Free (Save The Kids Book 4)

by E. M. Leya

  D sat up, trying to decide if he was strong enough to talk about his past. Was what he had with Jeremy strong enough for him to spill his guts to him? He trusted him, that wasn't the issue. What he was scared about most was that it might actually change the way Jeremy thought about him, even looked at him. He didn't want to see disgust or pity in his eyes, and both were very possible. "If I tell you and it's too much, if you can't handle—"

  Jeremy put his finger to D's lips. "Do you really think it's so bad that I won't want to stay with you? Do you think I'd judge you on your past?"

  D shrugged. "I don't think you will judge me, but it could be so bad that you don't want to be with me anymore." Feeling vulnerable was new for D. He'd never let himself get close enough to anyone before to where it mattered if they walked away. Sure, there had been Xander, but even then, when he'd told Xander it had been in the middle of a breakdown. He had nothing left to lose at that point. Even if Xander had walked away, he wouldn't have been any more broken than he already had been at that point. Now, he was realizing how badly he did want a future with Jeremy. He wanted to keep dating and see where it would go. Losing Jeremy would kill him after all he'd already gone through the last few months. After having a taste of commitment, even going back to the clubs wouldn't heal him.

  "I'm not going anywhere, D, and your past isn't going to change that. If things don't work out for us, it's going to be something that happens between us, something that happens now. It's not going to be because of something that happened years ago. I didn't think I could ever find someone who would be okay with the fact I'd murdered my ex. I seriously thought everyone would hold that against me, worry I'd lose my mind and do it again. You never once made me feel that way. You understood. You were the only one who fucking understood what I was feeling, how hard it was for me to accept and deal with things. No one else ever asked me how I felt about it, but you did. I can't forget that. I won't do to you what I expected everyone to do to me because of something in the past."

  D sat forward, bracing his elbows on his knees as he stared at the floor. "But I could have stopped it. I should have. I was just too scared."

  Jeremy placed a hand on D's back, but didn't say anything.

  Memories that haunted him every day of his life came forward, and against his will, tears filled his eyes. He needed to do this. He wanted Jeremy to know. Taking a deep breath, he kept his gaze on the floor, not wanting to see the horror that would probably fill Jeremy's eyes. "I knew I was gay at a young age. I remember being five or six and watching my parents and thinking that I wanted what they had but with a man. It was all innocent back then, simple things like watching them hold hands when we'd walk through the zoo, or kiss each other goodbye in the mornings. As I got a little older, I started to notice boys in my class. I was young. Maybe eight or nine. When I started going through puberty, I was ten or eleven when it really hit hard. I found myself always hard, always thinking about a certain boy at school I liked. Like any preteen, I was jacking off all the time." D paused, taking a long sip of his beer, glad that Jeremy stayed silent.

  "I was twelve when I told my mom I liked boys. She stared at me like I was crazy but really didn't say anything. I didn't know enough at that age to know that being gay wasn't acceptable really. I'd never been around anyone who was gay. I just knew I liked boys. I thought it was that simple. How wrong I was." D stared at his shoes as he remembered that night. "My dad came home from work that night and we had dinner like always, then I went off to play in my room. That was when Mom must have told Dad what I'd said. I'm playing video games one minute and the next my dad stomps into my room, furious, and telling me he won't have some sissy as a son. He slapped me hard, the first time he'd ever laid a hand on me. Mom had spanked me in the past, but never my dad. I was scared to death. He went on telling me how being gay was a sin and how liking boys made people bad. I can't remember half the stuff he screamed at me. I was hysterical, scared, and crying, telling him I was sorry, just so he'd stop. Again, I was twelve. I hardly understood all of this. Kids at school talked, but that was all I had to go off, and back then, people didn't talk about stuff like that as openly as they do now." D took another drink of his beer. His heart was beating faster as the memories became clearer as he gave voice to them. "My dad grabbed me by the hair and dragged me into my parents' bedroom. He said he'd show me how real men acted. I had no idea what was going to happen, but when Dad forced me to undress, I knew it wasn't going to be good. I expected a spanking honestly, but when he got undressed, then called my mother in and had her undress too, I knew that wasn't what was happening. We didn't have the internet and all that back then, at least not like we do now. I'd never seen porn, but I had seen a magazine or two. I knew what sex was, but not really the fundamentals of it. Just locker room talk mostly. Anyway, my dad had us all sit on the bed and he said I was supposed to watch as my mom made him come. I was freaking the fuck out, begging to be allowed to leave, but each time I went to get up, he would grab me by the hair and pull me back."

