Behind Iron Lace (16 page)

“Shut up.” Cold slithered along Caleb’s spine, making him weak, the haze in his brain turned black.

“Do it, choke me to death, just like you did your professor boyfriend. Think you’ll get just a manslaughter sentence this time without your grandfather to protect you? Oh yeah, I know about him too. One of the great crime bosses back in the day. He owned half this city. The whores and the bars. Nice family you’re marrying into there, Dar.”

“What’s he talking about?” Darcy laid his hand on his arm. Shame overwhelmed him at the touch. “Caleb? Is that true?”

Caleb let Chester fall to the floor. He lay there holding his neck and laughing. “I’m pressing charges, you prick. Gonna send your ass back to jail.”

“Do it and I’ll send you right along with him,” Darcy said. He was so close Caleb could smell him. He could hear the adrenaline pumping in his system. “Caleb?”

“It’s true. All true.” Caleb couldn’t look at him. He didn’t want to see the disappointment in his eyes. He didn’t want to see the betrayal or the hate that would follow. “I’m sorry.”

The black haze was gone now, purged by fear and the need to save his own skin. He pushed past Darcy and without looking to see where he was going he pelted down the three flights of stairs to the street. The air outside was too heavy, he couldn’t catch his breath. A storm was brewing, the gray clouds pressed down on him, pushing him to the concrete as if it wanted to bury him.

Without thinking, he turned and started to run, only stopping when the familiar sign of something safe came into view.

He saw his uncle’s startled face as he burst into the bar, the early evening crowd parted for him. “Caleb,
cher
, what—”

Caleb reached over the bar and pulled out the first full bottle of whiskey he could get his hands on and with a twist of his wrist, he had it open. He didn’t answer his uncle. He didn’t trust himself to speak. He pushed his way through the crowd to the back and the private rooms where he slammed the door closed on what was going to be his future. The whiskey burned a path to his stomach. He stumbled into a row of filing cabinets and that’s where he was when he heard the door open.

“I don’t know,
cher
, he looks like the hounds of hell are after him. Did he hit you, Darcy?” his uncle said softly; there was concern in his voice.

Caleb heard a soft “no, someone else did,” and something in him broke. He couldn’t stop the sob that erupted from somewhere deep inside.

“I’ll get you some ice.”

“It’s okay, just a scratch, I’ll live.”

“If you’re sure,
cher
? I’ll leave you to sort him out then.”

“Okay.”

The door closed, trapping Caleb in with his past and his lost future. Darcy didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Caleb took a gulp of whiskey letting the anger he kept in check loose from its cage. “Just say what you came to say and then go, okay?”

“I’m trying to understand. I don’t want to take that little slime ball’s word. Caleb, please tell me what he said isn’t true.” There was despair in his voice.

“It’s true. I spent two years in prison for murdering my first lover.”

“The professor? You were what, eighteen or nineteen?” The despair was gone now, replaced by a calm reasoning tone. God, Caleb hated the tone. It was the shrink voice.

“Eighteen. I was wild back then. I was into just about anything I could think of to piss my father off. Drugs, petty theft, tagging. I raised hell in this town with my grandfather pulling my ass out of the fire on more than one occasion. Helps having a mob boss in your corner,
cher
.”

“Don’t use that accent right now. Be straight with me, Caleb, help me understand this.”

“I told you the day we met that I come with a load of shit. Remember?”

“I remember. Everybody has shit.”

“Not like mine. You won’t like what I was, what I did. But I’m not that person anymore.”

“I know. Just tell me what happened. Make me understand.”

Caleb turned to face him. The blood from the gash on his nose had dried now, a bruise beginning to spread around his left eye. He sank to the floor in a crouch leaning against the wall. Anger welled in him at the pain in the blue eyes staring down at him. He couldn’t do this. This man—this man—he didn’t deserve this man. He didn’t deserve the love of someone so pure.

“I told you the truth, mostly, he was a photography professor. I took his class, and discovered I had a talent for capturing more than was visible to the naked eye. He liked my vision and he liked my paintings. I was looking for a father figure, I guess. Hell, now that I think about it he was older than my own father. I let him seduce me.”

Darcy just nodded as he leaned back against the door. “I really was a virgin, and I was in love. I was so fucking stupid. Darcy, I can’t tell you this shit. I’ve never told anyone this.”

