Violated (22 page)

There were alarms going off in the back of Derek’s mind now.
How ’bout it, bud? Wanna be my first time?
“I’ve gotta go.” He stood too quickly and sent the chair tumbling back onto the kitchen floor. “Sorry!”

“It’s okay.”

Russ stood and reached for him. Derek jumped back in terror, realizing too late that Russ
wasn’t
trying to grab him—he’d been reaching for the chair. Now he felt like an idiot. But the panic was still there, still rising. Russ froze and looked at him curiously, as if a strange wild animal had just wandered into his kitchen.

I have to get out of here!

“I’ve gotta go,” Derek repeated.

“It’s okay. I’m not gonna—”

“Gracie!”

The dog reluctantly got up from her spot near the fireplace where she’d been curled up beside Max and trotted over to him. Max lifted his head curiously but didn’t bother getting up.

“Derek, it’s okay.”

“Thanks for having me over,” Derek said hastily, not wanting to give Russ a chance to talk him out of leaving. He needed to get out of there, to get back to his own cabin, where he could feel safe. “I’ll see you later.”

“All right,” Russ said quietly.

Then Derek was outside, stumbling up the path. Gracie trotted ahead, oblivious to his distress. He struggled to catch up, not wanting to be alone out there, terrified he’d hear footsteps running behind him, chasing him down.

D
AMMIT
!
R
USS
thought.
What the fuck was I thinking?

He hadn’t been. Not really. He’d enjoyed having Derek with him, so he just kept trying to drag it out. When it came time for Derek to leave, when it was just too late to make up an excuse to keep him there, Russ had entertained the idea of asking him to stay the night. Not for sex. He’d known Derek wouldn’t be ready for that, after what he’d been through. But holding him had felt so right last night. Maybe they could have just shared a bed. No hanky-panky. Russ would have been fine with that. Just having him there beside him, keeping the bed warm, would have been enough.

But even before he’d opened his mouth, he saw the fear in Derek’s eyes, and Russ had a horrible moment of clarity. He saw what it must have looked like from Derek’s point of view—alone in Russ’s cabin in the middle of the night with no one to call for help, nowhere to run, and Russ getting it into his head to keep him there for the night.

I won’t hurt you, Derek.

I would never hurt you.

We can just cuddle for a while….

Russ felt sick. He hadn’t intended to be creepy, but he had been. And now Derek was terrified. Russ couldn’t try to explain. He couldn’t go after him without making it worse. He couldn’t even call, since they hadn’t exchanged numbers. And what could he say? Nothing would sound real to Derek. Everything would sound like a lie, an attempt to trick him into getting close.

If someone he’d known for over twenty years, someone he’d been sure was straight and had no sexual interest at all in him, could turn on him when they were alone together, how could Derek ever trust Russ? How could he ever trust
any
man?

D
EREK
HAD
a rough night. After the peaceful evening he’d spent with Russ just twenty-four hours earlier, this was one of the worst he’d had in weeks. He tossed and turned all night, even with the bed table lamp on to keep away the darkness. When he did manage to catch a moment of sleep, he had terrifying, nonsensical dreams—dreams he could barely remember when he woke. Russ was in them, but not the familiar, comforting Russ he’d been getting to know. He was massive and bulked up, with breath that reeked of alcohol. He leered at him and told him the police had found Derek’s father dead in a hotel room, shriveled and blotched from AIDS. But the AIDS hadn’t killed him. Someone had put a bullet in his brain.

At 4:00 a.m., Derek gave up trying to sleep and went out into the living room. It was warmer than it had been when it was raining, but he still felt chilly. He made some cocoa and sat on the couch sipping it, wrapped in the comforter from the bed.

He wished Russ were there. The familiar man he’d begun to grow fond of, smiling and poking fun at Randy Quaid’s over-the-top performance in
Independence Day
or giving honest details about his foray into public nudity, even while blushing with embarrassment—not the horrifying image of him from the dreams. Russ wasn’t a threat to him. Derek knew that. Or at least the rational part of him did. It had been okay, or better than okay, when he’d fallen asleep against Russ. He hadn’t been thinking about sex then, and Russ had just been offering a shoulder—or a chest—to cry on. But tonight had been different. That look in his eyes. Tonight he’d wanted Derek to come to bed with him. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but….
Jesus
. No. Not yet.

