by A. M. Arthur
He’d argued, of course, seeing no value in his own life beyond what others could take from him. Jennifer didn’t let him get away with the self-loathing, though. She never had.
“I’m going to teach you something that helped me get through some serious depression in college, okay?” she had said. “It’s a very old nursery rhyme, but I think you’ll understand why it’s an important one, okay?”
“Yeah, fine.”
“I see the moon and the moon sees me. The moon sees the somebody I’d like to see. God bless the moon and God bless me. God bless the somebody I’d like to see.”
It had taken him months to bother memorizing those four simple lines, and over a year before he truly took the words to heart. And now they were his lifeline, a mantra he wasn’t sure he could live without. They soothed his anxiety when nothing else could.
Once he’d finally stopped shaking all over, Will stood and descended the stairs. Outside in the hot summer air, he started going faster. Walking without direction, simply needing to get away. Get someplace else that wasn’t near Taz and the false future Will had seen with him. He walked until he was on a familiar street lined with tobacco stores and cheap bars that opened at eleven in the morning, that were packed at happy hour and where no one cared if you bought your underage companion a drink.
The place he chose was half-full, some people eating at tables, most lingering around the bar and pool tables. He’d come here a few times last month when he was cruising. Straight guys looking for a walk on the gay side were great targets for a fast, hard fuck. He picked a stool near the corner of the bar so he could angle outward and watch. The bartender quickly filled his order for a cola. More to use as a prop than because he was thirsty. He didn’t feel anything except numb.
Being able to sit in a public place, surrounded by strangers, should have been a win for him. Sure, it seemed like an improvement over his days of hiding at the halfway house in between days at the Stanley Center, but was it really? Here he was hiding surrounded by strangers, but still hiding. Hiding from his past, from who he was, and from the person he was certain he’d never get to be.
Normal. Loved. Whole.
A tall brunet in a construction vest was cruising him from a table nearby. Will did the same, but he was too old. Too dark haired.
He’s not Taz.
Well, tough shit, because Taz didn’t want him, so no sense in pining for another tall ginger to take him to bed. And Will wasn’t exactly dressed like someone on the prowl, with his loose jeans and blue T-shirt. He probably looked like a high school student who got lost and came in for a cold drink.
Not that Will had ever gone to high school. He dropped out of school completely when he was thirteen, and no one ever came looking for him. And he’d been so stupid and broken when he first went into foster care that no way could he have survived public school. Jennifer had done her best to homeschool him, but he hadn’t managed to test for the GED before he was booted out of the system. Now it didn’t seem all that important.
School is bullshit, anyway.
He failed at everything he tried to accomplish. GED? Fail. Getting his shit together and getting a job? Fail. Steady relationship with Guy? Fail. Having sex like a normal person? Fail. Making a brand-new friend with boyfriend potential? Mega fail. After today he’d be lucky if Taz still talked to him in the chat room.
His phone vibrated. Taz was calling him.
Will stared at the phone until voice mail picked up. Two new message alerts: one voice, one text. He erased the voice without listening to it. He couldn’t handle hearing Taz’s warm, comforting voice trying to make excuses—or worse, saying goodbye.
The text might not be so bad.
I don’t think you’re a slut. At all. I handled all that badly, and I’m sorry. Please call me so I can explain.
He didn’t want an explanation. He didn’t want excuses or reasons why. All Will wanted was for someone to fucking want him.
He wanted Taz to want him, and he didn’t, and Will had to live with that.
Raucous laughter drew his attention to one of the pool tables in the back of the bar. Four men surrounded it, two taking turns shooting. Midthirties, early forties. Nothing special about them, but one peal of laughter had stood out from the others. Something familiar about it. Will zeroed in on the guy leaning against the wall, a beer bottle in his hand. Grungy band T-shirt. Red bandanna on his head.
One of his buddies said something, and Bandanna laughed again.
The sound scraped down Will’s spine like a blade.
“Fifteen and you ain’t never done smack?” The laughter. “How about I set you up as a birthday present, before I get mine?”
Most of the time, he hadn’t bothered to look at the faces of the men who used him. It was easier to block out those hours of his life if the men were vague apparitions who appeared and then left once they got what they wanted.
After nearly a year of being sold, he’d hoped to spend his fifteenth birthday in peace. He’d even stolen himself a pack of snack cakes to celebrate with, and he’d been as quiet as possible all day, hoping his drugged-out mother didn’t notice him. Wanting this day all to himself.
Until he came into the house, and then into Will’s bedroom. For the first time since it all began, Will had tried to refuse. He’d even cried. He’d wanted one day. One fucking day. And it was his birthday. The guy seemed to take pity on him at first. Asked if he wanted to get high. “First hit’s free, a birthday present from me to you, kid.”
So Will shot up with heroin for the first time in his life, and while he was lost in a blissful haze, the guy fucked him. He’d laughed a lot, too.
Something made the guy with the beer in his hand and the red bandanna look up. Right at Will.
Time slowed down. Everything around him froze. Even his heart seemed to stop working. Bandanna’s eyes popped wide.