  "Your mom didn't argue about this?" Jeremy asked.

  "Nope, she did everything Dad told her to. First, it was a simple hand job. She worked his cock and got him hard, but when my dad saw I wasn't hard from watching, he told my mom to do the same to me. I thought I was too scared to get hard, but hell, at that age, any hand on my cock felt good. I was so embarrassed and ashamed, but I couldn't stop it."

  Jeremy nodded. "The body has a mind of its own."

  "Anyway, I won't go into all the graphic details, but over the next few hours, my dad had my mother do things to me and him that made me want to be sick. He always stopped her right before I'd come though, and I didn't understand that, at least not at first. Then, as it got later, and I thought I was going to die from the pain of my hard-on, my dad finally told my mom to fuck me. Said his sissy son needed to know the right way to fuck and he was going to make sure I was taught right. I screamed and cried and fought, but my dad held me down and had my mom get on top of me. I was sick. When it was done, I ran to the bathroom and vomited, locking myself in there for hours. I cried as I showered, trying to wash it all off me."

  "Fuck." Jeremy's hand pressed supportively against D's back.

  "It went on for years. I begged them to stop, but my dad was convinced the way to make me a real man was to force me to be with a woman. I never again brought up being gay, but it didn't matter. My dad kept forcing me and my mother to be together while he watched. Finally, I had gotten a part-time job at fourteen. That kept me out of the house a lot, but didn't stop it completely, and by the time I was sixteen, I'd saved enough money to buy a cheap car. I loaded everything into my car the day I got it and never looked back. I lived in my car and worked jobs, showering at friends' houses or truck stops when I could. As soon as I was old enough to enlist, I did. I haven't been back home since." D was exhausted even though hardly ten minutes had passed. Telling his story drained him. He hated admitting how weak he was back then, how he didn't put up a bigger fight, how he didn't tell anyone what was happening. Now, looking back, he could see what he should have done, but back then, he'd been so scared, he didn't do anything. He dared a glance at Jeremy. "I started having sex all the time because it was the only thing that made me feel human anymore. When I was with other men, I was normal."

  "You were always normal, D. What they forced you to do was horrible, but none of that was your fault. You were young. You know that now." Jeremy kissed his shoulder.

  "Now, but I didn't back then, and even after I left, I blamed myself. If I'd just kept my mouth shut about being gay. If I'd just told someone what my parents were doing to me. If I'd just fought harder. I had a million excuses, but none of them changed anything. I was fucked up. Before the military it was drugs, after I enlisted it was drinking, then it was sex. Sex was safe. It was an addiction I could hide, something I could use without fallout. I wasn't going to wake up hungover or overdose on something. I was always safe, but when the memories would start to haunt me,
it was my crutch. Fucking some guy in the bathroom of the club never made me feel as dirty as my parents did."

  Jeremy touched D's chin, gently urging him to turn his face to him. He brushed a soft kiss over his lips. "Nothing you told me changes how I feel about you. It doesn't make me want to leave, it doesn't make me hate you. It's your past, and what we have is stronger than those memories you have. I don't know how to help you heal, or even if I can help you, but I'm here for you. I'm here if you need to use me for sex to help forget, I'm here if you need a shoulder to cry on, or someone to scream at."

