“No problem. Anytime.” As I stepped off the porch, I heard the door close and the lock engage. Then engage again. And a third time. I walked up to the main house where I’d left my bike, unreasonably happy in the face of how traumatized Caleb obviously still was.
Because he’d asked me to walk with him, let me come inside, and had looked at me with so much gratitude when he’d thanked me for my help.
Because had trusted me, and that was more than I’d ever hoped for.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Caleb
“Caleb, you can’t expect to make the kind of progress you want to in so short a period of time,” Dana said after having listened to me mournfully tell her how I’d run from the house during Sunday dinner the week before and almost passed out over a duck. “Focus on what you did accomplish.”
I couldn’t see that I’d done anything spectacular.
“I’m tired of being afraid of my own shadow,” I said.
She just looked at me. She’d told me more than once how I could make progress on that front.
I shifted my gaze, staring past her at the wall where a painting of a mother and child hung. My heart constricted, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Caleb? What are you thinking?” Dana asked.
“Of m-my mother,” I said through gritted teeth. “B-because of the picture.” I wanted to ask her to take it down. To hide it or throw it away. I didn’t want to see it anymore. “Has it always been there?” I couldn’t believe I was just noticing it.
I heard Dana move, probably looking over her shoulder at the painting.
“No. My sister gave it to me for me for my birthday, and I hung it a few days ago.” I thought she might apologize and cover it up or something, but she didn’t.
“What exactly were you remembering about your mother?” she asked gently instead.
I let out a staggered breath, pain ripping through me. Pain that was trapped with no way out. But I could let it out.
“How she used to hug me so tightly. How she hugged me that night before I went to bed,” I forced out, opening my eyes and meeting Dana’s steady gaze. I knew she was waiting for me to go on. I’d never said much about my family or that night to her. She knew everything that had happened, had it all in her notes, but she insisted I needed to talk about it. If I didn’t, the nightmares would continue in their severity, and I wouldn’t get past the wall blocking any real progress.
Progress.
Twisting my fingers in my lap, I continued looking into Dana’s eyes. They were blue. The vague beginnings of crows’ feet had started in the corners. She didn’t wear any eye makeup.
“I went to bed after that. Didn’t say goodnight to my father or brother.”
“Did you normally say goodnight to them?” Dana asked.
I shook my head. “But I wish I had that night.”
Dana nodded.
The smell of cookies. Canned laughter. My brother’s screams.
“Caleb? Focus. You’re here with me in my office. Everything’s fine.”
I nodded, taking several deep breaths. I looked at the clock on the wall. I had fifteen minutes left of my session. I could do this. I could let some of the poison out.
Progress.
“Something woke me up. I’d been asleep an hour or so.” I swallowed.
“Go on,” Dana encouraged quietly.
I licked my lips, twisting my fingers to the point of pain. “I got out of bed when I heard a thump downstairs. I-I saw him. In the living room.”
“You saw Terrance Jefferson,” Dana clarified.
I nodded. “Y-yes. Him.”
“What was he doing?”
“Standing there. The TV was still on. Mom had been watching it when I went to bed. I could hear it—see it flashing over his face in the darkened room when he took off the black ski mask. He was bald, head covered in tattoos.” Had I said that last bit out loud? I repeated it in case I hadn’t.
“Then what happened, Caleb?”
“I-I froze. Just stood there. I didn’t understand what I was seeing. Who that guy was. Why he was in my house in the middle of the night. By the time I got myself together—” I stopped, sucking in a breath.
“Go on,” Dana prompted. “Tell me what happened.”
A tear slipped from my left eye and rolled down my face. “Someone had baked cookies after I went to bed. I could smell them. Sugar cookies. Dad’s favorite.” I scrunched up my face, almost smelling the thick, sweet scent again.
I remained silent as long as I could, tears dripping from my eyes. I wanted so much not to think about it anymore. I wanted to take my mind somewhere else, avoid it all.
