Dirty Secret (19 page)

“You were never
nothing
to me,” she replied softly. “I just can’t… I can’t have you be… that way.”

“It’s who I always was. Who I am,” I said, letting go of her cane. “You were my mom. The person who was supposed to love me no matter what. I counted on you for that. I counted on you loving me, and you left me with nothing. If Mike hadn’t… stayed with me, what the fuck do you think would have happened to me, after Rick died? I probably would have eaten my gun. I was that messed up. I fucking needed you then. If there was any time in my life when I needed you, it was then, but you never came. How am I supposed to come back from that?”

“It would have been easier if you’d died.” She leaned over, and delicately hooked the cane’s handle with her fingertips. Adjusting her cardigan, Barbara tilted her head up and stared me down. “I won’t lie to you, Cole. It would have been so much easier, because now I have to deal with Tasha wanting to see you, and she’s headstrong enough to be trouble if she doesn’t get her way.”

If she’d kneed me in the balls, I couldn’t have been more surprised. I didn’t have any strength left in me to breathe, and my lungs were growing tight.

“Your father is the one who agreed to her seeing you, not me,” Barbara sniffed. “So be sure to thank him. I would hope you kept your perversions hidden when the girls are around, but I have a feeling it would be useless to ask you for that one small favor. So when you’re done, please know I’m going to be the one who’s going to be left cleaning up after you.”

She was out the door before I could catch enough air to respond. Leaning against the wall, I stared at the googly eyed black cat clock Maddy hung in her kitchen until I was steady enough to walk. When I no longer felt the sting of razors in my gut, I headed back outside, smiling when Tasha wrapped her arms around me and called me Cocoa.

Jae’s hand came up to touch the small of my back, and I felt him tremble through the contact. I didn’t need to look at him to know his mouth was thin with anger. I reached for him, pulled him into a one-armed hug. I whispered that it was all right… that he didn’t need to defend me against my father even as I understood he was torn by an ingrained filial duty. Leaning over, I kissed him to take in the unspoken words lingering on his tongue.

The spiced caramel taste of him was enough to wash away the bitterness of Barbara’s words.

My father’s snort of disgust only sweetened the taste of Jae in my mouth. I would spit in the face of gods to hold onto my lover. Spitting in my father’s face wasn’t even on the short list of things I would do for Jae.

Tasha bolted to find a bathroom free of younger sisters, and then Maddy turned, tilting her chin up in a stubborn display of defiance. As gay as I was, I could see why my brother fell in love with her. All she needed was a fat pony, blonde braids, and a horned helmet, and I’d have fallen to my knees and sung
Die Walküre
.

I’d fear for my dick if she ever gave me the filthy look she gifted Barbara. My balls whimpered just being in the collateral damage range.

Maddy’s legs murmured tiny clicks as she approached me. Hugging me tightly, she gave me more of the incredible strength I’d already taken so much of after Ben shot me. I didn’t need the whispering affirmations she gave me, but they were nice to have.

Nearly as nice as the raging fury banked in Mike’s eyes. His face was flat, without any expression when he faced our father and said, “This is the last time either of you are coming to this house. The girls… they’ll always have a place here, but from this moment on, my front door is closed to you.”

“You’re going to throw away your family over a faggot?” My father’s words weren’t a shock. If anything, they were a balm over the raw wounds Barbara left on me in the kitchen.

“That faggot
is
my family,” Mike snarled. “You, sir, are not.”

I
MADE
it about half a mile before I had to pull over. I’d held it together through the dinner, knitting my mouth into a smile, but it was a brittle, ashy thing plastered onto my numb face. Rounding the corner, Mike’s house finally disappeared behind us, and I lost it. Tucking the car into a lookout offering a view of downtown Los Angeles, I left the Rover running and finally broke down. I hunched over the steering wheel and let the fragile wall I’d hidden behind all evening fall.

