Beau fought the urge to frown. Thinking back on his football days was bittersweet. The friends, the fun, all of the laughs he shared with the guys in high school, those had been great times. But despite any attempt to ignore the bad times, Beau had a hard time separating his father and football. The two seemed to go hand in hand, and just like Beau’s ties were severed with football when he had injured his arm his senior year, so had any conceivable relationship he had with his father.
“You were in a car accident that year, right?” Ethan asked, clearly having an exceptional memory.
“Yeah,” he said, forcing a hint of a smile on his lips. “Bunch of us were out fucking off. Black ice caught us by surprise and the truck we were in flipped. My arm was crushed. That was the end of my football career.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Football?”
“No, high school,” Ethan barked with a laugh. “Of course football.”
“Not really, no.” That was only a partial lie. He missed the thrill he got when he went out on the field, the roar of the kids and their parents. There was no doubt Beau had thought he’d be off to the NFL eventually just like everyone else had, but that dream came to an abrupt halt because they were out being idiots after a freak ice storm.
“What about you? You play sports?”
“Nah. I was too involved in FFA to take on sports.”
“So, you wanted to be a farmer, huh?” Beau joked, spinning his beer bottle in his hands.
“Nope, just knew I had to do something to pass the time. I always wanted to go to work for my brothers.”
“You mean for yourself?”
“I guess I don’t see it that way, but, yeah. I wanted to work at Walker Demo. Fixing things has always been a hobby of mine.”
Beau nodded, understanding completely. He’d been the same way. When he wasn’t playing football, he spent time at his uncle’s shop, working on cars and some of the heavy equipment. Usually anything to keep him away from the cold chill of his parents’ house.
Their food was brought out just in time. Beau enjoyed the steady, easy conversation, but he also felt as though they were dancing around the subjects that were most important. Specifically, Beau had questions he wanted to ask because, until he knew the answers, he didn’t know how to map out what the future might hold.
Not that he should’ve been mapping out anything. He was supposed to be enjoying the moment, getting to know Ethan on a comfortable level. But for some reason, Beau wanted to know him on a deeper level. What made the man tick? What made him hide even when they both knew his parents and his brothers would be nothing but supportive of him?
The conversation continued over dinner, mostly Beau relaying incidents from high school, all usually involving Zane though the man never seemed to get caught. He was almost as bad as the twins when it came to practical jokes.
Once their empty plates were cleared away, the waiter brought two more beers, and Beau settled in. They had nowhere to be and no one to worry about, so it seemed that talking – outside of the bedroom – was the ideal way to spend the evening.
Even if Ethan wasn’t going to like the direction Beau was headed with the conversation.
“What’s wrong?” Ethan asked, tipping his beer bottle to his lips. “I see the wheels spinning. You’re going to ask me something, and I’m not gonna be happy about it am I?”
Beau smirked. “Probably not, no.”
“Get it out there,” Ethan said softly. “I know you have questions, I just can’t promise I can answer them. Not easily anyway.”
Did Beau really need the answers? Couldn’t he just be satisfied with moving forward in the direction they were going?
No, unfortunately, he couldn’t. Especially since the direction was going to be much like it had been if he didn’t dig deeper. And quite frankly, Beau wasn’t all that keen on the idea of spending the rest of his life hiding who he was from those he cared about. It was hard enough to watch Ethan do it.
Beau paused for a moment, trying to choose his words carefully. “The other night, at Moonshiners. Reardon mentioned something about his family.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed, and his lips formed a hard line. Clearly Beau had hit a sore spot. Ever since Reardon made the comment, Beau had wondered what he was referring to. It was evident based on his reaction that Ethan knew exactly what he was talking about.
Ethan’s sharp inhale caught Beau’s attention and he looked up, watching and waiting. He could see his brain working overtime, knew he was about to say something, but Beau wasn’t sure whether it was going to be a story or simply a fuck off. Either way, Beau wanted to know where he stood with Ethan, and this was the moment of truth. If he wasn’t willing to open up at this point, Beau knew there was probably no hope for the future.
