Dirty Angel-BarbaraElsborg (19 page)

“Eventually?” Brody watched him eat. Aden chattered as if he was telling him about something he’d seen on the TV. Every word that came from Brody’s mouth felt as if he was pulling it out of setting glue. He ate a few more chips. They tasted of nothing.

“I wasn’t speaking at the time I went into care. After my parents died, it was several months before I uttered a word.”

Oh God.
“Was the guy okay?” Brody asked, then wondered why the fuck he’d asked that.

Aden shrugged. “Yeah. I’d been aiming for his cock and missed. I wish I’d hit it because maybe then it would have made a difference. Instead, after that he just made sure there were no weapons handy and he tied me up.”

Ten years old.
What trauma had made him mute? Something in the way his parents died?

“So the teacher kept messing with you,” Aden said.

“Yeah and all I could think about was when it would happen again. Break times, lunch, after school. We couldn’t keep our hands off one another. Once he sent me a note in the middle of a maths lesson telling me to come to his room. Jesus. The risks we took.”

“Taking risks is exciting. You both got off on that. I still do. Maybe you do too.”

Maybe he had until the incident in the alley.

“What did I say?” Aden asked.

“Nothing.” Brody swallowed hard. “Matt kept telling me he shouldn’t be doing this, that he couldn’t help himself, that I was irresistible.” He took a deep breath. “He said no one could know, but he wished he could tell everyone how he felt about me, wished the world would understand how real our love was for each other. About a month after it started, he told me to persuade my parents to let me go on a school ski trip he was helping with. I’d never shown any interest in skiing, but I took on a job in a shop, pretended I earned more than I did and Matt gave me the rest
.

“The first afternoon we were there, was the first time he…fucked me. Until then, we’d done everything but. He gave me something to sniff, told me it was harmless. The amyl nitrate helped me relax, but he was too desperate. I had to shove my hand in my mouth to stop myself crying out. Even though he’d hurt me, I still wanted him.”

He gave Aden a defiant look. Brody wasn’t going to blame this all on Matt. “When I got back home, Des knew something was up, but not what. He saw the bruises. I said I’d kept falling on the slopes. Later, without skiing as an excuse, I had to lie about the state of my body, invent accidents, but sometimes I had too many bruises, or bite marks, and I forged letters to get out of games. Matt told me the marks meant I was his. I was a sick fuck because I wore them like a badge of honour.”

“You were a child. You knew no better.”

“I
did
know better. I was as much in thrall as him.”

“Did he promise you’d be together eventually? When you were older? When his kids had grown up? When his wife would understand he was bi?”

“No, he never did.” Brody gave a short laugh. “That’s what I wanted to believe, that when I left school and went to college, we’d live together. I hated it when he talked about his wife. Knowing they were still sharing a bed, having meals, doing stuff together…it made me feel sick. His wife got pregnant again and even that didn’t stop him or me. Then Des saw him look at me one time when we were in Caterham. Matt was with his wife but Des guessed. He’d known I was having sex with someone, but not who.”

Brody took a deep breath. “He told our parents. They went crazy. I tried to explain how we felt about each other. Telling them it had been going on for almost four years made it worse. My mum sobbed. I begged them to say nothing. I convinced them my life would be over if they spoke out. There was no chance of anonymity. People would know. I’d have to leave school. My chances of going to Veterinarian College would be finished. My dad went to see Matt and the next day, Matt resigned. I guess my dad had threatened to tell if he didn’t. Two weeks later, my parents died in a car crash. Des was old enough that we could stay together on our own.”

“Oh shit. That must have been tough.”

“It was, but I… I blamed myself. Our parents were upset because of me. Not upset, devastated. They blamed themselves. Des blamed himself for telling them. Blamed me because I was the root cause. The awful thing was I was more upset about losing Matt than I was my mum and dad, and Des knew it. All my dreams about waking up with the man I loved, eating breakfast with him, I watched them disintegrate. Being apart from him just made me want him more. After the funeral, he came to see me. Promised that even though he’d be living a long way away, he’d never let me go, that he’d never forget me, and I’d be with him always. Words that have come back to haunt me.”

“He ruined your life.”

Brody bristled. “I made it as a vet. I worked—”

“I’m talking about your personal life.”

Aden was eating, but slowly, and watching Brody all the time. Brody tried to eat and couldn’t, but when Aden reached across the table to fork a piece of steak into his mouth, Brody bit it and chewed, made himself swallow.

“Maybe if I’d never seen him again I’d have been okay, pulled myself together and got on with life. I was miserable, but I worked hard while Des kept the farm and livery going. My parents left it all to him. They’d changed their wills a couple of days after they learned about me and Matt.”

“They trusted your brother—”

“And not me.”

“I was going to say they trusted your brother to look after you. They didn’t trust the teacher who was fucking you. So when did you see him again?”

