Destiny (Waiting for Forever) (33 page)

Then it came to me.

“One of the guys had some E, and they asked me if I wanted some. You hadn’t given me anything before you dropped me off, so I went with them,” I said, my eyes never leaving his face. I’d gotten really damned good at lying over the last two years, especially when my life depended on it. He held me by the throat against the wall while he considered my answer.

“And what did you give him, you little whore?” he growled, and his grip on my throat tightened. Why that would matter after he made me screw guys for money, I had no idea. Maybe he didn’t like something being in my control.

“No, I paid out of my part of the tip money,” I whispered because his hold on my neck prevented me from giving my voice any volume. The pressure on my windpipe made me light-headed. If he didn’t relent, I’d pass out soon. It had happened before. As lights popped in front of my eyes, I thought of Brian. Steven wouldn’t kill me, not over something like drugs, but if he ever found out about Brian, he would kill us both. Something must have changed in my expression because Steven’s face flushed with anger again.

“You’re so stupid. Don’t you remember me counting your tips at the club? You’d have to have had a really good night to buy shit and still have that much cash. It wasn’t that busy!” Pulling me away from the wall, he slid his hand to the back of my neck instead. Sucking in the air my body desperately needed, I couldn’t fight him when he shoved me onto the bed. Though I wasn’t struggling, Steven held me against the bed with his body while he unbuttoned my flimsy shorts. He didn’t bother with my shirt or even my jock as I heard him unzipping his own jeans.

T
HE
next week passed with frightening speed. Alex had called the apartment a few times, no doubt wanting to talk about the club, but I never picked up. I didn’t want to admit the humiliation I’d endured when I got home. I just wanted to forget about the entire night. Tortured by the feeling of Brian’s hair under my fingers and his soft, sweet moan in my mouth as I kissed him, I could think of little else. Steven’s words would ring in my ears, and my heart would freeze.
“If I ever catch you with another guy, I will kill him while you watch. Then I’ll kill you.”
No matter how much I wanted Brian’s comfort and his love, I couldn’t sacrifice him to Steven’s jealousy and temper. I wouldn’t.

On Saturday morning, Steven reminded me about his promise as he dropped me off at Hartley’s studio. He needed to go out to the suburbs and help his brother put together a tree house for his nephews. Even though I knew his brother was his only family, I found it almost impossible to believe that Steven would do something so domestic, but at the mention of the words “tree house,” I stopped listening because it made my heart hurt. He made sure I heard the warning in his voice as he told me he would be back to pick me up and he’d better be able to find me.

Alex intercepted me before I got to the door, and I gave him a brief rundown, keeping some of the more graphic details to myself. He paled when I told him about Steven’s threat.

“Do you think he’d…?” he asked, and I nodded solemnly because I thought Steven would absolutely follow through on his promise. Alex fidgeted, playing with one of the cheap silver rings on his hand. He watched it turn around his finger for a minute before he looked back up at me. I didn’t know if he felt uncomfortable because he was frightened for me, or if something had happened before I’d gotten to the studio. His nervous energy started to make me edgy.

“Is something wrong?” I asked, and he shook his head, his gaze still fixed on his hands.

“They want you up in the green room,” he informed me, and I looked at my watch. I must have been in the first shoot because we hadn’t been late getting to the studio.

“Oh, okay. Thanks, man,” I said and put my hand on his shoulder as I passed. A couple of guys sat in the living room watching a movie. Noticing that Brian wasn’t one of them, I let out a sigh of relief. Jogging up the stairs, I got to the second floor and saw that the door to the green room was open, so I walked in.

Brian was sitting alone on the bed.

“My shoot is with you today?” I asked, closing my eyes and rubbing my temples with the tips of my fingers. They usually didn’t have guys work together more than once or twice and certainly never in a row. I couldn’t work with him again so soon; I just couldn’t. Being in the same room with him, seeing him, hurt me enough.

“No,” he said quietly and got up off the bed. At first, I thought he wanted to touch me, but he walked past me, closed, and locked the door.

“Brian, I don’t know what you have in mind, but we can’t do this,” I told him and heard the panic in my voice. If Steven showed up, if he found us….

