“I was used for men’s entertainment.”
She tried to swallow. “Kev–”
She didn’t realize how close they were sitting until he turned to face her, his eyes huge and haunted, pale cheeks framed by his bedraggled hair, just two narrow blades of white beneath the sharp edges of bone. He swallowed, and she watched his throat move.
“The Nest,” he said, voice a strained whisper, “is a place where men go to watch boys dance. And they pay for private time with them in the back. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Her eyes filled with tears and he became blurry.
“I’m nothing but a sex toy.”
“Stop. Don’t say that, because it isn’t true.”
She couldn’t tell because of the tears, but she thought his eyes grew shiny, reflecting the lamplight. “They started breaking me in when I was ten. And when I was twelve–”
“Stop!”
“That’s what I’m good at. Fucking. Being fucked.” The curses were tiny explosions between them, as ugly as the acts they conjured. “I’m not interested in art. I’m not interested in anything. I just learned to do what they told me.”
“You are interested in things. Whatever happened, whatever they…You’re your own person now. You can–”
“I just told you I used to be a goddamn hooker, and you’re still trying to play the bright side act?”
“I’ll play it as long as it takes.”
“You’re un-fucking-believable,” he muttered, shaking his head, turning his face away from her. But it didn’t sound like an insult.
Or perhaps she’d lost all perspective.
“Do you want me to leave?” she asked.
His eyes came back to her, gaze unfathomable. He swallowed, Adam’s apple jacking in his throat. “Trust me. Of all the things I want right now, you leaving is not one of them.”
“What do you want then?” She swallowed, too. “What’s…what’s one of those – those things you want?”
His eyes widened, darkened, and unworldly though she was, she felt that tug in her gut, the answering response. She needn’t have asked; she knew what he wanted. She’d been wanting it herself for a while now, trying to pawn it off as something else in her subconscious.
“What…” she started.
“Don’t ask again. Please.”
She didn’t think she was leaning, and she didn’t think he was either. But slowly, through some inexorable force, they drew closer, and closer, and closer together.
It startled her when Tango’s long, delicate fingers brushed her hair back behind her ear, but she settled. He picked out a single strand and wound it around his index finger.
“I love your hair,” he whispered, eyes on what he was doing, distant, unfocused. “I love most everything about you.”
“Kev.”
His gaze slid to hers. “I can’t believe you’re letting me touch it.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
And again, he glanced away.
It was an actual, physical pain in her chest to watch him, to feel the hurt that burned just beneath his skin. Terrible, terrible things had been done to him, and he in turn was doing terrible things to himself. The cutting. Denying himself everything.
He was never going to do it, was going to push himself beyond with toying with her hair, so she did it for him. She leaned forward and kissed him.
She was a bad kisser. The last boy she’d made out with had told her so. He’d wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, made a face, and said, “Don’t you know how to do this?” Like eighteen year-old girls without any experience were supposed to just know how to kiss well. Like they’d practiced, or watched movies or something. Studied up on it.
So she knew, when she pressed her lips to Kev’s, that it would be the most stupid and underwhelming kiss of all time. That he would probably hate it, and wish she hadn’t done it. But she just had to. She…yes, she had to.
It shocked her, the feel of lips against her lips, and the knowledge that this was Kev, finally, after all her wondering. Kev’s mouth against her own. It sent a thrill chasing over her skin. The kind of shiver that started in her spine and ended up deep in the pit of her belly.
He didn’t react.
Guess she was so bad he couldn’t even muster a response.
Oh well. She pulled back a fraction, disappointed…
His hands clamped onto the sides of her head. His mouth fell open and he dragged in a ragged breath. He gasped. “Shit. Christ…shit.” And his fingers curled into her hair, and he brought her back in again. And this time, he kissed her.
Maybe it didn’t matter that she wasn’t any good. Maybe it was fine to shut her eyes, and gasp right along with him, and let him show her the way.
