Bound by Lies (36 page)

Brayden sits cross-legged on Jenner’s bed. The empty apartment, filled now with both of their possessions and a small, fuzzy cat, is sprawled out around him. Brayden’s surfboard leans against the far wall, and he stares at it. In an hour or so, he’s expected downstairs to start his shift. In the meantime, he’s trying to adjust to the reality created by the choices he’s made.

The messages in his voicemail have accumulated. He listens to them sometimes. Sometimes not. Then he doesn’t erase them. They simply gather there.

Andre.

Brayden draws out his phone and takes a deep breath. It shouldn’t be this hard to be honest with Andre, he tells himself. Andre is the one person who really understands Brayden, besides Jenner. It feels cruel to have waited so long without calling Andre back. Subconsciously, Brayden is aware that maybe he’s trying to kill the friendship, to move on and leave everyone behind. He can feel that maybe Andre wanted what they had to become more. Just because Brayden doesn’t feel the same way doesn’t mean he can’t appreciate being wanted. But no matter how many times Andre tries to reach out, they will continue to exist in other worlds, detached and separate. That’s why Brayden doesn’t answer or call back. If Andre isn’t connected to him, then Andre can’t hurt him. Right?

“God, I’m turning into my mother,” he groans to the empty room. From the living room, the cat meows in answer, as if confirming his suspicions.

But, if he makes some conscious decisions now, rebelling against his instincts, then perhaps that doesn’t have to be the case. Things could be different, but only if he makes the effort and takes a few risks. Andre is a good enough friend that he’s worth a risk or two, surely. Isn’t he?

Thinking of Andre’s laugh, of the calm, easygoing strength in his voice, Brayden curses under his breath and dials the number.

He wants to call to go to voicemail, but then the prospect of thinking of something to say to the machine is even worse.

“Hello?”

Brayden closes his eyes with a silent sigh. “Hey. It’s me.”

For a long, awful second, there’s nothing. No response.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called you back, man,” Brayden starts. “I just didn’t know what to say. Things got kind of complicated with us in those weeks before I left, and I wasn’t sure how to carry it all over into whatever we are to each other now. You’re an amazing friend to me, but sometimes it’s not exactly your friendship that I’m missing, if you know what I mean. I don’t know. I didn’t want to have to explain myself to you, I guess.”

“Explain what?”

Brayden thinks about asking if Andre spoke to Enrique, and can’t. He can’t do it.

“Explain what?” Andre repeats, a little more forcefully. “You know you’re more than a few states away, right? So you have to gimme something, Marsha. I can’t pry the truth from you except through this damn phone. Look, if you’re done with me and want me to stop calling, I will. I can take a hint. Just have the courtesy to say so. Please.”

“I’m not done with you,” Brayden says softly, battling with his instincts and the desire to cut ties, because it’s easier. “I don’t regret what we did. It opened my eyes in a lot of ways, but it’s like I don’t even know who I am anymore some days. Talking to you, knowing you’re in my corner as a friend, it definitely helps get me through, even if I’m a shitty friend in return by avoiding you so much. So, I’m sorry, okay?”

“What’s going on with you, huh? Where’s all this drama coming from?”

Pushing a hand back through his hair, pulling it back from his face, Brayden struggles inwardly.

“I met someone,” he blurts suddenly.

There’s another of those horrible silences, tense and strained, filled with Andre’s physical and symbolic hugeness, before he growls, “Who?”

“I went to a BDSM club. I met him there. I thought it was an anonymous hook-up, but it wasn’t. He’s… he’s my fucking
boss
, Andre. Now he’s my Master. And my boyfriend.” It becomes too much. His voice breaks and he moans, “
The things I’ve let him do to me….
”

“I’m coming up there.”

“No!” Brayden gasps. “Please! I can handle it! I can!”

“Like hell you can.”

The line goes dead.

“NO!” Brayden screams at the empty apartment. “Fuck.
FUCK
!”

