Chapter Eight
Matlock
I pulled into Simon’s driveway and turned off the ignition. My hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly, my knuckles were white. Seeing Freddie wink at Simon set something off inside me.
Simon flirted with everyone, especially my brothers. He did it to get a rise out of me, to push me into coming out. It never worked. At least not here. It worked at the club, because the club was a place I could be myself. Where I wasn’t judged for who I wanted.
But Simon hadn’t flirted with Freddie. He’d sat there stunned at what was happening. Freddie decided to take his life in his hands today and it didn’t go unnoticed. And it wouldn’t go unpunished.
“Get out,” I growled.
Simon didn’t say a word. He opened the door and climbed out. He didn’t wait for me; he went inside, ignoring the rage that was running through me.
Maybe avoiding it was a better way to phrase it. Simon knew exactly what I was capable of when I was jealous.
I sat in the SUV for a few more minutes trying to calm my anger. I wasn’t mad at Simon. I mean, I was, but not because of Freddie. Simon was gorgeous. He was tall and fit. He was strong and sexy. I couldn’t fault men for looking at him. But fucking touching, that was a different story.
I climbed out of the vehicle and made my way inside. Simon sat in the corner of the couch and stared out the window. I rubbed my chest; the ache of seeing him like this did me in. I sat down beside him and pulled his legs across my lap.
“Simon.”
I waited for him to look my way, and when he didn’t, I let out a long, frustrated sigh. “Simon, we need to talk about what happened in court.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
He turned his head to look at me, fear and pain etched on his face. “Did you sleep with her? Is that why she’s coming after me? A scorned lover who’s pissed the man she wants is into guys instead?”
“I have never slept with Rosalind Winthrop. We went to law school together.”
Simon turned away; his disbelief was a neon sign. I grabbed his chin and forced him to look at me. “I have never slept with her, or any woman.”
His eyes flared and blinked at me. “Never?”
I moved my hand from his chin to the back of his neck. “Never,” I confirmed and pulled him forward, connecting his lips with mine. I pulled him further onto my lap, letting him feel how hard I was.
“I have never been interested in a woman. Rosalind wanted Fury, not me,” I said between kisses.
“Why is she doing this?”
“I don’t know, Simon, but I will find out. I won’t let you go to prison.”
“Sadie can’t go either.”
I cupped his face in my hands. “I need the truth, Simon. I can’t defend you if I don’t know everything.”
“It was self-defense.”
“Yours or hers?”
Simon crawled off my lap and stood up. “Why does it matter? He was beating her.”
I leaned my head against the back of the couch. “There is no record of the abuse, Simon. Sadie wouldn’t make a report, so in the law’s eyes, everything she told you is hearsay.”
“She never told me.”
“What?” I asked, my head shooting up.
“She would never admit he had hit her.” My eyes tracked Simon as he paced the room. “It was always, ‘I fell.’ Or ‘I walked into the door.’ She never came out and said he hit her.”
I closed my eyes and ran my hands through my hair. “Simon, this makes things so much harder. Why didn’t you call the club? We could have cleaned it up. Zero would have made it all disappear.”
“You don’t have siblings, Tony. You don’t understand.”
I did have a sibling. I’d never told Simon about my sister. About how she died. That she was the reason I could never go back to New York.
Suddenly, I understood why Simon was protecting Sadie. I did everything I could to protect Julia, and I still lost her. And almost lost my life in the process.
Now the man I was in love with was about to lose his. If Simon was found guilty, he would go to prison, probably for the rest of his life. He would die there. And it wouldn’t be due to old age.
“I had a sister.”
Simon spun around and scowled at me. “What?”
“I had a sister. Her name was Julia, and she was three years older than me.”
Simon sat down in the chair across the room, and I wanted to ask him to sit on my lap. I wanted him within arm’s reach when I talked about Julia. When I told him my deepest, darkest secret.
But I didn’t ask. I wouldn’t be that vulnerable. I wouldn’t let him know I needed him that much. Two years ago, Simon told me he loved me. He said it often. But I’d never said it back to him. I couldn’t. If I told him I loved him, I’d have to give him more. And I didn’t have more to give.
I couldn’t be open with him. Not the way he wanted. Simon wanted to walk down the street holding my hand; he wanted to let the world know we were together. That we were committed to each other.
That I was committed to him.
But I couldn’t be open like him. We weren’t the same. Simon’s family, his town—they accepted him for who he was. My family never did. My brothers wouldn’t either.
I heard Fury’s voice in my head talking about Sypher and Pippen, but it wasn’t the same thing. They were young. They grew up in a time when men and women were free to be who they were.