When? Will I ever be able to sleep with a guy again?

His only answer was the silence and loneliness that surrounded him.

By the time the sky began to lighten, Derek was exhausted. He took Gracie out to pee and then went back inside to crawl into bed. He slept until almost two in the afternoon.

He awoke to Gracie pacing back and forth frantically between the bed and the door. “Sorry, girl. Hold on.”

When he opened the door to the stoop, he found a note taped to the glass. He peeled it off, nervous to open it. But it wasn’t an angry recrimination or a threat. It was just Russ trying to be considerate, even if he fumbled a bit.

Derek,

I’m sorry I was creepy. I wasn’t trying to come on to you. I know you don’t want that. I guess I thought, since we’d slept on the couch, it would be comfortable for us to share a bed—without sex. In our clothes, even. Just to keep each other company. But I guess that’s pretty weird, now that I think about it. I won’t ask you to do that. I won’t even let it into my head.

I hope we can still hang out.

Russ

There was a phone number at the bottom.

The note was weird and vaguely disturbing, but it felt honest. Derek could picture Russ agonizing over it, wondering if each word was just making the situation worse, and that made it kind of sweet. He took it inside with him when Gracie was done doing her business and set it on the bar. He reread it a few times while he made himself coffee. Then, when he had a cup of strong coffee to fortify himself, he dialed the number.

R
USS
HAD
patrol duty that afternoon, and he’d left his cell phone sitting on the car seat beside him all day. When it finally buzzed, he jumped a little in surprise. The number wasn’t one he knew, but he answered it and felt a wave of relief when Derek’s voice said, “Hey.”

“Hey,” he replied. “Hold on a sec.” He pulled the cruiser over on the side of the road. “Okay, I can talk now.”

“Oh! Are you at work?”

“Yeah, but it’s okay. I’ve got a minute. How’re you doing?”

“I’m fine.” There was a pause, and then Derek added, “Sorry I freaked out last night.”

“No, that’s fine. It was my fault. I should have realized….” He fizzled out, not exactly knowing how to explain it without sounding condescending. Derek was a full-grown man. He didn’t need babying. But at the same time, he’d been through something traumatic, and from what little Russ knew of psychology, it sounded as if he was suffering PTSD as a result. Some things were bound to make him feel vulnerable or even give him flashbacks.

Derek seemed to know where he’d been going with that thought. “I’m sure your intentions were good. It’s just gonna take me a while to trust… well, men, I guess.”

“It’s cool.” There was an awkward silence between them. Then Russ asked, “Hey, do you like Chinese food? I could bring some home. Your place or mine. Either way.”

“At midnight?”

“Oh. Yeah. I guess that might be a little late for you.”

“No!” Derek said hurriedly. “That would be great. I can pay you for mine when you get here.”

Russ wanted to pay for it himself rather than make Derek dip into what little reserves he had, but he knew Derek would find that a little degrading. “Great! Um… I’ll have to pick it up at ten, because that’s when they close. So we’ll have to heat it up.” He groaned. He was used to dealing with cold Chinese food, but now that he was hashing out the details, it didn’t seem all that practical. Why would Derek want a reheated dinner? “This is starting to sound like a dumb idea, isn’t it?”

Derek laughed. “It sounds like fun,” he said. “I’ll see you tonight.”

D
EREK
WENT
out during the day, partly to restock on essential groceries and partly to shake off the unpleasant associations he’d built up about Russ over the course of the night. They were bogus, he knew, a phantasmagoria created by his panic-stricken, exhausted mind in the middle of the night, but they still poisoned his feelings for Russ. He needed some air to clear them out of his head.

