Safe in His Arms (16 page)

This time Lon allowed Casey to touch him—a simple hand on his arm. “I think I’d take a chance on you even if you’d failed seventy times before. These days they teach kids about good touch and bad touch. At the core of that teaching is telling the kids to trust their instincts about people. I asked my counselor about my attraction to you. Is it healthy? He told me to trust my instincts. And do you know what? Every single cell inside my body trusts you, Lon.”

They stared at one another for an endless moment, brown eyes into blue. Then the walls seemed to come tumbling down inside Lon. He hauled Casey to him and they hugged, wordlessly forgiving each other and making promises.

Reality intruded in the form of a text message coming through on Casey’s phone. The two men pulled apart, and Casey found the device in his pocket.

“It’s my brother,” Casey said. “Grandma rang him and now they’re all freaking out.”

“What are you going to do?”

Casey melted at that comment. See! This is why he loved being with Lon. The guy allowed him to stand on his own two feet and make his own decisions. There was no “you’re too young” or “you’re not ready.” It was just, “what do you want, Casey?”

“What I want to do is say fuck them and spend the day with you. But what I’m going to do is be really grown up and go back to talk with Grandma.” Lon pulled him in for a quick kiss on his forehead. Casey looked up with hopeful eyes. “So are we good? I mean, I want to be your boyfriend and give it a go. Do you?”

“Yeah, Casey-love. I think I do. Go and take care of the shit you need to do. I’ll be waiting for your call. It doesn’t matter if it’s today or tomorrow. I’m going to head to the gym now—making sure I don’t show my face around your grandmother until you have it sorted. Call me if you need me, okay?”

“Okay. Lon?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna be the best damn boyfriend you ever had.”

“Casey? I think you already are.”

Chapter 10

T
HE
CHAT
with his grandmother took a long time and a lot of patience. There was yelling. There were tears. There were several phone calls to his mother and brother. His mother threatened to get on a plane and come over to sort him out.

“Mum!” Casey yelled in exasperation over the phone. “Why do you want to do that?”

“Grandma tells me you’re having sex with a guy who’s rough and likes to tie people up. I’m not having you in an abusive relationship, Casey. He’s too old for you, and you don’t know any better.”

Casey rubbed his tired eyes and glared at his grandmother, who was sulking on the lounge. “For a start how does Grandma know he’s rough? She’s never asked. She just looked at him and made all sorts of judgments without knowing the truth. So I’ll tell you both right now—don’t judge a book by his cover. Yes. Lon is older than me—but not by thirty years. It’s not too old. And Lon’s a good man. He doesn’t hurt me. He doesn’t tie me up or any of that crap. I wouldn’t be with him if he did. But most importantly you have no say about it even if he did. You need to realize, Mum, that I’m nearly twenty. I’m an adult. I’m a
consenting
adult.”

The argument went on. His mother and grandmother wanted to know why he couldn’t find someone his own age. Casey stormed to his feet.

“Because someone my own age doesn’t do it for me.”

“You should be with someone who is closer to your age.”

“No. He’s exactly right.”

“He’s too old for you.”

“He’s what I want.”

“Then maybe you need therapy,” his mother burst out, her voice crackling over the speaker of his phone.

“I’ve had therapy,” Casey rebutted loudly. “I’ve had years of therapy. I’m in therapy now. And both of them said it’s okay.”

His mother had nothing to say to that. His grandmother, however, turned around and said, “We just don’t think he’s the right man for you, Casey.”

“How do you know, Grandma? Have you ever asked me?”

“He scares me!” his grandmother shouted.

“Well, he doesn’t scare me, Grandma.” Finally he slumped forward, looked in her eyes, and whispered, “Don’t make me choose between him and you. Because I don’t think you’ll like the outcome.”

His grandmother’s eyes began to water. “We love you, Casey, and don’t want you hurt.”

Shaking his head, all he could say was, “Sometimes just loving someone is not enough.”

His brother, RJ, was supportive. He rang Casey. “I’ve spoken to Mum, and she’s acting like a little kid, but she knows to keep out of it. Bloody hell, mate. I hope this guy’s worth it. Because if you and him break up any time soon, then you would’ve caused huge waves for nothing.”

Casey phoned Lon after lunch. “Can I come over?”

Lon was happy to hear from him. “How about you meet me at the park’s entrance and we can catch a bus to Freo for some lunch. I don’t know about you, but I could see the back of this place for a bit.”

They caught the bus, and Casey told him all about it over a café meal. They caught a movie together and laughed until they forgot their problems. The trip home that evening was sobering, but they faced it stoically.

“I’m going to go and have dinner with Grandma because I promised her, but is it alright if I sleep with you tonight?”

“Definitely.”

Casey’s grandmother was putting on a brave face, and they made it awkwardly through a stilted meal before Casey grabbed some clean clothes and escaped to the safety of Lon’s arms. They stayed in their little bubble for the next two days, gently touching and reassuring each other that what they had together was real. It wasn’t until Casey arrived home from work Monday afternoon and found Lon packing that he wavered in his resolve.

“You’ll phone me, won’t you?” he asked.

