Bound by Lies (29 page)

“There was a….” He scrambles for a reasonable excuse, feeling caught like a rat in a trap. His voice roughens and it deepens as he tries to sound confident. “A fight. At the bar. Last night. I tried to break it up.”

Turning the glass of water in his hands, which tremble very slightly, he lowers his eyes to the tabletop. “I got caught in the middle. One of the guys pulled me out and held me back so I wouldn’t get hurt.” He holds up his wrist, indicating the bruises. “We were there to get looked at, just in case. But we’re fine. I’m fine. Like I said.”

“Brayden….”

“It was a bad night, okay? My… my friends got hurt and it shouldn’t have happened, but we’ve got it under control. I’m just tired, and I’d really like to just go get some rest if it’s all the same to you.”

“You would tell me if there was reason to worry about you, wouldn’t you? Hmm? You’ve been acting funny, like you’re always on edge or angry. It’s not like you.” Already, he’s standing, but she lays a hand, soft as a whisper, over his and gives it a squeeze. “If that bar isn’t safe or if you’re in some kind of trouble….”

“Nan.”

“The job isn’t worth your health,” she insists, sounding worried.

“These things happen,” he sighs, pulling out of her reach. “I stepped in because I have friends there. It’s important to be there for people who count on you.”

A tinny crash and wild, exaggerated
boings
and
bonks
sound from the television set in the next room. Frowning in the general direction, Brayden feels the intensity of his grandmother’s stare. “You’re a good boy, Brayden. But don’t run yourself into the ground for the sake of others. That goes for me and Em too. If being here isn’t agreeing with you, we’ll figure out something else. I can tell that you’re unhappy.”

“God,” he groans. “Nan, don’t. This isn’t about you and Emma Leah. And it’s not even about the bar or the fight, it’s… it’s….”

“Is it about Max?”

“What?” Brayden knows for a fact that he’s never so much as mentioned Max’s name to his family. “How do you…. What are you talking about? I….”

“A girl—a very
pretty
girl—came by the house earlier this morning asking after you. She introduced herself as Max and seemed, well,
distraught
when I told her you hadn’t come home last night. But she wouldn’t say why. She left her phone number, asked to have you call her when you showed up.”

A slip of notepad paper with ten numbers scrawled in flowing cursive script, written in purple ink, is slipped from his grandmother’s pocket and slid across the table towards him. Picking it up, Brayden stares in disbelief at it.

Ruth says, “Your friends are always welcome here. Max or whoever. I’d love to meet them, get to know who you’re spending time with. This is your home too, now.”

Brayden grunts, distracted, half-listening.

“Well, go on. Get some rest.”

“Th-thanks. Nana.” Brayden says haltingly, taking his water with him as he hobbles stiffly from the kitchen.

“You’re welcome, sweetheart,” she says softly as he rounds the corner and disappears from sight.

The phone only rings once before it’s answered with a brisk, breathless, “Hello?”

“It’s Brayden. I can’t believe you came to my house.” There’s a pause and he can tell it’s due to a complete loss for words, so he continues. “Jenner doesn’t know I’m calling. I need to explain some things to you and Art. You need to hear it from me, and I need to say it before anyone else gets hurt.”

“
You’re
the one getting hurt, Brayden,” Max says angrily. “Jesus, the more I find out, the worse it gets! Please tell me you weren’t with him. Your Nana said you didn’t come home last night. Just how stupid are you?”

“I was with him. He’s a wreck. No thanks to you guys. And no thanks to me either.” Brayden takes a deep breath and says it before he chickens out. “He didn’t want me to come out just to save him from getting his ass kicked, or even to keep from losing his best friends. No one knows I’m… except him. No one. Jenn and I have been together for a while now. And it’s none of anyone’s business what we do in our personal lives, or our bedroom. I appreciate your concern, but really, I’m a big boy and I can make my own choices. I don’t need you or Art protecting me from my own boyfriend.”

“He was hurting you,” Max tries, scrambling for an argument, audibly dumbstruck by the confession. “There were bruises. And Parrish… he said things, Art told me….”

“What can I say, Max? I like it rough. You know Parrish. He’s into a specific type of guy. Guess what? I’m his type.”

The silence on the other end of the line is so thick he doesn’t even think Max is breathing. Or else she’s hung up on him.

