Chapter Sixteen
Caleb
My eyes lock onto the small tattoo on Kayden’s hip. I stare in disbelief, but there’s no question about it. It’s the same tattoo, a small dandelion breaking through concrete, some written lines above it, etched into his flawless skin. That damn tan line has haunted me since I first saw it.
“You’re him. You’re that guy; dicKmedown.”
Kayden gapes at me, his mouth opening and closing.
Panic moves through his eyes as he wraps his arms around his naked body.
I jump from the bed, and after a few long strides that feel like forever, I’m wrapped around him, his arms trapped between us.
He’s shaking like a leaf caught in a storm, his erratic breathing hot against my chest.
“Don’t panic. Please don’t panic, sweetheart.
” He trembles against me, his body stiff, like he’s gone to some place deep inside himself.
I hold him tighter against me, locking myself around his body.
I can’t fucking believe it’s him, but the revelation is not unsettling in any way if that’s what Kayden thinks.
It’s mind-blowing for sure, but I loved everything I did with that guy, with him.
It was so fucking hot, just as hot as what I’ve just experienced with Kayden.
Somehow, it makes sense that it’s the same person who has brought me to places I’ve never been before.
“I love everything we did, just now, and on that app. Everything.”
He sniffles against me, but I feel his body relaxing just a tad. I kiss his hair again and again, and eventually his arms unlock between us and snake around my waist.
“I just…” he starts, his voice unsure and frail.
“Shhh. You don’t owe me any explanation.”
“So why does it feel like I do?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart, but you don’t. No one who goes on an app to seek pleasure or live out their fantasies or kinks owes anyone anything.”
He pushes away from me, tilting his head, his gaze connecting with mine. His sky-blue eyes search my face. “You’re BigOnBacks?”
“I am.”
“I can’t believe it’s you, but I guess I should’ve known.” His words stun me.
“How? How could you have known?”
He smiles wistfully. “Because I felt safe. It felt like you weren’t a stranger.” He chuckles. “And you weren’t after all.”
“You felt safe?”
His eyes spill over with tears. “I always feel safe with you, Caleb. I always have. Even when I wasn’t at home in my own body, I felt at home with you.” He looks at me, his face honest and open, tears sliding down his flushed cheeks.
I reach out and cradle his face. “Hey, what is it?”
His gaze flickers, tears clinging to his lashes. “Is it weird? What we’re doing. What we’re becoming to each other.”
“No, K. Only if we make it weird.” I caress his chin, and he melts against me. “I’m more myself with you than I am with anyone else,” I admit.
“I’m the most myself when I’m with you, too.”
“Yeah?” My chest squeezes as his words reverberate through my body. If I haven’t already, it’s just a matter of time before I fall for Kayden. I’ve never been in love before, but I recognize the feeling anyway. It can only be love.
“Yes.” He lifts onto his toes and brushes his lips against mine. I tighten my hold on him, then lift him off the floor. He smiles against my lips, then murmurs, “I can’t fucking believe it’s you.” He snorts. “You know, it was the name that pulled me in. BigOnBacks. That and your hairy chest.”
“Really?”
He giggles. “Yes. I just had to know the person behind that name.” He pauses, his voice serious when he speaks again, “Turns out I did all along.”
I kiss him harder, and Kayden wraps his legs around me as he buries his hands in my hair.
He grinds against me, and I grow hard again.
When it comes to him, I’m apparently insatiable.
I’m usually a come and crash kind of guy, falling asleep shortly after my release, but with Kayden, it’s like I can’t get enough, like I don’t want to miss a single second.
I guess that’s what love is, then: the need to suspend time, to be with that other person all the time, not letting a single moment get lost. My eyes sting, and my chest squeezes.
I don’t trust myself, my mouth. I’m afraid of what I’ll admit to him if he stays in my arms for a single second longer.
I press a quick kiss to his mouth, then ease him down onto his feet. “Go pee, baby, then come back to bed.” Fuck, I need a minute. Or two.
Kayden smiles at me, then sweeps my hair out of my eyes. “Okay.”
As soon as he closes the bathroom door behind him, I bury my face in my hands.
I’ve never hyperventilated before, but it kind of feels like I’m close.
I’m not panicking because the idea of loving another person freaks me out.
No, that’s not it. As terrifying as the thought is, there’s only one thing that scares me right now, and that’s the thought of Kayden not wanting me back.
He’s so young, just starting his life as his true self.
He’s learning things about himself every day, discovering new parts of himself.
He’s going through this awakening, sexual and personal.
What if, at the end of this journey, he realizes that I’m not the right guy for him?
Because with my track record, it’s possible he doesn’t see anything long term with me.
Hell, it’s not just possible, it’s very likely.
And I think I could really want something more with him.
Perhaps I already do. I can’t explain why it’s him, only that it is.
It’s Kayden. It doesn’t make any sense, and still, it makes perfect sense.
He brings out a version of me no one else does, that no one else ever has.
The toilet flushes, and I make my way to the bed. I try to get my breathing under control, but it’s really fucking hard when your entire life and everything you know to be true has been flipped on its axis.
Kayden opens the door, smiling hesitantly.
“Come here.” I pat the bed, and he leaps toward me, landing next to me, burying his face against my side. I tug him against me, unable to get close enough. He’s so warm and soft and perfect. “You feel so good,” I mutter into his hair.
“So do you.” His body grows heavy against me, his breathing evening out.
“Can I… Can I read what it says? Your tattoo, I mean.”
He nods against me. “Sure.”
