Chapter 25
25
BECK
I t was always you .
I wasn’t sure when my lust and love had become so entwined, but Gavin’s admission had my pulse roaring in my ears and my cock throbbing in my pants. The knowledge that he’d fucked himself while thinking about me—when we were worlds apart and his only response to all the abuse was hatred and anger—broke my heart and turned me on all at once.
It felt fucked up, that reaction. I shouldn’t be aroused. He’d been in so much pain during those years. But Christ, the thought of him alone in a room, on his bed, legs spread as he pumped a dildo in and out of his hole while thinking about me was making me harder than I’d ever been in my life.
I moved off Gavin, letting go of his wrists. “Come here,” I said. He braced his hands on the bed and looked at me over his shoulder, uncertainty bleeding into all that desire.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because as much as I want to fuck you like this, I want to see every expression on your face even more,” I told him. “So come here.”
He pushed himself up until he was sitting, then let me grab him and press him back into the pillows. His amber eyes were glued to mine, then lowered when I dragged my shirt over my head. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, eyes devouring my torso, and the hunger in them only sparked my own. I slid off the bed, shoved my pants down and kicked them off, then grabbed a condom from the drawer.
“Are you absolutely sure about this?” I asked him.
The glare he gave me had my lips twitching in amusement. “Yes, I’m fucking sure,” he said.
“Okay, princess. Tap out at any point if you don’t like it, got it?”
He kept glaring at me, but nodded. I didn’t think he had any idea how much his angry expressions turned me on. How adorable I thought he was. I wasn’t sure he’d appreciate hearing that. But I loved it. It reminded me of the boy I knew, of the closeness we’d had when we were younger. He’d always had trouble controlling his temper, but I could calm him down with just a word or two. I think we both loved that.
His hand was on his cock now, lazily stroking up and down as he stared avidly at my dick. When I crawled back onto the bed, he spread his legs without a word, letting me move in between them. I set the condom near his hip, then touched the hem of his shirt.
“I wish you’d let me see all of you,” I said. His face paled and the hand on his cock stopped moving. I leaned over him and cupped his face in my hands. “But I understand why you can’t. I need you to know it’s okay, Gavin.” I pressed a soft, gentle kiss to his parted lips, inhaling his whimper as he wrapped his arms around my shoulders. I kissed his cheek, moved to his ear, and whispered, “Maybe one day, yeah?”
He shuddered against me, so I threaded my fingers into his hair as he whispered back, “Yeah.”
When I drew back, his face was flushed again, so I gave him a cocky smile. “I’m gonna fuck you now, princess.”
“Stop talking and just do it already,” he grumbled, unwrapping his arms and sliding his fingers down my sides. He kept going until he reached my ass, and when he squeezed, I pumped my cock against his, making him moan. I leaned in and ran my tongue up his throat, then bit down on his pulse point and sucked hard. I wanted to leave my mark on him. I wanted to leave marks all over him. He jolted and gasped, thrusting himself against me as he panted.
“I want to fill you with my cum and watch it drip out of you,” I rasped, staring down at him as he looked between our bodies, watching our cocks rub together.
“Yeah,” he moaned. “Fucking do that. I want your cum so fucking bad, Becky.” His eyes cut back to mine, pupils so dilated there was hardly any color left.
“Christ,” I muttered, sitting up. “We’ll get there, baby. Not today, but we’ll get there.” I wasn’t going to last long enough to fuck him at this point. I grabbed the lube and poured some into my hand, tossed it near the condom, and stroked my other hand up his thigh. He slid his calf on top of mine and licked his lips when I gently moved his leg out a little more, opening him up to me. I leaned down and nipped at the crease where his groin met his thigh, making him buck a little. He fisted his hands in my hair and followed me as I kissed and licked his skin down his inner thigh. When I pulled away and moved over him, spreading his legs wider with my thighs, he looked up at me with so much need and trust that it knocked the air from my lungs.