They didn’t grow up seeing men on the street beaten to death for expressing themselves in a way that was different from the norm.
New York City might be a place where you could wave your freak flag high and unashamed, but it wasn’t always that way. New York City was different when I was a kid. If you weren’t rich, you didn’t belong in Manhattan.
“Julia had a boyfriend—Mark.” I leaned forward and braced my forearms on my thighs as I stared at the floor.
“He was an okay guy; my parents liked him. Julia loved him. At least she thought she did. She didn’t know him.
Not really. I tried to tell her she deserved better.
That Mark was an asshole. But she wouldn’t listen.
She knew I was gay. Aside from Fury, Julia was the only person I’d ever told.
She thought I was jealous. She thought I wanted Mark for myself. ”
“Did you?”
I glared at Simon. “No. Mark was a fucking rapist.”
“What happened?”
I stood up. It was my turn to pace. I walked over to the window and stared through it for a few minutes before I told him everything.
“I’d just passed the bar exam. Julia was so proud of me; it made up for my parents’ neglect.
I’d never told them I was gay, but I think they knew.
They’d tried for years to set me up with women, and it never took.
Eventually, they gave up, and that was when they gave up on me.
But Julia didn’t. She encouraged me to be who I was. ”
I closed my eyes and thought about that day. About the betrayal, and the pain. The grief of losing someone who had only ever been there for me.
“Julia swore she’d never tell anyone. But she told Mark. He was older than her by five years. Making him eight years older than me. I was twenty-seven years old and spent most of my time studying, so I didn’t hit the gym like I do now.”
I didn’t look at Simon. I didn’t want to see his face when he figured out where I was headed.
“Mark was thirty-five, and he was a gym rat. More muscle than brains. He showed up at my apartment with the excuse that Julia had asked him to meet her there. It seemed suspicious, but it wasn’t the first time, so I let him in. That was my first mistake.”
I put my hands in my pockets, hiding the force with which I squeezed my fingers into a fist. It was like being back there.
“Julia never showed. Mark had lied. He started to berate me. Telling me I needed to sink my dick into a pussy and then I wouldn’t think I was gay anymore.
“When I asked him to leave, he got worse. He started coming on to me. Calling me a fag and a sissy. He cornered me in the kitchen and pushed me to my knees. Told me that if I really were gay, then I wouldn’t have a problem sucking his dick.”
I stared out the window again. Simon had been so quiet when I started talking, I wondered if he’d left the room.
“He overpowered me, but it wasn’t the first time I’d been attacked by some bigot who thought he had a right to something that wasn’t his.”
“What did you do?” Simon asked, his voice barely a whisper.
I turned to look at the man I loved. The man I was baring my soul to. I expected pity or anger for what I’d gone through. What I found was Simon sitting in the chair, staring up at me as tears spilled down his cheeks.
“I punched him in the dick.”
Simon snorted and barked out a laugh before covering his mouth with his hand. “I’m sorry.”
“You can laugh. I do. I didn’t then, but I do now.”
“What happened to him?”
“He fell to the floor, and I scrambled up and kicked him in the head. When he fell to the side, he hit his head on something, and died instantly.”
“What did you do?”
“I called my sister. I had just passed the bar, and I knew I had a clear-cut self-defense case. But no one knew I was out. No one would believe that he’d just come on to me. Tried to rape me. As far as everyone knew, he was straight.”
I moved back to the couch and sat down. Simon came over and sat beside me, laying his head on my chest. I wrapped my arms around him and held him tight.
“When Julia showed up, I told her what happened, and she told me to leave. That she would take the blame. She started ripping at her clothes and slammed her face into the cabinet door. Turns out you can get a black eye from being hit by a door.”
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
“Did you leave?”
“I did. I took off into the city to establish my alibi. Only, Julia took things a step further. I don’t know exactly what happened, because I wasn’t there. But by the time the fire was out, my apartment had been ransacked and Julia was dead.”
“Oh, Tony, oh my God.” Simon sat up and looked into my eyes.
“The autopsy reports showed they both died with smoke in their lungs. Rumors started spreading, and suddenly finding out I was gay wasn’t my biggest concern.
I was accused of being in love with my sister and burning down my apartment with the two of them in it because of jealousy.
I left New York and moved south. That was when I met Titan and the Silver Shadows. ”
“Why would anyone think that?”
“Because being gay has always been seen as sick and demented. It may be more accepted today, but there are still a lot of people out there who believe homosexuality is just a step in the mind of someone depraved. Incest isn’t far off from there.
It was what Rosalind was alluding to in court.
That you killed Alan in a fit of rage because you couldn’t have your sister. ”