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.