Chapter 1
Chapter One
Five years later
The video was bad. No, it was a disaster.
Missy had warned him, but his cousin’s description, and even her obvious disappointment in him, hadn’t properly prepared him.
Justin was screwed. He winced as he looked down at the screen.
The crowd of rowdy onlookers in the darkened bar was slightly blurred, but the rest of the picture was clear and sharp.
For the third time since Missy had shoved the phone into his hand, Justin watched as the slightly drunk man threw vile, stomach-churning taunts at him, not quite loud enough for the bystander’s phone to pick up.
But Justin had heard them perfectly, and just as they had last night, the words made his heart pound as something rotten and buried rear up in his chest. The man’s hands were shoved snugly in his pockets, and he swayed a little as he jeered at Justin.
Justin was seven again, and afraid. He was eleven again, and furious. He was fifteen again, and desperate to get out of Hillstone and away from the leering bullies who’d turned his hometown into a claustrophobic prison.
In the moment, last night, what happened next had seemed to unfold in slow motion. But on the screen it was sudden and chaotic. The tiny Justin in his sweating palm shook his head menacingly, then slammed his beer down on the bar, drew his fist back, and swung.
The man went down, and the crowd around them went apeshit.
“Fuuuuuuck,” Justin breathed, dropping the phone onto the table with a clatter. Missy picked it up and closed Instagram.
“Yeah, it’s not great.”
“Understatement of the year,” Justin replied, flopping back in his chair. He closed his eyes and massaged the knuckles of his right hand, which were aching from last night’s Apollo Creed impression.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Missy asked, eyes wide. She gestured down at the phone. “That’s… not you. That’s some toxic masculinity bullshit. Your mum taught you better than that. Why didn’t you just walk away?”
Justin rolled his shoulders in discomfort, as if he could shake the heavy weight of Missy’s judgment off his back. She hadn’t been there. She hadn’t heard the awful things the man had said to him and Ricky and Matty. If she had, she would’ve thrown a punch, too.
Justin opened his mouth to say this, but the words didn’t come.
He couldn’t account for what he’d done last night.
All he knew was that his brain had seemed to freeze and glitch, and his body had taken over.
And not in the good way that sometimes happened on stage, when his mind felt blissfully blank and his body seemed to be nothing but muscles, connected and warm and moving seamlessly with the music.
He closed his mouth again and frowned, replaying the sequence of events so he could explain then—and himself—to Missy.
The guy had sidled up to them and sized them up, then asked them how they knew each other.
From work, Ricky had said. What work, he’d asked, and Matty—sweet, young, naive Matty—had told the guy the truth.
Justin usually dodged or outright lied when other men asked him what he did for a living, but Matty was younger and more principled than he was.
Matty didn’t want to hide who he was or what he did.
“We’re ballet dancers,” Matty had said, before Justin could throw out one of the fake jobs he kept in his back pocket for just this kind of interaction.
Marketing, sales, consulting, some vague nonsense job that everyone had heard of but no one really understood.
Not something unusual and eyebrow-raising like “male ballet dancer.”
Matty’s words had landed like a bucket of chum in front of a starving shark, and Justin had watched the guy’s face as surprise gave way to scorn.
And then, he saw the exact moment when scorn gave way to cruelty and ignorance and small-mindedness and—yes, he knew it when he saw it, he’d seen it on too many adolescent faces back in Hillstone not to recognize it—glee.
The next few minutes had been like being plunged back into his childhood.
The guy had poked and prodded, in that fake-jovial way that men did to each other, the “just giving you a hard time” jabs concealing real aggression that you weren’t supposed to respond to because come on, mate, can’t you take a joke?
Justin had felt Matty stiffen beside him, and then shrink, his posture shifting as his shoulders tensed and his knees locked up.
Matty had grown up in Sydney, half a generation after Justin had grown up in the country, and he was clearly taken aback by this response.
But Justin knew better. He knew what men like this, and the boys they had been, thought about men like Matty and Justin.
The guy had kept talking and talking—Justin wasn’t going to repeat the things he’d said to Missy, who was actually queer and didn’t need to hear that kind of vile shit—and Justin had soon turned to Ricky and Matty and told them it was time to leave.