  D smiled. "Thanks, and for the record, I'm not using you for sex. Maybe the first few times, but not now. I mean, yeah, I still crave it, need it, but with you, it's not the same. I'm not in it just to prove something. I'm not with you because of what happened to me. It was like that with others, but with you, I'm here because I want to be, because I care about you. Our sex is amazing, but it's not why we're together. I need you to know that."

  "I do. If it was just sex, we wouldn't have even had this conversation. I wouldn't have told you my real name, and most of all, I wouldn't care if you fucked others. I really don't know what this is between us. I don't have a lot to compare it to other than a really bad six-year relationship that I stayed in only because it was comfortable. He hated everything about me. We both know how that ended up. With you, it's different. There's passion, need, want, and dreams. It's not just going through the motions like it was with Chad."

  "Well, you have even more to compare it to than I do. I just know I like being with you. I trust you, and for me that's huge. I don't know how to make this work, I just know I want it to. The first step of trying to do that for me was letting you know about my past." D wasn't sure if he should admit so much about his feelings for Jeremy. What if it scared him off?

  "Thank you for letting me know," Jeremy said. "But us being happy and making it work wasn't contingent on telling me all your secrets. I'm glad I know. I think it helps me understand you. Not that I needed to. I like you for who you are. I don't need explanations why you're that way."

  D leaned against Jeremy. "I needed you to know. Anyway, you know the rest pretty much. I joined the Army, met Xander, who helped me get through my shit at least enough so I didn't kill myself. We had plans when we came home. We were going after his father first, then going after mine next. Bryon stopped us. Somehow, he knew who we were. To this day I'm not sure how, but that's just how Bryon is. He knows things. Reads people. He brought us onto the team and we haven't looked back since. Bryon offered to go after my father, and I thought about it. Revenge sounded sweet, but that would have been all it was. There were no signs he was hurting any other children, and by that time, I just wanted to forget. I focused on my new life with the team."

  "I'm glad you didn't go after him. He deserves it, your mom too, but I think that might have haunted you worse in the long run." Jeremy kissed D's temple. "Want another beer?"

  D sat up straight. "Yeah, and I'm hungry. You grab the beer and I'll grab the steaks. We can head out back and get them on the grill." He was glad that Jeremy wasn't focusing on what happened in his past. It made it easier. He didn't want pity or even long conversations about how strong he was. He'd had those with himself a million times. He just needed Jeremy to know. It was that simple. Now that he did, they could move forward. No secrets, no lies, nothing to keep them from creating their new lives together if they wanted. It wasn't easy, but like everything else in his life, he'd do it one step at a time. If Jeremy stuck around for it, even better.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Jeremy glanced at the time on his phone, then looked around the coffee shop again. He was supposed to be meeting with a guy he happened to notice on the dark web trolling the pedophiles. It had looked like some bored kid at the time, but the more Jeremy had watched him, the more interesting he found him. After hacking the guy's account, he found that Marshall was a computer genius that had dropped out of college after being hazed by one of the fraternities on campus. The hazing had been pretty bad, and Jeremy didn't blame the guy for dropping out. After digging deeper, he found the guy had been there on a scholarship. Both his parents were dead and he'd been raised by his aunt who had also died two months before he started college.

  It looked like the guy was alone, with no family, and from what Jeremy could tell, no real friends. That should have been a warning sign maybe, but then again, after the hazing, he could understand why Marshall would withdraw and close everyone out.

  After talking it over with D, Rani, and Jessica, he decided to try and talk the guy into meeting with him. Once he got a feel for the guy, he'd decide if he would talk to him about a job. If Marshall was interested, they'd set up another meeting somewhere for the rest of the team to meet him as well. It was risky, but they really needed a second person working the computers, especially if Jeremy wanted to ever have some downtime and relax.

  He'd emailed Marshall, explaining he worked with a group of people looking for someone with his computer skills. He didn't say anything about what the job would be doing other than it was an underground group, hoping to better society. When Marshall had tried to back-hack his information to find out more and had hit a brick wall, he'd emailed Jeremy back and said he was very interested in meeting someone with the skills to block him out of a system. They'd decided to meet at a small coffee shop in the city and talk.

