Good Things Once

The surgery lasted five hours.

"It went well," the surgeon said at last, stripping off her gloves, her eyes red-rimmed with fatigue. "The spleen is saved. The lung is draining properly. Now it's up to him."

Adrian said, "Can I see him?"

"For a few minutes."

He had not eaten all day. Marcus had tried to press a sandwich on him three times, and Henry Pell had come and gone with a thermos of tea. He had looked at neither. He followed the doctor through the doors like a man in a trance.

The room was dim and quiet and full of soft electronic sounds. A single lamp burned beside the bed. And in the center of it, wrapped in white sheets and a mess of tubes, lay a young man who looked horribly, heartbreakingly small.

Adrian sat down in the chair beside him. He took the unbandaged hand in both his own.

"Miles," he said. "Can you hear me?"

The machines beeped steadily. Nothing else.

"You're usually the best at causing trouble," Adrian said, after a long silence. His voice was rough, scraped raw. "You raise hell. Every time I walk through the door. You throw a fit." He laughed, a thin, broken sound. "And now I'm right here, and you're lying there like a saint. It's a poor trade."

Nothing.

"You wanted more wish cards." He bent his head until his forehead rested against the pale knuckles. "Just wake up. I'll write you as many as you want. A hundred. A thousand. You can have the whole damned stack." A shudder. "Please."

The room breathed.

"The last time I sat watch over someone," Adrian whispered, "it was over a grave that couldn't speak. I thought I would never be that afraid again. I swore it. I thought, I'm too old for it. I've lost everything I'm going to lose."

His shoulders shook.

"I was wrong."

He stayed there for a long time, a big, composed, devastated man bowed over a child's hand, and he said it over and over again, into the stillness, until the words lost their meaning and became only a sound.

"Just wake up. I'll agree to anything."

*Just wake up. I'll agree to anything.*

---

Two days later, a finger twitched.

Adrian was dozing in the chair, his head tilted at a painful angle against the wall, a blanket Marcus had draped over him slipping off one shoulder. He did not wake at first. It was the quality of the silence that changed: a faint rustle, a held breath.

"My wish," said a hoarse voice.

Adrian's eyes snapped open.

Miles lay with his head turned on the pillow, pale as chalk, his lips cracked, his eyes half-lidded and dazed. But they were open. They were looking at him, clear and amber and impossibly alive.

"Don't talk." Adrian lunged to his feet, nearly upsetting the chair. His hands hovered over the boy's face, afraid to touch. "Don't talk, I'll get the doctor—"

"My wish," Miles croaked. A faint, feeble smile. "Why does it come true sometimes?"

"What?"

"Yesterday." He swallowed painfully. "You said you'd agree to anything."

Adrian's heart stopped.

"You heard that?"

"Heard it all." Miles's eyes were bright with exhaustion and a fierce, wondering joy. "Every word. I was somewhere dark and I could hear you. You said please." A breath rattled in his chest. "This time it worked."

"Miles—"

"From now on," Miles whispered, "they'll all come true. I swear."

Adrian dropped to his knees by the bed. He pressed his mouth to the back of the thin hand and wept without sound, and the hand turned in his and held on.

"Adrian," Miles said, after a while. He sounded very tired. "When that board came down—"

"I know."

"I saw it first. I saw it hit you. I thought—" He stopped. "I didn't think. I just ran."

"You idiot." It came out cracked and furious and unbearably tender. "You absolute idiot. I'd have taken it. I'd rather have—"

"I know." A faint smile. "That's why."

---

"The young master's awake," Marcus announced, shortly afterward, to the corridor full of waiting men. A tide of relieved murmurs rose. Crowds had been camped outside the hospital for two days: partners and captains and half the family's rank and file, standing in the cold with hats in their hands.

"And the site?" Adrian asked, from the doorway.

"Sealed, sir. We're investigating the cause."

"I pulled the crane's maintenance records." It was Henry Pell, quietly, from the shadows. He held a folder tight against his chest. "Dig all the way down, Adrian. I think someone cut corners. I think someone cut them on purpose."

"Understood," Adrian said, in a voice that made even Marcus step back.

---

By the fifth night, the doctors grudgingly allowed him to stay.

Adrian had curled into the chair again, an old blanket pulled up to his chin, when a voice murmured from the bed.

"Get up here."

"What?"

"Get up here. You haven't slept in two days."

"It's a hospital bed, Miles."

"It's a big hospital bed." A rustle of sheets. "I don't mind."

"You're hooked up to eleven machines."

"I'll make room."

Adrian looked at him, at the lopsided half-smile and the ridiculous nest of tubes, and felt the last of his resistance dissolve. He kicked off his shoes. He climbed carefully onto the very edge of the narrow mattress, lay on his side with his back to the rail, and found a warm hand waiting to curl around his wrist.

"Adrian," Miles said softly, into the dark. "The wish cards."

"Hm?"