My tears hit hard and fast, pinpricks of pain stinging me with each drop I tried to blink away. My heart felt like it was throwing up glass, bleeding out from a thousand tiny cuts sharpened by Barbara’s coldness. Jae-Min reached over and gathered me close, murmuring something I couldn’t understand, but his warmth reached down into the iciness she’d left behind. I let myself be tugged over, rocking in his arms as he cradled me through the worst of it.

I don’t know how long we stayed there, the engine running and the lights on, but the windows were fogged over when I finally was able to look up. His face was as wet as mine, and I touched his cheek, hating that I’d brought him so much pain.

The smile he gave me chased away the last of the demons stabbing my guts, and I hugged him, not wanting to let him go. He kissed my face and wiped my tears away with his shirt sleeve. Pulling me over to the passenger seat, Jae got out and went around to the other side of the car to get in.

“Let’s go home,
agi
,” Jae whispered, patting my leg before putting the Rover into drive. “I’m here, Cole. I promise, okay? I’m here.”

Chapter Thirteen

“
R
ISE
and shine, Princess.” A gruff voice broke through the comfortable darkness around me. “Time’s a’wasting, and we’ve got places to go.”

I mumbled someplace tight and filthy Bobby could shove himself into, but he didn’t take my advice to heart. Instead, he yanked the sheets off my naked body, and his broad hand struck my right cheek. The burn hit quick, and I sat up, trying to keep the weight off my sore rear.

“What the fuck?” I bared my teeth and hissed, rubbing at the massive palm print welting up on my ass. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Waking you up, so we can go visit William Grey in Pasadena.” Bobby grinned mischievously and eyed my naked body. “You know, kid, I’ve never really taken a good look at you. You’re pretty hot. Even when your eyes are swollen shut.”

I resorted to the classics and told Bobby to fuck off before sliding off the bed. Stumbling to the bathroom, I recoiled like a B movie vampire when I hit the light switch. Dragging myself under the full glare, I stared at the wreck of my face reflected back at me in the mirror.

Bobby wasn’t far off in saying my eyes were swollen shut. I looked like a badly made-up version of Charlie Chan’s mother. My hair was wild, sticking up around my head as if trying to run away from my brain. Considering the night I’d spent, I didn’t blame it for wanting to check out of the Cole motel.

I’d woken up sporadically throughout the night, startled awake by my own thoughts. Every time I emerged from the terrors stalking my dreams, Jae was there, his arms wrapped around my chest and one leg draped over mine. Feeling his heartbeat against my ribs calmed me, and I soon drifted back under, only to wake up an hour or so later. It was a lather, rinse, and repeat cycle, but eventually my brain kicked in to the fact that Jae wasn’t going anywhere, and I fell off into a deep sleep.

Until Bobby’s hand met my ass, and now I wondered if I was even going to be able to sit on that side of my butt for the next few days.

The shower took care of most of my aches, including a blast of cold water to bring down the sting on my ass. Best part about sharing a shower with Jae-Min was smelling like him the entire day. Down side, my dick reacted to Jae’s scent on my skin, and I spent most of my time telling my little head to get a hold of its craziness until we saw Jae again.

My little head mocked me, listening about as well as my big head did.

A beaten-to-hell vintage Dr Pepper T-shirt hung from the hook on the closet door. It would have been easy to miss except for the bright neon-pink Post-it Note safety-pinned to it. Even though Jae’s sharp black writing took up most of the paper, the square’s color burned my eyes more than the bathroom lights did. Grinning, I undid the pin and set the note free.

Wear this. I wore it last night to sleep,
Jae wrote.
That way, you’ll have me around you today. See you later for dinner.

“Our Jae-Min,” I told an uncaring Neko sprawled on the bed I’d vacated. “He is silly.”

“Do you want coffee now, or drive through?” Bobby shouted from downstairs. “Never mind. Fuck it. Drive through. I’m not waiting for the coffee to brew. Hurry your ass up, Princess. I need some joe.”

“Yeah, he says that when he’s picking up guys at the bar too,” I muttered at the back of Neko’s head. “Except he’s screaming for Dick instead of Joe.”

