Chapter 19 #3
For the first time since beginning his story, Dominic seemed to struggle for the words. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of one hand, then dragged his fingers through his hair. Trey followed his instincts—he moved to sit next to Dominic and put a hand on his knee.
Dominic leaned until their shoulders pressed together.
“I’d dozed off, and then suddenly Mr. Chambers was in my room.
He had chicken soup from a nearby deli and a sports drink.
He said the soup would settle my stomach.
I ate it, of course, because back then I’d have done anything he asked.
About halfway through I started feeling really drowsy, so I put the soup aside.
I remember laying down and curling up to sleep some more.
Everything after that got real fuzzy and far away, like the vague memory of a dream you might have had a long time ago.
I remember feeling like I wasn’t alone under the covers.
I remember an ache”—he glanced at his lap—“down there.”
Trey squeezed his knee harder. One of Dominic’s hands covered his, and Dominic’s dark eyes were wet. Trey wanted to shatter into a thousand pieces of glass and use them to grind Mr. Chambers into nothing. He wanted the bastard obliterated for what he’d done to his Dominic.
His Dominic.
“In the morning I was sick to my stomach, kind of hungover, and I couldn’t shake a sense of wrongness.
I ached in weird places. At first I didn’t remember Mr. Chambers being there the night before, so I chalked it all up to anxiety, but I also couldn’t leave my hotel room.
I refused to go listen to the rest of the performances, and I refused to go to the awards that night.
One of the parent chaperones wanted to take me to the emergency room but I swore up and down I’d go to my doctor the next day. All I wanted was to go home.
“The last few days of school were a blur. Orchestra was over, and I was glad. But I couldn’t get better, and I didn’t know what was wrong with me.
Being around crowds made me crazy. I wanted to stay in my room at home all the time.
I refused to go to my tutor sessions with Mr. Chambers.
I was so fucking scared of everyone. My mom dragged me to all kinds of doctors.
One of them said I was depressed and gave me pills.
Mom handed them to me every day at breakfast, but the fucking things made me feel worse, so I pretended to take them. Stashed them in my bedroom.
“I’d made plans for Lincoln to come visit in July, and I tried but he knew something was wrong.
I pretty much drove him off, and at the time I thought for good.
The new school year started. I wasn’t even excited about being a senior.
The first day of orchestra practice, I walked into the room without my violin, made it about five steps inside before I had to vomit.
I never went back into that room again. I quit orchestra, quit playing music period.
I knew I was scaring my parents. I was scaring myself, and I wasn’t even sure why.
“By December I’d been to four different therapists, and my parents were at their wits’ end with me.
I saw it and I didn’t know how to change.
I didn’t want to change or to feel better.
And then Roxy, who was a freshman in my high school that year, came home the last day before winter break and said that Mr. Chambers had been fired. ”
“Fired for what?” Trey asked after another long pause.
“A freshman orchestra member who played violin went to his parents after Mr. Chambers insinuated the boy would get a better part if he was”—Dominic made air quotes—“nice to Mr. Chambers. Said it wasn’t the first time Mr. Chambers had insinuated something, and the boy was smart enough to get it on his phone.
Eventually the police became involved, but that was after. ”
Trey didn’t want to know, and he had to swallow several times before he could form the words. “After what?”
“After I ran upstairs, locked myself into my room, and took all the antidepressants I’d been saving up.”
“Fuck.” Trey’s heart broke for Dominic—for someone so amazing and full of life to have reached an emotional low so devastating that he’d tried to kill himself to make the pain stop.
“Roxy saved my life. She was always a smart kid, and she called 911 right before she climbed the tree outside my bedroom window and broke it with a bat to get inside. She shoved her fingers down my throat and made me throw up most of the pills. The whole time I was crying and cussing at her for interfering.” A single tear trickled down Dominic’s left cheek.
“She stayed with me until the paramedics showed up.”
“Thank God for her.” Trey yanked Dominic into his arms, all too aware of how precious this man was. Knowing how close he’d come to never knowing Dominic. How much poorer the world would have been without his music in it.
He pressed his face into Dominic’s throat, feeling the warm, sweaty skin, uncertain when tears had started leaking from his own eyes.
His insides were shaking, and it took a long moment to realize that his outsides were, too.
Dominic clung to him, breathing hard now, reliving painful memories all because Trey happened to be there during bad news.
“It took almost three days in the hospital before I finally broke and told my parents everything.” Dominic’s voice was rough, fractured with grief.
“They went straight to the police. Eventually two more former students made statements about inappropriate behavior, but no one else’s story was quite like mine.
He pled guilty, and it wasn’t until he admitted it to the police that I knew for sure what happened that night. ”
Dominic pulled back, eyes shiny and red-veined. He swallowed hard, and Trey braced for the words. “I finally knew for sure that he’d drugged and raped me.”
