He took Wanda’s calloused, gentle hands and kissed them. “Life is mysterious. We think we’re in control, but we’re only holding on for the ride, trying not to lose our grip.”
“Your man holds on to you tight. He loves you so.” She wiped her eyes. “Now it’s time for you to make up with that brother of yours.” She held up her finger when he tried to stop her. “Promise me you’ll listen to what he has to say. You may be surprised,” she said with a smile. “Like you said, life is mysterious.”
He opened the front door, and Sasha greeted him. He bent down to pet her, then straightened up and listened. Again his gut twisted as he heard the laughter coming from the kitchen.Shit, fuck. Closing his eyes and counting to ten, he took a deep breath and headed to the back of the house. By the time he entered the kitchen, he’d managed to at least put together an outward appearance of a man in control. Meanwhile, on the inside, his teeth bit down on his inner cheek until the pain made him focus on the scene in front of him.
“Hello, everyone. Sorry I’m so late, but the trains were really fucked up tonight.” Without looking too carefully at either Drew or Ash, he instead concentrated on Jordan.
Jordan’s eyes lit up, and he slid off his chair to greet him. “There you are. I was getting concerned. Come on and sit down. Drew and Ash brought sandwiches, and I’ve got a beer waiting with your name on it.” They kissed, and he sank down in the chair next to Jordan and took a long, grateful swig of his beer. While it tasted great, it unfortunately did little to quell the nerves playing havoc with his system. Underneath the table, Jordan squeezed his thigh, leaving his hand to rest there, offering comfort and support.
Showtime.
“So.” He placed his beer bottle on the table and, with a calm he didn’t feel inside, stared at Ash. “Why don’t we get this over with?”
Ash’s mouth tightened. “Is that all this is to you then? Something to check off your to-do list?” He pushed Drew’s hand off his shoulder. “Don’t. I’m fine.” Anger seeped out of his words. “I’ve waited years to talk to you. Now that the time has come, I won’t let you rush through it.”
What a joke. “You don’t get to make the rules. Maybe when I was young and naive, I let you be in charge. Those days are gone. Long gone.” If Ash thought he was in control here, he’d find out soon enough how wrong he was.
“When we were kids, I looked up to you, worshipped you. You were my older brother who could do no wrong.My family. Then you walked away without a backward glance. You knew we were too young to come with you when you asked me to. You had no trouble forgetting who you’d left behind. So no. You gave up any right to tell me what to do when you forgot about us.”
With each word, Ash shook his head with increasing ferocity, his breath expelling in quick, hard bursts until he interrupted Luke with a harsh cry. “It’s not true. I swear. I searched for you, and even though you changed your name, I never gave up. Never. I still haven’t given up on Brandon.” His hand slammed down on the table. “I won’t let you dismiss me now.”
“Maybe you should have thought about the reason why I changed my name.” Luke’s voice shook. “Maybe I didn’t want you to find me.” Luke dug his nails into the scarred wooden top of the table. “You left and never looked back. You didn’t fucking care.”
Something dark flickered in Ash’s silvery eyes. “That’s not true.”
This dancing around the elephant in the room was getting them nowhere. “You haven’t got the guts to admit it to me; that’s fine. I’m not even angry anymore because I’ve finally gotten what I’ve always wanted.” He took Jordan’s hand and held it. This man was his rock. His family. Ash, however, still needed to hear the ugly truth.
“It doesn’t matter anymore because I have Jordan. But when you go to sleep at night, I hope you can admit to yourself what you did to Brandon and me. That you left us alone with a vicious drunk and a physical abuser who also liked to touch young boys.”
Ash visibly flinched. Luke pushed ahead with his gruesome story. Perversely, he wanted Ash to hurt and to hear from Luke’s lips the carnage he’d left behind.