I leaned down until our lips were almost touching, loving the feel of his hands as he ran them up my back, down to my ass, touching every inch of my body he could reach like he was committing me to memory. I moved my hand to just below his balls, feeling the puff of breath from his lips as he exhaled in anticipation. His eyes were glued to mine, dark pools of amber that were sucking me in and trapping me in their intensity.
“I have never wanted anyone the way I want you,” I said softly. “You have always been it for me, Gavin.” He let out a small sound, close to a whimper, close to a gasp, and I brushed my lips against his. “I’m gonna make this good for you, baby. So fucking good for you.” I pressed my fingers to his hole, sliding them up and down, circling the puckered rim. He sucked in a sharp breath when I slipped one inside, his eyes riveted to mine.
“You like that?” I murmured, watching his flush deepen. “Did you think about this, princess? Did you think about me touching you like this? My fingers deep inside of you?” I pumped deeper, then drew out so I could slide two fingers inside.
Gavin moaned as his eyes fluttered shut, then open again, like he didn’t want to look away from my face for a single second. “Yes,” he groaned. “Every fucking day.” His hands were fisted in the blanket now, and he’d started to move his hips as I fucked him with my fingers. The moment I hit his prostate, his head fell back and his mouth opened in a silent scream, his eyes rolling as his muscles locked up.
Fuck, his responsiveness was so fucking arousing. I’d never been with anyone like him before, and because it was him , because it was Gavin reacting like this, I felt like I was constantly on the verge of losing control.
I sat up a little, needing to keep control so that I could give Gavin everything he deserved. “Did you think about my cock spreading you open?” I said lowly. He was so damn hot inside, and the way he kept clenching around my fingers made me feel like I was about to combust. “Did you fuck yourself and wish it was me, princess?”
He made a choking sound and pulled at the covers, panting and whimpering and clenching as I slid my fingers over his prostate again and again and again.
“So fucking sensitive,” I murmured, watching him come apart on my fingers. “Did you think about me filling up this tight, needy hole with my cum?”
He could barely breathe, let alone answer me. My own breathing felt stilted as I watched him fall apart, and when I had three fingers in his hole, Gavin reached for me, his hand on my chest burning through my skin. The noises he was making were so raw and desperate that I braced a hand near his head, slanted my mouth over his, and devoured every last one. He whimpered into my mouth and slid his hands into my hair, holding me tight as he thrust his tongue along mine, as he nipped and sucked and bit my lips. Then he was tugging at my hair, pulling my head back, his breaths puffing against my lips. “Fuck me, Becky. Right now. Fuck me,” he begged in a hoarse voice.
I groaned and removed my fingers from him, pressing a hard kiss to his mouth before sitting back on my heels. “Say please, princess,” I rasped.
“Please,” he whispered, curling his hands over my knees. “I’ve never needed anything more in my entire life, Beck. I’ve never needed you more.”
I was opening the condom, putting it on, and slicking it with lube before he’d finished speaking, and his words pierced my heart so thoroughly that I was sure I was bleeding out all over the bed. I wanted to give him everything he needed, and if that was me, then he could have me.
He’d always had me anyway.
“Fuck,” I said, falling over him and taking his lips in mine. He squeezed my hips with his thighs as I reached down and positioned my cock right at his entrance. He gasped against my mouth when he felt me there, and as I started to push in, holding myself up on my hands and biting along his jaw, a strangled sound came from his throat. I kissed his neck, right under his ear, then stopped moving my hips when he clenched so hard there was no way I could go any further. I pulled my hips back until just my crown was inside him and lifted my head. His face was turning red as his eyes rolled back, and he was definitely not even breathing anymore.
I stopped moving and said, “Breathe, baby. Relax and breathe for me.” I went down on my elbows and sifted my fingers into his hair, tugging. His eyes found mine again. “Breathe,” I told him softly. He sucked in a loud breath, and then another. “Good.” I kissed his lips and said, “That’s good. Just like that. I need you to relax and let me in, princess. Can you do that for me?”
He moaned and nodded, his eyes darker than normal as he stared up at me.
“Good,” I said, kissing his cheek. “You know what to do if you want me to stop.”
