Page 73 of Free
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
D took the beer that Jeremy handed him. "Thanks." He twisted the cap off the bottle and set it on the coffee table, then rested his free hand on Jeremy's thigh as he sat down beside him. "Thanks for not being upset with the change of plans." He hated how the phone call had changed his mood. He'd been excited to go out with Jeremy, but something about being in touch with Xander hit him hard.
"It's okay. I understand," Jeremy told him.
"Yeah, you do. You're living it too." D sighed. "I thought I was dealing with the changes okay, but that phone call made me realize all I've done is push the anger back because, honestly, what else can I do with it?"
"Scream, cry, or maybe just talk about it," Jeremy told him. "I know we were told to forget our past, to move on and start over, but it's really not that easy. You can't just erase all those years. You can't suddenly become what you're not. You can't forget the people you care about."
D leaned his head on Jeremy's shoulder. "I've tried. I mean, you'd think it would make it easier to try and forget. It's not like I can ever go back, but I just can't seem to let go. I guess talking to Xander today for the first time since I left hit me harder than I thought it would. I was pissed off that he's back home, living his normal life, watching Faith grow up. It's all stuff I thought I'd be doing too."
"Who is Faith? I've heard her mentioned a few times," Jeremy asked softly.
D smiled. "A pain in my ass." He laughed. "She's Xander's step-daughter. She was actually one of the kids we saved a few years back. She was kidnapped and our team managed to find her. We went in, took down her attacker, and called the police. Xander ended up marrying her dad, Matt, who is now one of our… their computer guys." He took a deep breath. "They still feel like my team, you know? Anyway, Faith is almost seventeen now. She just got her driver's license. Before I got caught, I was taking her out, letting her practice in my car. She just has a way about her. I don't even know how to explain it, but you can't help but love her. She's really good friends with Beau. Faith wants to be a doctor someday like Beau. She'll do it too. Probably be better than Beau ever dreamed of being. I've never met someone so young and so motivated."
"She sounds amazing." Jeremy smiled.
"She really is. Anyway, Xander is my best friend, so of course I was around her and her dad all the time. We were all pretty close. They were family to me. I mean, Xander always has been family. The only family that ever mattered to me at least." D closed his eyes. "Xander's always been there for me. He helped me get through some shit. When I got to the Army, I was a mess. I was a walking time-bomb. If he hadn't found a way to ground me, I'm not sure I'd be alive today."
"Do you want to talk about it?" Jeremy asked. "It's okay if you don't."
D smiled, opening his eyes. "Xander said I should tell you everything. Let you know why I'm as fucked up as I am, but it's not that easy."
"For one, you're not fucked up. You like sex. There's nothing wrong with that. Using it as a crutch probably isn't advised, but there are a lot of worse addictions you could have. Second, you only tell me what you're comfortable telling me. I'm here for you either way. We all have things we don't talk about. Some bigger than others. I'm with you now. The past doesn't matter to me. If you want to share, I'll listen, but if you can't ever tell me, then that's okay too."
D sat up, trying to decide if he was strong enough to talk about his past. Was what he had with Jeremy strong enough for him to spill his guts to him? He trusted him, that wasn't the issue. What he was scared about most was that it might actually change the way Jeremy thought about him, even looked at him. He didn't want to see disgust or pity in his eyes, and both were very possible. "If I tell you and it's too much, if you can't handle—"
Jeremy put his finger to D's lips. "Do you really think it's so bad that I won't want to stay with you? Do you think I'd judge you on your past?"
D shrugged. "I don't think you will judge me, but it could be so bad that you don't want to be with me anymore." Feeling vulnerable was new for D. He'd never let himself get close enough to anyone before to where it mattered if they walked away. Sure, there had been Xander, but even then, when he'd told Xander it had been in the middle of a breakdown. He had nothing left to lose at that point. Even if Xander had walked away, he wouldn't have been any more broken than he already had been at that point. Now, he was realizing how badly he did want a future with Jeremy. He wanted to keep dating and see where it would go. Losing Jeremy would kill him after all he'd already gone through the last few months. After having a taste of commitment, even going back to the clubs wouldn't heal him.
"I'm not going anywhere, D, and your past isn't going to change that. If things don't work out for us, it's going to be something that happens between us, something that happens now. It's not going to be because of something that happened years ago. I didn't think I could ever find someone who would be okay with the fact I'd murdered my ex. I seriously thought everyone would hold that against me, worry I'd lose my mind and do it again. You never once made me feel that way. You understood. You were the only one who fucking understood what I was feeling, how hard it was for me to accept and deal with things. No one else ever asked me how I felt about it, but you did. I can't forget that. I won't do to you what I expected everyone to do to me because of something in the past."
D sat forward, bracing his elbows on his knees as he stared at the floor. "But I could have stopped it. I should have. I was just too scared."
Jeremy placed a hand on D's back, but didn't say anything.
Memories that haunted him every day of his life came forward, and against his will, tears filled his eyes. He needed to do this. He wanted Jeremy to know. Taking a deep breath, he kept his gaze on the floor, not wanting to see the horror that would probably fill Jeremy's eyes. "I knew I was gay at a young age. I remember being five or six and watching my parents and thinking that I wanted what they had but with a man. It was all innocent back then, simple things like watching them hold hands when we'd walk through the zoo, or kiss each other goodbye in the mornings. As I got a little older, I started to notice boys in my class. I was young. Maybe eight or nine. When I started going through puberty, I was ten or eleven when it really hit hard. I found myself always hard, always thinking about a certain boy at school I liked. Like any preteen, I was jacking off all the time." D paused, taking a long sip of his beer, glad that Jeremy stayed silent.