I tap his thigh. “Turn around.”
He turns, his front flat against the bed, the natural curves of his body along with his golden skin giving the impression of sand dunes in a desert, always moving, ever-changing, but still always the same.
I lie on my side, trailing my index finger down his spine, and he shivers beneath me.
When I reach his lower back, I lean in and press a kiss against one creamy-white globe, then the other.
Kayden sucks in a breath, grinding his hips against the mattress, his body rippling with an outdrawn moan.
Fuck, I can’t get over how responsive he is.
With my fingers, I draw circles across his ass cheeks, random patterns, and his body becomes alight underneath my touch.
“Caleb,” he whines. “Caleb.”
I kiss him again, alternating kisses between his ass cheeks.
I can smell him and myself on him, and I’m hard again.
Not in an urgent, desperate way, but more like a subtle hum, a faint whisper of desire beneath my skin, like my body is singing with secret longing, some strange language it didn’t always have a tune for, but has now found with him, in Kayden’s arms. When I reach his tattoo, I stop, my lips hovering above his skin.
I trace the letters with my tongue, and Kayden chants my name again and again like a prayer. Caleb. Caleb. Caleb.
I once, as a kid, asked my mom why she and Dad chose the name Caleb for me.
If it meant something. She said they just liked it and thought it was a beautiful name, so I looked it up.
Dog, it said, in Hebrew. Dog. Then I read on.
Heart. It could mean heart, too. In the Old Testament, Caleb was the name of one of the twelve spies sent by Moses into Canaan.
Of the Israelites who left Egypt with Moses, Caleb was the only one of two who lived to see the Promised Land.
It didn’t mean anything to me back then, as a kid.
My parents weren’t religious, and we didn’t go to church.
The concept of the Promised Land carried no meaning to me, but now, hearing Kayden chant my name with such reverence, the memory stands more vivid than ever.
The Promised Land. What if he is that, my promised land? Mine.
I kiss the words again and again like I want them to become part of me without even knowing what they say. “Read them to me,” I beg against his skin. “Read them to me.”
Kayden’s hand finds my hair, his fingers digging into my scalp as he holds me against him.
His voice is calm and steady when he speaks, his eyes closed, “‘You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies. You may tread me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise. You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I’ll rise.
’” His voice breaks on the last syllable, and silence fills the room.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper against his skin. “You are beautiful, Kayden.”
“It’s Maya Angelou,” he says quietly. I’ve heard the name, but I’m not familiar with her poems. “It’s about the courage and resilience of Black women.
But… somehow it just struck a chord in me.
It’s like… I know their unique experience isn’t mine, but I see myself in her words.
They resonate. I am hated by some people, too, people who don’t even know me and will never know me, for the sole reason that I am trans.
Because I am something I can change just as little as someone can change the color of their skin. It’s just…”
“What, sweetheart?”
“It’s just so sad, you know, and so unfair.
And yet, so damn banal. The face of hate is always the same, so banal in its simplistic way of viewing the world.
The subject of hate is the same, too. It’s anyone who refuses to let anyone else dictate who they are and their right to live as themselves.
What they don’t understand, though, the haters, is that the human spirit is unbreakable.
It never gives up. Long after the body has been broken and destroyed, the human spirit continues to exist. It rises again and again, because it cannot, it will not surrender to hate.
Maya Angelou understood that because she lived it. ”
His words have left me speechless. The fact that Kayden is so aware that some people hate him for just being him. It makes me so fucking angry. It makes me want to destroy anyone and anything that sees him as anything other than what he is: perfect in his own right.
I think Kayden senses the shift in me, because his voice grows all tender.
“A change will come, Caleb. I believe it in my heart. I don’t know when or how, but it will come.
I have to believe that, just like those who came before me believed it.
Like Lucy Hicks Anderson and Michael Dillon.
Or Roberta Cowell and Lili Elbe. I refuse to apologize for who I am. ”
He turns on his side, looking down at me, his eyes burning with an internal flame I’ve seen in glimpses since he was a small child and came home from school, fuming with anger and indignation because someone had called Emily a racist slur, and later, when the hate was directed at him.
I have no idea who those people are, the names he just mentioned, and I feel bad that I don’t, because I can tell they matter to Kayden.
His bottom lip trembles with indignation.
“Why is it always the responsibility of the hated to love and forgive their haters? How come we are always asked to endure and forget and be the bigger person? Fuck that shit. I say fuck it like Maya said fuck it.” An outdrawn sigh leaves his body, and he suddenly smiles, breathtakingly beautiful in all his strength and power.
He shrugs, his cheeks flaming red. “So, yeah, that’s my tattoo.
” Then he laughs. “Anything else you wanna know?”
I smile too, then shake my head. “No, I’m good. The only thing I wanna know is if you look as fucking stunning when you wake in the morning as you do right now.” It’s true. Kayden has stolen the air right out of my lungs with his quiet strength.
He snorts. “Well, you don’t have to wonder. I can tell you right now I don’t.”
I reach for him and pull him against me. “I don’t believe that for one second.”
“It’s true.” He wiggles in my hold when I nibble his neck.
“Well, I guess I just have to see for myself then.”
“I guess,” he murmurs against my heart, his voice sleepy.
Yawning, he snuggles against me, and I close my eyes, breathing him in.
I always knew Kayden was special, but he is truly magnificent.
I don’t know if I deserve him, if I’m worthy of someone like him, but perhaps it doesn’t matter what I think.
Perhaps it only matters what Kayden thinks.