Bound by Lies (46 page)

Art turns to Jenner and Brayden, glancing between them, and says, “It’s your call.”

Jenner turns to Brayden, because it’s not Jenner’s call either.

Brayden looks at Todd, the table of grown men who used to be cruel little boys and just never grew up as much as they should have. He looks at the bar with all of the many people in it. Then he looks at Art and says, “It’s fine.”

Art nods, satisfied. Max smiles brightly at Brayden from a few feet away, then dashes over to give him a tight hug. Smiling, letting out a held breath, Jenner sees him lift Max clear up off the ground, both of them chuckling.

“Okay, people!” Art shouts, turning toward the masses. “Let’s get this party started! What d‘ya say?!”

There’s an ear-splitting roar of cheering, hollering and whistling and the volume gets cranked back up. Solitary voices are once again swept up in the din. The focus shifts off of the people by the door as everyone returns to their friends and their drinks.

“Shit, this is against the rules, isn’t it?” Max yells to Jenner, leaning cozily against Brayden’s bare chest, letting her hand rest upon it. “Damn, I guess that means Brayden gets a spanking, right? God, Braydy, I’m
so sorry
,” Max purrs with biting sarcasm, smiling wickedly.

“I’ll give him a pass. Dressed like that, I expect he’ll even be making the straight guys hard.”

“Yeah,” Max agrees. “I know, I’ve got a total boner right now. Where the fuck did you get this outfit?”

She plays with the leather belt, the straps wound around Brayden’s arm, the edge of the leg wraps that come all the way up his thighs.

Jenner cuts in, prying her off, “All right, that’s enough. The pass doesn’t include full groping privileges, Maxine.”

“Oh, you’re no fun,” she sighs, surrendering. She darts away, going back to the bar at Jackson’s panicked cry, as Jackson is trying to cover in both Jenner and Max’s absences.

People are swarming around everyone, jostling them, not paying Jenner and Brayden any attention anymore, even though they’re still holding hands, even though Jenner just declared that they’re boyfriends to the whole town.

Art has gone back to the kitchen. Callum is back with his date. The table full of hecklers are solemnly drinking their beers with their heads down, looking thoroughly reprimanded.

There’s no uproar over Jenner Parrish, the ex-quarterback, coming out in front of all of Robertsville. There are no people with pitchforks and torches, chasing them out. There’s barely any attention paid to them at all now that the threat of violence is gone.

He turns to Brayden, falling into his beautiful eyes, his honest smile. Jenner barely allows himself to glimpse the rest of Brayden’s body—bound in leather and cloth, barely covered, displayed to perfection. But he does note the collar. Hooking his finger in it, he bites his lip and savors everything he realizes they suddenly have.

“This is quite an outfit, slave,” Jenner says directly into the shell of Brayden’s ear.

“So, you’re pleased, Sir?” Brayden answers before Jenner pulls away, turning to kiss Jenner’s jaw while he’s there, in kissing range.

“Oh, I definitely am.”

“Is this actually happening?”

“I have no fucking idea,” Jenner laughs. “But let’s go with it, shall we?”

“I’m game,” Brayden grins. “Your wish is my command.”

“’Night Brayden!”

“See ya later,” he shouts back, not even sure who he’s saying goodbye to. There are still too many people around to be constantly sure who’s talking and what’s happening. People pour out of the bar, milling around on the sidewalks, lingering for a kiss under the streetlights with their sweethearts or just drawing out the night a little bit longer.

Jenner lets the last person out, then locks up. He’s dressed in green army fatigues that have a good amount of wear on them—enough to make Brayden guess that they’re authentic and not a costume-shop rental. The sleeves are rolled up due to the heat of the bar. At the collar, a dark t-shirt peeks out. Cargo pants and black combat boots complete the outfit. The only thing out of place is the length of his hair, too long and curly to be regulation. Something about the outfit and the confident ease with which Jenner wears it has been turning Brayden on all night, though hardly any skin is showing.