"I was twelve when I told my mom I liked boys. She stared at me like I was crazy but really didn't say anything. I didn't know enough at that age to know that being gay wasn't acceptable really. I'd never been around anyone who was gay. I just knew I liked boys. I thought it was that simple. How wrong I was." D stared at his shoes as he remembered that night. "My dad came home from work that night and we had dinner like always, then I went off to play in my room. That was when Mom must have told Dad what I'd said. I'm playing video games one minute and the next my dad stomps into my room, furious, and telling me he won't have some sissy as a son. He slapped me hard, the first time he'd ever laid a hand on me. Mom had spanked me in the past, but never my dad. I was scared to death. He went on telling me how being gay was a sin and how liking boys made people bad. I can't remember half the stuff he screamed at me. I was hysterical, scared, and crying, telling him I was sorry, just so he'd stop. Again, I was twelve. I hardly understood all of this. Kids at school talked, but that was all I had to go off, and back then, people didn't talk about stuff like that as openly as they do now." D took another drink of his beer. His heart was beating faster as the memories became clearer as he gave voice to them. "My dad grabbed me by the hair and dragged me into my parents' bedroom. He said he'd show me how real men acted. I had no idea what was going to happen, but when Dad forced me to undress, I knew it wasn't going to be good. I expected a spanking honestly, but when he got undressed, then called my mother in and had her undress too, I knew that wasn't what was happening. We didn't have the internet and all that back then, at least not like we do now. I'd never seen porn, but I had seen a magazine or two. I knew what sex was, but not really the fundamentals of it. Just locker room talk mostly. Anyway, my dad had us all sit on the bed and he said I was supposed to watch as my mom made him come. I was freaking the fuck out, begging to be allowed to leave, but each time I went to get up, he would grab me by the hair and pull me back."
"Your mom didn't argue about this?" Jeremy asked.
"Nope, she did everything Dad told her to. First, it was a simple hand job. She worked his cock and got him hard, but when my dad saw I wasn't hard from watching, he told my mom to do the same to me. I thought I was too scared to get hard, but hell, at that age, any hand on my cock felt good. I was so embarrassed and ashamed, but I couldn't stop it."
Jeremy nodded. "The body has a mind of its own."
"Anyway, I won't go into all the graphic details, but over the next few hours, my dad had my mother do things to me and him that made me want to be sick. He always stopped her right before I'd come though, and I didn't understand that, at least not at first. Then, as it got later, and I thought I was going to die from the pain of my hard-on, my dad finally told my mom to fuck me. Said his sissy son needed to know the right way to fuck and he was going to make sure I was taught right. I screamed and cried and fought, but my dad held me down and had my mom get on top of me. I was sick. When it was done, I ran to the bathroom and vomited, locking myself in there for hours. I cried as I showered, trying to wash it all off me."
"Fuck." Jeremy's hand pressed supportively against D's back.
"It went on for years. I begged them to stop, but my dad was convinced the way to make me a real man was to force me to be with a woman. I never again brought up being gay, but it didn't matter. My dad kept forcing me and my mother to be together while he watched. Finally, I had gotten a part-time job at fourteen. That kept me out of the house a lot, but didn't stop it completely, and by the time I was sixteen, I'd saved enough money to buy a cheap car. I loaded everything into my car the day I got it and never looked back. I lived in my car and worked jobs, showering at friends' houses or truck stops when I could. As soon as I was old enough to enlist, I did. I haven't been back home since." D was exhausted even though hardly ten minutes had passed. Telling his story drained him. He hated admitting how weak he was back then, how he didn't put up a bigger fight, how he didn't tell anyone what was happening. Now, looking back, he could see what he should have done, but back then, he'd been so scared, he didn't do anything. He dared a glance at Jeremy. "I started having sex all the time because it was the only thing that made me feel human anymore. When I was with other men, I was normal."
"You were always normal, D. What they forced you to do was horrible, but none of that was your fault. You were young. You know that now." Jeremy kissed his shoulder.
"Now, but I didn't back then, and even after I left, I blamed myself. If I'd just kept my mouth shut about being gay. If I'd just told someone what my parents were doing to me. If I'd just fought harder. I had a million excuses, but none of them changed anything. I was fucked up. Before the military it was drugs, after I enlisted it was drinking, then it was sex. Sex was safe. It was an addiction I could hide, something I could use without fallout. I wasn't going to wake up hungover or overdose on something. I was always safe, but when the memories would start to haunt me, it was my crutch. Fucking some guy in the bathroom of the club never made me feel as dirty as my parents did."
Jeremy touched D's chin, gently urging him to turn his face to him. He brushed a soft kiss over his lips. "Nothing you told me changes how I feel about you. It doesn't make me want to leave, it doesn't make me hate you. It's your past, and what we have is stronger than those memories you have. I don't know how to help you heal, or even if I can help you, but I'm here for you. I'm here if you need to use me for sex to help forget, I'm here if you need a shoulder to cry on, or someone to scream at."
