Philip started to tear up. “Ah, shit. You guys are adorable.” The audience collectively chuckled at his more-than-accurate commentary.
Drew and Christian exchanged rings, sliding delicate gold bands onto each other’s fingers. It was surreal, watching one of my oldest friends tying the knot. It felt like only yesterday when we were joking around at school, swearing that we’d remain awesome and cool bachelors for as long as we lived. But here and now, everything made sense. Watching Drew and Christian share their first kiss as husbands made me realize that if you’re ever lucky enough to find someone who openly loves you back, you better hold on tight.
The tiny chapel erupted into applause as the happy couple waved, arm in arm, to the crowd. Drew and Christian were quickly whisked away by a fancy black limousine parked just outside –ordered and organized by none other than Mr. Perfectionist– to go directly to city hall to file their marriage certificate. The crowd slowly started to file out of the chapel and make their way to the venue, where everything was already set up and waiting for the celebration to begin.
I marveled at the fruit of our labor. The hall looked nothing like it used to. The plain beige walls were covered up with white linen adorned with fairy lights along its borders. Tables were spaced out evenly, each hosting up to eight guests. Fancy table settings were already placed around floral arrangements full of roses and lilies and other flowers I’d failed to identify. The wedding cake was set up next to the buffet, standing tall and proud with five different tiers and slathered with fluffy vanilla icing.
Mason walked up next to me and slipped his hand into mine.
“What’re you doing?” he quipped. “Spacing out?”
“Yeah, sorry. I can’t believe we did all this.”
Mason gave my hand a squeeze before leading us to our table at the front of the room. We were seated on Drew’s right, seats of privilege for his adoring best men. The newlyweds arrived roughly half an hour later after all the other guests arrived, fashionably late. The DJ we’d hired started up his playlist as Drew and Christian slowly made their way through the crowd of well-wishers. When they finally got to us, I dragged Drew into a bearhug.
“Congrats, man,” I chuckled.
“Thank you.”
“So, how does it feel? Being married. Is it gross?” I joked.
“I’m not going to lie, I’m liking it so far.”
He moved on to Mason next, hugging him tight.
“I’m so happy for you,” said Mason, giving Drew one of his classic handsome smiles. I could stare at him forever.
Mason moved on to Christian, who shook his hand diplomatically. This offered me the perfect opportunity to pull Drew over to the side for a moment. I threw my arm over his shoulder and pulled him in close so that I could whisper in his ear.
“You remember that favor I asked of you?”
“Yes,” replied Drew giddily.
“Is it okay if I do it here?”
Drew clapped me on the back. “Of course! You want to make a big speech?”
“Oh, God no,” I answered. “I only decided to do this yesterday. I don’t have anything prepared.”
He laughed. “Yeah, man. No worries. Though, can you wait until I’ve had something to eat? Christian’s family hasn’t given me any alone time since we arrived and I’m starving.”
I nodded in agreement. “You bet.”
The party was pretty epic, especially considering that copious amounts of alcohol weren’t involved. We all ate our fill, watched gleefully as Drew and Christian cut their wedding cake, and laughed along as Philip somehow convinced Tommy to join him on the dance floor to do the “Chicken Dance” with some of the other attending guests. At around the midway point, Drew clinked the side of his champagne flute with the tip of his knife. The sound rang out over the crowd, beckoning for their silence. He stood and smiled sheepishly.
“Thank you, thank you,” he said. “So I’m sorry ladies, but I don’t have a bouquet to throw for you. But if I could get your attention, I think someone here has a very special announcement to make.” Drew looked to me and nodded.
I took a deep breath before getting up from my seat. Mason shot me a quizzical look. Reaching into the inside pocket of my blazer, I pulled out a small purple velvet ring box. Mason’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, eyes wide with confusion. Holding the ring box open between my fingers, I was wobbly, balanced on one knee. I was a tight ball of nerves, but I knew that there was no going back. I could hear the other guests gasp and squeal –the loudest reactor definitely being Philip off to my right– as phones were taken out to record what was happening.
“Mason,” I started a little shakily. A sudden wave of doubt and anxiety washed over me. Was I doing this right? Was this too public? Was there a better place and time for me to do this? Should I have gotten a more expensive ring? Is Mason the kind of guy who cares about that sort of thing? More importantly, was he going to say yes? Was I rushing things? Was it too early to propose? Did he feel as strongly for me as I felt for him? Oh, God, did I just screw this whole thing up?
