Chapter 21 #2
She hasn’t said it, but I know she’s been denying Jag for years, pushing him into the enemyzone. But he’s still here. A Peeping Tom in the window. A voyeur behind the cameras. A shadow curling in the edges of her thoughts, now coiled in mine.
Jag and Dove are a package deal, tied together, shackled in trauma and history. As long as he breathes, he’ll be the weight that presses behind every kiss I steal from her, every laugh and sigh and breathy moan I claim. He’s the name that burns both our tongues, whether we speak it or not.
And doesn’t that fucking suck? I hate that he’s under my skin. Hate that I can’t cut him out without cutting her, too. Hate that the only way forward might be through the come-soaked sheets in his bed.
I wipe a hand down my face and catch sight of the closet door. The cracked opening shows me what I don’t want to see, the saxophone case wedged up on the shelf, black leather dulled with age.
My chest caves, and my body moves without asking, dragging me into the closet, reaching up like a starving man. The case comes down hard into my arms, and I open the latches.
Brass glints in the dim light. My throat closes.
Still, I put it to my mouth. Because I’m a masochist. Because the sound makes me feel human.
The first note pours out, low and rusty. My fingers remember, moving with precision, muscle memory etched so deep no amount of trauma can erase it.
The sound swells, vibrating through the empty house, through my ribs, through the scared boy inside me.
For a dissonant riff of beats, I feel alive. But memory doesn’t stay dead for long.
Denver’s voice cuts through the melody.
Play it again, boy.
Slower this time.
Remove your underwear.
Let me hear you.
His shadow stretches over me, the slimy heat of his stare dripping down my body, every quiver of my embouchure feeding his sickness.
I see him, clear as the brass in my hands, legs spread in that chair, one hand buried down his pants, the other stroking his drink as he watches me blow out every note. His panting. His arousal. My shame.
The melody fractures. My breath stutters, and my fingers wobble on the keys. The sax slips from my grip, and my chest crumples, every breath airless, strangled, a scream with no sound.
My vision whites out, spinning, and I slam to my knees, gasping, the past and present indistinguishable.
The next thing I know, a hiss of water slaps my face. Then a cascade. I blink.
I’m in the shower. Naked. I don’t remember undressing. Don’t remember turning the knobs.
Through the steam and spray of water, I can see what I’m doing. From outside my body, I watch my hand move, throttling my erection, beating it in a ferocious, mindless frenzy that I can’t stop.
It’s not pleasure. Yes, it is.
It’s not punishment. Yes, it is.
On my knees, I press my forehead to the cold tile, my throat raw from sobbing. Every choking, ruthless stroke of my hand feels like self-harm. Self-destruction.
It doesn’t matter how much I tell myself I’m not built for it, that I don’t want a man ramming into my ass, that I don’t want to fuck his stepsister while she swallows his cock, my body’s a liar.
My head’s full of sick, dark cravings. Every second I’m awake, it hums under my skin, a low-level current, always circling, never shutting off.
“Disgusting,” I rasp, the word drowning in a broken cry. “You’re just like him. Spawn of the devil.”
My lungs thrash, gulping at nothing but the sour reek of my own panic. Every drag of air scrapes my throat bloody.
I yank harder on my miserable cock, nails biting into skin, trying to rip the thing off me. Doesn’t work. Never works. My body folds, buckling forward, forehead kissing the shower floor as more memories slide in.
Denver’s hunger-soaked grunts fall across my face as he traps me against the mattress, hips slamming into mine, watching me wheeze through the pain he gouges into me. The more I fight for air, the more he groans.
He used to say I looked like a bird when I gasped for breath.
Poor little broken fledgling, heart fluttering, wings clipped, dying in the corner.
My ribs shrink, crushing the oxygen out of me. It’s not me on the shower floor. It’s that weak, pathetic boy, hugging himself, shaking so hard he can’t stop, while Denver breaks him again and again.
I slam my fist faster, clenching and twisting, hoping to release the ghost in ropey streams and shoot it straight down the drain.
My vision spots white, black, then white again. My howls sound like screaming animals in a mating frenzy, fucking themselves bloody, and I can’t jerk my dick hard enough, can’t reach that climax to quiet them.
The worst part? Deep in the pit of my soul-cage, beneath the panic, I hear him. Not Denver.
Jag.
His hand wraps around my throbbing flesh, and his masculine presence curls over my back, panting with me, mocking me every time I moan.
I’m not gasping for air anymore. I’m gasping for release.
Tears burn hot. My whole body convulses, shame and arousal knotted together until I don’t know what’s what. My mind screams to stop, but my body won’t. I come with a sobbing, unsatisfying agony that leaves me hungrier than before.
I hate this flesh. I hate every nerve that remembers Denver’s touch, every cell he rewired, every scar that confuses pain for desire.
My fist tightens and pumps, moving like a piston along raw skin. I’m still hard. Ready to chase the next release.
So I do, shaking, sobbing, rocking under the spray. And a thought whispers, seductive and venomous.
It’d be easier if I just ended it.
No cliff this time.
A knife.
Let the blood swirl down the drain. Quick and clean. Sounds nice.
But what would happen to Dove? Maybe she doesn’t need me, but she already lost her parents. She has no one left in her life.
Except Jag.
I won’t leave her alone with him. I will never do that to her. She has me for as long as she wants me. And for as long as I need her, which happens to be forever.
Lucky her.
The water hisses louder, masking the sound of my broken gasps and stroking fist as I’m sucked back into the hills of shivers and shadows.