He winks and smiles. He is sinfully beautiful.
“Let’s go shower, babe,” he tells me with a smack to my ass.
I smirk and wink back.
He’s perfect and he makes me believe I can be perfect too.
2
ETHAN
“HOW DID YOU ENJOY the fight?” Joan asks.
“It was intense as always. Linc wasn’t happy with the outcome,” I admit.
“No knock out, huh?” she deduces.
“No. Tap out. He hates a tap out.”
She winces. “Ouch. He should count that as a win. It is a win after all.”
“He’s hard on himself.”
“Sounds like someone else I know.”
I sigh, lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees.
“I love him. I know he loves me. Why is it so hard for me to let go of all that bullshit from the past so we can just love each other any way we want to?” I question.
“How do you mean?”
“You know. Any way we want to. Any position. Any tempo. Any way he wants to fuck me,” I tell her softly. I’ve been seeing Joan for a year. I started when Lincoln and Tera told me they were coming to live with us in CFD, that Tera was working hard to overcome her PTSD so we could be a family again.
I’ve been working hard at this, but I still can’t allow Linc to take me from behind. I want to. I want to feel the weight of him over me, his warmth and scent surrounding me.
“Abuse stays with you for the rest of your life, Ethan. How you cope is up to you. Everyone has different ways of managing this. I’m glad you’re not pushing yourself like you were.”
I sigh, then speak quietly. “For a while, I’d push myself to see how far I could go, and I would endure. It would be okay… until after. Afterward, when the pleasure wore off and my mind started working again, I’d remember. I’d flash back to the abuse. Then the nightmares started.”
“My mom would get money for her drugs by whoring herself out. Some guys started looking at me when I was almost nine years old. Mom told them an extra fifty to see me naked.”
“Christ, she was fucked up. High on heroin and meth. I wonder if she would have done that if she’d been sober.”
“I didn’t know what to do, how to act when these guys showed up. So, I just sat there—naked—and wrote anything that came to mind. Poems, mostly. Dark, reflecting my pain. While I did that, those guys jerked off in a chair in the corner. I learned early on if I put my headphones on, I couldn’t hear them. To hear them made me sick. Hell, to see them made me sick.”
“Then came the time mom had two johns there at the same time.”
“I knew. I knew if she wasn’t nearby, someone would take advantage. And someone did.”
“While she was fucking john number one, john number two was raping me. He stole my innocence, my ability to trust anyone who stood or walked behind me. He hurt me in ways I didn’t know I could be hurt. And when he finished, he left before my mom came out.”
“I left before my mom came out, too. I don’t know how I managed to walk the six blocks to Xander’s house, but I made it. It was the only place I felt safe.”
“When Dr. Mac saw me and my blood-stained jeans, he never let me go back there again, to keep me safe—no matter how much my mom bitched. And she bitched a lot. I mean, an extra fifty could get her her next fix. Dr. Mac took care of me from then on.”
My body begins to shake with rage, disappointment, disgust.
Joan leans forward. “Breathe, Ethan. Breathe. Lean back and close your eyes. Think of someplace safe, somewhere bright and sunny.”