Brian held up his cell phone, shook it in midair, and then set it on the bedside table.

“Alex and Mike are watching for O’Dell. They’ll text me if he shows up. We chose the green room because it’s got that walk-through bathroom into the blue room. If he comes, you can go into the bathroom, wash your hands, and come out. He doesn’t have to know,” Brian told me and sat back down on the bed. I felt trapped. I didn’t want to hurt Brian by walking out when he’d obviously planned things out to talk to me, but I couldn’t let Steven catch me in here with him. Any of the other guys might tell Steven what he wanted to know; few of them would stand up against him for us.

“This is not a good idea,” I said quietly and sat down on the bed about a foot from where Brian sat.

“We won’t do anything but talk. Mike didn’t think it was a good idea for the other guys to hear what we were talking about.” He turned on the bed to face me, pulling one leg up to be more comfortable. I matched his position and remembered it was the way we had always sat on my bed to talk back home.

“What do you want to talk about?” I asked cautiously. “I can’t get into any kind of relationship with you, Brian. He will kill you, and then he’ll kill me, and I don’t mean that in some abstract way. I mean he will take your life. I can’t let that happen.”

“I am not afraid of Steven O’Dell,” he said, and the conviction in his voice surprised me. Brian never had that kind of confidence back in Alabama. Despite the danger, and despite that my instincts were screaming for me to get out of the room, there were so many things I wanted to know. So I stayed.

“Brian, he’s dangerous,” I said, trying to make him understand.

“So am I,” he said with a smirk. I couldn’t even imagine what that meant.

“What?”

“I’m dangerous too,” he said and then smiled. So many things about Brian were exactly as I remembered: his smile, his eyes, the way he ran his hand through his hair. So many things were new: his muscled body, his confidence, his conviction.

“Okay, what does that mean?”

“Before I came to San Diego, I had a job as a karate instructor. I’m almost a brown belt, which is just one belt below the black. I can hold my own in a fight, Jamie.”

“I’m not talking about a fight! I’m talking about him blowing your brains out. Karate isn’t going to be much help against a gun,” I said, losing all patience. The fear echoed in every word I spoke. Brian reached over and took my hand.

“I love you, and even if you didn’t love me, I wouldn’t leave you with him. I promise you, I will get you away from him, and we’ll go someplace where we’re both safe,” he told me quietly, and I didn’t have the heart to argue with him. Instead, I looked down at our entwined hands.

“I love you too, Brian,” I whispered. “It seems like I’ve loved you my whole life.”

“Me, too,” he said and pulled me into his arms. I rested my head on his shoulder, and he held me. Questions chased each other around my brain, and before I could decide what to ask first, one bubbled out.

“How did you learn karate?”

“I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine,” he promised, and I nodded. It would all have to come out eventually, and I really wanted to know all the new things about my Brian. The resistance I’d been trying to keep up since I saw him for the first time a couple of weeks ago crumbled. As hard as I pushed him away, he would just come back to me twice as strong. He’d given up his whole life in Alabama just for the chance at finding me. He would never ever give up. Too tired to make him try, I had to think of another way to keep him safe.

“Emma saw you kiss me on the lawn the day you left for California. She really thought that you guys were going to get married and have perfect little Bible-beating babies. Her brother Brad didn’t like that the fags had lied to his sister, so he and a couple of friends… they… put me in the hospital.”

I looked up at him, startled. That explained the scars on his leg and side. Goddammit, that was my fault too. If I hadn’t dated Emma, if I hadn’t lied to her, they wouldn’t have hurt Brian. Guilt turned my stomach, and I touched his arm before I could stop myself.

“Anyway, my parents talked to Coach Williams; remember him?” he asked, and I nodded. Of course I did, the gym teacher slash Marine who thought we were going to be attacked any time. “He has a dojo, and he gave me private lessons and then asked me to help him teach.” Something occurred to me as he half shrugged. Brian had never called Richard and Carolyn his “parents”; he always called them “Richard and Carolyn” or his “foster parents.”

“Your parents?” I asked, and his smile lit up his face.