Frantically, he redials, but the call goes right to voicemail. “Please don’t do this,” he begs the machine recording his message. “I know you just want to protect me, but no one knows about me and Jenner, and if you come up here looking to take him down, people are gonna
know
, and I don’t want you to hurt him. I just wanted to be honest with you about why I’ve been dodging your calls. I
chose
this. So, please.
Please
just call me back and we’ll talk. We’ll talk about everything. I swear. No more bullshit. Okay? Please?”

When he hangs up, he immediately dials Enrique instead. It rings five times before it’s answered.

“B-man?”

“I fuckin’ told ’im, Rique. I told Andre and now he’s on his way here.
What the fuck do I do
?”

Andre has plenty of cash to buy a plane ticket. He could be here by that night, or the next day at the latest.

“What do you
do
?” Enrique echoes. “You tell the gorilla to
run
.”

“Oh my god,” Brayden moans.

“Your ass shoulda dated smaller men. What do you think you can do about this now? You tell him about the sex?”

“Worse than that.” He imagines the things that Andre must be assuming have gone on. The sex. The sadomasochism.

“Andre is a motherfuckin’
semi-professional wrestler
.”

“Oh my
god
.”

“You listen to me. Tell the gorilla to
run
. Andre—that crazy bitch—he
loves
you and he will
take apart
anyone that he knows is doing freaky shit to you.”

“No one does anything
to
me that I don’t want them to. Jenner can hold his own,” Brayden starts. “He’s got a black belt in jujitsu.”

“Your dumb ass is gonna start a fuckin’ war over itself,” Enrique says with amazement. “You really want them to kill each other?”

“No,” Brayden laments. “Of course not.”

The phone’s other line beeps in his ear as a call tries to get through.

Brayden says, “Someone’s trying to call. I’ll call you back, okay?”

“Yeah, bro. Later.”

Brayden hangs up with Enrique and takes the other call.

“You wanna talk? We’ll talk. He fuck you?”

Brayden’s heart jumps up into his throat.

“You might choose to forget, but
I know you
, Brayden Clare.
Did he fuck you and take it by force
?”

Deny it
, Brayden screams at himself. His mouth opens and at first no sound comes out.

“No,” he says, but softly.

“Liar,” Andre hisses. “And you think I’m gonna let him get away with that?” Andre asks, sounding massive and murderous. “See you soon, baby.”

“Andre,
please
don’t. Jenner and I have an agreement. There are
rules
. We’re
safe
.”

“If I don’t stand up for you when you won’t stand up for yourself, then who will? Hmm?”

“I wanted him to do it.”

“Yeah, I bet you did. I bet he’s a lot bigger than you, isn’t he? He probably doesn’t even need to tie you down. How many bruises you got right now? Tell me none, and I won’t get on that plane. But I’ll know a lie. So, tell me. How many bruises?”

Brayden doesn’t have to look; he can feel the aching in his body and knows the purplish yellow and brown marks that wrap his wrists, chest and ankles.

“None,” he says.

“Yeah,” Andre grunts. “I’ll see you soon.”

Jenner gets a text from Brayden asking him to come home quickly. Five minutes later, Jenner is standing in front of him, just inside the apartment’s door. He can see how scared Brayden looks. When Brayden says nothing in explanation, won’t even raise his eyes to meet Jenner’s gaze, and only steps into Jenner’s embrace, winding his arms around him, Jenner can only hold on and try to understand.

“What happened?”

“I called Andre. I’ve been avoiding it—telling him about us. But I didn’t want to run away from things anymore. I don’t want to turn into
her
. I called him to own up to my choices, and tell him about you. But he got upset. He
knows me
, Jenn. He thinks you forced yourself on me and hurt me.”

I did
, Jenner thinks with horror, understanding how Andre must feel without knowing who Jenner is or his intentions. They stand there, with Jenner’s chin hooked right over the top of Brayden’s head, resting on it.

“He’s on his way, isn’t he?”

“Yeah. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have called him. I should’ve kept my mouth shut.”