Brayden continues, “We’re gonna be stopping by to get some more of his things, so we’ll talk more then. In the meantime, think about what I said.”

He hangs up and drops the phone. Sitting on the floor with his back propped against the side of the bed and his knees drawn up to his chest, Brayden rests his arms on his legs and lets his head fall back against the bedding. The ever-present, ever-growing panic crawls up his gut to his throat, constricting his windpipe until his lungs burn. He wishes, more than anything, that Jenner was there with him. Jenner would understand. But calling Max was something Brayden had to do himself.

Across the street, diagonal to where Brayden is suffering through his panic attack, Max’s ear is warm with the fading sound of Brayden’s smooth, low voice, confessing to her that he’s been getting fucked by Jenner for a while, and that he likes it rough. A tingling heat sparks between her thighs, thinking about that, imagining it. The tingle grows into a needful ache as her imagination provides obscene mental images of Jenner and Brayden.

“Who was that?”

Max nearly jumps out of her skin. Art stands in the doorway to her bedroom with Jenner’s kitten tucked into the crook of his arm. Max clears her throat and forces her thoughts back on track, even as her fantasy provides the imagined sound of Brayden’s moan when Jenner bends him over and stuffs him full of his cock.

“Whew, uh…” she laughs giddily. “It’s funny, that was, uh… Brayden. Seems someone’s been a bad, bad boy.”

After she tells Art everything that Brayden said, Art stares blankly at her, waiting for the punch line that never comes. “You don’t really believe that, do you?” Absentmindedly, he scratches behind the kitten’s ears. She purrs appreciatively. “Brayden’s clearly covering for him. Parrish probably threatened him if he didn’t put our minds at ease.”

“I don’t know,” Max says doubtfully. “He was pretty convincing. And, I mean, Parrish is an ass but maybe he’s not
actually
a psychopath. Maybe it is just the S&M stuff and they’re both into it?”

“Bullshit,” Art over-enunciates, guarding the small white kitten the way he’s trying to guard Brayden. “You don’t treat people you care about like that.”

“Maybe Jenner does,” Max shrugs.

Back in his bedroom, still sitting on the floor and enjoying how uncomfortable the position is, Brayden can’t seem to find the motivation to get up or do much of anything besides sit there. When he hears someone walk up to his door and slowly push it open, he barely registers it.

His cousin moves into the room, her wide eyes magnified adorably by her glasses, making her look like a cautious squirrel. They measure each other without saying anything. Brayden marvels at how old she looks, scolding himself for always thinking her a child, but he can’t muster the energy to put on his façade any longer. He lets her see how wrung out he is, and how scared.

“Can I help?” she says in her soft little voice.

“C’mere,” he sighs, patting the spot on the floor beside him. She springs into action and swiftly sits, tucking her body up close to his. It’s an instant comfort just to not be all alone, even if there’s no real way that Emma can help.

“You look scared. What do you have to be scared of?”

“It’s kind of hard to explain.” He imagines his Nana—or worse, his mother—seeing him with Jenner’s arm slung protectively around his shoulders, or holding his hand. That’s a scary thought. He imagines Jenner kissing him in full view of everyone in the bar, and that’s just as bad. But at the same time, it makes him angry that he can’t easily have those basic public displays of affection with the person he’s involved with. Looking down at Emma, Brayden tries to remember what it was like to be her age, and can’t quite manage it. She seems so delicate, helpless—the physical embodiment of Brayden’s mental state.

“Do you ever get scared?” he asks her, thinking of schoolyard bullies and peer pressures.

Emma thinks it over, biting at her bottom lip. She leans forward, elbows braced on her skinny, folded legs, her curtain of golden brown hair hanging beside her face. “Yeah,” she says matter-of-factly after a while. “I get scared sometimes of what would happen to me if Nana ever got sick or died.”

Turning slightly to face her, Brayden scoops her up in an arm and kisses the top of her head. “Emma Leah,” he frowns. “Girl, I’d take care of you.”

“Why? It’s not your job. I’m not your kid. I’m not even your sister.”

“Yes, it is my job. We’re family. We count on each other. It’s what we do, no matter what.”

“What about your mom,” she counters with determination and wisdom far surpassing her years shining behind her eyes. “Do you count on her?”