At the very least, it makes it feel less unusual to call him “Sir” in public.

With the itching and tickling of papers irritating his skin, Brayden digs out a few more stray dollar bills from inside the edges of his uniform and adds them to the wad already balled up in his fist.

When he glances back up, Jenner is there, smiling down at him.

“I seriously can’t keep all of this,” Brayden protests, holding up the cash. People had been sticking it inside his belt all night—men and women alike. Maybe he should have been offended, but no matter what he said or did, they just kept doing it and it added up fast.

“I told you, didn’t I,” Jenner says, “it’s all in the choice of costume. You earned it.”

“But this is hundreds of dollars! I barely did any bartending at all.”

“Put it toward a trip to Florida this summer. We’ll take a vacation. Or give it to Nana. Or Emma. You could start a savings fund for her.”

“Huh, that’s actually a really good idea,” Brayden admits. He waves to someone else who had waved first, their face too hard to see in the dark. “Whose uniform is that, by the way?”

Jenner looks down at himself, “Oh, my dad’s. He served in Vietnam. It’s tradition. I come dressed as the person he always wanted me to be—a new and improved version of himself. The whole ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ aspect of it all always made me laugh. I was going to enlist, you know, but my mother forbade it. Said she wouldn’t tolerate the possibility of losing me like she was always afraid of losing him.”

“I know the feeling. You look really hot, you know.”

“Oh please,” Jenner scoffs. “You’re practically a walking, breathing torture device in that, and you’re calling
my
outfit hot? Where in god’s name did you get that? I gave you no notice of this.”

He gestures at the bar—darkened and empty. Brayden stares at it, exhaustion making him a little hazy, wondering if he’d dreamt the whole thing.

“It was
my
uniform,” he answers. “In Miami. The other bar I worked at.”

The change in Jenner’s expression is so sudden and extreme that Brayden’s heart leaps up into his throat. The urge to kneel and beg forgiveness is almost too severe to resist, so instead he bows his head, brings both arms around behind his back and holds them there, crossed at the wrists, the money wadded up in his hands.

The possessive shine to Jenner’s eyes, the flex of his jaw, the curl of his lips, is burned into Brayden’s brain even though his eyes are now trained on his own feet. Jenner’s breath is hot on Brayden’s skin and he wonders if he should apologize, even though it would be for something that happened long before Jenner had any power over Brayden’s choices.

“Sir?” Brayden asks softly.

“Look at me,” Jenner demands.

Brayden wrenches his gaze upward with effort. Jennner’s jealousy is stark and undoubtable, but he gets it in check with effort as Brayden looks on.

After a moment, Jenner asks, “Who do you belong to, slave?”

“You, Sir,” Brayden answers without hesitation, infusing the words with emotion. “Only you.”

“You are not to wear this again without my permission, do you understand?”

“Yes, Sir,” he says, holding Jenner’s gaze. After a moment, he adds, “Thank you for what you did tonight, standing up for me like that. No one has ever done something that important for me before. It means a lot. I love you, Jenner.”

Softening slightly, Jenner cups Brayden’s jaw in a hand and sighs, “I love you, too.”

Taking half of Brayden’s cash, then claiming his hand, weaving their fingers together again, Jenner asks, “You okay?”

“Yeah, I just can’t believe it, you know? Did you get to talk to your brother? My Nana?”

Jenner shakes his head.

“Yeah, thought so,” Brayden sighs. He’d been too busy helping the staff, fielding questions and being sidetracked by conversations and attempts to stuff money down his pants to manage exchanging a single word with his grandmother, who had been there, listening, watching everything that went down when he’d arrived. “It’s like a dream. They know. They
all
know, or they will tomorrow, once word spreads. It’s what I thought I wanted, but…”

Jenner waits for him to finish, and when he doesn’t, says, “Scary?”

“Yeah. I mean, this weekend. Your parents…”

“One day at a time, okay? And we kicked today’s ass.”