His tongue swept across her lower lip, and she opened her mouth on instinct. He fit his lips against hers, and again, again, a new angle each time, a fresh taste, going deeper, pressing for more. And then his tongue slipped into her mouth.
His hands held her face, and it became savage, and desperate, but somehow delicate, the erotic precision of his tongue, and lips, and teeth, playing against her mouth.
Whitney’s head throbbed, and her breath stirred faintly in her chest, and her heart thundered. It was like melting, and she loved it. Wanted to touch him with her hands.
She reached out and found his chest. She could feel the hard ridges of his sternum and ribs. His heart, pounding away same as hers.
The contact seemed to kick off another reaction, because his hands moved down to her hips, and then his arms were around her waist and he dragged her in close, so she was in his lap. A new angle. A new, deeper kiss. It was drugging, intoxicating as wine. She speared her fingers through his long hair; it was silky and light as down in her hands.
He broke the kiss, and she murmured a protest. Her lips felt swollen and slick, and she wanted more. It had never been like this before. She’d never felt good, kissing someone.
But he wasn’t done, only migrating. Pressing wet, open-mouthed kissed down her throat. To her collarbone. She felt the fast nip of his teeth.
It was all so much more urgent and reckless than she’d thought. She’d envisioned him being so gentle and careful with her, but wasn’t disappointed with the reality. This was amazing. This was…
She wriggled and felt something hard against the inside of her thigh. His cock, hard and straining, ready for more.
Warm wetness welled between her legs. She was ready too.
He toppled her back onto the couch cushions and braced himself above her. One hand eased her t-shirt off her shoulder, so he could kiss her there. And the other hand slipped between her legs, touched her through her leggings.
It was too much, and she never wanted it to stop.
But it felt too rushed. Too much too fast, without talking, without any of those cautious looks she’d expected from him.
He was tugging her shirt, tugging…She heard threads snap.
Too much.
She pulled at his hair. “Kev.”
He came up like a drowning man, dragging in a huge breath and then struggling for another. He pushed up on his arms and stared down at her face, his eyes huge, his mouth open.
“Kev,” she repeated. “It’s okay, it’s just…”
“Oh shit.” He vaulted off the couch and to his feet as if she’d burned him. “Shit, shit, shit!” He shoved both hands through his hair, eyes squeezed shut.
“Wait.” She struggled to sit up. “It’s okay, I just…”
“No. No, no, no it’s not okay. I’m sorry. Shit, Whitney, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have.”
“Kev…”
But he walked back into the bedroom, shut the door, and she heard the lock click.
The apartment was achingly silent in the aftermath. She thought this must be what a bombed out city sounded like: the low buzzing of violence and the washing-out of sensation.
Whitney dragged a hand through her hair and exhaled. “Well. Shit.”
Session 1
Mercy arrived at noon on the dot. He knocked, and like a nervous kid going for a job interview, Tango slicked his hair down in the mirror one last time before he went to the door. He looked like shit, but what else was new. Mercy wasn’t here to pick him up for the prom, so it didn’t matter.
He took a last look at the apartment on his way through.
Last night, after he’d locked himself away like a horny girl-eating mountain lion, he’d paced around the narrow bedroom until it became obvious that wasn’t helping. He’d laid down on the bed, too hard to even stretch out properly. He lay in the dark, concentrating on his breathing, wondering how badly he’d hurt Whitney, afraid she’d never speak to him again, thinking that would probably be the best thing, in reality. Eventually, he’d slipped his hand down inside his sweatpants and taken care of the situation, ashamed, blushing furiously in the dark, as thoughts of Whitney, and what he’d wanted to do to her, filled his mind.
He’d fallen asleep with a sticky hand and tears burning his eyes.
This morning, he’d crept out of his room, wondering what he’d find, not expecting what awaited him. The couch was tidy, pillows plumped, Whitney’s painting supplies stowed in their case, it and the easel over against the bookshelves. Fresh coffee was brewing in the machine and there was a note by it.