He grunted, and then it turned into a whimper, his blunt nails scraping my back as I started pushing in again, and the tight, soft heat of him—being this close to him, the feel of his body wrapped around mine, the trust he was placing in me—were making it hard for me to breathe. But still, I murmured, “Good, you’re doing so good for me. Fuck, you feel fucking incredible, Gavin.”
He grunted and then moaned when I bottomed out, my hips flush against his, and it took every ounce of self-control I had to not just start fucking into him like a maniac.
I brushed the hair back from his forehead. “You okay, baby?” His skin was damp with sweat, and I wanted to lick it up, wanted everything that was his.
Gavin swallowed, his throat clicking, and said thickly, “Yeah. Fuck. It feels…it feels perfect.”
“Yeah, it really fucking does.” I kissed his cheekbone and said, “I’m gonna fuck you now.”
His eyes held a challenge when they met mine, and he said tauntingly, “You keep saying that, but you haven’t?—”
I pushed up onto my knuckles, drew my hips back and then thrust into him so hard the bed rattled against the wall. He cried out, hands flying to my waist, fingers digging into my skin as I dragged my cock out until just the tip was inside him. “Haven’t what?” I panted, staring down at him as I slowly pushed my way back in.
“Fuck you, Beck,” he wheezed on a groan, and the little smile that tilted up one corner of his lips made my heart explode.
I held myself up on one hand, grabbed onto his hair with the other and started slamming into him over and over again, not giving a single shit that the bed was pounding into the wall with the force of my thrusts. Gavin’s lips were parted and he stared up at me as long as he could, until I pulled his hair and his eyes rolled back, until his muscles locked up with every brush of my cock against his prostate, and when he was finally able to croak out, “Harder,” I yanked his head to the side and bit down on his neck like the animal he’d turned me into, pounding into him so hard that all he could do was lie there and take it. A fierce wave of possessiveness crashed over me, making me want to mark him permanently, let the world know he was mine.
But first I would let him know.
“You’re fucking mine,” I said harshly, tugging his head to the side and pressing my lips to his ear as I fucked into him. “You’re mine and you’ve always been mine. Haven’t you?”
“Yes…fuck, unngh, god, yes ,” he choked out. His fingers dug into my flank, as if he wanted to feel me fucking him, feel the power behind every thrust. I bit down on his jaw, feeling the orgasm start to crest when he made a sound that was coated in ecstasy. He was completely gone, lost in the pleasure I was giving him, that we were sharing, and the primal satisfaction of that set every molecule of my being ablaze.
“Becky,” he whined, hands fumbling on my face as he pulled me down, and I knew he was close.
“Fuck, yes, come on my cock, baby,” I panted, wrapping my fingers around his swollen shaft and stroking. I kissed him hard and felt him clench around me as he came, screaming into my mouth, thick ropes of cum shooting across his shirt and hitting my chest and stomach.
The bed collapsed at the same time my own orgasm barreled through me, and the abrupt drop had Gavin wrapping his arms and legs around me as the mattress crashed to the ground.
I was too far gone to care. I shoved my dick as deep into him as it would go, pumping and moaning with each intense wave of ecstasy. There was a ringing in my ears, my vision was dancing with bright colors, and I fell on top of Gavin, my face buried next to his. I felt his hands stroking down my back as I panted into the pillow, and when he said, “You broke the bed, you fucking elephant,” I started to laugh. I felt him laughing beneath me, heard the beautiful sound of it, and lifted my head.
The smile on his face as he looked at me was stunning, and it lit his eyes with so much joy that it stopped my heart for a brief moment. It felt like vital parts of me were shifting, making room for those missing pieces that had finally been found and then locking tightly into place around them.
His smile began to falter the longer I stared, until it finally vanished. “What?” he said warily. “Is there cum on my face or something?”
I huffed a laugh. “No, I was just thinking that I should break the bed all the time if it’s gonna make you smile like that.”
He rolled his eyes and playfully shoved at my face. “Shut the fuck up with that shit,” he muttered. But there was a blush spreading across his cheekbones, so I kissed one, and then the other, and then his lips. My post-orgasmic bliss and the incredible intimacy of this moment we’d just shared were making me dizzy.
