I needed to pretend it hadn’t happened because if I let myself spiral and overthink like I normally did, I would be forced to acknowledge just how much I hadlikedhaving that man’s hands on me. Which wascrazy.
I was Ryan Fairview. I ran a fucking funeral home. My job was exceptionally serious while also somehow totally abnormal.
It was extremely important that people believed I was stable, level-headed, and responsible. They were trusting me with the death of their loved ones. I was already strange enough as it was with the whole‘I can see dead people thing.’I didn’t need to add ‘sexually confused masochist’to the list of things people said about me behind closed doors.
That wasn’t even true! Was it?
I wasn’t sexually confused. It was just because he scared the shit out of me, and fear turned me on… I was still straight… right?
‘Come for me, straight boy.’
I shuddered as Cal’s words echoed through my mind. Would someone who was straight come for another man, even if they had a weird thing for fear?
Why would I like it so much if I was straight? Why didn’t I want Joanna to do the same thing to me?
I tried to imagine it, Joanna’s dainty feminine hand on my cock, and… nothing. Not even a twitch.
I scowled down at my dick in frustration as I diligently went through the process of searching the body for pacemakers or any other medical devices that might harm my cremator.
Traitor.
Why couldn’t I be turned on by nice, safe Joanna? Why was it the fucking murderous, punk mercenary with zero boundaries that kept making me so hard?
What the fuck was wrong with me?
Forcing away these confusing thoughts, I focused on the task at hand. I went through the cremation process and found it was much easier to do when it was off the books.
No paperwork, no worrying about what outfit the family wanted him burned in. Once I had made sure he didn’t have anything explosive on him, I preheated the chamber.
Then I loaded him up, closed the door, and set a timer for three hours. Some of the newer models were faster, but ours took a while to completely burn down. I had been saving up for some upgrades because of this; however, I didn’t mind the wait time so much right at that moment.
It gave me a ton of time to clean up my prep room and make sure I had all my loose ends tied up for Ms. Thompson’s service the following day.
My mother returned with Caleb around dinner time. I had heated up some leftover spaghetti for myself, and thankfully, Iris informed me they had already eaten.
She let me know she would get Caleb ready for bed, and I nodded, wondering what we were going to do with this kid now that I had his father burning to ashes in my cremator.
“Good night, Ryan!” Caleb said shyly, and I smiled at him, depositing my dirty dish in the sink.
“Night, Caleb. Sweet dreams,” I replied, but I frowned. He was staring at me with a confused look on his face. “What’s wrong?”
“What happened?” he asked softly, pointing to his cheek while staring directly at mine. I touched a hand to my face and winced, remembering that Cal had hit meextremelyhard in the face.
Fuck!
“Oh, nothing. I fell down some steps. I’m ok, though,” I lied, not liking the way Caleb’s eyes were filling with tears.
“Steps? No one… hit you?” he asked, his voice so soft and broken it made my stomach hurt. He was worried someone was hitting me like his dad hit him…
I crouched down, wiped a tear off his cheek, and gave him a reassuring smile.
“No, no one hit me. I’m okay. It was just an accident.” I felt horrible lying to him, but in that moment, I would have said just about anything to make him smile again. I hated the haunted look of fear swimming in his eyes.
“Okay…” he finally said. “Hey, Ryan?”
“Yeah, Caleb?”
“Can my momma come stay here with us, too? He hurts her more than he hurts me, and it’s scary,” Caleb whispered, and my cheek throbbed in response to the sudden tensing of my jaw.
