Rhys #2
“You have no idea,” I deadpanned, before thinking better of it. “Just get out of the way, and let us leave. This doesn’t have to be a confrontation.”
I wasn’t a violent person by nature. Sure I’d gotten into a fight or two in high school, immature jerk stuff, but I’d never relished using my size or strength to intimidate anyone. All that aside, I’d have had absolutely zero reservations about laying the old man flat to protect Kendall.
It occurred to me that I really had nothing to offer him, besides myself.
And I was no prize. I wasn’t financially successful, far from it, and I made stupid mistakes all the time.
I could fix things in his apartment and change the oil in his car, at least. But one thing I could do for him was protect him from anyone that would ever try to hurt him.
As long as I was breathing, no one would put their hands on him ever again.
“Kendall,” Vivian started, wringing her hands together nervously like she couldn’t stand all the yelling and tension. Like she wasn’t the fucking one who’d caused all the yelling and tension. “If you died tomorrow, you’d spend eternity in hell. Doesn’t that scare you?”
“I already lived in hell, having you as a mother,” Kendall spit out, in a venom-tinged voice I’d never heard from him before. “I don’t want you to contact me again. Ever. Not from a different phone number or whatever other stupid, manipulative bullshit you happen to come up with.”
“Honor your father and mother,” Hayward snarled, and I could see his temper was starting to reach its peak.
I was completely certain that if I hadn’t been between them, he’d have already lost it and lunged at Kendall.
Because I could imagine it too clearly in my mind, I kept my eyes locked on him even when I felt Kendall inch up closer to me. “That’s a commandment.”
“I’m pretty sure the bible probably says something about tolerance and acceptance too, but you never showed me any of that,” he countered. “You’re a terrible person, and a terrible father. If I never see you again for the rest of my life, it’ll still be too soon.”
When Kendall gently nudged at me like he wanted me to go with him to the car, I carefully let him guide me back toward it. I didn’t trust Hayward Austin enough to take my eyes off him for even a second.
“I just don’t get you,” he said, shaking his head in disgust at me. “You’re a man. You’re normal. I’ve seen it. Doesn’t it make you sick, seeing someone like him prancing around, making a mockery of everything you stand for?”
“Make me sick?” I repeated, nearly letting out a hysterical laugh.
It was the most surreal question I’d ever been asked.
If Kendall Austin, the person I’d come to associate with my peace and happiness and pride, that I couldn’t get enough and would have jumped in front of a bullet for, made me sick.
Anger for everything he’d had to go through welled up inside me, the injustice of it slashing at me like a knife.
I couldn’t change anything about that part of his life.
All I could do was make him happy for the rest of it.
I reached out, cupping under Kendall’s chin so he was forced to stare up into my eyes with confusion.
But when I raised my eyebrows questioningly, and he realized exactly what I was asking for, he took in a sharp inhale, his lips parting a little with the shock.
My heart was pounding, smacking up against my ribs like it was a fighter trapped in a cage, ready to burst out and attack.
I’d never done this in front of anyone before.
It’d always been this abstract, intangible idea that I’d been too afraid to really imagine in any realistic capacity.
But the fact that Hayward would suspect for even a moment that I found Kendall anything other than the most beautiful person I’d ever known in my entire life was completely fucking unacceptable.
I leaned in and pressed my mouth onto his, a chaste kiss that was over much too quickly but still long enough that the tip of my tongue tingled from the contact with his plush lower lip.
When I pulled back, Kendall was staring up at me in an awed daze, his fingers digging into the front of my t-shirt, panting like he was out of breath.
“Get in the car,” I murmured, jerking my chin toward it. He obeyed immediately, without so much as a backward glance toward his parents. When I finally turned to face them, though I’d kept them in my peripherals the whole time, I could finally take in their bewildered faces.
“If you ever reach out to him again without him giving the okay, I swear I will do everything in my power to make your life a living hell,” I warned. “If he wants anything to do with either of you, he’ll let you know. Do you understand me?”
Vivian seemed too stunned to speak, and could only respond with a tiny nod. But Hayward looked incensed, too surprised to even be repulsed.