“He used you. Come on, Caleb, there are professors at every college like him.”

“Not like him. Christ, I hope not, that would be tragic. He took me home with him for Christmas to meet his wife. To fuck his wife while he watched. It was messed up. He fucked me, I fucked her. They were messed up. I thought I’d died and gone to some kind of perverted heaven. When school started back, we met in a motel every evening. About a month after that, I found a strange man waiting for me. I let him do things to me while the professor watched. I liked it. I liked them all. In the spring—” the memory of that night threatened to kill him. Even after all these years it hurt so much.

“There was another man?” Darcy nudged him out of silence.

“A big one, bigger than me, he was… rough. It was brutal. When he was finished fucking me, he beat the hell out of me. Broke two of my ribs, split my lip wide open, broke a tooth or two. I could barely see. I wasn’t a virgin. He was pissed, because I wasn’t a virgin like he was promised. Ranting about the money he paid to have a fucking virgin ass to fuck and I was a fucking whore.”

“Oh.” The shock in Darcy’s voice tore at him. Caleb took a gulp of whiskey. In for a penny in for a pound.

“He’d been selling me. Pimping me out to his friends, then strangers, for money. Because he liked watching and he had a lifestyle to support. After they were through, he’d hold me, and pet me like a fucking dog. Call me his good boy. I was getting laid, and my ego stroked. I never thought…” He pushed the memory into a small box and after another drag on the whiskey bottle, he leaned his head on his knees. “That night, I couldn’t control the monster that lives just under my skin. He was selling me. He didn’t love me. He was—I choked him to death with my own two hands. Someone called the cops. When they busted in I was sitting naked on the floor. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I couldn’t tell them what happened. I couldn’t speak. I went to the hospital. A couple of days later I went to jail. I was a John Doe. My grandfather came looking for me. But it was too late. I had already confessed to manslaughter. He pulled some strings. Even in Baton Rouge, he had some power, not much but some. I got a light sentence. Five years. After two, my grandfather had the charges dropped to self-defense and got me out. He used his influence on the inside too to protect me. All I had to do was be someone’s bitch and my life was easy. Of course, he carved his fucking name in my flesh. His gang symbols on my body. He tatted me up real good. Could have been worse, could have been my face, or my arms. I could have had to service a whole cellblock. Or get my ass kicked for being too pretty. Or a Lasseinge or, well, it didn’t take much to get your ass kicked.”

Darcy didn’t say anything, but Caleb could hear him, his breath was harsh as if he was crying. He couldn’t take that. “When I got out my grandfather picked me up. Gave me a car and a few hundred thousand dollars and told me to disappear. I wasn’t to show myself back home and upset my family. The scandal had nearly killed my mother and he wouldn’t put up with a damned fag for a grandson. He’d done all he was going to do for me. I was twenty years old and I was on my own.”

“Caleb?”

“Don’t say anything. I don’t know why I told you. It’s not as if you mean anything to me. Just some straight boy I got a kick out of flipping.” He couldn’t stop the words. The pain drove him. He didn’t want to have his pity. He couldn’t live with Darcy knowing the worst about him. “You’re just a piece of meat to me, just a pretty ass to fuck. I wanted you. I took you. Now I’m done with you.”

“Caleb, please?”

He ignored the pain in his voice, letting the monster free just once more. “You want a goodbye quickie? Fine, drop trou. I’ll blow you and then I never want to see you again.”

“You don’t mean that. Please tell me you don’t mean that?” He could hear panic in his voice but he couldn’t stop.

“I mean every word. You have my truth, all of my truths now, Duck. You’ve seen firsthand what I am capable of. I wanted to kill him. I tasted it. It tasted good. If you stay, it will be you. One day soon, it will be you, and I don’t have a grandfather to keep me from doing life this time.”

“Caleb? Don’t talk like that.” Darcy didn’t bother hiding the tears in his voice this time. Soft sweet Darcy. His heart ached so badly and Caleb couldn’t stop himself from ripping his heart to shreds.

Caleb forced himself to look at him. Tears swam in his eyes, he swiped them away. Betrayal, humiliation, despair, it was all there. Caleb just dropped his head on his knees as he nailed the lid on the coffin. “Run, little faggot boy. I have no further use for you. Go home.”