Will’s entire world went gray. He vaguely recalled falling off the stool. Hitting his elbow. Cracking his head on the hard floor. Then nothing but cold and fear and rough hands pinning him facedown on a dirty, stained mattress.
Chapter Five
Bright fluorescent lights battled against his instinct to try and open his eyes. His head hurt for some reason, and those lights weren’t helping. He whined his discomfort, but whoever was there didn’t understand, because the lights stayed on. He heard someone saying something. Maybe his name. Familiar voices.
Where am I?
“Will? Can you hear me?”
I know him.
He grunted.
“He’s waking up.” Different voice, still familiar. Female.
“What?” Will croaked. He sounded muffled. Something was pressing around his mouth and wrapped around his ears. He batted at it. Plastic.
“No, leave the oxygen on for a minute.” Dr. Taggert’s voice, much clearer now.
That grounding voice helped Will pull himself out of the fog and finally get his eyes to cooperate. He was half reclined in a sterile-looking room, surrounded by curtains. The emergency room. He’d been here before. Too many times.
Dr. Taggert stood on his left, not in a suit like usual. Casual clothes. Gloria Benson, one of the halfway house social workers, stood next to him in mismatched clothes, as if she’d thrown on whatever was handy.
Will blinked at her. “Did I miss curfew?”
She seemed to understand the question, despite the annoying oxygen mask covering his mouth and nose. “Don’t worry about that right now, honey. How do you feel?”
“Lousy.” He tugged the mask down so he could speak better. “What happened?”
“We were hoping you could tell us.”
“Not sure.” Everything was all jumbled up in his brain. “How long?”
“You’ve been here for about two hours,” Dr. Taggert said. “E
arlier this evening, we both received calls that you’d been admitted via ambulance. Do you remember any of that?”
Will shook his head, then wished he hadn’t. The back of his head throbbed. He remembered his session with Dr. Taggert and then going to see Taz. Humiliation and anger over that visit came back in a rush. He’d left. Gone somewhere. A bar.
“Daffy’s,” Will said. “Got a soda there, I think.”
“That’s what the bartender told the police,” Dr. Taggert said. “That you sat at the bar and ordered a cola.”
“The police?” Why were the police involved? What the hell had he done?
“At one point you fell to the ground. The bartender said you looked like you were having some sort of seizure, or perhaps were tweaking on something, so the police got involved. I’m sure once your urinalysis comes back, it will show that you aren’t on any illegal narcotics.”
“No. Didn’t take anything.” Will had no idea why he’d fall off a stool like that. “Was it a panic attack?”
“It’s possible,” Dr. Taggert said, frowning. “The paramedics had a lot of trouble getting you onto the gurney. They said you kept lashing out, talking about it being your birthday, that you’ve never done heroin before.”
Great, no wonder they called the damn cops.
“It’s not his birthday for months yet,” Gloria said.
“Fifteen and you ain’t never done smack?”
Will jolted upright in bed, lungs squeezing hard, heart jackhammering in his chest. “Fuck. Oh my God, I saw him.” Everything grayed out a bit around the edges.
“Saw who?” Dr. Taggert asked.
He drew the thin blanket up to his neck, trembling all over, desperate not to go back into that bedroom again. He’d worked so hard to get out of there, to get away from it, and it kept dragging him back into pain and humiliation and loneliness.
“Will, you can talk to me. You’re safe, okay?” Dr. Taggert eased onto the bed but didn’t touch him. He knew better than to touch him.
“It was my birthday,” Will told his knees. “She couldn’t even give me my birthday. He fed me some smack first, so it didn’t hurt as much. But it was my fucking birthday.”
“She who? Who is he talking about?” Gloria asked.
“His mother,” Dr. Taggert said. “Will, did you have a flashback today? Did you see someone who reminded you of the past?”
“No.” Will wasn’t certain of a lot of things, but he’d seen him. He would never forget that laugh. “I saw him. One of the men who came around.” He dared to look up, into Dr. Taggert’s wide, shocked eyes. “It was him. You have to believe me.”
“I do. I do believe you, Will. I need to excuse myself and make a phone call, but I’ll be back soon, I promise.”
Will didn’t want him to leave the cubicle. Dr. Taggert was one of the few adults that Will trusted implicitly not to hurt him or lie to him. Not that he thought Gloria would do those things, but he hadn’t known her as long. She didn’t know his history the way Dr. Taggert did.
“Who are you calling?” Will asked.
“A detective I know. We need to get someone back down to Daffy’s to talk to the staff and the other patrons. See if they have security footage so we can try to identify the man you saw.”
That made sense. Except—”Will I have to testify again?” His stomach rolled. “If they catch him, do I have to testify?”
Dr. Taggert smiled gently. “We’ll see when the time comes, okay? I’ll be back.”
Will watched him leave the cubicle, already on his phone before he hit the curtains. Never in his life was he more grateful to have James Taggert in his corner than in that moment. Knowing he had one person who would always fight for him. Had fought for him for the last three years.
“How are you feeling now, honey?” Gloria asked.
“My head hurts.” True enough.
“You hit it when you fell on the floor. Didn’t break the skin, but you’ve got a lump.”