  D had wanted to come with him, but his face was still floating around some news reports from time to time. It was best to not have him sitting in one location for long. If anything went wrong, it was best there only be one of them there.

  Jeremy glanced up as Marshall walked in. He knew him by sight from the pictures he'd found doing his background check, but Marshall had also said he'd be wearing a Colorado Avalanche jersey, which made him stand out since it wasn't hockey season yet. In return, Jeremy had worn a Metallica t-shirt so Marshall would know it was him.

  Marshall glanced around, smiling when he saw Jeremy. He held up a finger as he went to the counter and placed an order.

  Jeremy watched the way Marshall stepped back as he waited, then casually glanced around the coffee shop as if looking to see who was around. It wasn't paranoia, but more just an awareness of where he was and who was around him. Once he had his drink, he slowly made his way over to Jeremy, taking a seat before offering his hand. "I assume you're Jeremy?"

  "I am. It's a pleasure to meet you, Marshall. Thanks for taking the time." Jeremy shook his hand, then sat back.

  "So, is this supposed to be like an official job interview?" Marshall asked.

  Jeremy laughed. "Not really. It's just a chance for us to feel each other out and discuss a few things and see if you're interested. I'm afraid I can't give away a lot of details, but I can let you know enough to hopefully decide if you're interested."

  Marshall nodded. "So it's not legal?"

  "No, it's not." There was no reason not to be honest with him.

  "How much time would I serve if I got caught?" Marshall asked.

  Jeremy smiled, glad that he hadn't instantly said no. "That would depend. Probably a few years for your part in things, but I can't be sure. I can tell you that the team would be there and if you were willing to relocate after, we could have you out in a week or two probably."

  Marshall narrowed his eyes. "Interesting. So, what exactly is this job? I assume computers?"

  "Right, you'd be going onto the dark web and searching for pedophiles and hacking into their systems to collect evidence," Jeremy told him.

  "That's not very hard. If you've done your research, you know I'm already there fucking with them." Marshall took a sip of his coffee.

  "I'm aware you're trolling them, but this would be different. You would act like one of them. Work to get into their inner circles, dig deeper than you've already been. Find the ones who are there doing more than searching for images to jerk off to. It's not an easy job. You'll see things that you can't unsee. Yet you tolerate it, act as if you are
part of it so that you can earn their trust. We are talking about sex trafficking, child porn, and an array of other atrocities that will turn your stomach." Jeremy watched Marshall closely.

  Marshall paled and sat back. "And what's done with the information I find?"

  "It's given to the other half of our team to handle." Jeremy wasn't sure how much information to share. He needed to get a better read on Marshall before going into details.

  Marshall's eyes widened. "I saw something on the news. It was a guy in California—"

  Jeremy smiled. "Keep your voice low," he warned. "I know of the news you're talking about."

  "Is that what this is?" Marshall swallowed hard.

  "Would you work with something like that?" Jeremy asked.

  "Fuck yeah. Those fucking pedos should be killed. Anyone who would hurt an animal or child deserves to die." Marshall didn't even hesitate in his answer.

  Jeremy nodded. "While I agree, if I remember right, he didn't kill them, he castrated them and left them for the police."

  "Dude, if someone cut your cock off, wouldn't it be the same as being killed? I mean, I know I'd want to die. Life would be over if I never could get laid again." He cringed. "Seriously, just kill me if I can't function down there." He gestured to his crotch.

  Jeremy laughed. "Yeah, I'd feel the same way. Anyway, back on topic. If that was what this was about, would you want a part in it? Would you be willing to take the risk and keep the secrets that you'd have to?"

  Marshall bit his lip for a second. "I couldn't handle doing the um, graphic work, but I could handle the computer side of things. I mean, computers are what I'm most comfortable with."