"You owe me a stack."

Adrian choked on a laugh. "You're still thinking about that."

"I almost died to get that *anything*. I can't waste it."

"No," Adrian said, closing his eyes. "No, I suppose you can't."

"I'm going to write one for every day."

"Please do."

"I'm here," Miles whispered, sleepily, nose pressed into his shoulder. "I'm right here."

---

They sent him home on the nineteenth day.

"The guest room faces south," Adrian said, hovering in the doorway of the mansion's east wing, holding a stack of freshly laundered pillows. "It's quiet. Sunny. The nurse can stay in the dressing room."

"I want your room."

"Nonsense."

"The doctor said I need watching at night."

"We have a nurse for that."

"Your room has the biggest bed."

"Miles—"

"If my wound hurts at midnight," Miles said, from the wheelchair, with great dignity, "can a nurse go to that site for you? Take that blow for you?" He folded his arms, wincing. "No. I thought not."

Adrian stared at him for a long moment.

Then he sighed, set down the pillows, and went to move his own things to the guest room.

"Wrong direction," Miles called after him, delighted. "You're staying *with* me!"

---

"The maintenance company cut corners," Marcus reported, on the twentieth night, standing in the study with his hat in his hands. "The straps were substandard, sir. Counterfeit rigging, certificates forged. We traced the contract back through three shell corporations to Barrett's nephew."

"And?"

"Everyone involved has been dealt with."

"Everyone," Adrian repeated, very softly.

"Yes, sir."

"Good."

He sat for a long time after Marcus left, looking at the empty hearth. When he went upstairs, the lamp was still burning in the master bedroom.

Miles lay propped against four pillows in the big bed, in a pair of Adrian's own pajamas, a book open and forgotten against his chest. He looked up as the door opened and his whole face lit.

"Adrian."

"You should be asleep."

"You've never said you love me."

The words dropped into the room like a stone into a still pond.

Adrian paused halfway to the bed.

"Take your medicine," he said, finally, "and go to sleep."

"There you go again." Miles's lips twitched. "In the hospital, you said you'd agree to anything. You swore they'd all come true."

"That was—"

"A wish. It was a wish. I made one." His voice dropped, softer, more dangerous. "Come here."

Adrian came. He didn't know why. He sat on the edge of the bed and found his hands being taken, both of them, and held in warm fingers.

"Miles," he said helplessly.

"Could you kiss me first?" Miles murmured. "That's not hard, is it?"

It wasn't hard.

It was the easiest thing in the world.

He leaned down and covered that mouth with his own, gently, carefully, mindful of every stitch, every bruise. Miles sighed into the kiss, a small, contented sound, and slid a hand up into Adrian's hair. They stayed like that for a long, slow minute, breathing each other in, and when Adrian finally drew back, his heart was pounding as if he were twenty again.

"Love is a very small part of it," he said hoarsely.

Miles blinked.

"I mean—" Adrian laughed unsteadily. "Listen. Love is a very small part of what I feel. It's the part that fits into words. The rest of it—" He pressed his forehead to Miles's. "The rest of it is the sun coming up. The reason I get out of bed. It's you at the other end of the table, and your shoes in the hall, and your stupid, stubborn, impossible face."

"Adrian—"

"Admitting I love you won't stop the sun from rising. The city won't fall. And if anyone insists on judging—" His voice caught, and steadied. "They can do it to my face."

Silence.

Miles's eyes were shining.

"Say it," he whispered.

"I love you."

A breath. A tremor. A hand clenched in the front of his shirt.

"Again."

"No."

"*Adrian.*"

"I only say the good stuff once," Adrian said, and kissed him again, laughing, and let himself be pulled down against a warm, unbroken heartbeat.

---

A long time later, in the hush of the lamplit room, Miles stirred.

"There's something I should tell you."

"Mm?"

"The envelope."

Adrian's eyes opened. "The one on my desk. The night you left."

"You never opened it."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I knew what you'd said." Adrian's fingers drifted through his hair. "A paternity test. I thought: if it says what I think it says, I don't want to know. And if it says anything else—" He swallowed. "Then it still won't change how I feel. So there was no reason to read it."

Miles smiled against his collarbone. "Idiot."

"I've been called worse."

"There is no test." He tilted his head back. "I never ordered one. I was lying. I wanted to hurt you. I wanted you to wonder, just once, whether you'd been wrong about everything." He reached under his pillow, slowly, with a grimace, and drew out a cream-colored card with a rumpled corner. "That's what's in the envelope. I put it back in your study the night we—" He stopped. "The night before I left."

Adrian took the card.

It was the same heavy stock, with the same embossed crest, and across it, in Miles's untidy, slanting hand, were four words.

*Wish one: Never leave.*

His throat closed.

"I wrote it before you even gave me the first one," Miles said. "I knew. I knew you'd give it, one day. I just didn't know it'd take a whole winter and a crane."