“Great.”
She took a step closer, all kinds of serious now. “You know you can’t drink or do drugs, Will.”
“I drank cola, and I didn’t do any drugs,” he snapped, not liking her insinuations. He knew house rules, and he hadn’t broken them. “Whatever I said about heroin, it was in the past.” He’d considered turning to drugs to numb some of his pain, but every time he thought of his mother and what a horrible creature dope had turned her into. No matter how much life hurt, he never wanted to become her.
He’d die first.
Gloria didn’t seem like she believed him, but fuck her anyway. The hospital’s tests would show he was telling the truth.
Dr. Taggert came back fast, and he had someone else with him. A guy with dark hair, a dark beard, dressed in similar casual clothes. He also had a notepad and pen out. “Will, Gloria, this is Detective Nathan Wolf.”
Will blinked. “How’d you get a detective here so fast?”
“He was in the waiting room.”
Detective Wolf stepped closer to the bed, his dark eyes serious. “Full disclosure, Mr. Madden,” Wolf said. “I’m James’s partner. We were out together when he got the call, so I may not be able to stay on the case for the full length of the investigation, but since I’m here I can get the ball rolling.”
“Oh.” Will looked between the two. He’d known from passing statements that Dr. Taggert was in a relationship, but with a gorgeous detective? Lucky bastard. “Um, what did Dr. Taggert tell you?”
“Only that you saw someone this evening who you believe is connected to a past criminal offense against you.”
Of course he’d frame it like that. Doctor-patient confidentiality and all. His shrink couldn’t exactly say Will thought he saw one of the guys who’d raped him when he was being used as a transactional tool by his piece-of-trash mother.
“Can you tell me what happened tonight?” Wolf asked, more gently than his gruff-looking exterior presented.
“I had a fight with a friend,” Will replied. He didn’t need to dig into the mess he’d made of his friendship with Taz. “I got anxious and started walking. Ended up at Daffy’s. Sat down and ordered a soda.” Cruised a few guys. “I heard laughter. Laughter I knew. Even years later, I haven’t forgotten how he sounds when he laughs.”
“How who laughs?”
The phantom smell of stale sheets and musk made Will’s eyes water. “These guys were playing pool in the back. This one guy was wearing a red bandanna on his head. He was older, but it was his laugh. It was him. I got all caught up in the past, and that must have triggered the massive panic attack that got me here.”
He eyeballed Wolf as he scribbled his notes. “Do you know who I am?”
Wolf paused in writing and blinked at him. “I know of your case, yes, but I was never directly involved with it. The investigation was handled out of a different precinct.”
“So you know my mother used to let her drug dealers fuck me when she didn’t have the cash for her dope?”
Only Gloria flinched at the harsh way Will said that.
“Yes,” Wolf said.
“Well, this guy I saw tonight was one of them,” Will snapped. He was exhausted, angry, in pain, and all he wanted was to sleep. But now that he’d seen Bandanna’s face, something new would be haunting his dreams for a while. “It was more than once with him, but the one time I remember most was on my birthday. He let me shoot up with smack before he fucked me.”
Anger seemed to burn in Wolf’s eyes. “He fed you drugs?”
“Yes.”
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
Wolf swallowed hard. “Can you describe the man you saw tonight in more detail?”
Will told him what he could recall about the guy’s general appearance and what he was wearing. Then h
e tried to turn inward, to the past, searching for any other detail that might link to the man from the present. It was one of the few encounters that really stuck with him, because of his own internal anger over it being his birthday.
And the fact that the guy had treated him, more than any of the other men, like a person. For a little while, anyway. Concerned over why Will started crying and resisting, when he usually rolled over and took it. Admitting to it being his birthday.
“Fifteen and you ain’t never done smack?” He laughs, as if it truly is the funniest thing he’s ever heard. And maybe it is, considering how much dope has come into the house over the years. “How about I set you up before I get mine?”
“What do you mean?” He hates himself for being such a pussy and crying, but at least this guy is treating him like a human being. Talking to him. Listening.
“Trust me. It makes everything feel so good. First hit’s free, a birthday present from me to you, kid.”
He watches the guy pull out his kit. Put a little gray ball on a scorched spoon. Melt it with a little bit of water. Suck that nasty-looking liquid into a narrow syringe. Poke it into Will’s shoulder, near his clavicle.
“No track marks for you, little boy.”
The calm euphoria that follows makes taking his clothes off seem kind of okay. The guy even tugs on his dick, and Will gets hard and that’s nice. Nice for his birthday. Nice until he’s being penetrated, and then nice goes away and Will floats along until it’s over.
He didn’t tell any of that to Detective Wolf.
“He had a mark on his right hand,” Will said. “Like a scar. On the back of his hand, about the size of a walnut. A burn or something, I don’t know.”
“That’s helpful, thank you,” Wolf said. “Now, you mentioned that you recognized his laughter first.”
“Yeah. I tried not to look at their faces, but most of them spoke. I knew their voices.” So much so that he’d identified three of his attackers through a voice lineup first, and then visually confirmed each man by face. He’d probably have to do the same thing if they caught this asshole.