But I’d been doing that for years. I had to make progress, or I’d always be like this—broken. Damaged. Axel’s face appeared in my mind.
“What did you do?” Dana asked.
“I kept standing there. He disappeared from view. Then I heard…the screams.” I swallowed, breaths beginning to come shallow as I stared at the floor.
“Did you know who was screaming?”
I nodded. “My older brother. He’d recently moved to the bedroom downstairs. It had been Dad’s office, but Dad had retired and didn’t use it anymore. CJ wanted to be downstairs. Away from me.”
“Why would he want to be away from you?”
I shrugged. “He was mad because our parents wouldn’t allow him to live in the dorms. He felt like a kid sharing a room with me. I couldn’t blame him.”
“Go on.”
I didn’t want to go to that place. I didn’t want to remember.
Progress. Again, I saw Axel’s face in my mind.
“It was a terrible sound. Like…like something you’d expect to hear during a wild animal attack. I’d never heard my brother make that sound. And I still couldn’t move. Until…I heard something else.” I took a break, pushed past that moment. “It got me moving. I ran to my parents’ room.”
I had run down the hall, tripping on the carpet runner in my haste, and burst through my parents’ door. “They weren’t in bed. It was still made.” I was holding myself so tensely, it felt like my bones might break.
“What did you do then?” Dana asked neutrally, which seemed fucking weird considering what I was telling her, but I knew she had to keep me calm.
“I could still hear my brother screaming.” As the terrible memory of that night washed over me, I scrubbed at the tears on my cheeks. I’d tried so hard not to remember, but in my nightmares, I’d relived it all again and again, sometimes with fucked up changes that were even worse than reality, although that hardly seemed possible.
“Caleb, if it’s too much, you can stop. We can pick up next time,” Dana said. “You’ve done very well.”
I shook my head. I had to try harder. I had to. I couldn’t live in the painful limbo I’d found myself in any longer.
I forced myself to go back to that horrible night.
“I ran to the banister again. Without the man in the room taking my attention, I saw things I hadn’t noticed before.”
“What things?”
I choked on the words mixed with my tears. “Things like blood.”
I began to cry openly, the room filling with my ugly, jagged sobs. A small part of me wondered if the people out in the waiting room could hear, and what they thought was going on if they could.
Dana stood and handed me some tissues. I mopped at the tears and snot on my face. The couch dipped beside me, and she took my hand, hers cool and soft.
“You’ve done very well today, Caleb. So well. You should be very proud at the progress you’ve made. I think that’s enough for today. Sit a moment until you get yourself together.”
My lips trembled into a half-smile, half-grimace. I’d made progress. That’s what I’d wanted, but it had left me shattered and shaky.
I couldn’t seem to win no matter what I did.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Axel
I was on top of the world that week. Whistling as I mixed drinks at The Y
ellow Banana, joking around at the club more than usual.
“What’s up with you? You win the lottery and not tell us?” Zeke asked one evening as he worked on my bike in the garage while I sat on the bench playing a word puzzle game on my phone. Zeke wasn’t often at the club anymore because he and Morgan were married now and had recently moved into a house. Morgan was the little brother of our late club brother, J. He and Zeke made an interesting as well as unlikely pair, considering Morgan was a professional ballet dancer and Zeke a tatted tough guy who worked on bikes for a living.
“Can’t a guy just be happy?” I asked, shifting the sunflower seed I’d been sucking on to the corner of my mouth with my tongue.
Zeke eyed me before turning his attention back to the bike. “Sure. Something happen with Caleb?”
I looked up from my phone. “Why do you ask that?”
“Come on. It’s no secret how much you like him. Nothing to be ashamed of, man.”
“I’m not ashamed of him,” I said, voice steely.
“Whoa. I didn’t say of him, did I? I just mean, I know what it’s like to be in love.” The last part was said on a mumble.
I snorted. “I should hope so, or you never should’ve gotten married. I never said I was in love.”
“You never said anything at all. But we’ve all watched you. Keeping your distance like you do but eyes always on him. Growing in your fucking hair.”
