Emma were actually Grace's adoptive parents, and Sam's best friend Tyler was Nicholas' dad, technically his step-dad. They used the terms uncle, aunty and cousin loosely between the two families. 

Sam pumped the coach's hand and then the coach got over his initial shock and started raving about Grace. Apparently her talent was unparalleled. 

"She has been coaching since a young age," Sam explained, "haven't you Grace?"

"Well kind of, more like tagging along with mom."

Grace had always loved going down to the pool with her mom. She wasn't that good at swimming herself but she would walk up and down the pool watching their dads swim, and then later, when they both had retired, she would watch her brothers and then his brother swim. Between both of their families Grace was the only girl. She was used to watching men workout and pointing out what they were doing wrong, it was no wonder she was a good coxswain. 

Sam took them out for dinner. They talked mostly about rowing, Grace was really into it, Nicholas could tell. It was the happiest he had seen her since before that night. She smiled and talked with her hands, she explained the terminology and gave an impression of how to make a turn without spoiling the balance of the boat. God it was good to see her talk like that again. 

Nicholas could see the panic in her eyes when they parted at the train stop. Her dad had been there the weekend that they had moved into their separate rooms in separate buildings, in different cities, so he knew that Nicholas needed to go one way and Grace needed to go the other. Sam himself was staying at a hotel close to Grace's dorm room. 

He hugged them both goodbye and got on the red line train, went one stop, got off and backtracked. He got off the green line train a few stops before her dorm building and walked slowly, not wanting to run into Sam. 

This had to stop. 

He had to convince her to let him tell his dad. If nothing else they needed to move into an apartment, something big enough so that he could have his own bed. Grace fought back against him. 

"It is my secret Nicholas, it's not yours to tell." Her voice was angry, but it was fear that he saw in her amber eyes. 

"But Gracie how can we keep on doing this? Pretty soon someone is going to notice that you are living here illegally and chuck you out, then what? Where would we go then? I can't stay in your room, you have a room mate."

She didn't have an answer to that, she just sat on the bed and started crying. 

He sat beside her and put his arm around her narrow shoulders. "Milaya," he said gently, "It's just Tyler, you can trust him. I will make him promise not to tell. I'll tell him it was just one man, I'll tell him that he just hit you and now you are afraid."

She buried her head into his chest and he rubbed her arm. 

"I'll ask him to pay for an apartment for us. Then you can have your own key and your own bed and we wont have to worry about you getting chucked out of here."

Finally she conceded. He could tell his dad if he promised to keep it a secret, but he couldn't tell him any of the specifics. 

He waited until thanksgiving break to do it. This was a conversation better done in person. It wasn't hard to get his dad alone, he seemed to want to have a man-to-man, he was probably still upset about the eleven hundred dollars in the night incident. 

They went to the park down the road to talk. It was too busy at the house and he needed to take him somewhere that he would be able to cry and not be noticed. They sat on the bench that overlooked the pond, the same pond that they used to throw stale bread to the ducks at when he and Grace were little kids. It was frozen over now, the ducks all flown south for the winter. 

"You're killing me Nicholas, what's going on with you?" His dad's hazel eyes searched his for some hint of what weird things were going on his life. 

"I can't tell you until you promise not to tell anyone else."

He shook his head. "You know I can't do that. I can't keep secrets from your mother."

"I can't tell you then."

His dad shifted uncomfortably, his internal conflict obvious. "Okay," he finally agreed.

"Nobody dad. That means Sam and Emma."

He nodded. "Okay, I wont tell Sam and Emma."

"This is really important, I need you to promise."

"Yes, I promise," he said impatiently. "I wont tell anybody else, not even your mom or Sam and Emma." 

Nicholas nodded. "It's Grace."

He looked surprised. "Grace? What about Grace?"

Nicholas blew out a long breath, fogging the cold air. "She was raped."

"What?" His eyes went wide with shock. "When? How?"

"Remember when I called you asking for money? That was when."

He watched his dad's brain tick over. It had been three months. 

"She needed a special drug cocktail immediately to make sure she didn't get HIV from it. It was expensive and I didn't have enough money. I would have called Sam but she made me promise not to tell anyone. I didn't know who else to go to." 

His dad looked over at him for a moment and then pulled him into a rough embrace. "Thank you," he said. He held him like that for what seemed like a long time. 

When he released him he could see the tears in his dad's eyes. He asked how it happened. 

"She was jogging and she got jumped. That's all she'll let me tell you." 

"Was it bad?"

"Yeah..." 

He was cut off. "What sort of a question is that? What am I thinking?" His dad buried his head in his hands. 

"Dad, she's a mess. She's so afraid. She wont sleep anywhere but in my bed."

He looked up sharply. "In your bed? Where do you sleep?"

"At the other end of the bed."

"You don't...? Don't you dare touch her Nicholas." His voice rose in anger. 

Nicholas shook his head, trying not to take offense at his father's outburst. "If I had any intention of touching her do you think we'd be having this conversation?"

The anger in his face melted away to sorrow and despair. 

"We need to figure something else out," Nicholas said. "It's against the rules for her to be in my room in the first place, but aside from that I need my own space, at least my own bed."

"Yes." His dad agreed quickly. 

"I want to get an apartment off campus, maybe closer to BU so she can come and go as she likes. Hopefully one with two rooms." 

"Yes. Do it. I'll pay for it." 

Nicholas nodded. 

"Anything she needs Nicholas, you make sure she gets it."

Nicholas felt the weight of his expectations settle on his shoulders. Grace was his responsibility now. 



 CHAPTER TWO



 Nicholas found and signed a lease on a cramped but livable two-bedroom apartment in Cambridgeport, a nice safe neighborhood that was less than half a mile to BU for Grace and just over a mile from Harvard for him. It was also very close to the boathouse, which was a big plus. He didn't mind taking her to practice in the mornings, but once the snow started coming down being a few hundred yards away instead of a mile and a half turned out to be very handy. 

Obviously it didn't solve her problems, but it was more sustainable this way. He still woke up with Grace's feet in his face every morning. Unless she was having a bad day they went to sleep separately, but sometimes she would sneak into his bed during the night, and other times he would go to her when he heard her sobbing, either way she was there when he woke. 

They didn't have their own rooms so much as they had two rooms that they moved between, but at least this way he didn't have to get changed in the bathroom. At least this way he had some time and space to himself to take care of his own needs. 

It wasn't because of Grace. She wasn't what was making him hard, it was just that he was eighteen and he was a guy. It was natural, it's just the way it was. He knew this but he was absolutely certain that it would scare the shit out of her if she found out that he had a fully functioning cock that needed to be taken care of every now and then. 

He was pretty sure that Grace thought he was gay. It was a mistake that a lot of people made. He guessed that he could understand why, he wasn't really a manly kind of guy. He was slightly built, his mom had been a ballerina and he had inherited her frame and fine-boned features. Even though he was average height, and he worked out daily, he still had a delicate look about him. He had inherited his birth father's dark complexion and his adoptive father's submissive temperament. 

Tyler, his adoptive father and his mom's second husband, could get away with having a submissive attitude because he was a fucking giant and that was manly enough for most people, but Nicholas didn't have that physical advantage. Most people think that a person's temperament is inherent, but Nicholas knew better. When you grow up idolizing a gentle giant you turn into gentle, just not necessarily giant. 

Regardless, Grace thinking he was gay suited their current situation very well, so he wasn't about to do anything to let her know otherwise.

His dad called daily to ask about her. Nicholas didn't know what he wanted to hear. He told him what had happened that day. He reassured him that she was safe. He told him when they went to get her tests done and when she got the results. She was negative. She was always negative and he hoped that she would stay that way. The doctor was happy when her three-month test came back negative but she wouldn't know for sure until after the six-month test. It weighed on him. He could only imagine how it must make Grace feel. 

He still took her to counseling sessions and to her support group every week. He had no idea if it helped her or not. She never talked about it. She always looked blank when she came out. The only time she showed any enthusiasm for anything was when she was talking about rowing. Thank god she had that. 

They went home to Denver for Christmas. It was a relief for Nicholas. For nine days Grace became someone else's responsibility. He could relax and be an eighteen year old again. He hung out with his little brother, who was no longer little. Lucas was only thirteen and already he was pushing six feet tall. That was nothing compared to Grace's brother though. Matthew was almost as tall as Sam and already as broad. Micah and Oliver weren't gigantic yet but they weren't far behind. As usual Nicholas felt like a guppy in a bowl full of overgrown koi. 