“No, you did the right thing. Actually… I have something to confess too.”

Brayden tenses in Jenner’s arms, but doesn’t pull away, he just braces for the news like someone waiting to be struck. Feeling that tension makes Jenner hate himself a little.

“I want to take you with me to Sunday dinner at my parents’ house. I promised I’d go and I want to bring you. As my date.”

Some of the stiffness drains from Brayden’s form. He does pull away, but just far enough to be able to look up into Jenner’s face. Chin tilted up, he gazes back into Jenner’s eyes.

“You’d do that?”

“Yeah. Will you go with me? It has to be your decision. But it would mean a lot to me. I suppose I’m ready to own up to my choices, too. It had to happen eventually, right?” Jenner caresses the side of Brayden’s face and places a kiss to the center of his forehead. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” Brayden says, still looking, still searching.

“What do you think?”

“I think I’d like to try.”

Jenner smiles.

Brayden asks, “What about Andre?”

“I can handle Andre. I know where he’s coming from, after all. Don’t worry. It’ll be okay.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah.”

Jenner lets Brayden see that he isn’t afraid, just sad. But when Brayden pulls Jenner down for a kiss, with the heat of his mouth and the force of his devotion, the sadness melts right away.

A few hours later, Brayden is a third of the way into his shift.

“You know Mary Hendrix?” asks one of the Pub’s regulars, a man named Bill. Bill lives somewhere nearby, a bachelor aged somewhere between forty-five and sixty-five. His weathered appearance and small, close-set eyes don’t give much away. Most of the time, he likes to sit at the end of the bar for a few hours a night, chatting up anyone he can. Brayden figures that Bill prefers idle conversation with townies over hiding away alone at home, as he doesn’t seem to have many friends. Most people he wrangles into a chat slip away quickly, with some excuse to hasten their departure. Brayden can’t fault Bill for being a little overbearing. He’s a nice enough guy otherwise.

Shaking his head in response to Bill’s question, Brayden drags a rag over the top of the bar to clean up a few condensation rings.

“Well, Mary lives next door to me,” Bill continues. “The panels of her garage door keep falling out. The damnedest thing, like someone just keeps coming past and poking ’em out with a stick or somethin’, but she don’t fix it. No, sir. She just sets her garbage cans in front of the holes to hide ’em, like that’ll keep out the raccoons.” He shakes his head. “Whole house is going to hell now that her husband’s run off with that redhead. What was her name again? Eh, I forget. Anyway, hey, your mom ever do crazy shit like that with the garbage cans?”

The implied insult to his mother gets him a little hot under the collar, but Brayden just takes a deep breath and says dismissively, “I don’t know, man. Get you anything else? You hungry?”

“Nah, all that fried crap Art cooks gives me indigestion. Come on, you can tell me. Everyone knows the deal with her anyway, had a few screws loose or somethin’. You’ve gotta have some juicy stories. Where’d she get to anyway? Africa? China?”

“Can’t really say,” Brayden tells him, smiling politely even if he is gritting his teeth. “How’s that beer?”

Bill is momentarily distracted when the front door swings open. When he recognizes the people coming in, he calls, “Hey Steve! Over here!” Steve tries to pretend he didn’t hear his name, ducking into conversation with a group in the back corner, his eyes darting over to Bill as his brow furrows with what looks like guilt. It’s nothing new. Brayden has seen it all before. He wanders away from Bill to take more orders and the clock ticks steadily on.

The distraction of work has helped ease his concerns about Andre and coming out to Jenner’s family, but his nerves have been jangling all day with apprehension of other things, too, like moving in with Jenner, and worry about disappointing his grandmother and cousin. Fear of Andre’s imminent arrival and the prospect of being introduced to Jenner’s family as a lover rather than a friend or employee are just the icing on the cake. It’s also his first time at work with the knowledge that Art and Max are fully aware of the relationship between himself and Jenner. Brayden expected it to be weird, but so far Max and Art are the least of his problems and it hasn’t been a big deal at all.