It was hot. As usual Lon was in minimal clothing, pottering around in his briefs and nothing else. Now that they were officially an item, Casey had also noticed how often Lon would casually touch or kiss him as he walked by. This time it was a kiss on the temple as he made his way back into the van for items to put in his bag. “Of course. You have my number. You can call me too.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Four thirty tomorrow morning. I have a taxi booked.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want to stay in my van while I’m gone?”

Casey grinned. “Can I? I mean, do you trust me enough? Your bed empty is ten times better than Grandma’s lounge.”

He watched as Lon threw some fluoro work shirts in the bag. “Of course I trust you. I usually pack everything into the van and lock it away before I go. You’ll save me having to do that.”

“Excellent.”

That night they curled up together on the recliner and watched mindless TV.

“Lon?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you…? I want you to make love to me tonight. Properly, I mean. Full sex, anal sex, total fucking—whatever you want to call it. You always say you will, then distract me with something else. Why?”

Casey felt Lon sigh and knew that he wouldn’t be getting any tonight either. “Not yet, Casey-love. I can’t tell you why. I don’t understand it myself. Just not yet.”

Lon left before dawn the next morning. He placed a tender kiss on Casey’s cheek before sneaking out.

Chapter 11

“H
E
WON
’
T
fuck me.”

Casey was pacing the floor behind Mick’s couch in an effort to use up his excess energy. Lon had been gone five days, and the issue had stewed and stewed. His appointment with Mick was a relief—an opportunity to get it off his chest.

Mick had asked him about his “homework,” and Casey had reported back about Devon. Then he’d told Mick all about the fight with his grandmother.

Then finally, after twenty minutes of off-loading and discussing things, Mick had said, “Now, are you ready to tell me about the thing that’s really bugging you?”

Casey knew then that Mick was a bloody good therapist. His graying eyebrows rose as he watched Casey reach the end of the room and spin around to prowl back the way he’d just come. “He won’t have sex with you?”

“No. Yes. Shit. I mean we have sex, yes, but not anal sex. And I want it. I’ve asked and asked, but he won’t. He just sucks me off or something until I lose my train of thought, and it’s thirty minutes later that I remember he
still
hasn’t fucked me. He just won’t do me.”

“Why not?” Mick was calm in the face of Casey’s hysterics, not even flinching when details got a little personal.

“I don’t know,” Casey wailed. “It’s annoying the shit out of me. Am I not good enough? Am I not sexy? Am I doing something wrong?”

Of course Mick simply said, “So, did you ask him that?”

“No.” Casey halted, jammed his hands on his hips, and glared in frustration out the window. “It sounds so easy when you say it. Just ask him. I just don’t know if I’m ready for the answer.”

Mick took a moment and seemed to think over it. “Are you sure he’s gay? Maybe he’s unsure of his own prowess?”

With his arms crossed, Casey slumped onto the couch. “Definitely gay. He and his mate talked one night about all the guys they’d done. I didn’t have enough fingers and toes to keep up with Lon’s conquests.”

“Does he know about what you went through?”

Casey ran his fingers through his hair for the tenth time. “Yes. I told him.”

“And how did he react?”

“He wanted to know how I could still be gay after something like that. I mean, he was horrified and sympathetic, but he seemed to think that I shouldn’t be gay just because I was raped by a couple of arseholes when I was too young to defend myself. He’s brought it up a couple of times when we’re fooling around. He’s great about it, making sure I’m not spooked or that he’s not doing something that reminds me of my father. He doesn’t seem to realize that I know the difference.” It was that instinct thing he’d told Lon about. For some reason every single cell in his body
knew
that Lon was just right for him.

“Did you tell Lon everything? Or just some of it?”

“Do you really expect me to tell him everything? Jeez, he’d dump me straight away.”

Casey was beginning to resent the you-are-being-dumb look on Mick’s face. It made him feel like he was a dickhead.
Okay, let’s call a spade a spade
, he thought. It made him feel like a dumb dickhead.

“You do realize that it’s not your fault, Casey? You didn’t choose to be abused. If Lon holds that against you, then he’s not the man you think he is.”

“I know. But he doesn’t need to hear the gory details.”

“Maybe he does.”

With a shocked look at Mick, Casey felt his jaw drop. “What?”

“We’ve been through this. Your experience didn’t only affect you, Casey. It’s going to influence your other relationships for the rest of your life. Your mother and grandmother are going to treat you differently because of it. Your brother will treat you differently. Why not Lon? He needs to know. I treat a lot of abuse victims here and I can tell you that it’s not only the victims that need support, but their families and spouses too. Partners can feel a range of emotions when it comes to their loved one’s abuse. Guilt is probably the most common—guilt that they weren’t there to stop it. But anger is another. Husbands can feel angry that their wives were raped, and thus changed forever. They feel the anger, but they have no one they can take it out on. It’s not right to blame the victim, so where does the anger go?”

“But he didn’t even know me when it happened.”

“Still. I’m sure your previous counselor told you that there are no time limits on any of this stuff. You need to talk to Lon. He needs to know what’s going on in your head, and then you need to ask what’s going on in his head. It’ll be hard, Casey, but you need to know. Forcing Lon to have sex with you when he’s not ready to is just another form of rape.”

Casey was aghast at that thought. There’s no way in this world that he wanted to be tarred with the same brush his father used. Mick smiled at him and gave him homework again. This time he had to ask Lon if he would be willing to come to one of Casey’s therapy sessions.

Sounded easy, right?