“Maybe my head was cold,” I said with a growl. “Besides, most of those tats on my head are from my old club. ‘Bout time I covered ‘em up, don’t you think?”
I’d ditched Heaven’s Rejects years ago, opting to follow Blaze when he’d taken over the Hedonists after his brother Tim’s death. I was lucky I hadn’t been tattooed with the Reject’s symbol, or they would’ve hunted me down and taken it off with acid. Or a flame thrower. I wasn’t sure which would be worse. And their tat wasn’t like the Hedonists’ devil’s face on the upper bicep; it was a fallen angel that took up the entire back. That had been one of the reasons I had been holding off having it done. Deep down, I hadn’t wanted to stay with the Rejects.
“Oh, so that’s why you grew it in, huh?” Zeke didn’t sound convinced.
Anger rising, I reminded myself that Zeke was right: I had grown in my hair so Caleb wouldn’t be so scared of me. “I like volunteering at the shelter, and having the kid freak every time he saw me was no good.”
“Why don’t you just admit how much you like him? You think I’m gonna tease you? I thought I was straight, and now I’m married to a fucking ballet dancer.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. I put my phone down on the bench and leaned back against the wall.
“I don’t know what I feel, except every time I see him, I just want to make it all better.”
Zeke grunted and reached for a wrench. “Isaac said Caleb went through some kind of trauma.”
“A fucking home invasion. I looked his name up and found it all on the internet. This asshole killed Caleb’s brother and parents with Caleb in the house.”
“Fuck, that’s brutal,” Zeke said, glancing at me. “How’d he get away?”
“Hid in a closet. Called 911 from in there. The police caught the guy while he was still in the house. Caleb didn’t have anybody after that. A teacher at his school took him in and helped him get through the trial. They lived in that house on the other side of the woods from the shelter. Moved away a while back, and that’s when Caleb started living with Isaac.”
“Poor kid. He must be doing better—he’s living alone at the shelter, right?”
“Yeah, he is.”
“Think you’ve got a chance with him? And don’t act like you haven’t thought about it.”
I sighed. “I don’t know. He’s been talking to me some, but I don’t know if he’ll ever be ready for a relationship.” I barked out a humorless laugh. “Blaze and Hung certainly think I should give up.”
“If he was hiding in the closet, that means he wasn’t physically hurt, right?” Zeke asked. “The guy didn’t touch him?”
“I hope that’s what it means. Sometimes I’ve wondered if what’s in the papers is all true. I mean, what if they’d changed it because he was a minor? He wasn’t quite eighteen when it happened and still in school. I think the teacher helped him finish his senior year at home.”
Zeke stopped working and turned to face me. “You saying he could’ve been sexually molested during the home invasion and got away somehow?”
I hated the thought. “It’s possible. He’s so fucking afraid.”
“I’d think what the press said happened would be enough for that,” Zeke said. “Imagine hiding in a closet while your family’s being slaughtered.”
I suppressed a shudder. True.
“I hope so. I really do.”
“Well, I’ve never seen anybody as patient as you’ve been, and it looks like it’s paying off. Keep trying, buddy.”
A weight rolled off me at his words. “Thanks, man. Means a lot to have one of you on my side.”
“They’re just trying to protect you. You stopped socializing. All you do is work, either at the club or at the shelter. It’s been three years, dude.”
“I know. That’s why I gave in and went on that double date Hung suggested a week ago.”
Zeke snorted. “Didn’t think you did it for fun. You go out with Hung, you’re likely to see some kinky shit.”
“Yeah, well, I can tell you that all fucking that guy did for me was make me want to get with Caleb even more.”
“Fuck Hung and Blaze. Do what you think is right.”
I thought about Zeke’s words long after I’d gone to work.
Friday nights were always packed. I had to hustle, but most drinks I could make without thinking, so I had plenty of time to muse over the conversation with Zeke. What he’d said had encouraged me. I really wanted to be with Caleb in any capacity that I could, and to hell with what anyone else thought.