“Hey, baby,” I said, looking into his eyes.
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Don’t fucking call me baby.”
“Why not?”
“Just don’t.”
“What about…baby hippo?” His brows scrunched together in confusion, his lip curling in disgust. “If I’m an elephant, then you’re a baby hippo.”
The look of outraged horror on his face was almost comical. “Are you serious right now? Hippos are ugly as shit.”
I laughed. “I think they’re cute. But they’re vicious, too. Just. Like. You.” I punctuated each word with a kiss on his face, and then he was shoving me away again, smooshing his hand into my face.
“Hey, Gavin.”
“Fucking what.”
I lowered my lips to his ear and said, “I’m gonna fuck you again. And again. And again.” I bit down on his earlobe, and then he smacked me on the ass. Hard. The sound of it rang out in the room, and I laughed against his cheek. “What the fuck was that for?”
“For being an arrogant, assuming prick,” he said. “What if I want to fuck you ?”
A shockwave of lust rippled through me, and I groaned as I pulled back to look him in the eyes. “Is that something you want?” I asked. An image of Gavin pumping into me from behind, overwhelmed with desire, losing control and fucking me like a feral animal embedded itself in my mind, and suddenly, that was something I desperately needed. “You want to use my body, princess?” I would let him do anything he wanted to me.
Gavin whimpered softly, his hands curling over my shoulders. “Fuck,” he whispered. “ Yes .”
I kissed the corner of his mouth, then his flushed cheek. “Will I be the first man you’ve ever fucked?”
He groaned and said, “You fucking know you will.”
“Mm. I want to watch your face when you fuck a man for the first time,” I said, brushing the hair off his forehead. “I want to see you lose control, to feel you coming hard inside me. I need to see you when you fuck me, Gavin.”
I felt his cock twitch against my stomach, and the dazed look he was giving me made me think he was imagining it as vividly as I was. I kissed his lips and said, “Or would you rather I fuck myself on you, use your cock and make you come inside me?”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he breathed. His dick was getting hard again, and I wished I had the same short refractory period he did because I wanted to fuck him again so damn badly. Slower this time. I wanted the only sounds to be him panting and moaning and whining, wanted to make him beg for me to go harder, faster.
“Fuck, you have no idea how much I want to fuck you again,” I groaned, burying my face in his neck. His hands drifted across my shoulder blades, fingers trailing down my spine and back up again.
“Beck?”
“Mm.”
“Did you mean what you said the other night?” There was a vulnerability in his voice that had me lifting my head.
“I said a lot of shit,” I replied, watching his lips lift in a tiny smile.
“Yeah, you talk too damn much,” he said, bringing one hand up to play with my curls. And then, in a smaller voice riddled with doubt, he asked, “Did you mean it when you said ‘always’?”
“Gavin,” I started, cupping his face in my hands. “I mean every single word I say to you. Got it? I’ve never lied to you, nor will I ever lie to you. You can trust the things I say, okay?”
His eyes searched mine, and then he said, “Okay.”
“And yeah. I meant it when I said ‘always’,” I told him.
He didn’t say anything in response, so I just kissed his cheek and rested my head beside his, staring at him as he stared up at the ceiling. I stayed on top of him for a long time, my soft cock still in his ass, his fingers moving lazily over my skin. I wondered what kind of thoughts were drifting through his mind, if they were good or bad, if he was slowly retreating back into himself again, if I’d have to mourn his loss. Again.
After a long while he said, “Maybe this time you should get a steel frame.”
I barked out a laugh as he looked at me sidelong with a little smile. Here I was, anxious that he was slipping his toxic armor back on, when in reality, he’d been thinking about my bed. I resisted the urge to laugh at myself and said, “You wanna help me pick it out?”
“Maybe,” he said, sliding a hand down my back and then squeezing my ass.
“You like my ass?” I asked, propping my head on my hand and leaning on my elbow.
Gavin shrugged. “It’s okay.”
This little asshole. “Yeah? Just okay?”
