Page 20 of Jingle Bell Flock
I stared at the ceiling.The day before.He’d asked her the fucking day before prom.
My jaw clenched. Then unclenched. I wanted to rage at him—at how carelessly he’d forgotten about me while he scrambled to make his father happy.
But I’d seen how Harrison’s father treated him. The comments. The pressure. The expectations.
My hands relaxed their grip on the sheets.
“You could have given me a heads up,” I said, my voice eerily calm despite the war going on inside me. “Instead, you made me feel like a fool.”
I felt the mattress shift as Harrison rolled onto his side. In my peripheral vision, I could see him staring at me, his expression desperate. His hand lifted—reaching for me—but stopped midair, hovering for a moment before falling back to the sheets. “It wasn’t like that, Jeremy.”
“Wasn’t it?” I finally looked at him. “You chose making your dad happy over … over us. Overme. And you didn’t even have the balls to tell me yourself.”
I heard him pull in a breath, and then he turned to face me, his eyes rimmed in red, tear tracks staining his cheek, and his mouth twisted in grief. “My dad had been making comments about usall year, Jeremy. Things like, ‘You spend too much time with that Price boy.’ Or ‘When are you going to find yourself a nice girl? What are you, queer?’”
His hands clenched into fists on his thighs, knuckles going white.
“The closer we got to graduation, the more pointed his comments got. The more insistent he became about me dating. He started watching you and me like a hawk whenever you came over. Why do you think I always wanted to be at your house instead? Then, when I’d get home, he’d grill me about what we did together. Where we went.”
His voice dropped to a whisper again. “And I started to panic that he knew. That somehow he’d figured out what was between us.”
I stayed silent, watching him. Watching the way his chest heaved, the way he’d wrapped his arms around his middle like he was trying to hold himself together.
“He cornered me one night a couple of weeks before prom, and … and … asked me point-blank if I was sucking your cocklike some goddamn fairy. Asked me if that’s why my knees always hurt. He got …” Harrison shuddered, his whole body shaking as he screwed his eyes closed. “I don’t know if you remember, but we were in the locker room, and you asked about a bruise. I told you I’d tripped over some socks in the middle of the night on my way to the bathroom.”
He opened his eyes and dragged his teary gaze to me. “I didn’t trip over my fucking socks, Jeremy.”
The world tilted.
I remembered that bruise—dark purple blooming across his ribs. He’d laughed it off, made some joke about being clumsy at three o’clock in the morning. And I’d believed him because why wouldn’t I?
“He hit you.” The words came out flat, emotionless. Because if I let any feeling in, I’d lose it completely.
“Yeah.” His voice was small. Ashamed.
My hands clenched into fists, my nails biting into my palms. “How many times?”
“Jeremy—”
“How many times, Harrison?”
After a long pause, he said, “Enough that I knew what would happen if he found out about us. Enough that I was willing to hurt you to keep him from knowing.”
My stomach churned. Bile rose in my throat.
Seventeen fucking years.
All this time, I’d been angry at him for being a coward when he’d been trying to survive his own father.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I couldn’t keep the hurt from my voice. “I would’ve done something. Told my parents. You didn’t have to deal with that alone.”
“And say what? ‘Hey Mom and Dad, Harrison’s dad beats him because he takes my dick like a champ’?” Harrison let out a bitter laugh.
“They would have helped you.” I was more than sure of that. “They loved you.”
“I know.” He choked on the words. “But I was too scared. I told myself it would stop once I left for college. Once I was out of his house, it wouldn’t matter anymore what he thought or what he knew.”
He fell silent, and I let us sit with the weight of what he’d just revealed.