On Christmas day his family went over to Grace's family's house for dinner. They had done it this way for years. Sam's parent's, Grandma Judy and Granddad John, were there, as usual. Even though they weren't genetically related to them, Nicholas and Lucas had always called them grandma and granddad, the same way that Grace and her brothers called his dad's parents babushka and dedushka.

Zach wasn't having Christmas with them that year. Nicholas loved Grace's older brother, he was one of his favorite people, a misfit, like him. It was weird and lonely having Christmas without him. He was at his fiancée's family's place this year, he was getting married in the spring. Nicholas was going to be one of his groomsmen, he felt honored. He hadn't asked any of his brothers, he had asked Nicholas. 

After dinner he went to sit in the living room and talked to Matthew. Grace followed him in. He didn't know if anybody else noticed the way she followed him around. She was sitting on the coffee table talking to Micah. She seemed happy enough. She looked tired, but she was smiling. 

She reached out and swatted Micah on the arm, laughing at something he had said. He made a funny face and started tickling her. She giggled and swatted at him, which of course only served to make him try harder. She stood up and backed away from him, still laughing, and then she tripped on the foot of the coffee table. 

She didn't fall hard, she was still laughing, which is why Micah descended on her, intent to continue their game. He was thirteen years old, the same as Lucas, and like Lucas he was already easily bigger than Grace. She wasn't laughing anymore. She twisted and tried to crawl away from him but he was on all fours with her underneath him, he grabbed her arm and tickled her on her ribs. 

"Kolya!" There was raw panic in her voice. He could see the fear in her eyes as she desperately looked around for him. She was spooked. 

He didn't think, he just acted, something that he would later regret, but he couldn't stand that look on her face, he didn't want to see that distress for a microsecond longer. He probably should have said something like, "Hey Micah, I don't think she likes that," but he didn't, he took a step towards him and pulled a Daki Wakare. 

He launched himself over the top of Micah and grabbing him by the shoulder and around the chest he rolled him off her, across his own chest and threw him to the ground. He was on his feet in his fighting stance before he even realized what he had done.

The whole room was silent. Micah was lying on his back gasping for air while Grace huddled behind Nicholas' legs, between the coffee table and the sofa. He shook his head, redistributed his weight and brought his feet together, as force of habit demanded. 

He looked around. It was just his mom, Grandma Judy and Matthew. Thank god her parents weren't there. He could feel his cheeks burning with embarrassment, how inappropriate was that? 

He knelt down to Micah, his narrow brown face wore an expression of shock. 

"You okay?" Nicholas asked.

"Yeah." His hands padded over his body to check that everything was in the right place. 

Poor kid, Nicholas felt ashamed of himself. "Sorry Micah, I didn't mean to do that... I don't know why I did it." 

Emma walked into the room. "Why did it get so quiet in here all of a sudden?" 

"Nicholas pulled a Taekwondo move on Micah," Matthew said. 

Emma snapped her head around to look at him sharply, the quick movement causing her long black braids to fan out from her head. "Nicholas, what is the meaning of this?" 

"It was judo, and it was an accident. I wasn't trying to hurt him." 

Her face softened, she must have recognized the regret in his voice. "You just did some accidental judo?"

He smiled, she was giving him an out. "Yeah, don't you ever do accidental judo Aunt Emma?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, sure, in my sleep," she said sarcastically. "No more. Take him to the gym if you want to teach him to wrestle."

"Okay, sorry." 

"Bro, that was awesome," Matthew said. "Can you teach me how to do that?"

"Yeah, me too," Micah chimed in. 

Okay, this felt more normal. "Yeah sure, whenever you like."

He thought he had gotten away with it, but it wasn't that easy. The next day his dad told him that they all needed to sit down and have a chat. 

"What do you mean 'all of us'?" Nicholas asked. 

"You, me, mom, Sam, Emma and Grace." 

They were alone in the kitchen and Nicholas was suddenly angry. His dad wanted to spill the beans, or force Grace to. He leaned into him and whispered in a menacing way, "Don't you dare, dad. If you say one word about what happened to Grace I will never set foot in this house again." 

Tyler recoiled from him, shocked and obviously hurt. "I wasn't going to. Sam called me and said he wanted us all to talk. Maybe she told him herself." 

Fuck. Nicholas breathed out heavily, why did he doubt his dad like that? "Sorry dad, I thought... Never mind. I'm sorry." 

They all sat around Sam and Emma's kitchen table. He sat between his dad and Grace. It was odd the way the seating had fallen. Those who knew were on one side, those who didn't on the other. There was tension in the air, a feeling of discomfort. 

Sam started. "Grandma Judy told us about what happened yesterday with the judo. Nicholas, she said that you acted very... possessively of Grace."

What the fuck was he supposed to say to that? He wasn't possessive, he was protective, she called for him and he acted. 

When he didn't respond Sam continued. "I know this is awkward, but I'm just going to come out and ask it..." He closed his eyes and sighed. "Are you two... a couple?" 

Nicholas looked at Grace, saw the shock in her amber eyes.

"I noticed it too," his mom added. "You called for him Grace. You called him Kolya, you haven't done that in years." 

"And Nicholas is always there when we call you Grace, always." That came from Emma.

Nicholas didn't know what to say and Grace was similarly mute. 

Sam took their silence as an affirmation. "Now, I know how awkward this is, but we should talk about responsible sex and birth control."

The shock in Grace's eyes was replaced by panic. She was going to lose it. He could see her composure starting to crumble. 

Sam pushed on, "When you are young, and... experimenting..."

Grace's lip started to quiver. She was about to start crying. 

"I'm gay," Nicholas blurted out. 

Fuck. It was a strategic move that would have the desired effect but he knew immediately that the victory would be pyrrhic. 

It was an awful thing to lie about. He was breaking his mother's heart, he could see it in her face, her mouth gaped open and her forehead wrinkled, shock flashed over her pale blue eyes. He hadn't known that it was possible, but his dad's face grew even paler than its usual paper white. Even his freckles seemed to pale. Emma looked down into her lap and Sam just stared at him for a few seconds before nodding and looking away. He didn't want to look at Grace. He didn't want to lie to her. It was one thing to let her believe that he was gay, but another thing to lie to her about it directly. 

"Okay," Sam said. "I'm sorry if you feel that I forced that out of you, it wasn't my intention." 




3. The Grace I've Known Ch. 01-03



Sam was a good guy. Nicholas wasn't. 

"I guess there is no need for us to be having this meeting then." Sam stood up.

Nicholas looked around. The rest of them still looked shocked, Sam was the only one who had moved on. He watched as he nudged Emma, she got up too and they left the room. He looked over to where Grace had been sitting, but she had slunk away, unnoticed. It was just he and his parents. 

He wanted to take it back, but there was no way. Once something like that is said by a guy like him there is no turning back. The only way anyone was going to believe that he was straight now is if he found a wife and produced viable offspring. Even then they'd probably still wonder. 

They were just sitting there looking at him, struck dumb by his 'revelation'. Nicholas felt like shit. 

"I'm going to the gym," he said. 

They didn't try and stop him. He walked out the front door and into the frigid winter air. The cement path was crusty with slippery ice. He was about half way down the street when he heard his dad call out. 

"Nicholas, wait." He was walking quickly towards him on the icy path and his long solid body stuttered as he slid a little on a patch of ice. 

"Careful dad," he said. His dad was a big klutz, he didn't know how to fall.

"Nicholas." He grabbed him by the arm. "It's okay. You are still my son. I still love you."

Nicholas looked up at him. Poor Tyler looked like he could use a stiff drink. 

"Dad, it was a lie. I'm not gay," he told him.

"What?" He looked confused.

"I said it because Grace was about to break down. Sam wanted to talk about sex, do you know how hard that would be for her?"

Now the confusion in his eyes was turning into anger. "You lied about something like that? Do you know what you just put your mother through?" 

"I'm sorry dad, I didn't have a choice." 

"You always have a choice Nicholas, or didn't I get around to teaching you that?" His voice was severe. 

Nicholas let his head bow and he looked at the ground. 