Hope you’re feeling better. Made you a sandwich; top shelf of fridge. See you tonight.
There was a smiley face.
He’d already inspected the sandwich and found that it was turkey on rye, no tomatoes, because they would make it soggy.
God, she was wonderful. He felt doubly shitty for pouncing on her the night before.
But today was the first day toward not doing that again, hopefully. He wasn’t too optimistic – when had he ever been? – but he was going to go through the motions. For the people who loved him. For his own safety.
He took another huge breath, reached the door, and opened it.
It was a cold afternoon, the kind that still felt crisp as morning, the air sharp against the skin. Mercy was bundled up in his heavy Black Watch jacket, beanie pulled down over his ears. His breath plumed like smoke in the pale wash of sunlight, and for a moment, he looked exactly like the kind of guy you sent to collect fingers for trophies – which he was – and nothing like the therapist he’d offered to be – which he wasn’t.
Tango’s stomach cramped. Damn, this was a bad idea.
But Mercy didn’t give him a chance to voice that. “Shit, it’s cold,” he said, and stepped into the apartment, smelling of frost, chafing his hands together.
Heart thumping like he had stage fright, Tango closed and locked the door. “Yeah.” His voice felt distant, disconnected from him somehow. “It smells like it might snow.”
“Remy would love that. Every morning, when he sees the frost on the grass, he thinks it’s snow, and it’s like his whole world comes crashing down when we explain that it’s just frost.” He laughed as he shrugged out of his jacket and hung it up.
Tango could envision Remy at the front window of the Lécuyer house, hands pressed to the glass, squealing with delight. A mental image that made him smile.
“You want coffee?” he offered. “I made a second pot.”
“Yeah, sure.”
This was going to be weird, wasn’t it? His pulse was migrating up into his throat as he went to the kitchen and poured two mugs. Whitney’s note was still there, where she’d left it, and he scanned it again, not reading the words, but lingering over the lines she’d made with the pen. Marks she’d left for him. He closed his eyes, a hand wrapped around each mug, absorbing the warmth.
Please don’t be too weird, he thought, and turned back for the living room.
Mercy, in what had to be an intentional move, had stretched out full-length on the couch, which meant his feet were kicked up on the arm and overhanging by about a foot-and-a-half. This left the recliner for Tango. A flip on the old patient-on-the-sofa stereotype.
All his fear of weirdness evaporated. Mercy wasn’t a licensed therapist, and probably had no idea how to act like one. But he was kindhearted, and he was a sharp, thoughtful guy. And he was Tango’s friend. Tango’s friend who, once upon a time, had pulled his barely-dressed, heroin-ravaged body off a stage in The Cuckoo’s Nest and carried him out to the car like a baby.
“Thanks,” he said when Tango handed over the mug. “Smells good.”
“It’s something fancy Mags bought.”
“She tends to buy nice things.”
“Yeah.”
Mundane small talk. A shield for what was to come.
Tango settled into the recliner and took the mug between both hands. If he could have, he would have crawled inside it. But perhaps baths weren’t such a great idea anymore…
Mercy sat up in an unhurried way and smoothed a hand along the crown of his head, pushing his hair back. When he’d first come back to Knoxville a few years ago, it had been shaggy and chin-length. Now it was down past his shoulders, and Tango had secret suspicions that Ava played with it like he was a My Little Pony, and that Merc liked it. In any event, the longer hair always made his face look narrower, more sinister, his eyes darker.
But today he just looked like himself. Not scary. Not in any rush. The dichotomy of the man would never cease to amaze. Full of wrath and vengeance. And full of sweetness and sympathy. Complicated was too delicate a word.
The knowledge eased him further. This wasn’t going to be that weird at all.
“Okay. So,” Mercy said, sending him a friendly look. “I gotta say I don’t really know shit about therapizing.”
