Together, while now sharing many of the same classes, we lean on each other and make it day by day. A shared burden is lighter and all that, right?
We don’t party. We rarely socialize with others. When we do socialize with people, I have agreed, at his request, that we pretend to only be friends, nothing more. Most people who know us don’t even realize we’re roommates.
That part grates on me, keeping a large chunk of my life in a closet, but I love Ward and he’s worth it.
The smiles he gives me when we’re alone are worth it.
He wants only me, and my happiness and success.
Aside from satisfying his father’s wishes for him.
Apparently, his father’s big in state-level politics, an attorney turned GOP political operative who’s a force to be reckoned at a state level, with his reach growing by the year throughout the Southeast. His stated plans for Ward include getting him taken on as a junior partner at his firm, then shoving him through the meat grinder of local and state politics to make him a rising GOP political star so he can then step onto the national stage.
Doesn’t matter that Ward has no interest in doing any of that, of course. Or that Ward really wants to register as a Democrat, like I am.
Later that night, after making love, I hold him tightly. “You don’t really want to run for office, do you?”
He softly chuffs. “No.”
Part of me wants to proclaim my grand plan to him now, and common sense tells me to wait. That I’ll overwhelm and scare him if I do.
I havenowwith him, and every day helps me show him,proveto him, that I have his back and love him.
That I can take care of him. “You don’t have to, you know. You can make a life for yourself.”
He sighs. “I’m hoping by the time I graduate law school and start working that he’ll have found another candidate to focus on and forget about me.”
The despair in his voice makes anger swell inside me. His father must be a real shit of a man if he can make his own son feel like that. “What happens if you just tell him no?”
He shudders in my arms. “No one tells Mason Rutherford Callahan ‘no.’ About anything.”
I know he says that now. “Once you graduate from law school, you’re in the clear.” I try to tell myself to shut up but I lumber forward into the swamp anyway. “Then he doesn’t have anything to hold over your head, and you don’t have any college debt to worry about.”
“He’d totally cut me off though,” he softly says. “Not just the money. He’d make Mom disown me.”
I let his words gently fade between us and settle in the darkness for a moment before speaking again. “My dad would never do that. Loving parents don’t leverage their children that way. Loving parents don’t let each other do that, either.”
“Your dad’s not a rich, narcissistic sociopath trying to relive his life through you,” he snarks.
It’s not often Ward speaks about his father in such a direct way. If anything, he tries to avoid talking about his father at all.
I rub my chin against the top of his head. “My dad would open his arms to you and welcome you as a son. So would Mom.”
In my arms, Ward’s body tenses, but he doesn’t speak for several long minutes. When he finally does, it’s in a pained whisper. “Your father isn’t ruthless, and doesn’t have the power and money to ruin lives, either.”
* * * *
“You read it to me.” Ward stands at the far corner of my bedroom, his arms wrapped around him in a desperate, panicked hug, while I hold his phone.
A phone he just shoved into my hands like it was radioactive, because he received a text from his father.
We’re a week into the first semester of our last year of pre-law, and we still live in a residence hall, although sharing an apartment now.
Ward never sleeps in his room or in bed when we’re at school. He makes it the first day we arrive, and he doesn’t even wash or change the sheets, because he’s always in my bed. All his room is for is storing his clothes and other items.
Every text he receives from his father is met with nearly this same level of terror. I’ve never met the man, because since that very first day when we were freshmen, he’s never accompanied Ward to school. Neither does Ward’s mom. They send him alone, and his father only cares about Ward’s grades and LSAT scores.
I tap in the code to unlock Ward’s phone and take a deep breath as I wipe into the text, scan it, then rein in my anger before I read it aloud in as neutral a tone as I can muster.