He heard his dad sigh. "Why didn't you just say the truth? Just tell him that you're not in a relationship with her?"

"Does that answer why we're always together? Why she suddenly calls me Kolya again after all these years?" He looked up at his dad. "How do I explain why I felt the need to wrestle Micah off her? There is only one answer to those questions dad, and she's not ready to tell it yet. I had to do something radical." 

His dad sighed again, an impatient look on his face. "Hasn't this gone far enough? Now you're not just keeping a secret you are lying outright. You are causing pain to the people who love you... You're not a lier Nicholas, we raised you to be better than that." 

His dad's impatience with the situation pissed him off. 

"You're wrong Tyler." He used his real name for maximum effect. "I would gladly lie, cheat and steal if it would make Grace's burden just a little lighter."

He turned on his heel and started to walk away. 

"Nicholas, don't walk away from me." 

He stopped and turned back, he was angry now. "You know what dad? I'm sorry if you're upset at me for lying. I'm sorry if you are having a hard time keeping a secret. I'm sorry if mom is feeling shitty because she thinks I prefer guys. But honestly, I have to tell you that in the grand scheme of things your petty little problems are nothing. 

"You're not dealing with the memory of being held down and fucked against your will in every way possible by god only knows how many gutless pricks, you're not dealing with the paralyzing fear of going outside on your own lest that happen again, you're not sitting there wondering if you have HIV. So you know what? I'm going to lie. I'm going to lie my fucking ass off, because Grace needs it. You told me to make sure she has what she needs and I'm doing that, so get off my fucking case." 

He was screaming by the time he got to the end of his tirade. His angry voice reverberated around the cold empty neighborhood.

Nicholas turned around and walked away. He was crying. He didn't usually swear at his father. 



Grace knew that she should go and find Nicholas. She felt awful for the way things had turned out this Christmas break. It was her fault that he had been forced to admit that he was gay. If she hadn't flipped out when Micah was tickling her this wouldn't have happened. She had called for him and he had protected her, not from her brother, from her fears. He had protected her and then he had been forced to come out of the closet. 

Honestly, she was surprised. In high school her friends always wrote him off as gay, always pointed out how docile he was, how quiet and respectful, how he'd never had a girlfriend, and how well he dressed. She had never bought it though. 

"That's just Nicholas," she would tell them. "He's just different. Give it a rest."

They learned that Nicholas was not a subject to be discussed in her presence. Even though they weren't really friends she still felt a loyalty to him, she would still defend him. 

She asked her mom to take her to the taekwondo gym that he practiced at, there was a pretty good chance that's where he'd be. In the car her mom prodded her gently about her life, she wanted to know why she was being so quiet these days. 

"I don't know mom, college is harder than I thought, and I had the flu early in the semester, when everyone was just making friends with each other, so it's been hard to get to know people." It was a carefully thought out and practiced response that her mom seemed to buy. 

"So you've been hanging out with Nicholas because you had difficulties making your own friends?" 

"Yeah, I guess you could say that... I don't know. He just... he feels like home, you know?" 

Her mom took her eyes off the road and glanced at her for an uncomfortably long time. "Feels like home or reminds you of home?"

"I don't know... I guess he reminds me of you guys."

She seemed satisfied with that answer and moved on. "What about your room mate? Karen?"

Her parents thought she was still living in the dorms. "She's nice but she's never there, she's always out partying."

"Does she invite you?"

"Yeah, she did at first, but I have practice at 5 every morning. I can't stay out partying all night." 

Her mom nodded. "Have you thought about switching to the women's crew team? Maybe you could make friends that way?"

She had thought about switching, but not so she could make friends on the women's team. 

Practice with the men scared her. It was fine when they were out on the water, when they were at the boathouse it was okay too. The men and women practiced out of the same boathouse at the same time in the mornings so she never felt that horrible asphyxiation of being surrounded by men there, but now that the Charles had frozen over for the winter they didn't practice at the boathouse anymore. 

They were in the gym every day and the men and women practiced at different times so it really was just her in a room full of men. Big testosterone powered men. Sometimes she felt uncomfortable, but more often she just felt plain frightened. She tried to think rationally but that didn't help, sometimes she had thoughts in her head that she could identify, but more often it was just a feeling, a horrible oppressive fear deep in her gut. Imagining that Nicholas was there with her helped a little, but nothing but his actual physical presence could make that fear go away. 

She'd joined the men's team because she was used to coaching guys and also because she thought she might meet someone she wanted to date that way. She had always thought she would find herself someone big, tall and athletic, like her dad and uncle Tyler. But she had no interest in that anymore. 

She would never have sex, she would never want to, she was sure of that. She never wanted to see another penis again in her life. Besides, what man would want her now anyway? A woman was probably her only hope of a relationship, and even then Grace didn't want anyone touching her down there. If she found herself a girlfriend she would give her oral and do whatever other stuff lesbians did to her but ask only for cuddling in return. 

Cuddling was probably okay. Sometimes she wanted to ask Nicholas to cuddle her, but she had thought that it would be weird. He hugged her when she woke up from nightmares and he put his arm around her when she cried, but he never lay down with her. He always returned to his end of the bed. Now that she knew he was gay maybe she could ask. Or maybe she wouldn't, she didn't want to do anything that might make Nicholas go away. 

Aunt Maya's car was in the parking lot at the martial arts gym, which meant that Nicholas was inside. He'd left the doors unlocked. Of course he had, he was Nicholas, he didn't need to worry about things like his personal safety. 

He was in the middle of the dojang floor practicing moves in quick succession, his skin and hair dark against the white fabric of the tobok that fluttered around him, unable to keep up with the swift movement of his limbs. He was so fast. He moved his body with such precision, such grace. Watching him practice was like watching fire, completely mesmerizing. He was liquid, but he had unimaginable power. 

It was part of the reason that he made her feel so safe. She knew that there were only a few people in the entire country who Nicholas couldn't beat the crap out of if he wanted to. He could bring down someone twice his size with a single blow, she knew because she had seen it before. When they were sophomores in high school he took out a line backer who was pushing him around in the school cafeteria with just one kick to the chest. He fractured three of his ribs. It was the last time anyone hassled him at school. 

His physical prowess was only part of the reason that he made her feel safe though. The other part was that she knew with absolute certainty that Nicholas would never hurt her. Not because he was scared of her dad, or because she was his 'cousin', but because he was a placid person. He didn't have a mean bone in his body. He was a walking contradiction, a pacifist whose body was a lethal weapon. 

Nicholas wasn't just good at taekwondo, he was a master. He had gotten his Poom belt, the equivalent of a black belt, when he was 8. He had won every competition that he had ever entered when they were young, and then he'd stopped entering them. She didn't know why he didn't want to compete, he'd kick ass if he did. But that was Nicholas for you, he wasn't an easy one to understand. 

Part of the reason he was so good was that his mom had made him take ballet classes since he was really little. Not many people appreciate it, but they were actually very similar sports. Well, that is if you overlook the fact that the goal of one is to prance around and look pretty and the goal of the other is to take out your opponent in spectacular acts of violence. 

The ballet had taught him how to be light on his feet. He was like that elf from that really boring movie about the hairy little guy who has to carry the ring around, Legless, or whatever his name was. Anyway, that's what Nicholas was like. When everyone else was trudging through the snow he was walking on top of it. 

Grace took all the same classes as him when they were young; ballet, judo and taekwondo. She wasn't any good at any of them. The teachers always told her to watch Nicholas and try to copy him, which pissed her off. Even when she was a little kid she hated being compared to Nicholas. There was no comparison. He was better at everything. He was still better at everything.

It was one of the reasons that she'd rarely hung out with him during high school. It wasn't that she didn't like him, she just didn't have what it took to roll with people like him. He hung out with the smart kids and she hung out with the dumb ones, it's just the way it works in high school. 

She sat down and leaned against the wall at the edge of the mats. He knew that she was there. He hadn't looked at her yet but she knew that he knew. 

He had been doing basic kicks when she came in but now he was doing jump kicks and combination kicks. His long legs flying out from his body at precisely determined heights with impossible speed. Spinning, jumping, and turning quickly, she could hear his breath leaving his body in long forceful strokes in time with the rhythmic twist of his body. The sound of his breathing and the thump of his feet on the floor were the only sounds in the room. 

