Bound by Lies (28 page)

Brayden scrambles a little when reentered. All he can hear is weeping—Jenner’s weeping. His tears patter down onto Brayden’s fevered skin.

It takes Jenner a while to realize he’s not hard at all anymore. He’s so disgusted with his behavior that he’s wilted any twisted interest there might have been to start with.

Jenner is utterly unable to look for long at the irrationally peaceful expression on Brayden’s sweet face, like he has accepted this as something deserved. Brayden’s sun-lightened hair is pushed back from his sweat-damp neck, his eyes closed, trying to catch his breath. Jenner pulls out and tucks himself away, backing out of the kitchen.

He leaves the room and goes to the bathroom. Kneeling in front of the toilet bowl, he waits to be sick, certain it’s coming, feeling the bitter taste of vomit rising in his throat.

An uncertain amount of time later, he is still kneeling there on the tile and shivering. When arms encircle him from behind in a gentle embrace and Brayden hugs him, Jenner chokes on his tears. They’re too thick to wrench free and he strangles on them, wanting to die.

Only half aware, he lets Brayden guide him to his feet and out to the bed where he lays down, curling up on his good side. Brayden covers him with a blanket and lies down next to him. Jenner folds his body around Brayden and keeps him close while salty rivers burn tracks down his face.

Time slips by in large, smooth spans, like silk through fingers. When Jenner wakes, Brayden is still there, in his arms.

“Oh
god
.” Jenner gasps, the horror of what he’s done rising like the sea inside his chest once more. “
Bray
.”

Brayden turns in Jenner’s arms, brushes the tears from Jenner’s face.

“You should have left,” Jenner tells him. “You should leave. I’m worse than those… those
bullies
. What’s a schoolyard bully compared to how I just treated you? Art was right. You were right. You need to go.”

“Art beat you because I left you there. I abandoned you because I was too afraid to admit that I love you.
I did that
. Me. I left like a coward and let your best friend use you as a punching bag. I did
nothing
to stop it.”

Sounding strange in his own ears, like someone else—small and afraid—Jenner says, “I didn’t mean for it to go that far, to hurt you like that. I raped you.”

It feels good to say it. It feels like a way he can effectively push Brayden out of his life for good. It’d be better that way for both of them. Safer.

Brayden is visibly unaffected. He looks back into Jenner’s eyes, steady and calm. “No. I didn’t say stop. I submitted to my Master’s will.
I trust you
, Jenner.”

Screwing his face up around his disgust, gritting his teeth, bearing down so hard that he wills something—some vital internal organ—to burst and end him, Jenner sucks in a harsh inhale and battles fresh tears. “I didn’t
let you
say stop!”

“You wanna hear what ‘stop’ sounds like?” Brayden says smoothly, his voice a caress. He draws in a lungful of air, his chest expanding around it, and roars the word, right in Jenner’s face.

Jenner doesn’t even flinch, but all of the care wipes right off of his face, leaving it blank, empty.

“
That’s
my fuckin’safeword. Did ya hear that?”

Gathering Brayden in his arms, Jenner hugs him, breathing in the scent of his neck, using him as an anchor, stroking his hair.

“You may be stronger than me, but you can’t outsmart me,” Brayden says calmly, always calmly. Maddeningly so, especially when force is involved. The pain pacifies him more than words or promises ever have. “Everything you do, it’s because
I let you
do it. My eyes are open.”

“What’s wrong with us?” Jenner asks fearfully. “My god, Brayden, what the hell is wrong with us?”

“We’re just a good match, is all. I love you. I trust you to hurt me.”

Jenner’s eyes close over tiredly.

“I was terrified in Miami. I wasn’t even honest with the first person I ever let get past all the fucking excuses. I used Andre to get off but I
never
trusted him, and I never trusted my friends. Not enough, at least. It was pathetic. Maybe it would’ve gotten better, but I doubt it. It wasn’t until I got here and you knocked me on my ass, turned me inside out, that I felt like I finally made sense. I don’t make sense unless I’m with you.”

Brayden pulls back, enforcing his confession with a search of Jenner’s face for understanding and acceptance. Jenner, more regretful than ever, tells him softly, “I’m a sadist, Bray. That’s not going to change. I thought it would be better if I scared you into hating me. Then you wouldn’t have to out yourself, or take a chance on me like you are. You could go and start over without me.”

“I know,” Brayden says, unaffected, unfazed, like he’s just glad that Jenner’s finally caught up. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Max and Art think I’m a monster. I have no idea what to do to fix this.”

Drying Jenner’s face with a wad of tissue, brushing it tenderly, Brayden says, “We’ll think of something.”

The next morning finds Jenner covered in bruises that wrap large spans of his torso. The inner fire that usually keeps him going has been blown right out. He doesn’t want to deal with anything that has happened.

Brayden, on the other hand, seems wholly unaffected by the events of the previous day. If anything he’s left stronger for it. He brings in breakfast for both of them and serves it to Jenner in bed. It’s proof for Jenner that maybe Brayden was right, that he’s been the one pulling the strings all along, and Jenner’s just the puppet.

After the coffee has been transferred from their paper cups to their bellies, Brayden sits cross-legged, tan and vibrant beside a sickly, miserable and pale Jenner. Sounding like he’s been working up the courage to say so without it coming out forced or hesitant, Brayden declares, “We have to tell them. Max and Art.”

“You don’t owe them that,” Jenner says wearily. “It’ll be better if I just fire them and move on.”