Tango smiled. “I figured you didn’t.”
“But I’m a good listener. And I think, really, it’s more about talking and having someone listen than it is about any kind of doctorate.”
Tango stared at him.
“And…” Mercy looked almost nervous. “I think, sometimes, talking to someone who cares about you might be better than talking to a stranger. Sometimes,” he stressed.
“I hope so.”
The nervousness went away. “And, listen. That poison you got up here?” He tapped the side of his own head. “That’s not healthy. All that’s gotta come out. And I’m not Ghost, and I’m not Aidan, and you don’t gotta worry about freaking me out, or making me look at you different. I’ll still feel exactly the same about you when all this is said and done.”
A lump formed in Tango’s throat, so he nodded again.
“And I promise you, there’s not one thing you could say that I can’t handle. My mama was a hooker and I castrated her boyfriend before I fed him to the gators,” he said without inflection, as if he were stating the weather. “So don’t worry about me. Whatever you say stays between us. I’ll never tell. So you just go on and say whatever you want to say. Walk me through it. Fight it out with the old ghosts.” He gave him an encouraging smile. “Okay?”
Another nod. “Yeah…yeah, okay.” It was hard to swallow. “Where do you think I ought to start?”
Mercy considered. “Start at the start,” he suggested. “All of the poison, remember? Go back to where your life first went off the rails, and tell me about that.”
“Okay.” He took a sip of coffee, fingers shaking against the mug. “I was seven…”
~*~
It was a single-wide trailer, no bigger than a motor home. White with green shutters. A green door. The screen door had a rusted spring that groaned when you pushed it open, and that never held, so it slapped shut every time, usually right into Kev’s little backside. It sent him sprawling across the carpet, until he was big and quick enough to outrun it. Mama would pick him up, dust off the seat of his pants, and say, “My, Kevin, you’ve got to get quicker.” And she’d smile and kiss the top of his white-blonde head.
A small trailer, yes, but clean. The yard full of hard-packed red dirt was always free of weeds. Mama plucked them up by hand, in her flower-printed garden gloves, and dropped
them in the pail Kev carried as he followed her, helping. “Mama’s little helper.” A massive pecan tree stood at the edge of the yard, just inside the chain link fence, its oblong leaves tossing and rustling in the breeze, its dappled shadows falling across the plastic army men he lined up one-by-one, like Robert Ferguson had showed him at school. Robert had plastic tanks, and trucks, and even an army base, but Kev only had the soldiers, and so he made trips to the small stagnant pond in Mr. Willis’s back yard with his pail, trudged it back, slopping droplets all down his skinny legs and into his sneakers; he made thick mud patties and then shaped them into little huts, and forts, and barracks for his army men. They baked in the slanting morning sun and hardened, a whole little earthen village. A place where he retreated every afternoon when school let out, alone with his imagination, fighting brave wars for freedom, while Mama folded laundry in front of Oprah.
It was not a bad life. For a seven-year-old boy, with a best friend, and a bucket of green army men, and a mama who loved him, it seemed all the life anyone could ask for. He was teased for being scrawny, for having such pale hair, for being so delicate in the face. But some of the girls said his eyes were “real nice,” and he’d felt this funny sort of fizzing in his chest.
It was Daddy’s friend, Miss Carla, who told him he was pretty for the first time.
Daddy didn’t live with them, and never had in Kev’s memory. “He has problems,” Mama always said when asked. Most of the time, when he stopped by, he and Mama argued viciously, and she was in tears by the time he left. There was always talk of “money.” And of “lies.”
The day Daddy brought Miss Carla was a Saturday. Cloudless, warm, bursting with the sounds of summer: buzzing flies, droning bees, tossing tree limbs, rustling grass, the hiss of tires as cars went past on the highway. A hot morning; Kev was already pushing a damp forelock of hair back off his face as he knelt in the yard, red dirt coating his knees.
Loverboy (Dartmoor Book 5) Page 9