A quick stop at the bank told him what he’d already suspected—that Tim had closed their joint house account and taken the few thousand that had been in it.
Prick
. But Derek hadn’t expected anything better from him. And even if they’d split it down the middle, his share wouldn’t have stretched far—all their reserves had been wiped out when they bought the cabin.

His own account had about a thousand in it, and depositing his final check brought it up to nearly three thousand. That would be enough to cover the mortgage next month, as well as the electric bill and some groceries, if he was frugal. Thankfully his car was already paid off. What would happen the month after that, he had no idea. He’d start putting his résumé out, of course, but it was unlikely any corporation would hire him. It was also unlikely he’d be able to collect unemployment—not under these circumstances. And thanks to Tim, he might not even have a suit that fit anymore to wear to interviews. He’d be lucky if he could find a part-time job flipping burgers at the mall.

Derek forced these miserable thoughts out of his head for the time being as he stopped at the supermarket. He stocked up on things that were cheap and could be stored indefinitely—macaroni and cheese, ramen noodles, instant oatmeal, crackers, Pop-Tarts…. Fortunately, Gracie already preferred dry food to the more expensive canned food. He picked up some Chinese tea to go with dinner, because he liked it. Maybe Russ would too. He also grabbed a six-pack of beer, since he and Russ had killed off at least that much yesterday. He was tempted to stop by the liquor store for something more interesting like sake—that was Asian, at least, even though it wasn’t Chinese—but alcohol would likely make him anxious. He’d never again associate getting drunk with “fun.”

D
INNER
SEEMED
to go well. After some awkward apologies, with neither of them really understanding what they were apologizing for—Russ for thinking the wrong thing, perhaps, even though he hadn’t expressed it; Derek for having let anxiety and fear kick in, even though it was understandable—they were able to find a certain level of comfort again. Derek put one of his cleaned CDs into his laptop, and Celine Dion’s
French Album
accompanied their dinner.

It seemed an odd choice to Russ. It was a sensual album, put out when the singer was still fairly obscure, and it was sung, as the title suggested, entirely in French. He liked it. But it seemed oddly romantic for Chinese take-out with a man he wasn’t sure how to touch, or if he even
could
touch. He’d only learned of the rape three days ago, though they’d spent so much time together in the interim, it seemed longer.

What he’d learned from his research and from Officer Chavez hadn’t prepared him to deal with a friend going through an ordeal like this. And it hadn’t prepared him to deal with a
man
going through it. He knew it happened, and men were even less likely to report it than women were. The humiliation of “allowing” another man to overpower them was too great. Even though Russ believed Derek’s account without question, it was still hard for him to imagine someone as tall and muscular as Derek being pinned down. Russ
believed
it, but he couldn’t
see
it. It was no wonder Derek would find it impossible to discuss with people he didn’t trust. They wouldn’t believe him, and he knew it.

The only thing Russ could do right now was take his cues from Derek. Let Derek do the touching, if he wanted it. But otherwise, hands off. Derek had gotten the impression he was some kind of Casanova, and Russ hated that. But the only way to prove he wasn’t like that was to be patient. He liked Derek, and he was fairly certain Derek liked him. It was worth taking it slow.

They talked about it, finally, when the food had been eaten, leftovers given to the dogs, and they were sitting in front of a warm fire again. The music playing in the background was a collection of slow Madonna ballads—
Seriously, Derek?
—and they were sitting agonizingly close without quite touching.

“I’m not sure I’m ready to sleep with you,” Derek said out of the blue, as if they hadn’t just been discussing whether Lady Gaga was as good as Madonna. “I mean, even without sex.”

Russ wasn’t surprised, but it still hurt a bit. “That’s fine.”

“I’m not sure I’d feel… safe.”

Russ didn’t have a response to that. He knew it wouldn’t do any good to assure Derek he’d never lay a hand on him without permission. Derek had absolutely believed that about Victor. Hell, he’d probably even thought
he
had to be careful not to make
Victor
uncomfortable when they undressed and showered together.

“I don’t mean you’ve done anything that’s… threatening or anything like that….”