Drew cleared his throat and gestured with his hands as if to say go on.
“Mason,” I repeated, “I don’t think I’ve ever felt happier, more complete than when I’m with you. Never in my life did I think I’d be lucky enough to meet someone like you. Again, I mean. You make me want to be a better person. Your happiness is my happiness. And quite frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I never want to lose you, and I knew I’d be stupid if I didn’t man up and tell you the truth.” I held my breath and listened to the intense beat of my heart in my chest. “Will you marry me, Mason?”
Mason hadn’t said a word. His face was frozen with an expression that was a mix of shock and confusion. When he didn’t respond right away, I felt my heart sink into the pit of my stomach. My hands immediately got very cold, and my throat was distressingly dry. Why wasn’t he saying anything? Did I do something wrong? Shit, I knew it was too early to propose. Yep, I definitely screwed this up.
“Son of a bitch,” he grumbled.
“W-what?”
Mason reached into his own inside pocket and pulled out a tiny ring box of his own. He opened it quickly to reveal a gold ring with a gorgeous pearl inlay.
“You beat me to it,” he said, feigning bitterness.
I sighed in relief. “Wait, does this mean– Do you–”
“Yes,” he laughed as he nodded happily. “I’ll marry you.”
Without missing a beat, I scooped him up in my arms and held him tight. I kissed him so hard I thought we were about to tip over. The wedding party cheered and whistled, but I happily ignored them. My heart was so unbelievably full and warm in that very moment, and I was sure every moment moving forward, that everything was right with the world.
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Chapter 1 Preview – Made For You
I didn’t have much time to make an escape.
I heard a lot of things while pretending to sleep in my hospital bed: the steady beeping of my monitor, the shuffling of a nurse I didn’t dare open my eyes to look at, the police—two voices, standard procedure for them to stop by when a victim of a vicious mugging was taken into the emergency room—talking to Maxwell.
“Tyson came stumbling home like this. Said he got jumped before he passed out,” Maxwell said. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
He’s lying.
I was good at faking sleeping. I was good at faking everything. Nearly ten years with Maxwell had made sure of that. Faking was the norm with him. I always had to fake being okay, fake being happy, all the while deluding myself that he was always right.
A mugging.
He wasn’t right about that, and he knew it just as much as I did, but still he told his fabricated story to the cops, playing the role of concerned boyfriend expertly. He was good at faking, too; faking being a good person, faking like he cared about m
e, like he didn’t beat me into submission every opportunity he got. Look at him funny, and I got hit. Talk back to him, and I got hit. Maxwell Vincent could talk his way out of anything and could charm his way into anyone. Cops included.
Today’s offense landed me in the hospital.
Another man had touched me, which was somehow my fault.
The memory was terrifyingly fresh, yet somehow it seemed like it had happened years ago. The two of us had gone on a simple grocery run—he never let me go anywhere on my own unless he was feeling lazy and I was reduced from ‘punching bag’ to ‘errand boy’—and I had the great misfortune of running into an old college friend.
We hadn’t spoken in years, but he recognized me. I remembered the feeling of recognition, the brief excitement of it, before it was snuffed out like blowing out a birthday candle. My one wish would have been that things had gone differently, that my old friend hadn’t pulled me into the kind of hug you share with someone you were once close to. Anxiety bled through me. It didn’t matter how obviously platonic the hug was; Max watched with a stiff jealousy that I knew all too well. He made nice, all the while his hand on my shoulder tightly, possessively, a promise for later.
I felt gutted and hollow as I introduced Maxwell and we forced small talk.
I knew what was waiting for me back home.
Max was more of a prison warden than a boyfriend, and he kept close as we shopped. Every aisle brought us closer to the privacy of our shared apartment—his apartment, he always reminded me. Not mine.
The car ride back was silent and tense. I knew better than to try and explain it away. I knew it would be bad. Over nearly a decade, the routine was predictable: he’d slap me around, remind me it was my fault, and I’d go crawling back to him because I knew nobody else would ever take me or love me or want me. But this time was different.
I didn’t think Max would choke me within an inch of my life.
I’d never been so close to dying.
He’d made it a point to corner me, hand coming down across my cheek in a slap that echoed in the kitchen. The carton of eggs in my hands dropped, shells and yolks breaking on the floor as I fell with it.