“Do you understand me?” I repeated, slower this time, and he hissed out a breath before spitting onto the ground.
“It’s sick,” he mumbled, like he couldn’t physically keep himself from commenting on the fact that I, someone he surely couldn’t comprehend as one of those prancing fairy boys, had just kissed his son right in front of him. That was fine. I’d wanted him to be bothered by it.
“Yeah,” I scoffed, barely resisting the urge to roll my eyes. “I’m the sick one. Don’t forget what I said.”
Kendall had voluntarily put himself back in the passenger seat, so I slid into the driver’s side, jamming the keys in the ignition and revving up the car before hauling ass out of there. I wanted as much distance between them and us as possible.
My adrenaline started to wane a little as I sped down the road, and the gravity of everything began to wash over me. I couldn’t bring myself to look over at Kendall.
“I can’t believe you did that,” he finally said, in a soft voice I found myself struggling to decode the meaning of.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, feeling heat rise to the surface of my skin. “I shouldn’t have! I know. I just… I don’t know, it was all I could think about, and I wanted him to get where I was coming from, and-”
“Rhys,” he cut me off, as he tended to do when I was babbling like a fucking idiot. “I’m not upset.”
“You’re not?” I asked, finally forcing myself to glance over at him, just for a second.
He looked a bit shaken, probably from the confrontation with his parents, but otherwise the way he was staring at me was totally fucking infatuated.
Like he was holding himself back from launching himself across the center console into my lap. “What are you?”
He let out a surprised chuckle, probably because of the stupid way I’d asked that question.
“I’m… I don’t know,” he finally admitted, after a pause.
“I just never imagined doing something like that. It feels kind of liberating, putting it in their face like that. It made me feel like I was finally proving that there’s nothing wrong with me. ”
“Still, I… I should have asked first. I mean, it came on really strong for me, that urge to just… Show them what you are to me. But I didn’t know if you’d be upset about me just putting us out there without your permission.”
“Rhys,” he repeated my name, and this time I understood how he was feeling loud and clear.
No one had ever spoken to me with so much lovesick devotion before.
“I know that coming out is a huge deal for you, but it’s different for me.
You don’t need my permission for anything.
As soon as you feel like you’re ready to tell people, then I’m ready. And I can wait until you are.”
Relieved, I let myself relax a bit in the seat. “Thank you. I think you might be the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Sparkles.”
When I let myself glance over to him one more time, the smile carved across his mouth was painfully adorable. And now I was the one that had to keep from launching across the console at him.
“Not to be conceited, but I think I might be, too.”
Laughing, I punched the gas to pass a yellow light just before it turned red. “Alright, I’m taking you home. You look like you’re in serious need of cuddles.”
“Oh, um, wait!” He said, as if he’d suddenly remembered something. “I know today’s already been a lot, but… there’s something I’ve been wanting to do. And I don’t think I want to do it alone.”
“Whatever you need.”
“You know that empty lot in your parents’ neighborhood?”
“Yeah?” Sometimes people would bring picnic stuff over there, or kids would play in it.
“Can you just park there?”
“Uh, sure. Why do you want to go there?”
“I want to walk over to the house on Mulberry. There’s something I need to get, but we’re not really supposed to be there, so…”
“Got it.”
The daylight was almost completely gone, and that neighborhood was really quiet at night.
It was highly unlikely we’d be seen or run into any issues sneaking a few properties over to the spooky house.
By the time I pulled into the back corner of the empty lot, the sun had completely set, all the fiery warmth drowned out by the inky, star-dotted sky.
We silently made our way over to the abandoned house, dodging the pools of lights from the street lamps.
I didn’t think anyone would call the cops on us if they saw us, and if they did I highly doubted Sheriff Henderson would make a big fuss about it, but it would be kind of embarrassing to be caught sneaking into this place at 28 and 24 years of age.
When we finally got into the yard, Kendall led me around to the back of the house and showed me a tiny window down below the soil line that must have led into the basement of the house.
It would only be reachable by lowering down into the window well, pushing it up and squeezing through the minuscule opening.