"I never left," Adrian said, thickly. "I never will."

"I know." A pause. Then, with the infinite casualness of the truly guilty: "Oh. And I found something."

"What?"

Miles reached under the pillow again and drew out a heavy gold ring.

The Moretti wolf glinted in the lamplight.

Adrian stared.

"My old ring," he said slowly. "It was *you*. You were the one who hid it."

"Since the night of the dinner." Miles had the grace to look sheepish. "I thought if you had nothing of his, you might finally notice what was in front of you." He held it out. "Do you want it?"

Adrian looked at the ring for a long moment. Then he looked at the plain steel band on his left hand, scuffed now, worn smooth from three months of daily wearing.

"Too many rings," he said, "is a hassle."

"Is that a no?"

"Your father's ring," Adrian said, closing Miles's fingers over it, "you keep it."

"Adrian—"

"He was a good man. He pulled me out of hell. I'll love him in my way until I die." He kissed the knuckles gently. "But he isn't the one I wake up for. You are."

Miles stared at him.

Then, with an expression of utter, shattered tenderness, he pressed the old gold ring against his own heart and closed his eyes.

"Go to sleep, baby," Adrian murmured, and drew the blanket up around his shoulders.

"You said baby."

"I said go to sleep."

"You said *baby*," Miles mumbled, already drifting, smiling into his chest.

Adrian lay awake a little longer, listening to the breathing of the only person in the world he could not live without, and looking at the faint glimmer of the city through the curtains. Somewhere out there, in a small clapboard shop by the sea, a man with Gabriel's hands was closing up for the night, whistling off-key. Somewhere a one-eyed cat waited on a back step.

*Be happy*, Adrian thought, to the dark, to the old ghost, to the boy he had been. *I'll take care of him. I swear it on my name.*

Then, at last, the Mafia heir's heart finally let him go, and he slept.

EPILOGUE

The Last Wish

Spring came to the house on Hollis Row with an open window and a smell of rain.

It was six months to the day since the accident. Miles had been walking without a cane for three of them. He'd returned to work in the fourth, to the visible terror of the senior partners, and in the fifth he'd taken over the entire eastern port. Now, on the first warm Sunday of April, he stood in the doorway of the master bedroom with his shirt half-unbuttoned and a small cream-colored card in his fingers.

"I've decided on the last one," he said.

Adrian looked up from the bed, where he was reading a ledger with his glasses on the end of his nose. "The last what?"

"The last wish." Miles closed the door behind him, and the lock turned with a soft click. "The final card. Do you want to hear it?"

"Is it going to cost me another building?"

"No." Miles crossed the room slowly. His eyes were dark and deliberate, his smile curving at the corner. "It's going to cost you the rest of the afternoon."

Adrian set the ledger on the nightstand. He removed his glasses. He folded them with great care, placed them on top of the ledger, and looked up at the young man who had come to a stop at the foot of the bed.

"Read it."

Miles flicked the card between two fingers, and then, in a low voice, read:

"*Wish eleven hundred and four: let me take care of you.*"

Adrian's breath left him.

"I want to see you come apart," Miles said, "the way I have. Every night. Every day for eight years." He set the card on the sheet. "I want you to let me. All of it. Whatever I want."

"Miles—"

"You said *anything*." He unbuttoned his shirt, the rest of the way, and let it slide off his shoulders. The long pink scar across his ribs gleamed in the lamplight. He climbed onto the bed on his knees and crawled up the length of it, slow as a cat, and Adrian's hands lifted of their own accord and settled on his hips. "You swore."

"I did."

"Then say yes."

"Yes," Adrian said, hoarsely, and pulled him down.

What followed was long and unhurried. It was nothing like the desperate night in the study, no frantic hunger, no grief. It was a slow unwinding. It was lamplight and open windows and warm skin, and Miles's mouth moving over every scar he had ever wondered about. It was Adrian's laughter breaking into a groan against the pillow, and Miles murmuring *there you are, there you are* into his throat, and the fierce, tender wonder of being seen entirely and not turned away.

At some point the afternoon light slid across the floor and turned amber, then rose.

At some point the card slipped off the bed and lay face up on the rug, ignored, the ink a little smudged where a thumb had traced it.

*Let me take care of you.*

And for the first time in thirty-six years, Adrian Cole let someone.

---

Much later, in the long gold hush, he lay with his cheek against Miles's shoulder, one hand spread over the steady drum of his heart, and watched the curtains stir.

"I have another wish," Adrian murmured.

"You don't get wishes. You're the one who grants them."

"I'm making an exception."

Miles laughed softly into his hair. "Go on."

"Stay."

The arm around him tightened.

"That's the easiest one yet," Miles said, and kissed his forehead. "Done."

Outside, the spring rain began, soft and silver on the roof of the old house, and a city that had never learned to forgive anyone went on sleeping, indifferent, beneath it.

Inside, the Mafia heir held on, and did not let go.

THE END