The flat look he gave me had me grinning. “You know you have a perfect body, motherfucker. Stop trying to fish for compliments you don’t need.”
I brushed his hair back from his forehead. “You think I have a perfect body?”
“Compared to mine, you look like fucking Superman.”
I frowned at that. “What do you mean, compared to yours? What’s wrong with your body?”
Gavin turned his head away and took his hand off my butt. “Nothing, forget it.”
I gripped his jaw in my hand and forced him to look at me. “What’s wrong with your body? Because in my eyes, you’re perfect, Gavin.”
His eyes flitted between mine, and I hated that he felt this way about himself. I wished he could see himself the way I saw him, that he could see how strong and beautiful he really was.
“I hate the way I look now. I’ve lost a lot of muscle,” he said softly, and the honesty of his words made a pang of sorrow tear through me.
“I love the way you look. But I can help you get it back, if that’s what you want. Help you feel strong again,” I told him.
“Yeah,” he said. It didn’t feel like a denial or an affirmation, but I was confident I could convince him.
“Yeah,” I said back. I finally looked around the room, at the headboard, and then the frame of the bed. It looked like the footboard broke, which made the whole frame fall apart. The mattress was perfectly level, and the headboard was still standing. “I mean, technically we could just leave it like this…”
Gavin raised his brows at me. “Technically?”
“Yeah. Technically.”
“Okay, but what if we wanted to be practical,” he said, lips twitching up at the corners.
“Then I guess we’d go to Beds ‘R’ Us and get a new frame.”
“Right. We’d go to a store you just made up.”
“Yep.”
Gavin’s hands were on my ass again, lazily kneading in an almost absent way. His eyes were glowing with mirth as he looked at me, and I decided that this was the moment I wanted to freeze. To keep forever. Just talking normally, like there wasn’t a decade of separation and heartache between us.
And then he reminded me that we definitely weren’t kids anymore when he said, “I like how it feels when you’re inside me, even when you’re not hard.” My lips parted as my heart began to pound. My cock twitched at those words, and Gavin’s eyes practically glazed over when he felt it. “Yeah,” he grunted. “I fucking love that. Feeling you there, filling me.”
“Jesus Christ,” I rasped. My dick was trying its best to rally, and all I wanted to do for the rest of the day was lay on top of him with my cock buried in his ass.
Then Anya was pounding on the door—because of course. “Beck! They didn’t have any gummy worms so I got you Cheetos instead! Can we get back to training?”
Jesus fuck. I’d sent her to the store to get her out of the house in case Gavin had a meltdown—not because I was afraid he would hurt her, but because I knew he’d be humiliated if anyone was around to see or hear it.
And what was the thought process behind substituting Cheetos for gummy worms?
“Okay great! We’re taking a break!” I yelled. “Go eat lunch or something!”
“What, by myself?” she said.
“Yes!” I said at the same time Gavin did. We looked at each other, and then a devilish glint in his eyes appeared right before he spanked me.
Where the fuck had this Gavin been hiding? Under all those toxic layers? God, it was like I had my best friend back. It was utterly surreal; him being playful like this was making me feel like I might choke on all the happiness bubbling inside me. How did I keep him like this? How did I get him to completely drop those layers for good?
“Fine!” Anya called, obviously pouting. “I’m not making you dinner!”
“Fine!” I yelled.
“Fine!” There was a pause, and then she said, “It’s baked ziti tonight!” Her footsteps were obnoxiously loud as she stomped down the hall.
Gavin was smiling at me again, and my heart couldn’t take all this joy.
“You’re still ticklish, right? That’s not something that just goes away,” I said with an impish grin.
Gavin’s smile dropped and his eyes widened. “Don’t you fucking dare. Beck, I swear to god, if you?—”
All it took was sliding my fingers over his pec to his armpit, and he was rolling me onto my back as I laughed. I let him pin my wrists above my head, let him look his fill when he had me stretched out underneath him. And then he took one of my hands and brought it to his head, rubbing into it.