“Don’t be a jackass,” Brayden scolds. “They’re your closest friends. They obviously like me enough to kick your ass in the name of preserving my honor. I mean, really Jenn, who does stuff like that? Putting themselves out there for someone they barely know, expecting nothing in return? If anyone deserves the truth, it’s them. No argument. It’s decided.”

“Who are you trying to convince?” Jenner snaps, then quickly bites back some of the attitude. “Even if we tell them we’re together now, it doesn’t explain why you were bruised and what Art overheard yesterday. Hell, if
I
heard someone saying that shit to someone I knew, I’d probably kick their ass, too.”

Jenner scratches at his empty cup, eyes downcast. “You were supposed to meet up with your friend last night. I fucked that up too, didn’t I?”

“I called ’Rique. He understands. He’s the one that showed up without warning. He can’t expect me to drop everything in my life to just spontaneously hang out. It’s fine. Hey. Jenn.”

Jenner looks up with a weary sigh. “I didn’t use protection. Or prep you. Have you been bleeding? Did you check your underwear and the toilet for spotting?”

Fierce color blooms on Brayden’s cheeks, and for the first time, he can’t meet Jenner’s gaze. “I’m fine. I checked.” It sounds like a lie.

“There could be tiny tears. We’re going to take it easy for a while so that your body can recover from any damage. And we’re going to the clinic as soon as I’m dressed.”

“Really, I’m fine,” Brayden says adamantly.

“It’s not up for discussion. I’m telling, not asking.”

Brayden groans.

“And if I gave you anything…” Jenner can’t finish the sentence. Imagining the possibilities prohibits speech. “I couldn’t live with that.”

Brayden gets off the bed, rolling his eyes. “God, you’re so fucking dramatic sometimes. Relax.”

“Relax?! I could have just given you a death sentence and you say ‘relax’.” Jenner struggles to a more upright position and swings his legs over the side of the bed with a grimace of pain. “The only way I’d get laid, up until very recently, was with random submissives at Manse. I never even asked their
names
. God, everything about me is poison to you!”

Walking back to the bed, Brayden holds Jenner’s chiseled jaw in his hands and places a kiss to the top of his head where the hair is growing in a little more every day and starting to curl up at the ends. “Whatever is meant to happen will happen. Worrying about it will do shit for us now. So,
mellow out
. It’s all good.”

“Fucking hippie.”

Brayden laughs. “Come on. I’ll find you some clean clothes.”

Three hours later, Brayden has used up all of his bravery and bravado. His good mood is gone. He’s off in his head, now that Jenner isn’t there to keep him present and alert. Hurting in places and in ways he’s never hurt before, feeling violated from the questions and the tests at the clinic, he’s never craved an out more in his life. Even at the clinic there had been people in the waiting room he recognized. Friends of friends or customers or people who know people who know him. No one said anything to him directly, but he got a few nods of greeting, and Jenner had too. It was the worst possible time to be made to feel self-conscious about who he was with and why he was there. If only he had his own place, he could hole up with a big bottle of something abrasive and mind-numbing, and say screw the world for a little while.

Instead, he’s standing in his grandmother’s kitchen, listening to the shrill soundtrack to some cartoon playing in the living room and thinking with annoyance,
isn’t Emma too damn old for cartoons by now anyway?

What he should be doing is resting. But if he goes upstairs, he’ll really have nothing to distract him from everything that’s causing him stress. It’s better to stay downstairs and be pleasantly pissed off about inconsequential things like the noise pollution.

“You’re home,” Ruth observes, shuffling into the kitchen while favoring her good hip. She drags out a chair and settles into it like it pains her.

“You okay, Nana?”

She waves the question off. “Sit with me. You look worse than I feel. Is there something going on with you I should know about? Anything you wanna talk about?”

Perking up with suspicion, Brayden holds his grandmother’s tired gaze, trying to give nothing away. When he moves over to one of the free chairs, deciding how to explain and what to explain, he doesn’t realize the stiffness that’s evident in his walk, or the bruises that are becoming more visible on his arms.

“I’m fine,” he says. “Just had a long night.”

“You can talk to me, you know. I’ve been around long enough to have heard it all.”

Brayden laughs, as unaware of his sneer as he is of the careful way his bottom connects with the hard wooden seat. Taking a sip of the glass of tap water he’s carried over, he resolves quietly that maybe it’d be better to go on upstairs after all. At least no one is there to question him.

His Nana continues to observe him.

It’s been a few months since Brayden first showed up at her door, having sacrificed his freedom for family’s sake, but at least then there was the hope of good intentions and positive thinking. Undoubtedly, there were ways to contribute and make a difference in the lives of his loved ones, and that got him through. It put a shine on his outlook. Now, the shine is gone, eaten up by a nagging hollowness brought of too much suspicion and mistrust. It casts dark circles under his eyes, chews at his soul. And there are the injuries to consider as well.

“My girlfriend, Mary,” Ruth starts, slow and steady, but watching, always watching, “is having some trouble with her diabetes. She doesn’t have the best medical coverage, so she goes down to the clinic that’s a few minutes’ drive from this end of town.”

He tries to seem unaffected by this news, looking back at Ruth with a question in the shape of his eyebrows. Unconsciously, he slumps a little in the chair. There had been a few older ladies at the clinic, he can recall.

“She saw you there. Called me a few minutes before you got home, telling me about how you were sitting in the waiting room, along with a male friend. She said the two of you looked a little guilty about something, though she couldn’t say what.”