She couldn't take her eyes off him. He was so powerful. He did a kick that was actually some sort of flip, his straight dark hair hung loosely for a fraction of a second while he was upside down in the air. Before he even had two feet on the ground he turned his body into the next maneuver. 

It wasn't exercise it was art. He was beautiful, not in a sexual way, in a fundamental way. 

When he was done practicing his kicks he walked over to her. He was puffed and strands of his hair stuck to his forehead where a thin layer of perspiration had formed. 

"Hey," he said.

"Teach me something?" 

"Um... okay." He motioned for her to come onto the mat and he picked up jump ropes from out of a chest at the side of the room. "You need to warm up and stretch first." He threw her a rope and they skipped together. 

"You okay?" He asked. 

"Could ask you the same thing," she replied. 

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Your parents upset?"

"Mom probably is, I think dad's okay though."

She didn't know what else to say. She wanted to say something reassuring, to tell him that it was okay with her, that she wasn't judging him, but she didn't know how to. They skipped in silence and then they stretched. Nicholas was ridiculously flexible, his legs extended well beyond the 'splits' position. 

"Do you remember your stances?" He asked.

"I think so..." 

He showed her the stances, how to distribute her weight on her feet and how to control the movement of her torso. He showed her a basic low front kick. He touched her lightly with his fingertips. He was a good teacher. 

"You're a natural," he told her. Even though she knew that wasn't the truth she smiled. He agreed to teach her more once they got back to Boston. 

They only had a few more days of vacation and she was glad. It was stressful to have to act happy all the time and she didn't sleep. She couldn't without Nicholas. 

She would lie down and as soon as her head hit the pillow horrible memories would come back to her. She would be back there, on her hands and knees in the dirt, rocks and glass cutting into her flesh, paralyzed by fear. 

It unsettled her and then the fear would come, or the sadness. She knew it was irrational. She was at her parents' house, with her family, she was safe, she should be happy. In reality she was probably safer there than she was with Nicholas in their apartment in Boston, but no matter how many times she told herself that she couldn't get herself to calm down without Nicholas.

She read all night long and took catnaps throughout the day. She read anything she could get her hands on. She read the books that Matthew's 10th grade English class were studying, she read from her mom's odd collection of novels. She read Clarence Thomas' autobiography. That dude had issues. 

That night she perused over the titles in the bookcase in the living room and chose one called 'The Map that Changed the World'. It sounded exciting, apparently there was a map, and it changed the world. Sounds good, no? Well, this had to be one of her dad's books. She couldn't imagine anything more boring, and through the boredom it was the sadness that was penetrating her mind tonight.

She wanted to see Cassie. She needed Cassie. 

It was absurd, Cassie had been dead for years, she had died in her arms when Grace was thirteen. Everyone had been there and Uncle Tyler had let her be the one to hold her while the vet gave her the injection. There wasn't a dry eye in either house, not for weeks. She was buried in the back yard at Nicholas' parents' house. 

She leaned over to her bedside table and grabbed her phone. It was almost midnight. He was probably already asleep, but maybe not. She scrolled to Nicholas' number and pressed send. 

"Hey." He answered after the first ring. 

"Are you asleep?" 

"Nope, you?"

She smiled, what a stupid question. "No. Are your family still up?" 

"No. What's up?" 

"I thought... well, I'd like to see Cassie... I mean, her grave."

He didn't answer immediately. "Okay, I'll come and get you. Look out the window so I don't have to knock."

It was really cold outside. Grace had her heaviest winter coat on and she could still feel the prickle of the icy air. She pulled the ushanka that Nicholas had given her for Christmas down snugly on her head. Those Russians really knew how to do cold weather. 

They walked the five blocks between their parents' houses in silence. It was a clear night, which is probably why it was so cold. A thin slice of the moon hung low on the horizon and the ice on the pavement crunched under their feet. 

Nicholas led her down the side of the house and through the gate that fenced off the back yard. He opened it silently and let her through before closing it carefully behind him. 

Cassie's final resting place was near the back of the yard, underneath the oak tree, marked by a large river stone that had her name carved into it. It was dark back there, the shadow of the leafless oak branches barely discernable in the faint moonlight. 

She knelt down on the cold ground and looked at the rock, trying to remember everything she could about Cassie. Her big pointy ears, the white stripe down her nose, her shiny black fur, the way she would wiggle her butt and whine to greet you. The way she loved you no matter what you'd done wrong. 

Grace began to cry. Big fat tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped onto the frozen earth, leaving an icy residue on her face that burned in the cold night air. 

"Cassie-o," she whispered. 

"Cassie, you're such a good girl." 

She bent down and placed her cheek on the ground. 

"Cassie... something horrible happened."

She knew that Nicholas could hear her, but she didn't stop. 

"I... I got hit on the head. I wasn't careful enough Cassie. I should have been more careful."

She was sobbing, her breath catching in her throat. 

"I think there were four of them. They were laughing, they were laughing at me. They called me a slut."

She felt that horrible blackness behind her eyes, a dark inky patch that seemed to spread across her soul. That dark place where her shame lived. 

"Cassie... they did things to me. Awful things." 

Her skin crawled when she felt flashes of those horrible things. Hard things inside her body, hurting her, beating her. 

"I should have done something. I should have screamed, or tried to kick them or... I should have done something, but I didn't. I was scared. They had a gun... I was scared."

She could still taste the metal, feel the cold hard lines pushing against the flesh of her tongue. 

"And now I'm so ashamed. How can I look at daddy? How can I let mommy see me when I know? When I know that I didn't do anything. That I just let them do those things to me and I didn't do anything." 

She felt Nicholas' hands on her sides, lifting her. He pulled her into his lap and wrapped his arms around her. He rocked her against his warm chest. 

"It wasn't your fault Grace. There was nothing that you could do baby," he murmured to her. 

"I should have screamed. If I had screamed someone might have come to help me."

"No milaya. If you screamed they would have shot you. You did the right thing Gracie, you're alive and that's what matters most." 

"But if I just had have kicked them like you showed me today..."




3. The Grace I've Known Ch. 01-03



"No Grace. There was nothing you could do. It wasn't your fault." He rocked her gently back and forth as she cried into his solid reliable chest, her uneven breath and snotty sniffs the only sounds in the dark night. 

"Kolya, do you think... do you think that I'm a slut?"

She felt the air leaving him. "No Grace. You are not a slut. You are pure and clean and beautiful." 

She wanted to believe him. She wished that she believed him, but she didn't. She was anything but pure. She may have grown new skin and the drugs may have cleaned her out, but she was still sullied, she was soiled because of her own stupidity. 

"I wish Cassie was here,' she said.

"Yeah, me too."

She slept in Nicholas' room, on his bed, with him at the other end. They both slept in their clothes. Even though his bed was easily big enough for both of them she let her shin and foot rest against his back, and he didn't move away. Nicholas slept curled up on his left side. He always slept like that. 

***

Nicholas felt heavy when he woke. Grace was still asleep at the other end of his bed. Once they'd gotten up to his room they'd had a good night, by Grace's standards that is. She had slept through. She must have been really tired. After the trauma of talking to Cassie he had felt sure that she would have a bad night, but she didn't, she went to sleep immediately. Perhaps it had been cathartic for her. Perhaps she needed to say those things out loud. 

He felt depressed. How could she think that it was her fault? Last night he could see the shame written all over her face. She really believed that she'd done something wrong, and that was so fucked up. 

He lay in bed listening to his family. Lucas moved down the hallway quietly, it was 5 am and he had swimming training. Nicholas strained his ears, trying to figure out whose turn it was to take the boys to swimming. It must have been Sam's turn. He heard the low purr of an SUV and the front door open then shut. 

Swimming. It was the thing that held them all together. All of them but him. His dad and Sam had been Olympians in their day. Emma coached them, not exclusively, but she was always at the pool and Grace always went with her. All of the boys swam. All of them but him.

It was one of the reasons he'd grown so close to Zach. Zach wasn't actually Sam and Emma's son, he was a foster kid who had lived with them ever since Nicholas had known them. Nine years his senior, when Nicholas had been a kid Zach had been his idol, his favorite person in the world. Zach didn't swim. He hated the water. Nicholas loved the way that Zach would shake his head and mutter, "These people are fucking nuts," so that only Nicholas could hear. At that point Zach was the only person he knew who used the f-word. 