“Jimmy Reardon has a younger brother. His name was Gavin.”
Beau caught the use of past tense mixed with present, but he didn’t say a word.
“Gavin was…” Ethan paused, taking a pull off of his beer as he stared down at the table. “Gavin was the first guy I was ever with.”
Understanding dawned immediately, but Beau didn’t speak up, not wanting to interrupt.
“I was nineteen and Gavin had just turned twenty when we…”
Again, Ethan trailed off, and Beau tried to read between the lines but he had no idea how to fill in the blanks. He tried to nurse his beer slowly, wanting to be patient with Ethan, but he found himself fidgeting.
“Anyway,” Ethan began, his eyes looked glazed as though he had disappeared somewhere in the past. “I fell in love with him. I lost my virginity to him.” Ethan took a deep breath and continued, “One night he asked me to meet him at the lake. Since we’d been doing that every night for almost a full week, I agreed without question. When we got there, he wanted to talk. That’s when he told me that he wasn’t gay and that he hadn’t meant to sleep with me.”
Hadn’t meant to? How the hell was that possible?
“He said it was a mistake and told me that I shouldn’t have forced him. I didn’t force him, Beau.” Ethan looked directly at him, his eyes almost crazed for a moment. “I swear.”
The last two words were a mere whisper, and Beau wanted to reach out and take Ethan’s hand but he didn’t dare. They were in a restaurant, and he knew Ethan would panic if others were around, so Beau gripped his beer bottle tightly in an effort to keep from doing just that.
“That night, Jimmy showed up. Before I knew what was going on, he was beating on me. With a fucking baseball bat. Gavin stood by and watched, but he didn’t try and help. He didn’t even try to stop his brother. I thought I was going to die that night.”
Ethan’s usual deep baritone was raspy, like his throat was closing up and the words were painful to get out.
“They left you there?” Beau couldn’t hold back the question. The outrage that erupted in his gut was so powerful, he was surprised his beer bottle didn’t collapse into shards beneath his death grip. The son of a bitch beat Ethan and left him for dead. And the man Ethan loved had fucking watched?
“Yeah, they left me there. Luckily I had my cell phone. I managed to call Sawyer and he found me, took me back to his house. Greyson wanted to take me to the hospital, but I refused.”
Greyson, the paramedic. Shit. Ethan must’ve been bad off for that to be necessary. Being that Beau was just a couple of years younger, he wondered how he’d never known about this. Surely he would’ve remembered something that horrible happening to one of Zane’s brothers.
“I stayed with Sawyer for a couple of weeks. Refused to see my parents or my brothers until I healed enough that I could brush off the questions.”
“No one knows about this?” Beau knew his skepticism was apparent.
“No one besides Sawyer, Jimmy, Greyson and Gavin.”
“Where’s Gavin now?” Beau asked, knowing that the answer wasn’t going to be a simple one, like “he moved” or “he went off to college”.
“Gavin’s dead.�
�� The clouds in Ethan’s eyes disappeared and were replaced with devastating sadness.
“Dead?”
“Gavin killed himself a month after that.” The words were a tormented rasp that Beau barely heard.
“I loved him. I even tried to forgive him, but he wouldn’t listen.”
“Did you…” Beau couldn’t even get the question out.
“Did I what?”
“Were you the one who found him?”
“Yeah.” Ethan glanced down at the table for long minutes, not saying a word.
Beau considered changing the subject, but they had made it this far. Ethan had been holding this inside for so long, he only prayed that, by urging Ethan to tell the story, he was able to alleviate some of Ethan’s pain. He doubted it would help, but he still hoped.
“Gavin texted me. Told me he was willing to talk, but I had to come to his house. I didn’t want to and told him as much. There was no way I was going to risk running into Jimmy. Anyway, I couldn’t say no because I wanted to see him.
“When I got to his house, his front door was standing open. I called out, fully expecting another setup, but there was no one there. The idiot that I was, I walked in the house and went in search of Gavin. Something pushed me forward, telling me I had to find him. I knew before I even walked in his room what he’d done. He had overdosed on some prescription pain pills that his mother had. He was dead when I got there.”