Bobby waited until we’d gotten coffee and were on the 10 before his patience wore off. Glancing quickly at me, he set his paper cup into the truck’s cup holder and said, “You wanna talk about it? The dinner?”

Who the hell in their right mind ever wants to relive the fight where they get their teeth kicked in and they choked on their own blood? I slurped a sip of latte from my cup and shook my head. “Nope.”

I’d spent enough time talking. Lying in the dark with Jae’s hand on my chest, I’d spilled out everything poisonous I held inside of me. My throat closed up from choking back tears, and in the quiet between my confessions, Jae held me as my body fought to get rid of the toxins injected into me by my ex-mother. When I’d finally exhausted myself, he’d offered no platitudes or there-there babies. Instead, he’d come back from the bathroom with a damp, cold washcloth and wiped my face clean of the salt crackling my lashes and cheeks.

The silence comforted me more than words. His warmth became the light to keep the monsters away, and now as I sat in Bobby’s truck, I felt the slither of his hands on my skin as the T-shirt I wore moved against me.

“Not… now,” I offered Bobby. A true friend knew when to push and when to back away. Bobby was a true friend. He only grunted and nodded as he drove.

“Just let me know,” he said finally. “I’ll get some whiskey, and we can go drive to the beach to scream at the ocean.”

“Deal,” I agreed.

By some benevolent fluke, the 10 was relatively clear of assholes and traffic. The construction was still there, metaphorical logs damming the stream of cars as if placed there by psychotic beavers. This being Los Angeles, freeway construction was an ongoing evil. It was a giant game of Russian roulette, played with a Californian’s drive time and the gunpowder bursts of rain to delay progress.

We hit the 110 in no time at all, and meandered through the winding, haphazard freeway’s curves with ease. Bobby sang along with George Thorogood as he drove. My coffee was still hot when the 110 ended abruptly at Pasadena’s South Arroyo Parkway, beginning the whispers of its love-hate affair with Los Angeles.

I’d long since come to the conclusion that Los Angeles wishes it could wipe Pasadena off the map. They bicker and fight like wild dogs or, rather, in Los Angeles’ case, a pack of wild dogs against an old, white-muzzled Chihuahua. When people think of Los Angeles, a certain idea comes to mind: a myth of fast-moving cars, bouncy women, and ritzy lifestyle LA works hard to maintain. The city itself consumes the smaller cities around it, slowly absorbing communities’ identities until they start referencing themselves by their proximity to Los Angeles itself.

Pasadena, through sheer stubbornness, refused to give in to Los Angeles’ greed.

And man, that pissed Los Angeles off.

Rather than allow its smaller sibling its own identity, Los Angeles spent over a century choking Pasadena’s lifelines. Until recently, getting in and out of Pasadena was a bitch, and even now, connected to other freeways besides the clogged, two-lane 110, the sleepy city under the mountains was treated like it would take a mule train and five months’ rations of food to get to. Tell the average Angeleno you were heading to Pasadena, and they’d kiss you on both cheeks and tell you to suck on a lime to avoid scurvy—once they were done trying to cover their look of horror and asking you if you had to visit a dying aunt.

Personally, I think Los Angeles is pissed off about Pasadena’s Rose Bowl, and looks for ways to stomp on the smaller city’s toes as often as it can get away with.

Bobby turned right onto Green and swore loudly, hooking the truck over to the left lane. I tried not to laugh, but a chuckle worked free, and he glared at me as we sat at the red light.

“Hey, I make that mistake all the time,” I apologized. “Easy mistake to make. Colorado. Green. Not like Colorado’s a big wide street that everyone uses.”

“How’d you like to catch the Metro back to your house?” Bobby threatened. “Better yet, I can drop you off over by Mount Wilson, and we’ll see how you laugh your way from there.”

Bobby’s grumbling only made me laugh harder, and he blew out his cheeks like a puffer fish. Pointing at the light tree dangling above us, I nudged him. “It’s green, dude. Kind of like the street name.”