Lucas loved swimming, he always had, you couldn't get the kid out of the water. Their dad was so proud of him. He went to all of his races. He'd casually put his arm around his shoulders and ask questions about each race, smiling and joking with him. He didn't push him but he was supportive. He was proud of him. His offspring. 

Nicholas had always wished that he were Tyler's biological son. Not his step-son or adoptive son, his genetic offspring. He wished he had gotten his genes. He wished that when Tyler looked at him he saw part of himself, that when his mom looked at him she saw part of the man that she so obviously loved. He wished he were tall and fair with Tyler's quick smile and light sense of humor, all of the things that Lucas would be. 

For a while he had thought that if he could get really good at Taekwondo, if he could get selected on the national team and go to the Olympics like Tyler did, it might make him proud. He could probably get good enough, he had never met anyone quicker than him. His strength was somewhat of an issue, but that's nothing a good weights program couldn't fix. 

He had given up on that idea when he was thirteen. He'd competed in the southwest regional championships and won every spar. It was easy. They weren't really fair fights. He didn't know if it was because he had the best coach or if he just had good instincts, but either way it was like taking candy from a baby. In the final round he had delivered the winning blow as a spinning axe kick. The crowd had gone wild, but he had felt sick as he watched his opponent crumble to the floor. 

When he went back to his parents on the sidelines his mother had smiled, but it wasn't enough to hide the horror in her eyes. Tyler had pat him on the back and told him that he'd done a good job. Afterwards they'd gone out to dinner and Tyler had struggled to sound enthusiastic when he asked if he wanted to go to the national championships. 

Nicolas had watched him carefully as he told him 'No.' Tyler didn't react either way, he wasn't happy and he wasn't sad. He didn't give a shit. Nicholas never competed again. 

He tried to cheer himself up as he listened to Grace sleep through the darkness of the early morning. There were positives. Grace was alive. Before last night he hadn't really thought about the threat her life had been under, he had been so preoccupied with the rape part that he hadn't even considered that she might have been killed. She said they'd had a gun. It was no wonder she was so frightened now. 

He heard movement in the house, his dad's heavy footsteps. 

He had to figure out a way to get Grace back to her parent's house without rousing suspicion. He knew that everyone believed him when he said that he was gay, but there would still be a million questions if anyone figured out that Grace slept in his bed. He'd use his dad. He felt shitty about it, he really was a terrible son, but Tyler was an adult, he'd just have to deal with it. 

Nicholas was nervous to go down to the kitchen. He hadn't spoken with his dad alone since he blew up at him on the street yesterday. He felt awful about the way things had been left. He hadn't been that disrespectful to him for a long time. Not since that awful summer before high school when they'd fought non-stop and Nicholas had told him that he had no authority over him. 

"You're not my real father," he had told him. 

Nicholas still remembered the mixture of pain and anger on Tyler's face. "Nicholas, we're not biologically related" he had told him, "but I'm the only father you're ever going to have, and that's about as real as it gets." 

Ashamed as it made him now, at the time it hadn't stopped the arguments. It hadn't stopped him from pushing every button Tyler had. For a while there he refused to call him dad, he only used his real name. Nicholas pushed him to his limit and then he pushed him further. He found his breaking point a few times. 

Once he had started laughing when Tyler's parents had missed a connecting flight and had gotten stuck in Las Vegas instead of being able to visit for 4th of July and it had made Tyler so mad that he had struck out at him. It was futile of course, by that time Nicholas knew how to defend himself and he had gotten out of the way easily, laughing. 

Later he overheard Tyler talking to his mom. 

"Fuck Maya, I don't know what to do with him. We've created a monster."

Instead of feeling ashamed it had given Nicholas a perverse sense of achievement. He had broken Tyler. 

The thing that had finally stopped him was the history project that was assigned to him that fall. It was family history. He had to get together copies of all of the certificates that documented his life and those of his family. He'd compared the dates and found out that Tyler had adopted him before he'd married his mom. He didn't know why that made such a big difference to him, but it did. It meant something. Tyler was his dad before he was his mom's husband. 

The moment he realized that everything had changed. He started calling him dad again. He censored himself when he saw an opening for an attack. He did all of the things that were asked of him without question. And that's how it had been for the past four years. Tyler was the one in charge and Nicholas was the one who listened. Until yesterday, that is. 

His dad was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of steaming hot tea, reading the newspaper. 

"Morning dad."

Tyler looked up from the paper. He looked old and tired. "Hey."

Nicholas sat down at the table opposite him, he felt like a little boy again. "Dad... I'm sorry about yesterday. I didn't mean to yell at you." 

He shook his head. "No, it's okay. You're right. I think you probably did the right thing. It's just hard for me, I'm not used to secrets, I don't like it."

"I know... so you are going to hate what I'm about to tell you."

He closed his eyes and sighed. "What is it?"

"Grace is in my room." 

His eyes were still closed and he grimaced. "She's not doing well is she?"

Nicholas shrugged. "I think she's doing about as well as could be expected under the circumstances. She told me some of the details last night. I think that was a big step for her."

He opened his eyes. "What did she tell you?"

Nicholas shook his head. "You don't want to know and I don't want to tell you."

His dad looked at him for long seconds. "What about you Nicholas? How do you feel?"

"How do I feel? I think that's largely irrelevant."

"No it's not. How are you dealing with all of this?"

"I don't know... I guess I'm depressed that it happened but I'm glad that she's still alive."

"Still alive... was her life in question?"

"Yeah. I don't know if it was an empty threat or if it was for real. Either way it scared the crap out of her."

His dad buried his head in his hands. 

"Dad, I've got to get her back to her house without anyone seeing her. I need you to create some sort of diversion." 

Tyler looked up at him, his eyes full of pain. Nicholas knew what he was asking would elevate his dad from being an unwilling keeper of a secret to an unwilling co-conspirator. It was a lot to ask, but he didn't really have a choice. 

"Okay," he said, resigned. "We should do it now, before Sam's parents get up."

"Thanks dad."

"No. Don't thank me."



CHAPTER THREE

WINTER, FRESHMAN YEAR

The women's crew team was so much fun. Grace felt kind of bad for leaving the men's team but she'd used the excuse of needing to make friends and Jim, the men's coach, had let her go without complaining. 

Unlike the men, she could actually talk to the girls on the women's team after workouts. She went to breakfast in the cafeteria with them after morning practice in the gym and they talked about rowing and about school and about guys. 

She became friends with Stacie immediately. She was on a full ride scholarship for crew. She was Canadian and she'd rowed all through high school, she was completely obsessed with the sport. They would sit for hours in the cafeteria talking about the theory behind different techniques, and they gossiped together. They talked mostly about the other girls, who should be in the Varsity boat and who shouldn't. They speculated about which ones might be lesbians. 

Stacie was in her freshman year too and she still lived in the dorms. She thought it was so cool and exotic that Grace lived in an off campus apartment with a guy. 

"Is he your boyfriend?" She asked. 

"Who Nicholas? No! He's..." She didn't quite know what Nicholas was. Her protector. Her confidant. Her best friend. "Gay" is what she settled for. It was the truth but she still felt weird saying it. 

"I want to meet him."

"Okay, fine, I don't see why not. Have dinner with us tonight."

If Grace were thinking clearly she would have invited Stacie over the next day, to give her a chance to reorganize the apartment a bit. As it was the two bedrooms were set up so that she or Nicholas could live in either. It made it easier when they were changing clothes. 

Of course Stacie wanted a tour of the apartment. Grace showed her both of the bedrooms. 

"Which one is yours?" She asked.

Grace chose one arbitrarily. 

"Oh cool, do you play the guitar? That is so cool. Play me something?" She pleaded excitedly. 

"Ah, no. That's Nicholas' guitar," Grace replied uncomfortably. 

"What's it doing in your room?" 

Grace had to think on her feet. "I was trying to learn, I was borrowing it, but I'm really bad."

She looked around the room. There was heaps of Nicholas' stuff in here, his clothes, his school books, his sparring gear. She closed the top of the laundry hamper to conceal his boxer shorts and walked out of the room, praying that Stacie would follow her. She did. 