It was Beau’s turn to look down at the table. Gavin Reardon had killed himself. Had he done it because he was gay? Beau knew the unfortunate statistics of suicide. He’d read about them. And young gay men were amongst those with the highest suicide attempts.
It was disheartening.
The waiter interrupted them when he brought the bill, but Beau paid him no mind, nor did Ethan. He wanted to show Ethan that he could share his story, and he could still move forward.
It might not be easy, but it had to be done.
Chapter Thirty
♂♂
Ethan could hardly swallow past the lump in his throat. He was angry, and he was sad at the same time. He was pissed that Beau had gotten him to open up about something that he didn’t want to talk about. On the other hand, he felt somewhat lighter, even if his heart still ached for Gavin.
No one knew exactly why Gavin took his own life because he didn’t leave a note. Ethan had a theory, not that he would ever share it with anyone. It was obvious Gavin was gay and coming out didn’t seem to be an option for him. Especially after the way Jimmy had reacted to Ethan.
If he thought about it, Ethan was pretty sure Gavin had loved him. Although the memory was fuzzy, Ethan was almost certain Gavin had told him as much the first time they made love, but again, he would never know for sure.
And it was true, the bullies were everywhere, especially in their small, redneck town, and it didn’t help that Gavin’s own brother was amongst them. But Ethan still carried the guilt because he felt as though he could’ve stopped him. Could’ve made him understand that everything would be all right.
But would it have been all right? It surely hadn’t been for Ethan. He’d had to keep himself locked up in that proverbial closet so that he didn’t draw attention from the Jimmy Reardons of the world or he risked something far worse than some cracked ribs, a broken nose and a busted face. He’d been lucky. The evil still lurked everywhere he turned.
Ethan drained the rest of his beer and spun a knife on the table as he tried to collect his thoughts. Staring back at Beau, he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tell you that now.”
Beau gave him a questioning look as he pushed his beer away. “Would there have been a better time?”
He heard the annoyance in Beau’s usually calm tone.
No, there certainly wasn’t a good time to talk about Gavin and all that had been lost back then. Not only had Ethan been beaten, but he’d lost the only man he had ever loved. It was the one and only reason he didn’t fall in love. He didn’t want strings. Nothing to bind him to someone so tightly that he would ever feel that kind of pain again. “No,” he said simply.
“I’m glad you told me, E,” Beau said, and his hand moved across the table to touch his.
Ethan didn’t pull back, unsure why not. Had he been thinking clearly, he would’ve looked around to ensure no one was looking, yanked his hand as far back as he could. But for some reason, he needed Beau’s reassuring touch, needed everything Beau had to offer him even if he had nothing to give in return.
“Let’s get out of here,” Ethan told him, forcing a smile.
Beau nodded as he pulled his hand back to his side of the table. Ethan snatched the check off the table and tossed his credit card in the folder.
While they waited for the waiter to do his thing, Ethan stared at his hand, feeling the loss of Beau’s warmth and realizing just how much he missed his touch.
A short while later, Ethan was walking into their hotel room with Beau right behind him. He was emotionally drained, and he was pretty damn sure he’d ruined Beau’s night. He had tried to apologize again, but Beau had shut him up with a glare.
Glancing at the bed, he suddenly wished they’d opted for two double beds. He doubted that Beau would want to be anywhere near him at this point.
Dropping onto the edge of the mattress, Ethan removed his boots, his socks, and then pulled his shirt up and over his head. Scooting back on the bed, he propped himself up on a pillow and tried to relax on top of the comforter that was still rumpled from their earlier encounter.
Heat infused his body as he remembered what it felt like when Beau had been balls deep inside him, staring straight into his eyes as though he were the only man in the entire world who had ever meant anything to him. It was nice to hang on to that dream for a while because he sure as shit knew it wasn’t a reality.
“Lose the jeans,” Beau told him, but Ethan didn’t make a move to comply. He was emotionally and physically exhausted.