Hearing it made Trey rage even harder. Knowing a grown man had taken advantage of a teenager’s trust and musical dreams and done something so horrible.
So life-altering, and that those actions had driven Dominic to attempt suicide.
A small part of him was also furious at his parents for not seeing how much their son had been hurting.
For not doing more to get him help, even though that wasn’t fair.
Trey didn’t want to be fair about this. He wanted someone to pay for Dominic’s pain.
He also wanted to find and hug the life out of Roxy for saving Dominic that day. For giving him a chance to finally tell his story and prevent another kid from being abused by Joseph Chambers.
Trey couldn’t find the words to communicate how he felt in that moment, so he took both of Dominic’s hands and pressed them against his own chest, right over his heart. And he held them there.
Dominic gave him a precious gift by smiling. “It took a lot of therapy before I was able to say that out loud. First to the shrink, and then to my parents. I told Lincoln, too, because I missed him, and he was so great about it.”
“The overprotective-best-friend bit makes a lot more sense now,” Trey said.
“Yeah, it does. Outside of him and my family, you’re the first person I’ve told.”
“Thank you.” He kissed the knuckles of one of Dominic’s hands. “I mean that. Considering how up-and-down we’ve been this last month and a half, you didn’t owe me an explanation.”
“I know. But I wanted to tell you. Not just because you overheard us tonight, but because I trust you. And I hope this thing we have is going to last. This is an important part of who I am, and you deserve to know.”
“I’m glad you told me.” He pressed a firm kiss to Dominic’s forehead. “It’s a good thing I don’t know any hit men, because that bastard doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as you, much less get out of prison for what he did.”
“The first time we heard that he was eligible for parole, I thought my dad was going to explode, he was so mad. I sent in a victim statement letter, and I don’t know what good it did or didn’t do, but they didn’t release him that year.
Or last year. Guess the parole board figured his debt was paid.
” The final few words were coated in bitterness.
“Maybe to society or whatever, but not to you.”
“I went to visit him once. Four years ago.”
Trey nearly startled right off the lounge. “What? Why?”
“I wanted to ask why me. Why did he fixate on me? Why did he groom me to be emotionally dependent on him? Why did he rape me, and not those other kids?”
“What did he say?”
Dominic snorted. “He refused the visit.”
“Bastard.”
“At first I was upset. I mean, what right did he have to deny me answers? Lincoln helped me see that it didn’t matter why he’d picked me. Knowing wouldn’t change what had happened, and I needed to move on as best I could. I needed to pick up my violin again and remember why I loved music.”
“The violin reminded you of him.”
“Yeah. It’s why playing at Off Beat that night was so huge for me. I didn’t even tell Lincoln I was going to do it, but when I did he was so proud of me.”
A tiny flare of jealousy lit in Trey’s gut. “I’m proud too.”
“I know. Starting a YouTube channel was Linc’s idea, too.”
“You have a YouTube channel?” Something else that he was the last to know about, apparently.
“It wasn’t supposed to be anything bigger than me playing my violin for a web cam and then uploading it.
Playing for an audience without actually seeing them, you know?
And it helped with my anxiety. Only I started getting followers.
From dozens to hundreds, and now in the four digits.
So I uploaded a video very vaguely telling my story—how music saved me from the demons that wanted to flay me alive.
And I started getting comments from people, especially teenagers, about coming out and being brave and not letting things get so bad that you do something desperate and dangerous. ”
“Wow.” Disappointment about not knowing about the channel until now couldn’t bring down his pride for Dominic and how far he’d come. How fucking strong he was, to go through something so horrible and become an inspiration to others. “You are so amazing, Dom.”
Dominic ducked his head, his lips quirking. “I’m surviving. One day at a time. Off Beat was freeing for me in a lot of ways. It laid one more demon to rest.”
“But they’re not all gone?”
“I doubt they’ll ever truly be gone, but one day I’d like to be able to take the stage in front of thousands, instead of under a hundred, and play my violin again. To really exorcise that fear.”
“What about adding your violin into your set for nationals?”
Dominic pulled back, his face so horrified Trey might as well have asked him to microwave kittens. “No way. It’s too soon, and I’ve never played my strings with the band.”
Trey put his hands up in surrender. “Okay, sorry. It just seemed like a ready-made solution.”
“I can’t. Not there.”
“Not there as in Unbound, or not there as in New York?”
The answer was clear in Dominic’s flinch. “Orchestra nationals were in Carnegie Hall. Same theater as Unbound.”
“But doesn’t that kind of make it the very best possible place to get up onstage and reclaim your joy? Reclaim everything he took from you?”
“No. Forget it.” Dominic’s face hardened. The battle was lost.