Nicholas got home not too long after that. She introduced Stacie to him and they chatted for a while. Stacie was a real motor mouth, she told Nicholas her whole life story before he could even put his book bag down and take his winter coat off. Grace was immensely relieved that he chose to stash his gear in the hallway closet rather than taking it back to the bedrooms, incase he chose the wrong one. 

Grace cooked roast beef and vegetables for dinner. She cooked almost every night. Nicholas didn't expect her to, it was just the routine they'd gotten in to. She kept a list on the fridge door and Nicholas would take it twice a week and do the grocery shopping. It was fair. It was the same with the rest of the chores, she did the cleaning and he did the laundry at the local Laundromat. It wasn't something that they had ever talked about, it was just the way they did things. 

There were a lot of things that they did that they never talked about. They had given up on trying to sleep in separate beds. Now whoever came to bed last went to the bed that had a warm body in it. Some nights, when she was feeling shaky, Grace slept at Nicholas' end of the bed with her back pressed up against his. It was incredibly soothing. She never slept better than when her body was touching Nicholas', and now that she knew he was gay she didn't have to worry about it turning into anything sexual. 

Stacie brought up his sexuality in the middle of dinner. The girl was completely without tact. 

"So you're gay huh?" She asked. 

Nicholas looked at Grace for a few seconds before he responded. It made her feel like a snitch, or like she'd spread a nasty rumor about him or something. 

"Yes, I am." He said. 

"When did you realize?"

"Um... I don't know. I guess it was a year ago? Maybe a bit more."

"So, was there, like, an event?" Stacie clearly wasn't going to let this rest. "Did you, like, fall in love with another guy or something? Or did you just wake up one day and know?" 

Nicholas shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "No, I've never been in love with another guy. I guess it is something that I just figured out on my own."

"Hm, that's interesting, because back home I have this friend Charlie who is gay and... blah blah blah..." She was off again, talking up a storm. 

Grace looked at Nicholas, he was sitting there eating his dinner, nodding politely at Stacie. He looked pretty normal but Grace could tell that he was tense. His shoulders looked tight, the way he was moving belied his discomfort with the topic. 

Like so many other things, his being gay was something that Grace never spoke with him about. She figured if he wanted to talk about it he would, and he never did. 

"So, I could introduce you to him if you want..." Stacie was offering to set Nicholas up with her gay friend back home. 

"Thanks, but I don't think so. He still lives in Canada right? It doesn't sound very practical."

"Yeah." Stacie looked disappointed. "I'll keep an eye out for you though, you never know where you might find Mr. Right."

"Yeah, thanks Stacie." 

Stacie went to the bathroom after they'd finished dinner. Nicholas was putting the leftovers in Tupperware containers while Grace washed the plates. 

"Kolya, I told her that the bedroom on the left is mine, so can you use the one on the right tonight?"

"Sure." He didn't look up from what he was doing, it made her feel like maybe he was mad at her, but she couldn't tell. "Thanks for cooking dinner, it was good." He said, and then he put the leftovers in the fridge and went back to 'his' room. 

Then Stacie was back and talking again. She filled in all of the space around her. She was larger than life, it really took Grace's mind off herself. They talked for a while in the living room and then Stacie needed to go home. It was nine o'clock and she had homework to do that night. 

"Nicholas and I will walk you home," Grace said. 

"Don't be stupid, it's like, half a mile away, I'll be fine." Stacie looked genuinely okay with the idea of walking around alone at this time of night. 

"Kolya?" Grace called out.

"Yeah?" She heard from the back room. 

"Will you please walk with us over to Stacie's dorm room?"

"Okay." A moment later Nicholas appeared in the living room. 

"This is totally daft," Stacie said, "I don't need an escort. I don't want to be mean or anything, but I'm bigger than both of you, any attacker would be more afraid of me than of you guys."

It was true. It wasn't that Nicholas was small, he wasn't, it was that Stacie was a towering woman. At close to six feet she was taller and broader than Nicholas, but there was still no way Grace was going to let her walk home alone. 

"Try to hit him," Grace said, motioning towards Nicholas with her head. 

"I'm not going to hit him, I might hurt him."

"I know you're not going to hit him," Grace smiled slyly as she talked, "but it's not because you might hurt him, it's because you can't."

"What!" Stacie hated being told that there was something she was incapable of, it was a surefire way to get her to do something. 

"Are you ready?" She asked Nicholas. 

Nicholas smiled and nodded his head. 

Stacie struck out at him and he moved out of the way easily. She tried again and again he dodged her. Frustrated, she tried to kick him, but he stepped out of her reach. Now she lunged towards him but he moved to the side, grabbed her by the arm and used her momentum to throw her onto the couch. He was on top of her, pinning her down before she could even gasp in a breath of air. 

He stayed on top of her just long enough for her to realize that she was completely immobilized, but then moved away, giving her space. 

Stacie looked a little shocked, but she found her voice before too long. "Okay, so maybe you can dodge but I bet you can't hit me."

Grace laughed. Stacie had no idea what she was saying. 

Nicholas smiled at her. "You really want me to hit you?"

Stacie nodded. "I want you to try and hit me." She got up off the couch and lined herself up with Nicholas, her fists up in front of her like a boxer. 

"You ready?" He asked.

"Yep." 

In the blink of an eye Nicholas' foot was beside her face. He tapped her lightly on the cheek. "Gotcha," he said. 

For once Stacie was at a loss for words. 

"Tall people always think they have an advantage in a fight," Nicholas said. "Remember, size isn't everything."

When they were walking home after dropping her off Grace asked him what he thought of Stacie.

"She seems nice. She's a bit full of herself, but whatever, most people are."

"Am I?" She asked. 

"Full of yourself? No." 

For some reason hearing that made her feel good. "What about my brothers? Do you think they are?"

"No. Micah acts like he is sometimes, but I think he's just insecure. He's probably worried he'll never be as good as Matthew." 

Grace nodded. "I know the feeling." 

Nicholas stopped dead in his tracks. "What are you talking about?" He asked. 

Grace didn't know why she'd said that. It made her feel ungrateful for her family to voice her insecurities. "I don't know... Forget I said that."

Nicholas looked at her for an uncomfortably long time and then he nodded and let it drop. 

She changed the subject to Zach's wedding, she knew Nicholas was excited about it. The wedding was in San Francisco. 




3. The Grace I've Known Ch. 01-03



After high school Zach had gone to university in Boulder for a year before he decided that he would prefer to go to culinary school. He moved to Berkeley and lived with Grandma Judy and Granddad John while he went to some fancy culinary school in San Francisco, where he'd met his fiancée Beth.

"Will you help me buy a dress for Zach's wedding?" She asked. 

Nicholas had impeccable fashion sense, it was one of the things that allowed her to accept that he was gay. He didn't dress up or anything, he just chose clothes that suited him, and he always had cool shoes. All of her brothers combined didn't have as many shoes as Nicholas had split between the rooms in their apartment. 

That wasn't really why she wanted Nicholas to help her buy a dress though. It had been six months since she looked at herself in the mirror and she didn't want to have to start now. Of course she had glanced at herself, you kind of have to use a mirror every now and then when you had hair as uncontrollable as Grace's, but she hadn't really looked at herself. She couldn't. She was afraid of what she would see. 

He agreed to help and that weekend they went downtown and she let Nicholas shop for her. She didn't have the energy to have any input of her own. He only made her try on four dresses and then told her to buy number two. It wasn't anything she would have chosen for herself but it was an easy way out so she bought it. The whole ordeal lasted less than thirty minutes, and she was thankful for that. 

When they traveled to California for the wedding a few weeks later she felt nervous. She didn't want to see her family again. It was too stressful. Their lives had gone on uninterrupted. they were still the same shining happy people that they had always been. To pretend that she was the same Grace that they had always known was incredibly tiring. 

Once she was there it wasn't nearly as bad as she had expected. San Francisco was a fun town and Grace was happy to find that she was able to enjoy herself for some of the time. What had happened was still in the back of her mind, she still hadn't made it through a full day without thinking about it, but there were pockets of relief. There were periods where she felt like herself again. 

Her family were staying at the same hotel as Nicholas and his family. Grace got a room to herself because she was the only girl, but Nicholas was sharing with his brother Lucas so she couldn't ask to sleep in his bed. 

On the day of the wedding she was met with a challenge. She had to do her hair and put makeup on, which required looking at herself in the mirror. She hated every second of it, but she did it. It was Zach's wedding, she wasn't about to show up without her hair and makeup done. 

