Page 60 of Unbound
Jesse had kissed me.
Jesse—repressed, terrified, closeted Jesse who apologized for existing—had grabbed my face in front of two hundred people and kissed me like his life depended on it.
And then he'd looked at me like I was the devil himself and ran.
"Adrian."
I turned, still dazed, to see Rebecca pushing through the crowd toward the stage. Her face was streaked with tears, her carefully applied makeup running in dark tracks down her cheeks. She looked like she was barely holding herself together.
Behind her, I caught sight of two older figures near the back of the auditorium. A man in a dark suit with greying hair and a stern face that looked carved from stone. A woman in a modest dress, her hand pressed to her mouth, shaking her head slowly like she was trying to wake up from a nightmare.
Jesse's parents.
They'd seen everything.
Fuck. Fuck.
"Rebecca, I—" I started, but she was already climbing the side steps to the stage, her movements sharp and unsteady.
"You did this." Her voice was barely above a whisper, but it cut through me like a blade. Up close, I could see she was trembling, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. "You broke him."
"I didn't—he kissed me." The words sounded pathetic even to my own ears, defensive and hollow. "I wasn't expecting—"
"Don't." She stepped closer, and I could see the rage burning behind her tears. "Don't you dare act like this was his choice. You've been following him around for weeks. Everyone's seen it. Following him around campus, cornering him in coffee shops, sitting next to him in the library, pushing and pushing until—"
She gestured helplessly toward where Jesse had disappeared, her voice breaking.
"Until this. Until you made him forget himself in front of everyone who matters to him."
I opened my mouth to argue, to defend myself, but the words died in my throat. Because she was right, wasn't she? I had been following him. Playing with him and his emotions. Pushing him toward this exact moment.
I just hadn't expected it to happen so publicly. So catastrophically.
"Rebecca, I know his family is Topeka Covenant, but—"
"But what? You thought because you knew he was gay it wouldn't matter?" She laughed bitterly. "Adrian, his father is David Miller. Elder David Miller. He's one of the church's inner circle, one of their most vocal leaders."
The blood drained from my face. I'd heard that name before, seen it in news articles about the church's most hateful protests.
"Jesse isn't just some member's kid who can quietly disappear," Rebecca continued. "He's the son of one of their most prominent leaders. The perfect poster child they've been holding up for years as proof that their methods work."
"What methods?"
Her face crumpled. "You really don't know the whole story, do you? You thought this was just about a closeted college kid being afraid of what his friends might think."
"I..." I swallowed hard. "I knew his family was conservative, but I didn't realize—"
"When Jesse was fourteen, his parents found gay porn on his computer. Not much, just a few sites he'd visited when he thought no one would know. They sent him away for eight months." Her voice got quieter, more broken. "Conversion therapy. The kind where they don't let you sleep if you have 'impure thoughts.' Where they make you write letters to God begging forgiveness for your 'abomination.'"
My stomach lurched. "Jesus Christ."
"They broke him down completely. And when he came back, he was different. Perfect. The ideal Christian son who never stepped out of line, never questioned anything, never even looked at boys again." Tears were streaming down her face now. "Everyone said they'd fixed him. His parents paraded him around as a success story."
The pieces clicked together with horrible clarity. Jesse's rigid control, his constant anxiety, the way he flinched whenever anyone got too close. The careful way he spoke, like every word was being monitored.
"But he wasn't fixed," I said quietly.
"No. He just learned to hide it better. To bury it so deep that even he could almost believe it was gone." She wiped at her face with the back of her hand. "Almost."