“My turn to ask you a question,” he said with a smirk, and I grinned. The carefree feeling his smile inspired in me was completely foreign in my new San Diego life, so I clung to it like a child with a favorite blanket. Just like that blanket, it was warm and comforting.

“Okay, your turn,” I replied as I leaned over a few inches to kiss his cheek. Brian looked at me for several minutes, trying either to phrase his question or decide on one.

“Where did you go when you left the Sunshine Center?” Brian asked carefully. The question he really wanted to ask, hidden behind the more harmless one, was how I had ended up the drugged-out slut with Steven O’Dell. It wasn’t a story I looked forward to telling, though I knew I would have to eventually. It disgusted me, how easily manipulated I’d been.

“I didn’t really go anywhere. I’d talked a delivery driver into giving me a ride into San Diego, and then I spent the next three days wandering around trying to figure out what to do. The second day, after I’d stayed awake the whole night because I was too afraid to sleep, I called my parents.” The sharp edge to my voice made him kiss my forehead and pull me a little closer. “I was scared, so I called my mom. She told me that she didn’t want me to come home.” Actually, she had told me that her son was dead and for me not to call again. My father hadn’t even bothered to come to the center when she left me there. He couldn’t even look at me.

I wondered how proud they’d be of where my life had gone.

“I went to your dad’s office to see him when I first got here. Jamie, he—” he started, but I pulled away quickly and cut him off.

“I don’t want to talk about my parents, Brian… ever! And don’t you ever tell them where I am!” I spat and started to get up off the bed.
My goddamn parents
. They started all the crap that had happened to me over the last two years. I could be in college, happy with Brian, instead of screwing random guys and getting my head kicked in. If I never saw them again, I’d be perfectly fine with that.

“Okay, okay… Jamie, we won’t talk about them,” Brian said quickly as he pulled me back down onto the bed. He held me gingerly, like a bomb that could go off and incinerate his helping hand. When I started to calm, he whispered into my hair, “Why didn’t you go to a shelter?”

“My turn to ask a question,” I reminded him. I felt him sigh, and his soft, warm breath tickled my hair before he nuzzled in closer.

“I know. Did you still want to know about my parents?” he murmured, and I nodded. He explained that he had been taken away from Richard and Carolyn after Emma’s parents had called the state. My heart broke for him as he glossed over the details of the investigation, and his face flushed when he mentioned an exam they did at the hospital. “When they came to get me from Hudson House, they asked if they could adopt me. So, Richard and Carolyn are now really my parents.” I could hear the smile and pride in his voice as he said it, and for the smallest instant, I envied him. Even after finding out about Brian’s homosexuality, they still wanted him.

Knowing my parents didn’t want me made me feel empty and alone.

I didn’t want to feel like that, not with Brian. Lifting my head from his shoulder, I pushed him back to rest against the pillows. Being with Brian was as easy as falling back into his arms. If it weren’t so dangerous, I’d never leave. Our legs entwined as our bodies pressed against each other, hips, chests, lips, in a kiss more about comfort than sex. His fingers stroked the back of my short hair, and I felt him whisper against my cheek.

“Why did you cut your hair, Jamie?”

I kissed him again to keep from answering. He didn’t need to know all the ugliness in my life. Knowing everything would just make him more determined to save me, and he couldn’t. But I would take our stolen moments together, as selfish as they were, and remember them when I needed to feel his love fill me.

The cell phone on the table chirped. That single, high-pitched noise threw Brian into action. He kissed me quickly and then jumped off the bed.

“It’s Mike. You need to go. I’m going to unlock the door and go in the closet in case he looks in here,” Brian said and pushed me toward the small bathroom. “I love you, Jamie, more than anything.” I nodded as I scrambled for the bathroom and wished I could tell him so much more. My pulse raced, and I could hear Steven pounding up the stairs to find me. I heard a small click from the other room and guessed that either Steven had looked in the room or Brian had closed the closet door. Either way, I turned on the water, washed my hands, and then took a few drinks from the faucet. There didn’t seem to be a trace of Brian on me, but I couldn’t take any chances.

The bathroom had no towel hanging from the rack, so I wiped my hands on my jeans and took a deep breath. When I opened the door and stepped into the hall, I nearly ran into Steven.