It was a beautiful ceremony. Zach looked so handsome and Beth was stunning. There was real emotion when they exchanged vows. You could tell they were in love. She was happy for Zach, but it made her sad for herself. She didn't feel as hopeless as she had in the fall, but she still worried about her ability to have a normal relationship. She still worried that nobody worth having would want to be with her. Have her used goods. 

Nicholas looked ridiculously good in his penguin suit. Beth had chosen a deep plumb color scheme that really worked with his dark complexion. He looked happy and she was glad. She knew that she asked a lot of him, and he always delivered without complaint, he deserved to have a fun day. 

She tried to thank him for the things he did for her in little ways. She cooked his favorite foods regularly. She even made him foods that he liked but she couldn't eat because of the nuts in them. On his birthday she had gone down to New York City with him to visit his grandparents, which had been an odd adventure. He had complained about not wanting to go, but of course he did. He was a diligent grandson. 

His biological father's parents were weird. They came from India and they still wore those strange decorative Indian clothes. They called him Amir, not Nicholas. Amir was his middle name so it wasn't that unusual, she just never knew anyone else that called him that. 

They were strange, but they were nice. His grandmother made tea and served them sweet little pastries that dripped with honey. His grandfather spoke slowly and softly about how important it was for Nicholas to stay in school. When they said goodbye they stood on the stoop of their apartment building and waved as they held hands. 

After their driver dropped them back at the train station he apologized for them. 

"Don't be ridiculous, I thought they were cute," she had replied. 

Zach and Beth had their first dance and cut the cake and then the floor was opened to the rest of the guests. Aunt Maya waited a respectable amount of time before asking Nicholas to dance. 

It was impossible not to watch them. The dance floor cleared quickly and every eye was glued to Nicholas and Maya. They were the best looking people in the room and they moved like they were a part of the song. They were extra instruments, a visual expression of the music. 

Nicholas was an amazing dancer. His feet moved with speed and precision and he manipulated his mother with a confidence that seemed at odds with his personality. He turned her and directed her, dipped her and lifted her. He didn't just lift her off the ground a little, he lifted her above his head and continued moving while she was up there. He didn't just dip her, he dipped her between his legs and then somehow flipped her and twisted her back into a standing position, moving seamlessly into the next series of steps. 

When they passed Grace she could hear him issuing the next move, the next series of steps. Grace could see his hands controlling her, dictating what she would do next. Maya had asked him to dance but it was clear who was leading. Nicholas was in complete control. 

It was... erotic. Watching Nicholas dance with his mother was incredibly erotic. It wasn't meant to be, she was sure of that. She looked around the room to gauge the response of others. Everyone was watching, but they were smiling and laughing and clapping. She was pretty sure nobody else's lips were tingling. She couldn't be sure, but it didn't look like anybody else's nipples were erect and sensitive and wanting attention. 

Man she was fucked up. Watching her gay best friend dance with his mother in public was turning her on. Seriously fucked up. But no matter how weird it was she couldn't stop watching. She couldn't tear her eyes away from them. Nicholas didn't look gay on the dance floor. He looked decidedly masculine and very heterosexual.

The song was coming to an end and Nicholas lifted his mother by the thigh and rib cage and threw her into the air, into a horizontal spin. He caught her and somehow twisted her back into a standing position, took two more steps and handed her to his dad.  

Everyone applauded, Maya curtseyed and Nicholas nodded shyly. Now that the song was over he had lost his confidence and was back to his docile self. The act was over, or was the act back on? She guessed that both the dancer and the shy guy were Nicholas, no matter the cavernous difference between them. 

She went to replenish her drink and was intercepted by Jeff, one of Zach's groomsmen. Jeff made her feel uncomfortable. He was drunk and clearly trying to hit on her, trying to get closer to her. They were near the edge of the room and she felt vulnerable, she could go missing from here and nobody would notice. 

She tried to keep control. She breathed deeply, separated her feet into one of the stances that Nicholas had shown her and slid back to what she thought was a good striking distance. She practiced taekwondo with Nicholas three times a week and now she tried to pretend that she was at the gym, and waited to see if she would need to strike. He kept on inching towards her and she kept on sliding away. She needed to stay at a good striking distance but him moving towards her was causing her to move further and further away from the rest of the party. 

"Hey, what's up?" Nicholas appeared beside her. 

Grace was enormously relieved. "Hey, nice dancing. Will you show me some moves?" 

"Sure." Nicholas smiled at Jeff and guided Grace to the dance floor with his hand in the small of her back. 

"Thanks," she said. 

"Do you really want to dance?" 

"No, I just wanted to get away from him."

"I thought so. I need a break, want to go outside?"

"There's an outside?"

"Not really, but there's something cool across the street I can show you." 

Nicholas took her to a landscaped garden on the roof of a towering building. It was beautiful. There were old-fashioned lanterns hanging at different heights among potted dwarf weeping willows, their light escaping like the flashes of fireflies when the cascading leaves moved in the breeze. There was a small pond filled with round fleshy green leaves and pink lilies, and the large yellow bell-shaped flowers of the datura shifted softly like the trunks of sleeping elephants.

"How did you know about this?" She asked.

"I took an architectural tour of San Francisco with Uncle Josh and Aunty Anna that turned out to be a tour of privately owned public open spaces. There is a public ordinance here that says that all new construction needs to have some publicly accessible outdoor space." 

She went to the railing and looked out at the view of the city around them. There was jasmine growing along the railings and she tried not to crush it as she leaned out to the city around her. Lights twinkled, horns honked, sirens blared and there was the sound of laughter on the street below them, but it all seemed oddly removed in the haven of the landscaped rooftop garden. It was hard to believe the world out there actually existed. 

The air was cold and damp and Grace hugged her arms around herself. She should have brought her pashmina. She felt Nicholas' coat around her shoulders and looked up at him. 

"You don't need it?"

He shook his head. "The cold air feels good after dancing, it was really hot in there."

She put her arms into the sleeves and enjoyed the remnants of his warmth. It was big and heavy on her shoulders, the cuffs extending past her fingertips. 

They enjoyed the view in silence for a while. She wanted to talk to him but she didn't know how to start. There were a lot of things she wanted to talk to Nicholas about. She wanted to thank him, to make sure that he knew that she appreciated him and all the things he did for her.

"Are you having fun with your family?" He asked. 

"Yeah, it's going better than I had thought. Ollie is growing up so fast, I can't believe how big he is. I'm tempted to go home for the summer, I feel like I'm missing out on his life. Micah and Matt too, but Ollie in particular."

"I thought you wanted to stay in Boston?"

"Mm, I think I probably should. If you are going to, that is." There's no way she would stay in Boston on her own. 

"I was planning on it." 

She nodded. She would stay with Nicholas, at least through this summer. She was getting a bit better. Her nightmares weren't as frequent now, they were still bad but they didn't come every night. All of the taekwondo was helping her with her self-confidence. She was still nervous and she wouldn't go out in the late afternoon or night on her own but she was pretty good during the day now. Maybe by the end of the summer she would feel comfortable on her own. 

She had surprised herself by how well she had slept on her own in the hotel room. She had gotten a few hours in each night. It wasn't stellar, but it was a huge improvement from the last time she tried to sleep on her own. 

"Your dad made a good speech," he said. "I guess I knew he must be a pretty good public speaker, but I didn't realize he was that good."

"Yeah, I don't think there is anything that he's not good at." Her dad was a physics professor, he was used to talking in front of lecture halls full of students, and it probably wasn't that different for him to speak at a wedding. "My brothers are the same. There's nothing they're not good at."

Nicholas was looking at her carefully, studying her face. "Do you ever feel like you don't belong?" He asked. 

"Are you kidding? I feel like I don't belong more often than I feel I do."

"Me too."

She looked at him, his dark eyes steady. He was serious. She had never considered that Nicholas might feel like he didn't fit in, after all, he was genetically related to his mother, surely that should have given him some sense of place. 

"Have you ever heard anything about my biological father?" He asked. 

"Not really, only that he died before you were born, and then the photos I saw at your grandparents' place." 

He nodded, he had returned to looking out over the city. "I don't think my mom loved him." 

"What! They were married. You don't marry someone unless you love them."