I took hold of his hair in a tight grip, my dick starting to thicken with the way he moaned. I pulled him down to me and slid my tongue into his mouth, praying that my life from this moment on would be filled with days like this.
Knowing that life never went the way you hoped.
While Gavin was at his therapy session the next day, I drove down to Shelby’s. There were questions that had been sitting in my mind for two months now, unanswered and growing heavier with each passing day, and I was determined to get answers to them.
I was going to find out just who the fuck had hurt Gavin the night I’d found him, and why.
I parked on the street and headed inside, my time limited because I had to get back before Gavin’s session was over. The bar was part of a row of businesses set in crumbling brick that probably dated back to the eighteen hundreds. At least, it looked that way. The front window had a lit neon open sign, and a thick crack ran through the entirety of the lower part. When I got inside, it was brighter than I thought it’d be, and because it was past six, it was fairly crowded already.
I headed right to an open spot at the bar, looking around while I waited for the bartender to make his way down to me. There were a lot of men here, some of them giving me lingering looks. Had Gavin known this was Gardiner’s unspoken gay bar? The thought made my stomach churn with a volatile displeasure. How often had he come here?
“What can I get for you?”
I turned toward the bartender, a middle-aged man with silver streaks in his black hair. He had sharp eyes that made me feel like he could see straight into my mind, but there was also a softness in them.
“Actually, I had something I wanted to ask you,” I said, pulling the picture I’d brought from my pocket. He raised a brow and leaned his hip against the wooden bar top. I slid the picture and a twenty to him—since I wouldn’t be ordering anything—and said, “I know it’s a long shot, but have you ever seen this guy in here before?”
His eyes held mine for a few beats, then drifted down to the picture.
It was old—I’d printed it off the computer from a news article featuring Gavin in his sophomore year of college after a wrestling match because all the pictures I had of him were from when he was younger. He was smiling, his hair short and neat, but there was a dullness in his eyes. I didn’t like looking at it. I didn’t like acknowledging the things I’d been stupidly blind to all those years.
The bartender nodded, wiping a hand down his mouth. “Yeah. Haven’t seen him in a while, though.”
My heart sped up. “Do you remember if he was with someone? The last time you saw him?”
“Yep.” He lifted a hand and pointed a thick finger to somewhere behind me. I turned to look as he said, “That guy at the last table there, wearing the skirt.”
A smaller man was sitting alone at a two-top table near the back hallway. He was smiling at something on his phone and swinging a foot, making his long pink skirt flare with the movement.
An incendiary burst of anger swept through me, like I was having a hot flash. I turned back to the bartender and took the picture back. “Thank you, I really appreciate it.”
I tapped the bar and stood up, but paused when he said, “Don’t go causing trouble. Got it?”
I shook my head. “That’s not why I’m here.” I walked away after he nodded, trying to stop myself from clenching my hands into fists.
The small guy, who was facing me, saw me coming. His eyes widened and he clutched his drink so hard his knuckles turned white. When I made it over to him, he said, “Can I help you?”
I forced myself to smile. “I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”
He looked unconvinced, but just frowned at me and said, “What?” He had a thin mustache above painted lips and there was something shifty about him. It felt like he was ready to dart up and away at any moment, like a little rat getting caught in the light.
I pulled out the picture of Gavin and held it up, watching his face closely. His lips parted, his eyes widened, and he paled immediately. His gaze slid to the door behind me.
I don’t fucking think so, you piece of shit.
He hopped off his seat, but instead of running toward the front like I thought he would, he darted away from me and ran down a hallway that led to the back of the bar.
“Shit.”
I ran after him, following him past the bathrooms, around the corner, and out a back door to an alley. I caught up to him right outside the door, grabbed his arm and jerked him back into the wall. He made a small sound drenched in fear and tried to rip my hand off him when I bunched it in the front of his shirt and held him to the brick.
“What did you do?” I growled. “What did you do to him?”
“Nothing! Stop—get off me, man! I didn’t do anything—” His fingers scraped at my hand, but I ignored that.
