Chapter 25 #2
“For a while, I’d known secretly that I was attracted to girls and guys, but I lived in a tiny, homophobic town, so I’d never explored being a with a guy.
Not until that New Year’s Eve, when Brady kissed me in the barn, after counting down the new year together.
I’d never felt anything so right in my short life.
I was nervous, of course, but Brady had fooled around before.
He taught me about hand jobs and blow jobs, and we spent a lot of time in that barn, exploring each other.
“We started dreaming about a life together. On the road, both of us playing to packed houses all through the south, partners in public and lovers in private. I fell in love with him. As deeply in love as a seventeen-year-old can be, but it was real. Brady was three months older than me, so he’d turn eighteen first, but he promised to wait for me. And then we’d leave and be free.”
Dread twisted around Benji’s heart. No story with that sort of buildup had a happy ending, and the wetness in Van’s eyes told the end before he said it.
“The second Saturday in May was a huge county fair, and my parents never missed going. They showed my mother’s baked goods and canned jams, and she always won some kind of ribbon, so the whole family usually packed up to go for the day.
Only I complained of a sick stomach so I could stay home.
About an hour after they’d gone, Brady showed up because we’d arranged to have the day together.
We were finally going to try anal sex, and we wanted to do it in a real bed, not in the hayloft. I wanted him to do me first.”
Van choked a bit on that. Benji slid out of his chair to kneel next to Van’s knee and clasp his hands. Joshua mimicked his pose, both of them there for whatever Van said next, no matter what.
“We were naked in bed, Brady ready to do it, when my old man burst in screaming about sin and beating the devil out of us. He hit Brady with my guitar case. I tried to run and he hit me too. A couple of times.” Van’s right hand twitched.
“Then he crushed my dominant hand under his goddamn work boot. Broke a bunch of bones. All I remember is the pain, hearing Brady scream, and then my old man dragging him out of the bedroom. It was the last time I ever saw Brady.”
A lump thickened Benji’s throat, making it difficult to swallow or breathe. He didn’t want to hear anymore, but there was no escaping Van’s truth.
Tears slid down Van’s cheeks, but he barely felt them over the steady pounding in his skull and the ache in his stomach. Reaching into his past hurt more than he’d expected it to. The memories were so fucking fresh, so painful, as if they’d happened last week, instead of a decade ago.
That’s what happens when you block bad shit out, instead of dealing with it.
Regret and self-hatred continued to ooze down his cheeks from tears that weren’t really from sadness.
His body simply couldn’t contain the pain any longer, and it had to go somewhere.
He despised himself for dumping it onto his boyfriends.
His two beautiful boyfriends who were watching him with so much compassion it nearly broke him.
“What happened to Brady?” Benji asked.
Van had to swallow several times to find his voice.
“He ended up a missing person. My father took me to the hospital and said my hand got damaged in a farm accident, and I didn’t correct him.
I never spoke against anything he said to anyone, not even the police when they questioned us about Brady’s disappearance.
I stayed silent, in survival mode, and as soon as I could, I left.
I left everything behind. Brady, my guitar, my so-called family.
I went to New Orleans, and I did my very best to forget and to punish myself for not saving him.
Liquor and drugs and risky sex, all of it.
I think I was trying to kill myself, but I was never strong enough to really go through with it. ”
He should have died ten times over in the Big Easy, considering all of the stupid shit he’d done, but somehow he’d survived. He’d survived, while Brady lay in a dry gulch, his flesh eaten by wildlife, his bones bleached by the sun.
“Van, who called yesterday?” Joshua asked.
“My brother Kirby. We actually had a good relationship. He’s the only person from my past who knows how to get in touch with me if he needs to.”
“And he needed to.”
Van’s breaths shortened as the urgent need to vomit overtook him. “The cops finally found Brady’s body out in the desert.”
Benji made a soft, pained sound, his own eyes brimming with tears. Van didn’t want Benji crying over this. It wasn’t his pain to carry.
“The cops and coroner ruled his death an accident,” Van said. “They assumed he was out alone in the desert, fell, and hit his head on a rock, then probably died of exposure because he couldn’t get help.”
“But you don’t think that,” Joshua said.
The intense pressure in his chest and stomach was too much.
Van vaulted out of his chair, ignoring his boyfriends’ surprised shouts.
He bolted into the living room, every limb trembling with the force of his emotions.
His regret and guilt and self-hatred, and the love he’d never stopped carrying for Brady.
His first love, who died because he loved Van back.
He paced, because if he stopped, he’d explode, and he didn’t want to explode.
He wanted it all to go away so he didn’t have to dump it on Benji and Joshua.
Except he’d already put it out there. All they had to do was draw the inevitable conclusion, and they’d hate him.
Hate him for not going to the authorities ten years ago.
For never saying anything between then and now.