His colleagues had apparently just been waiting for his permission to walk away, because they set their drinks on the bar, Matty’s relief palpable and Ricky’s hand a little shaky as he tossed a few bills down.
They’d almost gotten out of there unscathed, but the guy, beer-brave and sensing weakness, had smirked and spat out one last insult.
“Yeah, time to leave, you fancy little freaks.”
Justin’s spine had gone rigid with rage and fear, all the repressed sensations of childhood rushing back into his body, flooding his brain.
His vision had gone blurry around the edges until all he could see was the guy’s face, twisted with disdain and, unmistakably, triumph.
In the moment, it had felt like he’d stood there a long time, the sounds of the crowded bar dulled by his fury.
In the video it lasted barely a second or two but last night, he would have said it was a few minutes as his adrenaline swept through him, lighting up his limbs until his body finally caught up and cooperated with his brain.
And then he’d swung. Once the guy had said that word, freaks, walking away was never an option. Justin looked up at Missy and shook his head.
“I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Obviously,” she tutted. “You weren’t thinking at all. You could have really hurt the guy. Did he hit his head?”
Hurt and betrayal flared in Justin’s chest. That’s what she was worried about? She snapped right into HR Mode, without checking if her own cousin was okay?
“I don’t know,” Justin repeated, frustrated now, “but he insulted me and my friends. I couldn’t walk away. Couldn’t just let him get away with it.”
Missy’s eyes went wide and disbelieving under her mop of unruly brown curls. “Couldn’t let him get away with it? What kind of country town crap is that? You had to defend your honor? Jesus, Justin, why not just call for pistols at dawn?”
“Give me a break, okay?” he ground out. His cousin had always been more of a big sister, and usually he didn’t mind that she kept him in line and told him when he was full of crap, but this morning he had no patience for it.
He knew he’d fucked up. He knew there’d be consequences—hell, even without video evidence, the guy might try to press charges—and he was worried about that.
But he couldn’t bring himself to regret what he’d done.
Every time he thought about Matty standing beside him, the younger man’s smile sliding off his face as his pride turned to doubt, and doubt turned to fear, Justin clenched his jaw. Some people deserved to get punched.
“I’ll give you a break when you explain to me why the hell you did something so totally out of character, something that could have done another human being serious harm and result in a criminal record, and that will now live on the internet forever,” she shot back.
“I can’t explain it,” he said shortly.
She fixed him with a look, then spoke in a dry, don’t-bullshit-me tone he knew she’d never use on an employee. “Try.”
He rolled his shoulders again and heaved out a heavy sigh. “I’m not bullshitting you. I really didn’t know what had happened. I was… outside of my body almost. And not in the good way like when I dance. It was like… like my brain went blank. I panicked, and then it was all instinct.”
Missy cocked her head and gave him a shrewd, assessing look. “Like, you disassociated? And went into fight or flight?”
Still in HR Mode, then. “Maybe.” He shrugged.
She looked at him for a long moment. Her eyes, which usually sparkled with mischief, were sharp and serious. When she spoke, though, her voice was gentle. “What did he say to you?”
Justin let out a long breath. “I don’t want to repeat it. It was…” He trailed off, reluctant to even paraphrase the guy’s taunts.
“Homophobic and shitty, and really triggering for you?” Missy finished for him.
Justin swallowed, and nodded gratefully.
“Okay,” she said. “I understand.”
He knew she did, too, because they’d grown up together, and she knew what Hillstone had been like for him.
They’d spent an awful lot of time together as kids.
Until his stepdad had entered the picture when he was seven, his mum had been on her own, and Justin remembered stretches of time when Missy and his aunt Justine had moved in with them.
He and Missy had gone to the same primary school, then the same high school.
She’d left Hillstone a year before he did, and gone to uni in Sydney, but he’d moved in with her when he’d come to the city to dance.
And it was because of Missy that he’d started dancing in the first place: Because he’d idolized her, followed her everywhere she went, including the local church hall for her weekly ballet classes.