“That’s disgusting.”
“The porn?” Jag asked, trying to inject humour into his voice. He failed dismally.
“Trying to make you associate feeling sick with men having sex with each other.” Anger seethed in Michael’s voice. “Your parents knew this was happening?”
Jag nodded, shivering. “I can’t watch gay porn now,” he said ruefully. “Can’t even stand to talk about it, but it didn’t stop me from liking guys, so I’m not sure if it counts as a win for the therapists or not.”
“Which is why you freaked out when we were star gazing and I mentioned rule thirty-four,” Michael said, looking as if he was mentally slapping himself for being thoughtless despite the fact he couldn’t have known Jag would react badly.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologise,” Michael growled. “I can’t believe anyone would do that to someone, let alone a kid.”
Jag cringed at Michael’s words. Yes, he had been a kid—he wasn’t much more than one now—but he hadn’t thought of himself like that whilst in Michael’s company before. Now, laying his past torment bare and with that word passing Michael’s lips so freely, he felt young, vulnerable, and weak. It was just another example of why he wasn’t good enough for Michael. What could a successful man like him, with so much maturity and life experience, want with a messed-up twenty-year-old?
“Talk to me,” Michael whispered. “What are you thinking?”
“That I’m too young and fucked up for you.”
Michael traced Jag’s spine with his finger. “You’re you,” he said softly. “You’re the man I’ve fallen in love with.”
Jag decided that would do for now. Pressing for further explanation would make him sound whiny and needy, and he was too exhausted to behave like that anyway.
He stayed still and quiet until he finally felt safe enough to stop leaning over the edge of the bed and roll onto his back again. “I can’t even decide if the drugs and porn was the worst thing they did to me,” he said. “It’s left me with a pretty crappy physical reaction, yes, but it didn’t screw with my mind as much as some of their other techniques.”
Michael pursed his lips. “Do you want to talk about them?” he asked tentatively.
“No,” Jag admitted. “It’s not going to change anything, is it? It’s not going to undo the damage they’ve done.”
“No,” Michael agreed, stroking Jag’s hair back from his face. “But talking about it might help you process it.”
Jag bit his lower lip, not quite sure he agreed.
“But it’s your choice,” Michael said, kissing his cheek. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay.”
“There was a lot of talking therapy,” he said, the words weighing him down. “Dr Miller wanted to work out why I liked boys and not girls.”
“Being gay isn’t a fucking mental illness,” Michael growled. He closed his eyes and breathed in and out a couple of times. “I’m sorry.”
Jag stroked his arm. “Don’t be. I’m angry about it, too. And you’re right. That’s exactly how they treated it: like something that could be cured by changing the way my mind was programmed.” He felt his brow crumple, and he sucked in a sob. “The trouble is that they did change the wiring of my brain, just not in the way they’d intended. I never believed the way I felt about guys was disgusting or wrong, but I did start to doubt everything about myself.” He shuddered and swiped at his eyes with the heel of his hand.
“And it destroyed your relationship with your parents.”
Jag shook his head fiercely. “No. The therapy didn’t do that. They did that when they refused to accept me for who I was and they sent me to Dr Miller. I hated them from the moment I was first sent to him, and that only got worse when they sent me away for the summer.” He laughed bitterly. “Dr Miller even tried to blame them for me being gay, which I’m sure they would have just loved to hear.”
“How?” Michael asked.
Jag inhaled. “He claimed that because my father had been emotionally distant most of my life and my mother was overbearing, that I craved the attention of men whilst simultaneously being afraid of women.” God, he’d hated those conversations. It was as if Dr Miller hadwantedhim to hate his parents.
“Sounds like bullshit to me.”
“Yeah,” Jag said quietly. “It doesnow, especially because my mother wasn’t exactly actively present my whole life, because—” He clamped his lips shut. He wasn’t ready to tell Michael anything that would reveal who his parents were. He barrelled on, hoping Michael would overlook his slip-up. “But when I was locked up in that place, being told it over and over…” He rubbed his chest, which had become tight and painful. “I didn’t believe that anyonemademe gay, let alone my parents, but that didn’t mean it didn’t have some kind of effect on me. Perhaps I’d never been as happy as I thought I had, or maybe my relationship with my parents wasn’t what I thought it had been.” He forced a sad smile. “As I said, I started to doubteverythingabout myself. But I was lucky,” he whispered. “I got away.”
“How?” Michael asked in a low voice.
“I thought they’d let me go home after the summer so I could go back to school and start studying for my A Levels. But my parents and Dr Miller told me, in no uncertain terms, that I’d be there until I was better.” His chest shuddered. “So I pretended they’d cured me.”
“You must have done a good job.”