For not immediately flying down to Texas to tell Brady’s parents the truth about their son’s death.
Maybe truth. The only people who know for sure what happened are both dead.
“You think your father killed Brady,” Benji said.
The words, spoken plainly and out loud for the first time, broke Van completely.
Someone grabbed him before he hit the floor, and he clung to the bodies closing in on him while his heart shattered.
He grieved for a boy he’d loved without reservation, and whose death had haunted his every waking hour for ten years.
That tiny, distant hope that Brady was still alive and thriving somewhere—always a fantasy at best—dissolved with the force of his tears.
He wasn’t the only one crying, and that made it all somehow worse, that his grief was hurting the two men he loved more than anything else in the world.
He apologized over and over, and he begged them not to hate him.
He cried himself sick, until he was bent over the toilet, retching up what little he’d eaten at breakfast. Two voices stayed with him, hands constantly caressing him, promising they loved him no matter what.
The secret had been slowly poisoning him for a decade; now that he’d lanced the wound, he couldn’t make it stop.
Couldn’t keep it in any longer, and he didn’t want to.
At some point, he became aware of a pillow and sheets. They were all back in bed, piled together with Van in the middle, surrounded by love and support, and warm bodies. His eyes were sandy and his nose stuffy. His head hurt. His entire body ached with grief and exhaustion.
“Don’t leave me,” Van whispered.
“Never.” Joshua stroked damp hair off his forehead. “You’re stuck with us.”
“Promise?”
“We promise,” Benji said. “We’ll get through this.”
“As a throuple,” Joshua added.
Van’s short bark of laughter dissolved into a choked sob. “You hate that word.”
“I know, but it made you laugh.”
“Doesn’t feel right to laugh. Ever again.”
“Hey.” Joshua tilted his chin so Van had to look him in the eye. “You kept a devastating secret for a long time, but just because Brady died doesn’t mean you aren’t entitled to live. No matter what happens next, you are allowed to be happy Van Holt.”
“Donovan.” Van hadn’t said that name out loud in ages, either. “My first name’s Donovan. But everyone used to call me Donnie, because Donovan sounded stuck up. Donnie died in that bedroom, though, and I wasn’t anyone until I left home and became Van.”
“And Van is the guy we both fell in love with,” Benji said. He rested his chin on Van’s chest. “He’s the guy we still love and will do anything we can to help get through this. No matter what you want to do.”
As in, do you want to go to Texas and tell the truth?
Did he? He could tell his side of the story, the truth of that final day, but it proved nothing.
Van hadn’t seen his father drag Brady out into the desert.
He hadn’t seen him strike Brady with a rock.
Maybe after the old man tossed him out, Brady had tried to stumble home and really had hit his head by accident?
Would Van’s truth do anything to alleviate the Gibbonses’ pain, or only add to it?
There was no one left to punish except Van.
Maybe I deserve to be punished. Maybe I deserve prison for living freely while he died so painfully. Alone in the desert. Did he die thinking I abandoned him?
“He must have been so scared,” Van said. “I should have tried harder to save him.”
Joshua shook his head sadly. “It’s easy to say that now, but back then? You’d been brutalized and terrorized by your father. An authority figure who was supposed to protect you, not break your hand and destroy your love of music. You did what you had to do in order to save yourself.”
“I could have gone back at any time and told the police what I knew. Hell, I could have done it years ago after my father died, and I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you do.” Joshua cupped his cheek, held him steady. Kept him from breaking apart and flying away. “You know why.”
Van closed his eyes, but couldn’t see Brady’s youthful, smiling face anymore. All he saw was a sun-bleached skull covered in sand. “He was dead, and telling wouldn’t bring him back.”
“Once more, present tense.”
He opened his eyes, looking first at Joshua’s determination, and then at Benji’s strength, and they both helped him find the words. “Brady is dead, and telling won’t bring him back.”
“Sometimes protecting others from the truth is a mercy,” Benji said. “They found his body. Let Brady’s parents grieve and move on, and you do the same.”
“The first person I fell in love with died.” Van choked on the rest of his words, desperate for them to understand without him saying it.
“So you hid your heart away, until we came along. And you took a risk by loving us. Was the risk worth it?”
“Yes. So much yes.” Van tried to hug them both at once, which was both awkward and kind of awesome, all arms and noses and soft kisses. “The news about Brady hurt. It still hurts. But I wouldn’t trade our lives together for anything.”
“Good answer,” Benji said.
Joshua nuzzled at Van’s neck. “Very good answer.”
Now.
Now was the time to say the words. To put voice to the things he felt and tried to say in his actions, but hadn’t said out loud yet. Not to the two people who needed to hear it.
“I love you,” Van said. “Joshua. Benji. I love you both so much.”
“We love you, too,” Benji whispered.
Joshua placed a hand over Van’s heart. “Always.”