“Great, fucking look at that,” he said, hand fisting tightly in my hair. “You made a mess—fucking slob.”
I was forced to the floor, cheek in the mess. I knew better than to fight back. I was too weak to hold my own with Maxwell and we both knew it, so all I could do was brace and bear it. He slammed me into the fridge by my hair, and I cried out. I couldn’t remember the sound of my own voice, but his voice was still clear in my mind, like I was hearing it through headphones, playing over and over.
“You whore.”
He said it over and over, his hand in my shirt as he slammed me into the counter and the fridge and the stove—as he grabbed my ankle when I tried to crawl away, flipped me over, his weight like a boulder on my chest, hands like a vice as they came around my neck and held.
I swallowed in my bed at the memory, throat still aching.
Pretending to sleep would only keep me safe for so long. I’d have to wake up at some point, have to go home with Maxwell and repeat it all again, the idea almost too much to handle, the words, the pleading for help stuck in my throat and never coming out—
The police were leaving and I heard Maxwell thank them, offering to walk with them out of the emergency wing.
Now.
An old voice, my old voice, where it was kept small and deep inside of me said it.
Now.
The curtain was pulled back around my bed.
I held my breath and listened to the footsteps. When I opened my eyes, there was no one. I was finally alone.
Sitting up quickly, I felt the pricking in my fingers, the animal fight-or-flight instinct.
Carefully, I pulled the IV from my arm and pressed the tape down. I had been waiting for an opportunity like this for some time now, biding my time until Maxwell slipped up, until he left me alone long enough for me to give him the slip.
Maxwell’s only mistake was taking me to the hospital. Apparently, I thought bitterly, he wasn’t ready to have a dead body on his conscience just yet, but I knew the day would come eventually. It was only a matter of time, each beating worse than the one before it. The next time, I probably wouldn’t be so lucky.
That was inevitably where our relationship was headed. I think I had always known that, always hoped for something better, but tonight’s beating was confirmation enough. As I slipped out of my monitor lead and tied my shoes, I realized I had no money or ID on me, but even that was infinitely better than having no life.
The window was small.
I had to leave him while I still could.
Being here was maybe a blessing in disguise, albeit a grim one. The nice part about being admitted to Denver Health was that with so many patients, it was easy to sneak out undetected. I was good at making myself small and unnoticed. I tried not to limp too obviously or wince too much as I blearily searched for the nearest exit. No one noticed me as I went, and, if they did, they didn’t try to stop me.
I had no real plan, only a series of fantasies that I kept to myself when Maxwell slept like a baby while I nursed the wounds he’d given me, curled up on the edge of the tub in the bathroom. Having no money was an issue, but I could get by. I had no friends or support system to help me get out of Denver or hide from Maxwell. He’d come looking for me.
For a moment, I thought about crawling back into the bed and waiting for him. He wouldn’t be mad if he never knew I had tried to leave.
No. Now. It has to be now.
The only ‘friends’ I had were Maxwell’s friends, and they would each turn me over to him in a heartbeat, so they were out of the question. That left only shelters, really, and I knew of a few in the area. Again, once the friends were exhausted, shelters would probably be the next place Max would check. I could go, but I’d have to keep moving, bounce between them and keep under the radar for as long as possible.
The trek from my hospital bed to the nearest exit was an exhausting one. It felt like a lot of listless minutes of wandering until my bleary vision caught the sign: ‘EXIT,’ illuminated in red. My sweet escape. The sight of it brought a bubbling hope to my chest for the first time in a long time.
I hadn’t cried over being happy in… too long. I couldn’t remember the last time I had ever felt so free and so light as I did stepping into the damp night. The rain was more like a mist. I looked to my right: a parked ambulance. I looked to my left: dumpsters.
It was beautiful.
Freedom was close, but still so far. The light of it was touching me, but the warmth was something I’d have to work for. I couldn’t rest just yet.
Denver wasn’t safe.
I needed to come up with some quick cash and get out of here.
I had to get home to Harlan.
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I Hate To Love You
J.P. Oliver
© 2019
Disclaimer
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are all fictitious for the reader’s pleasure. Any similarities to real people, places, events, living or dead are all coincidental.
This book contains sexually explicit content that is intended for ADULTS ONLY (+18).
I Hate To Love You: A Contemporary Gay Romance Page 14