“He left me alone for two years after you left. Every once in a while he’d look at me funny or make a strange remark to me. I ignored it but made sure to always look out for Brandon. But one night he tried to touch me and I screamed so loud Mrs. Munson and Brandon came running into my room. I told them to leave, get out. Go to Mrs. Cartwright down the road.” He blinked to try and forestall the rush of tears at the memory, but it did no good. “So they left and I was alone with that bastard. He laughed at me, thanking me for getting us alone together.”
Memories of that night flooded his mind. For over twelve years he’d kept it bottled up, but now the doors were flung open and the evilness was there, ready to be revealed in all its ugliness.
“He tried to pin me down, but I went berserk, punching and kicking him. When he pulled out his gun, I thought that was it. I was going to die.”
“Lucas.” Jordan breathed. “You don’t have to do this. It’s over now. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
Luke’s laughter caught in a sob. “It’s never going to be over. Don’t you see? It’s like a brand, burned into my mind. Every time I close my eyes I see him, that monster.” Like a movie playing in his mind, Luke heard the sickening thuds of Munson’s boots against his flesh and recalled the excruciating pain as the man kicked him with his steel-toed boots, all the while holding the gun over him. Luke barely felt Jordan put his arm around him, holding him, soothing him. Loving him.
The pain receded as, for the first time in years, he cried for the child he’d been.
“I love you, Lucas. And I’m so proud of you for this. You’ve beaten your demons and are in control.” Jordan gently touched his lips to Luke’s, and he kissed Jordan back like a drowning man breaking the water’s surface. Needy, desperate, and gasping.
It took several minutes for him to regain his self-control. After he’d dried his eyes and taken a cold drink of water, he watched as Drew murmured something in Ash’s ear. Oh no. Ash wasn’t going to be stroked by his boyfriend and made to feel better. Luke wanted him to feel what Luke had gone through, smell the fear and the blood and sweat, as if Ash had been in that very room when he and Munson were fighting to what seemed like the death. Because Luke had no doubt that if he hadn’t passed out that night, he’d have died. Munson must’ve gotten scared and fled when Luke failed to move and respond.
“Do you know that was the last time I ever saw Brandon? I never got a chance to see him or say good-bye. At some point I passed out from the pain, and when I woke up, I was in the hospital. Later on they told me someone had called the police, saying I’d been hurt during a break-in at the house. I was alone, unconscious, and the Munsons had taken Brandon and disappeared. I never saw any of them again. By the time I recovered and was discharged, they’d left town, and no one knew where they’d gone.”
Ash’s eyes looked like holes in his white face. “I—”
“No. Not you. Me, Ash. This has nothing to do with you. I was the one left in a hospital, not even eighteen, abandoned, alone with no one who cared. I was so fucking scared. Everyone and everything I knew had been ripped out from under me, and I had no idea what I was going to do or where I would even live. I had no money, no home. Nothing.”
The humiliation of those days came rushing back on him. The first place he’d gone to after sneaking out and running away from the hospital was the only place he remembered as home. The social workers at the hospital had to be wrong; the Munson’s couldn’t have left. But it was true; the house was dark and abandoned. The Munsons and Brandon had vanished without leaving a trace of where they might’ve gone. He’d sat on the broken-down steps of the wooden porch and cried like a baby. After a while he’d wiped his eyes and his nose, and with everything he owned in his backpack, he’d headed down the road to the highway. And as he walked, he’d left himself behind. Lucas Carini was no more. Luke Conover was born. And that person would never get hurt, would never care about anything except making sure no one would ever hurt him again.
Feeling the weight of Ash’s stare on him, Luke glared back at him. “Do you remember what we used to talk about at night, or did you forget that too?” The memories of the two of them lying in their beds, sharing their dreams of glory, wrapped themselves around Luke. He’d wanted to be a baseball player, and Ash had wanted to travel the world. “We were going to make it out of there. Have families and share our Thanksgivings and Christmases together. It was supposed to be us against the world, but first we’d take care of and protect Brandon. He was ours, never theirs. But somewhere along the line you forgot us, didn’t you? We weren’t enough for you.”
“No, no. It wasn’t that, never that, Lukie, please believe me.”
