“You and he…” Aiden trailed off.
Thomas shook his head and took another sip of his drink, letting the alcohol burn its way down. He was grateful Aiden didn’t finish the sentence.
“It somehow happened slowly but also overnight. We would do things…sexually, but then we would just go back to being friends. Then, suddenly, he said I was his boyfriend but that we had to keep it a secret. He said people wouldn’t understand. He never even asked, he just declared it so. And, as usual, I never questioned it.”
“You were thirteen.”
Thomas turned to look at Aiden then back at the fire. “I had a genius level IQ. I was studying psychology. I should have seen the warning signs.”
“You wouldn’t say that if this happened to someone else,” Aiden assured him.
That was true. But it hadn’t happened to anybody else. It had happened to Thomas. He should have known better. Should have seen the warnings. They were everywhere. Red flags. Alarm bells. Sirens. Thomas had ignored them all.
“At first, it was nice. Like a secret just between us. But almost immediately, he started getting weird. Jealous. Possessive. I was so…confused. One minute, he was my best friend, the next he would be mad at me for some perceived slight. I’d talked to a girl, looked at another boy too long, smiled at a teacher. I found myself constantly apologizing. I was getting whiplash.”
“You like making me jealous. You just can’t stand not having constant attention.”
“What did I do?”
“You should just go back to your dorm room tonight.It’s not like we were going to do anything anyway.”
“I didn’t get that the situation was toxic. It didn’t seem abusive. It seemed…dramatic, I guess. But my parents were plenty dramatic. The constant push and pull felt normal. The cycle of feeling bad, apologizing, then getting his attention back was…what I knew. I spent years with parents who pretended I didn’t exist, so to have Shane be so possessive felt good.”
He didn’t really want to talk about this next part. Especially to Aiden. He’d already seen the worst of Thomas, but this was just one more layer scraped away. He was already one big open wound. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take.
“He wanted more than we were already doing…physically. He wanted everything, but I was scared. We fought about it constantly with him trying to push me into more almost every night until I was afraid to go to sleep because I knew I’d wake up with him touching me.”
“Did you share a dorm?”
“No. But a locked door never stopped Shane in his life. He wanted something, he got it. Except that. With me.” Thomas took a healthy swallow of his drink. “I was fourteen by then and he was almost seventeen. He tried every tired line to get me to see that he ‘needed’ sex. That it wasn’t a big deal. But I just had this thing in my head…I wasn’t ready. Finally, he just stopped.”
“Stopped?”
“Yeah, he stopped being affectionate, stopped wanting to do anything…intimate. He told me he was fine with me not being ready for a relationship, even though that wasn’t what I’d said. And then he brought home Holly.”
“Holly?” Aiden echoed.
Pain arched through Thomas as he remembered the hurt of seeing the girl’s face. She’d been everything Thomas wasn’t. Beautiful. Smart. Funny. Age appropriate.
“Mm. He brought her to my parents’ Christmas party. Introduced her to everybody as his girlfriend. Made sure I heard him. Made sure I got to see him dote on her all night. When I got upset, he dragged me upstairs to tell me that he had needs and that he loved me, but Holly was old enough for a real relationship. He told me if I stopped being a baby about adult things and just accepted that Holly was his girlfriend, then we could go back to the way things were.”
“What did that mean?” Aiden asked.
Thomas closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the chair. “It meant, when we were alone together, we’d kiss, make out, fool around. He’d keep pushing for me to do more, but when Holly was there, I was just his friend. At least, at first.”
When Thomas didn’t continue, Aiden stood, taking his glass and refilling it before sitting once more.Thomas took another healthy swallow. He wished he could be more concise. He knew he was rambling, but there was just so much that happened back then. Too much to ever share in one sitting. He had no way of explaining the pain, the torment, the constant push and pull of never quite knowing where he stood with the only person in his life who’d ever shown him any affection.
“He was pushing us around like pieces on a chess board. But neither of us noticed at first. He wanted to see how much he could get away with. How far he could push us before we refused to do as he asked. It was a game to him. She was jealous of me. Of course, I was jealous of her, too. I hated her. She was pretty and sweet and socially acceptable. Exactly who Shane McAvoy should be dating. Which was what he wanted.”
“He was pitting you against each other.”
Thomas nodded. “And it worked. We both worked extra hard to give Shane what he wanted. I even…stopped fighting him off when it came to sex. I let him…take what he wanted. I thought if I just did it, he’d get rid of Holly. But that didn’t happen. He wanted us both. Together.”
“Together?”
Thomas nodded. “He set it up so she would find us together. It was like he wanted to gauge her reaction. I think he hoped, on some level, she’d want to join in. But she was horrified. Heartbroken. She lost her mind, screaming and crying until Shane had to shove her against the door and cover her mouth before we all got caught in his dorm room.”
Her words still echoed in Thomas’s head, crystal clear.“You always pick him. Always. I knew there was something weird going on between the two of you. You’re fucking disgusting. He’s a little kid and he’s your family. I’m going to tell everybody what you’re doing.”