“I don’t fucking believe that.” I towered over him, and even though I didn’t like using my size to intimidate anyone, I needed him to tell me what happened. “I think you know him. I think you hurt him while he was drunk and couldn’t fight back?—”
I paused when a tear slid down his face. “We had to!” he said wetly. “We needed the money and it was so much money, and when the guy showed us who it was, we thought he deserved it, that we were helping this guy get some kind of justice, and without that money we wouldn’t have been able to pay for Jack’s insulin, it’s so?—”
“Hold up, slow the fuck down,” I said, stepping closer. “What guy? What money ? Someone paid you to do this?” The idea left me hollow, but a rage so all-encompassing I practically shook with it filled those empty spaces, consuming me.
“He—he was this—” The man was crying now, had his hands over his eyes. I didn’t feel an ounce of sympathy for him. “He was this older guy, and he came up to me and my brother while we were walking back to our car after a few drinks one night.” He sniffled and wiped his nose. “He asked if we could help him with—with something, and when he took out this big wad of cash, Jack and I just looked at each other, like, it didn’t matter what it was, we would do it. Because we really needed that fucking money. I’m sorry. He told us that he was a bad guy,” he cried, gesturing at the picture I was still holding, though it was crumpled in my fist now. “Said he deserved it, that he’d hurt his son and the law didn’t do enough, and he wanted us to leave him without his clothes somewhere so he’d get arrested again. We felt kind of bad and only hit him twice, we had to hurt him because the guy wanted pictures of it, and?—”
With every word he spoke, my horror and disgust deepened until it was squeezing at my skull and making me feel like I would vomit. “What did this guy look like? The one who paid you to do this?”
He was sniffling and wiping every inch of his face with his hands. “He was—like, maybe fifty? Sixty? I don’t know. Stocky. He was driving a gray pickup truck, maybe a Dodge Ram, I don’t know.”
My vision swam with black spots. “How much did he pay you?”
“Five hundred dollars, we needed it, we fucking needed that money, Jack wouldn’t be able to get his insulin if we didn’t have it, and then he would die ? —”
I didn’t give a shit about this motherfucker’s sob story.
I let go of his shirt, but stopped short when he grabbed my arm.
“Wait, are you—are you gonna tell the cops? Please don’t, please, I swear we’ll apologize, we can’t?—”
I ripped my arm out of his grip and said, “No. We’re finished here.” It was better if this fucker didn’t think I’d take any kind of action right now. I needed to call my lawyer, see what he could do, see what he could dig up. This wasn’t something I’d ever let go.
He didn’t try to grab me again, and I stalked out of the alley, the black cloud surrounding me snapping and booming like a storm was raging inside of it.
Why, after two years of distance, was Eric Forster trying to hurt Gavin again? No, not trying. He’d fucking hurt him. If I had to guess, he’d never really left him alone. He’d probably been keeping tabs on him and wasn’t happy about his son frequenting a gay bar.
Fucking piece of shit.
I got in my car and drove back to Gavin. The closer I got to him, the more the storm seemed to lessen, until it was just a buzzing undercurrent patiently waiting for me to give it my full attention again.
When Gavin came out of the building and got in the car, the smile he gave me was like a rainbow after the storm had passed, almost magical in its beauty and rarity.
My heart broke all over again, seeing him smile. Knowing what his dad had done. Knowing how much it was going to hurt him.
Gavin’s smile faded when he realized something was very, very wrong with me. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
I took his hand and shook my head. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
Gavin didn’t say a word after I told him what I’d learned. He just stared straight ahead, letting me hold his trembling hand until we got home. He was quiet for the rest of the evening, and I didn’t try and get him to talk to me, but I did let him know that I was right here if he needed anything.
Before we fell asleep that night, as I was holding onto him tighter than I ever had before, he whispered, “I hate him, Beck. I hate him so much for what he did to me. To us. I fucking hate him.”
I kissed the back of his neck and said, “I know, baby, but I’ve got you now. I won’t ever let him hurt you again.”
But I thought that was good. It was good he was angry. It meant that he wanted to fight back, and I promised myself we would give Eric Forster the fight of his fucking life.