He heard the click of the door, but he didn’t look up to see if he was alone. He let the tears come now. Shit. “SHIT!”

“You are in love with him, Remy.”

Caleb slammed his head into the wall behind him at the sound of his uncle’s voice. “How long have you been here?”

“Since that boy ran out of here like a scalded cat. He’s in love with you.”

“What do you care? You’ve never approved of my predilections.” Caleb lifted the bottle to his lips, noticed it was mostly gone and he was still fucking sober.

“Why did you never tell anyone what happened to you?”

“
Grand-pere
knew. He made me tell him why I killed that
débauché
, that fucker. He hunted down the one who beat me. It’s what freed me.”

“Remy?”

“Don’t fucking call me Remy. I stopped being Remy when I was twenty. Stop using that damned name.”

His phone buzzed in his pocket, he pulled it out and read the text. “Well, I guess I won the shit trifecta today.” He tossed his phone to his uncle. “
Maman
is gone now, and I hear about it in a fucking text message. Now get the fuck out and let me go on with my plan to find oblivion in the bottom of this bottle.”

“I’m sorry, Rem—Caleb. I wish I had known. I would have—”

“There was nothing you could have done, Uncle. You couldn’t make my father love me. You couldn’t make him stay when he wanted to leave. You couldn’t make my mother stay sober after he left. There was nothing you could have done to stop anything.”

“I saw her today. I went. I am so sorry, Caleb.”

“Yeah, Uncle. So am I.”

Caleb hefted the bottle again and drained it. This time he could feel the liquor take hold. The pain started to fade away in the recesses of his brain where he couldn’t pick at it. Soon he would find oblivion, and he would forget how ruthlessly he ran off the first good thing to ever happen to him.

Darcy was standing in line waiting to board the first plane to Oregon he could get a ticket on. Not an hour had passed since he’d run from the bar with his tail firmly between his legs. Pain threatened to drag him to his knees but he kept walking. The bruise on his face was drawing attention he didn’t want. Everything was pleasantly blurry without his glasses, so he really didn’t notice the looks so much. “Are you all right, sir?” The flight attendant who checked his ticket seemed genuinely concerned.

“I’m fine.” He didn’t feel like trying to explain when he had no idea how to process what had just happened. “Lost my glasses and walked into an overhang.”

She seemed to take his answer in stride and directed him to his seat. He’d bought first class out of desperation because the plane was full. Once seated, he asked for something cold to drink mostly to press against his face, and for something to kill the headache building behind his eyes. At five o’clock he left the Big Easy behind. His heart ached with so much pain he couldn’t swallow.

Eight hours later, the taxi pulled into the drive of the neat house he’d grown up in. There were lights on downstairs. He knocked, feeling like a fool. He’d never thought he’d come home like this. Empty handed and broken.

His mom answered, her smile fading as he stepped into the lighted foyer. “Sweetheart—what happened to your face?”

“Who is it, Monica?” His dad came out of the kitchen, a beer in hand, before he had a chance to say anything. “Darcy! Oh my God! Son, what happened to you? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, it’s nothing, I just… I need to come home for a little while if that’s all right?” He knew he should have called. He should have stayed in New Orleans and tried to salvage his life. He should have broken Chester’s nose. There were a million things he should have done but hadn’t.

“Of course, sweetie, you know you’re welcome here. Why would you even ask?” His mom pulled him to her for a hug. “Are you hungry? I have lasagna in the fridge, I could heat it up.”

“That would be nice, thanks.” He followed his parents into the kitchen noting the new stove. “I left the magazine, Bailey and I…”

“Broke up?” his mom finished for him when he couldn’t find the right words.

“Something like that. I was offered a job at the University. I’m going to take it,” he decided on the spot. There was nothing holding him back, he could have the career he wanted, he was free. Free to do as he pleased, to live as he wished, to love…

No one. He loved no one. And that was how it should be. He didn’t need a sultry talking man fucking with his head just to get into his pants. He didn’t need anyone. Pain clutched in his gut and twisted. Caleb’s tormented green eyes flashed in his memory. “
Run, little faggot boy. Go home.”
The words chimed in his mind, tearing him into so many pieces he didn’t know if he could ever put himself back together.