On my break, I phoned Dante.
“You got any extra work out there for me to do?” I asked him.
“You short on money?”
“Saving up for something,” I lied since I wasn’t sure if Dante would back me in getting closer to Caleb or not. Isaac was all mother hen over the kid, and Dante tended to side with his boyfriend because he was totally whipped these days.
“I’m sure I can dig up a few things.”
“Thanks, man. I’m off tomorrow. Be out there early.”
“See you then.”
At the manager’s request, I took a short stint as bouncer when things started getting rowdy around eleven p.m. I admit I got a rush getting up in the faces of big guys who thought they were the shit and seeing the fear rise in their eyes at my bulk. That rush was why I’d kept myself so beefed up over the years. I wasn’t competition status or anything, but I certainly put the fear of God in people and had used that to my advantage.
“Lake’s not off until one,” I whispered into my club leader’s ear when I got back to the bar. Lake was just finishing up his stint on the pole. “What’re you gonna do with that wood until then?”
The bossman couldn’t always be at the club when Lake was performing, but he tried to be. He loved watching Lake pole dance, and truth be told, so did I. The guy worked that pole like nothing I’d ever seen.
Blaze gave me a mischievous smile. “He gets a break, doesn’t he?”
I lifted my brows. “You gonna fuck him on his break? Where, in the breakroom?”
Blaze grinned dirtily. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Great, now I’m hard,” I muttered, and Blaze laughed.
“Hey, Daddy,” a voice to my left said, and I turned to see Mick looking way different than the last time I’d seen him. Gone was the nerdy-librarian look, replaced with—I wasn’t sure what.
“God, Mick, can you breathe in that thing?” I asked, indicating the pink spandex jumpsuit that clung to him like cellophane. It certainly wasn’t the craziest thing I’d seen any
body wear to the club, but it was up in the top ten.
Mick laughed. “Yeah, I can breathe.” He perched on the only vacant stool at the bar. “I’ll have a Manhattan.”
I reached for the whiskey.
“You busy tonight after work?” Mick asked, batting his long lashes at me.
I glanced at him. “Afraid so.” It was a lie, but I wasn’t going to have a repeat of the last time.
Mick pouted. “Dang. I wanted some of that Daddy dick pounding into me. Thanks to you, I can’t look at a bike without getting hard.”
I shook my head. “Not my normal thing. I’m sure you can find yourself a Daddy in here somewhere though.” I indicated the crowded room filled with gay men.
Mick scanned the crowd. “Let’s hope so. I don’t wanna go home with blue balls.”
“Well, if you strike out, there’s always tomorrow night. Saturday’s are even more crowded.” I passed him his drink, and he sipped at it with a hard, washable plastic straw he produced from the glittery little purse he wore at his hip. We only carried paper straws now because they were better for the environment, but some patrons missed their plastic, I guessed. Watching him wrap his tongue around it revived my hard-on, and I reminded myself I wasn’t going there again. Mick was a cutie, but life wasn’t all about sex.
“Hey, I know you,” Mick said to Blaze. “You were at the clubhouse when I was there.”
“Blaze, this is Mick. Mick, Blaze, our club leader.”
“Sorry, but I don’t remember seein’ you,” Blaze said to Mick.
“You didn’t. I saw you out back talking to somebody right before me and my sister left. We were with Hung.”
Blaze nodded, understanding and probably remembering what he’d heard through the wall that night. “Nice to meet you.”
I tuned out after that, taking several drink orders one after another. When I turned back to where Blaze and Mick had been, they were both gone. I didn’t see Lake, and figured Blaze was making good on his plans. Mick wasn’t too hard to spot in all that pink—he was a few tables away sitting on the lap of a big, hairy guy. Maybe he’d found his Daddy for the night.
When closing time rolled around, I got out of there as fast as I could. Back at the clubhouse, Hung was already occupied in our room.
The Survivor and his Safe Place Page 5