With a smile, he leans down and kisses Brayden on the lips. Somewhere nearby, someone wolf-whistles at them, making Jenner chuckle against Brayden’s lips.

“We did, didn’t we?” Brayden smiles back at him.

“Come on,” Jenner says, leading him toward the apartment door. “Let’s go home.”

The next day, seated beside the front window of an Italian restaurant that’s only a short walk from the apartment, Jenner and Brayden eat a modest, early dinner and sip wine in relative silence.

Looking at Brayden’s faraway expression over the rim of his wine glass, Jenner thinks about how it felt to wake up and prepare to face a world where everyone knows he’s gay, that he’s in a relationship with Brayden Clare and that no matter how he and Brayden might feel about that, they can’t undo the revelation. Now that everyone knows, there is no going back to the safety of pretending to be straight. This is their life now. The imagined spread of gossip, from person to person or phone to phone feels like an uneasy tickle he can’t dispel. Even though the town’s reception of the news at the Pub last night had been wildly more favorable than expected—with Callum and Art and nearly everyone else in the room showing their support, standing with Jenner and Brayden against the bullies—the hardest people to face still need to be dealt with.

Jenner can sense Brayden’s unease. The good mood that traveled home with them from the Pub is fled, replaced by simmering worry. It was all well and good to know that their friends and acquaintances were fine with the homosexuals in their midst, but now it’s likely that not only does Ruth know they’re lovers, but Jenner’s family knows, too, along with the rest of Robertsville. They didn’t get to relay the news on their own terms. The cat’s already out of the bag; all that’s left is to show their faces and deal with the fallout.

Very literally overnight, they have left behind the trappings of childhood. The only choice now is to act like men, own their identities and see what they’re left with once it all shakes loose.

He knows Brayden is afraid of losing more, as he has always lost more than he was willing to give. Not only do their families know the truth now, but their families’ friends, their casual acquaintances. All of the whispering, the sometimes rude remarks that have already been made at Brayden’s expense when people only suspected he might be gay will be amplified, intensified. Their families will hear it all now, too. It’s one thing to be accepting of your loved one’s orientation when it’s a private matter. It’s another to have to stand up to the threat of ridicule on a daily basis, wherever you go. Maybe their families will pull away from them to spare themselves the hassle. Maybe, eventually, they’ll be left with nothing but each other.

So they sip their wine, hold hands and try to gather their courage for what’s to come in mere hours.

Brayden’s phone rings. He gives it a quick glance and pushes it away as he chooses to ignore it.

“Who is it?” Jenner asks.

“Nana. She’s been calling but I can’t do this right now, in public and over the phone like that.”

Jenner understands what he’s going through, as he has the same feelings of trepidation about his parents, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to help start the conversation.

“Give it to me,” Jenner tells him. Thus far, everything from Jenner has been softened and hushed so that they could enjoy a relaxing dinner together without any added pressure or stress. But this is sharper and clipped. It’s an order.

“No,” Brayden frowns.

“
Give it to me
,” he insists. “She knows. She saw everything. There’s no point in avoiding her if she’s the one reaching out.”

“Whatever,” Brayden sighs, slapping the phone into Jenner’s palm.

“Hello, this is Jenner Parrish,” he says, answering. “Yes, he’s not available right now but is there something I can help you with?”

Unable to hear his grandmother’s side of the conversation, Brayden can only pretend to be disinterested and pick at his food.

“Yeah. Definitely. That works for us. What time? Okay. See you then, Ms. Clare. Bye.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Brayden sighs. “What did you just agree to?”

“Dinner. Tomorrow. She asked if we might be available to come by for chicken.” Jenner lowers his voice and adds, “Why, you have a problem with that, slave?”

Hiding his expression behind his wine glass, Brayden stays mum.

“Yeah, I thought so. She wants to see us. That’s a good thing.”

But Brayden is not so easily convinced.