"Unless you feel like you have no other choice. Remember freshman year of high school, when we had to make those family trees?"

She nodded. She remembered that stupid assignment. 

"I got copies of all of the documents. She was five months pregnant when they got married. She was twenty-two and he was thirty-eight." 

"So. That doesn't prove anything." It was pretty good circumstantial evidence, but saying that his mom hadn't loved his dad was a big jump.

He turned back to her, his dark eyes stunning her with their sadness. "Once I overheard my dad talking to your dad. He didn't know I was there. He called Hamid, my biological father, an asshole. He said he only did two things right in his life; He convinced mom not to have an abortion and took out a big life insurance policy."

Grace was lost for words. She couldn't imagine Uncle Tyler saying something like that. It had obviously deeply wounded Nicholas. 

"Nicholas," she said gently. "Think about it, of course Tyler doesn't think much of his wife's ex-husband. It's just because of his relationship with your mom, it has nothing to do with your biological father."

"She never talks about him." Nicholas' voice was steady but she could see the pain written all over his face. "Even when I used to ask about him, she never wanted to talk about him, he's like an episode of her life that she would prefer to forget. Why would she need to be convinced not to abort me if she loved him?" 

Grace put her arms around him. She didn't have an answer to that question. She suspected that he was probably right. Life was fucked up, but that's just the way it was, nothing can change the past. 

"I was born with the name Chandrasekhar, she changed it to Galloway when I was three, and then to Gray when she married Tyler, as if changing my name would make me somebody different. Sometimes I think that when she looks at me she sees Hamid. She sees a man that she never loved."

"No! Nicholas, no, that's absurd."

"Why? I look just like him."

It was true, Nicholas looked strikingly similar to the photographs of Hamid that adorned the walls of his grandparents' apartment.

Grace held him tightly, she let her hand run up his back and into his short thick hair. "Kolya, you're not your father. No matter whether your mom loved him or not she does love you. I know that. You know that."

It took him a moment to confirm. "Yeah, I know." 

She held him like that for a long time. There was more that he wasn't saying. She knew there was more and she was waiting to see if he would say it. When he didn't she decided to say it herself. 

"Lucas isn't perfect, you know." She felt him melt into her. His arms, which had been resting across her shoulder blades, closed around her and squeezed her into a tight hug. He felt so good in the cold air. It felt so good to be the one leaned on for a change. 

"Nicholas, your parents love you just as much as they love Lucas. My parents love you as much as they love Lucas." She pulled away from him and looked up into his dark brown eyes. "I know I'm not supposed to play favorites but I have to admit that I love you more than I love Lucas." She smiled at him. 

Nicholas smiled back at her. "I love you more than I love your brothers too." 

It was an odd declaration, but it fit. It worked for them, the family misfits. 

"Kolya, I don't care if you are gay. I wouldn't care if you had a boyfriend or if you wanted to dress like a woman. So long as you are still Nicholas I don't care about any of that stuff." 

For a split second he looked like he was going to say something, but then he shut his mouth and nodded. 

"You getting cold?" She asked. Her arms were still around him and she could feel him shivering. 

"Yeah."

"Come on, let's go back. You can teach me some of your fancy dance moves."



When Nicholas woke the next morning there was something very different about the way that Grace was laying against him. He was used to her legs against his back, and more recently he had become accustomed to the feeling of her back pressed up against his, but this didn't feel like her back. Her back was bony, this was soft and warm and luxurious.

Those were breasts that he felt against his back, pressing and receding in time with her breath that was a warm tickle on the back of his neck. That was her arm that was draped over his ribcage. Those were her fingers resting up against his chest. He realized that he wasn't wearing a shirt, her skin was pressed up against his. The whole effect was nothing short of spectacular. 

He was hard as a rock. His cock was straining against his boxer shorts, looking for a way out. Looking for a way to get closer to Grace. 

Shit. He had to get up. He had to get out of here without waking her up. She would be seriously freaked out if she knew that she turned him on like this. But he didn't want to move, he had never felt anything so beautiful in his life and he was having difficulties pulling away from her. 

His boxer shorts were twisted a little, pinning his cock onto his inner thigh. He felt the wetness as his precum dribbled onto his inner thigh. Shit, he really needed to get up. He made a deal with himself; he could take care of himself in the bathroom if he got up now. He counted to three in his head and moved away from her. Away from the best thing he had felt in his life. 

She stirred and he looked down to see if she had awoken. Bad idea. Grace looked even better than she had felt. Her dark curly hair was wildly tousled and it fanned out around her head like a halo. Her features dominated her small face, large round eyes blinked up at him, still half asleep, honey brown irises stunning against her light olive skin. Her plump curvaceous lips separated to say his name. 

"Kolya," she sighed. 

God, she was so beautiful.

"Hush milaya, go back to sleep." He wanted to touch her face so badly. He wanted to run his fingers over her delicate cheek and down her neck, but he stopped himself. He couldn't touch Grace. She was completely off limits. 

Thankfully she closed her eyes and appeared to fall back to sleep. Her breathing was deep and even. 

He got up and went straight to the bathroom without looking back. Shit. His cock was throbbing, it had never done this for Grace before. Not wanting to stink up the room he decided the shower was the best place for him. He didn't want Grace to know that he had jerked off in her bathroom.

He started the shower and stripped off the boxers that he had slept in. They were both drunk when they'd gotten back from the wedding last night, not so drunk that he didn't remember what had happened and when, but drunk enough that he had slept only in his underwear when usually he made a point to keep some form of pants and shirt on when he shared a bed with her. 

He stepped under the shower, unwrapped one of the hotel soap bars and lathered up. Normally when he jerked off he didn't think about anyone in particular, usually he just thought about pretty girls and their breasts, but right now there was nothing he could do to get Grace out of his head. 




3. The Grace I've Known Ch. 01-03



She had looked so beautiful last night. She made the dress that he had selected for her come alive. He'd chosen one in deep burgundy, so it was in the same color family as Beth's theme without being too similar to the bridesmaid's dresses. She would look good in the photos, like she belonged there. It was fairly conservative, which he figured she would want, you couldn't see the sexy parts of her body so much as you could glimpse hints of how beautiful she was when she moved. 

He had felt her move. When he was teaching her dance steps after they came down from the rooftop garden he had put his hand on her waist and felt the gentle curve there. He had looked down and seen the delicate skin of her chest, the smoothness of her shoulders. 

She still had the fragrance of the jasmine that she'd been leaning against on the roof on her skin and it had raised to Nicholas, intoxicating him in a haze of pleasure. He doubted he would ever be able to smell Jasmine again without thinking of how beautiful Grace was last night. 

She had been smiling and laughing. She was a fair dancer, she could move to the beat but she couldn't remember the series of steps. They were drinking wine and eating the tiny little desserts that the waiters were circulating with. She kept on stepping on his feet. He had laughed and told her that she had to let him lead. Grace didn't seem to know how to follow, how to relinquish control to him. 

It had been fun. For that time it seemed that there was nothing else in world but he and Grace and their absurd attempts at dancing. There was no assault. There was no other family. There had just been the two of them, laughing and jostling around clumsily in each other's arms. 

She had asked him to sleep in her bed and he had agreed without even thinking about it. "Of course milaya, whatever you need," he had told her. 

In retrospect it didn't seem like such a good idea. Lucas might have realized that he never came back to the room last night. It was still pretty early though, if he got back soon he might be able to fudge it. 

He washed his hair with the hotel shampoo to add another layer of overpowering flowery scent to the room, got out of the shower and dried off. He considered his boxers, sighed and pulled them back on. He hated wearing dirty clothes.

Out in the bedroom Grace was still asleep. He put his tuxedo pants and shirt back on and gathered the rest of his clothes. He didn't know what it felt like to have a one-night stand, but he was feeling pretty uncomfortable as he stood by the door about to leave a sleeping girl behind. 

How would Gracie feel when she woke up and found that he had left? It's not like they had done anything together. She had probably just rolled over in the middle of the night and her arm had fallen over him. She probably wasn't even aware that there was anything different about last night. When she woke up she'd probably just assume that they had slept head to toe or back to back like usual. 

Besides, Grace thought he was gay. Even if she remembered putting her arm around him, she would think that it was just a friendly gesture. She would think that he would respond like a gay man and be unaffected by her body. 

He opened the door as quietly as he could and left.