He watched as Beau stripped down to bare skin. Despite his own reluctance, his body had other ideas as soon as he got an eyeful of the perfect male specimen that was Beau Bennett.
“Well, if you won’t do what I ask, then I’ll just have to do it for you,” Beau said as he moved around to the side of the bed Ethan had claimed.
Watching, his breath lodged in his chest, Ethan couldn’t deny the intense satisfaction he felt when Beau unbuttoned his jeans and then carefully pulled them down his legs until he was laying there as naked as the day he was born.
But that’s where Beau’s seduction ceased. Ethan stared in disbelief as Beau moved around to the opposite side of the bed, pulled the blankets back and then crawled in beside him.
“Come here,” Beau said curtly, trying to push the blankets out from under Ethan.
Not wanting to cause any more problems for the night, he did as Beau asked and situated himself beneath the blankets and then flipped off the lamp on the bedside table.
“I said come here,” Beau told him, his command leaving no room for any misunderstanding.
Before he had the opportunity to move, Beau was pressed up against him, his hard chest against Ethan’s back, his firm, solid thighs brushing up against the backs of his own.
God it felt good to be held. Just to have Beau’s strong arms wrapped around him. Their fingers twined together and Ethan held them close to his chest, breathing slowly, deeply.
“Thank you for sharing with me tonight.”
Ethan laughed without mirth. “Thanks for letting me ruin the night.”
Beau tugged his hand, forcing him over onto his back, and Ethan stared up into Beau’s dark eyes, the faint light coming in through the open curtains making it possible for him to see somewhat.
“You didn’t ruin anything, E. Just being here with you is more than I ever expected.”
Ethan swallowed, unsure what to even say to that.
“Now sleep. I’m right here if you need me.”
Ethan nodded, not sure whether Beau could actually s
ee him or not. Turning back to his side, he snuggled in deeper against Beau, wanting – no, needing – to feel him.
♂♂
Beau didn’t close his eyes, didn’t even try to sleep. He simply held Ethan in his arms, breathed in his intoxicating scent and sent up a silent prayer, thanking God for giving him this.
He’d spent his entire life confused about who he was, about what he wanted, about what would possibly make him happy. He’d found clarity when V had so graciously convinced Zane to give Beau what he needed. And true, he had needed Zane. But not for anything more than clarification on what he’d believed for a long time.
Was that wrong? Maybe some would see it that way. Not Beau. And he knew from their last conversation that Zane didn’t harbor any ill feelings toward him. They were friends, as close as brothers, and he cherished that relationship, but no, like he’d told Ethan, Beau didn’t love Zane. Never had loved him other than like family.
Then again, it had taken Ethan letting Beau in, giving him this chance for him to realize what true love felt like. And this… what he felt for this amazing man was real and true and powerful.
Regardless of how he got here, Beau was just thankful he was here. Here with Ethan.
After months of wondering whether he was chasing his own fucking ass, something had told him to keep at it because the end result was going to be worth it. Whatever had spurred him on had been right. Ethan was worth it. Every ounce of love he felt for this man was worth it.
Hearing Ethan’s story, witnessing his pain… that had been a wake-up call for Beau. It explained so much. Ethan wasn’t in denial, although he’d probably say he was. He knew who he was, he just hadn’t come to accept all of himself.
Maybe Gavin was to blame. Or maybe it was Jimmy. Either way, those men had altered Ethan’s world. Jimmy with his God complex, thinking that he had the right to dole out punishment because someone didn’t measure up to what he believed to be the norm. And Gavin for stealing Ethan’s heart and breaking it into a million pieces.
Sure, Beau’s heart went out to Gavin. He’d been young, confused, and probably in love with someone he knew his family wouldn’t accept. Too bad it didn’t sound like he had a sturdy support system to get him through the confusion. And just like so many unfortunate others, he’d taken his own life. Beau couldn’t even imagine the pain Gavin had been in at the time. He was likely confused and watching his own brother beat the man he loved had to have been hell.
Ethan (Alluring Indulgence) Page 26