Vaguely, he knows that Emma must have heard about their past, and the way his mother walked out on all of them, leaving him alone in the world. He’s living Emma’s nightmare.

“We can’t change who people are,” he says sullenly. “We can only try to accept them.”

“Are you in trouble?” Emma says in a tiny voice. “Because you don’t look good at all and I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. I need you. Don’t go away, all right? Please?”

“I’m not going anywhere, girl,” he tells her with a gentle hug. “I’m not gonna ditch you like my mom did to me. That’s not what this is about.”

“Then what is it about?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you. At least not yet. Maybe someday. Okay? This is something I have to figure out on my own first.”

She searches his face. When she decides she doesn’t like what she sees, she throws herself at him, hugging tightly to his chest, pressing her face there. He wraps her in his arms and somehow it allows him to climb back out of his own head. Emma is real, and solid, and he’s scaring her. That’s something he can’t abide.

The doorbell rings later that afternoon, when the sun is sinking low, grazing the edge of the horizon. Brayden assumes that it’s one of his Nana’s friends from church or the neighborhood stopping by to nose around and see what this business is about her grandson going to the medical clinic. He’s sitting on the couch beside Emma, helping her think of ideas for an essay assignment from her English professor when Ruth calls from the foyer, “Brayden! You have company!”

Max
, he thinks. Detangling from Emma and her schoolbooks, Brayden stands and shakes his hair back over his shoulders, pushing some irritably behind an ear.

“Coming!”

He prepares himself for the defensive, ready to say whatever needs to be said when he sees not Max’s petite shape waiting in the doorway beside his grandmother, but a much, much larger one.

“What the hell are you doing here,” he says automatically as his blood turns to ice in his veins. He can’t reconcile it. The instinct to run from revelation is almost overpowering. He stops advancing and instead takes a step backward.

“Brayden Clare, I am taking no responsibility at all for your poor manners. What a way to greet your friend! Please, won’t you come in,” Ruth says, gesturing into their home with a welcoming smile. “It’s so nice to meet you. Brayden so rarely introduces his friends to us.”

Jenner Parrish, almost as tall as the doorframe, his shoulders nearly as wide, makes no move to squeeze himself through. In a moment of irrationality, Brayden sees his lover as a human wall, ready to grab and take him prisoner, to force him to confess all of the ways he’s been a disappointment to the very people he most wants to hide them from. He imagines Jenner staking his claim to Brayden like a Neanderthal, dragging him off by the hair or mounting him right in the hallway. Even the back door doesn’t seem promising, as Jenner has already displayed how much faster he is, his reflexes that much more honed.

Someone touches Brayden’s lower back and he almost yells in surprise. Then Emma fits herself against his side, her arm circling his back, and asks curiously, “Who is it?”

Taking a deep, calming breath, trying to regain his composure, Brayden uses his cousin as an anchor and wraps her little shoulder with a hand. One look at her face and he knows she can tell he’s scared, and that it’s the newcomer that’s caused it. Mainly to derail her suspicions, Brayden finds his voice at last and says shakily, “This is Jenner Parrish.”

“Parrish for short.” Jenner smiles charmingly, taking Ruth’s hand in greeting. “You must be Ms. Clare.” He turns slightly to the girl hiding herself under Brayden’s arm. “And Emma Leah.”

“Parrish is my boss. At the bar,” Brayden finishes stupidly.

“And a friend,” Jenner adds.

Brayden blushes a dark, deep red.

“Oh, then I can ask you directly,” Ruth says to Jenner. “Is everything okay over there? We heard you all had some trouble last night.”

The stark bruises on Jenner’s face are proof enough of this, though no one says so.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jenner says in his suave baritone. “Right as rain. We’ve got everything under control. I’m just sorry that Brayden was involved. It was a friendly scuffle that got a little out of hand.”

“Well, okay then. Better safe than sorry. Please, come in. Can I get you anything?”

Bowing his head, Jenner barely glances Brayden’s way before answering, “Thank you for the invitation, but unfortunately I can’t stay. I stopped by on my way to see a mutual friend and was hoping Brayden would want to join me.”

The constant, low ache that Brayden has had in his rectum all day long from the rough sex the previous night suddenly intensifies. Clenched, tensed and awkward, he grabs a jacket from a hook on the wall and gives Emma’s arm a brief squeeze in goodbye.