“A year later. Toward the end of my first year of college. I’d just caught the bus to go back to my room and he was standing across the road. He saw me, knew I’d seen him. I got off at the next stop, feeling as though all my internal organs had liquefied, and he’d gone.” Brody huffed. “By the time he turned up at my bedsit, I was desperate for him, and it all started again.

Brody sagged. “I was such an easy going kid. I didn’t throw tantrums, lose my temper. I wanted him to be like that and sometimes he was nice, but it was just part of his method of controlling me. Kind, angry, cruel. I never knew what I was going to get. He confused me. But I’d grown up. I thought I knew what I was doing now, knew how to handle things. I thought, this time he’s mine. He’d moved to the town to be near me, then told me he was still with his wife, still saying he couldn’t hurt his kids, that we’d have to wait for the littlest one to grow up, that we had to be careful. All the same crap, but he made me believe I was worth loving, worth the risk to him. I felt guilty, but it didn’t stop me. I was as obsessed with him as he was with me. I’m ashamed of the way I behaved. That shame weighs me down as if I had a mountain on my back.”

Aden said nothing. Brody wasn’t sure what he wanted him to say.

“Matt didn’t know how much I’d fucked around before he came back into my life. I’d been careful to use protection, but not careful with my body. I did bad things. I let guys do bad things. Hurt me. I was out of control, driven by guilt and shame and need. I studied like crazy, was the perfect student, but it was like I had two personalities. Good boy and bad.”

Aden let out a choked laugh. “At least you had a good side. I was all bad.”

“You’re not all bad, but I’m definitely fucked up. Maybe forever.”

“Not forever. You wanted him to go tonight. You told him to go.”

“He didn’t though. Not until you came in.”

“You were determined. I heard it in your voice. He’s a big guy and he’s a bully.”

“Yeah.”

“All those years ago, he turned you on,” Aden said quietly. “Literally turned you on. All that pent up teenage frustration, that need to be what your body was telling you to be, and he opened the door to our world. And to
his
world. An obsessive one where pain was a reward, controlling you his game. He abused you physically, sexually and emotionally. He made you think that was what you wanted. Then he left without closing that door, left without turning you off, setting you free.”

Brody stared across the table. Aden had understood. “Is that what happened to you?”

Aden shook his head. “Different reasons for the way I behaved, but maybe a similarity in some of what we did. Sex without commitment. Quick hard fucks in bathroom stalls, in alleys, in parks. I never found myself a guy like you did in Peter. I’m sorry you lost him.”

“All through the time I was studying, Matt was around. Calling me up at random, meeting me when he wanted sex. We never went anywhere, never did anything other than fuck. But he sometimes left it months between visits. He moved away and I thought I was free of him, but he kept coming back. I could have asked to move to a different college but I didn’t.”

Brody knew he was talking himself out of anything happening between him and Aden tonight or maybe ever. Hardly a chat over dinner. Brody was unloading his sad fucked up life.

“Stop blaming yourself,” Aden said.

“Who else is there to blame?”

“You act like a victim, then you become one. Leave the past alone. You can’t change anything. Just learn from what you did.”

Why not tell it all? What was there to lose now? “Those times when Matt was out of my life, I became obsessed with picking up guys at clubs, then using Grindr. I don’t know what I was looking for.”

“Something new?”

“Except looking for easy, casual hook ups as the norm isn’t healthy. Searching for a guy who might be sexier, funnier, better looking, more into me—where does it stop? My life was crazy enough with Matt, but hooking up several times a week isn’t right either. Unfaithfulness shouldn’t be a normal part of gay life. I know that’s not what I want.”

“What do you want?” Aden asked.

Brody hesitated, but he’d said so much, why stop now? “To find a guy I can be with forever. Doesn’t everyone want that? Isn’t that the whole point of life?”

Aden didn’t answer and Brody needed him to.

“What about you?” Brody’s heart thumped.

“I’ve never looked for forever. I like Grindr. Easy lays. What’s not to like? I was never looking for more than a quick fuck. But the teacher is not your forever. He’s a user. In that, he’s like me. He’s come back with barriers down. Wife out of the way. Kids no problem. He expects you to fall in line. What you want doesn’t matter. It never has.”

“You heard all that?” Brody sagged.

Aden shrugged. “I heard enough to know he’s a prick.” He paused. “Does he have a big cock?”

Brody laughed and felt weight lift from his shoulders. “Big enough.”

“Not big enough to make this right. Fucking you around. Coming into your life and then buggering off again.”

“When I began working in Leeds and Matt wasn’t around, I spiralled out of control. I knew if I carried on like that, I was going to have a breakdown. Then Matt inadvertently did me a favour. Nine months ago, he turned up late one night and nearly killed me. That time I swore it was over. I found another job and came here. I hoped I’ve never see him again.”

“You’ve grown up and he hasn’t. Eat.”

Brody cut into his steak.

“This food is too good to waste,” Aden said. “It’ll take that bad taste out of your mouth.”

“I know he’s wrong for me.”

“Good. Trouble is, so am I.”

Aden was shocked by Brody’s story but made sure it didn’t show on his face. When he’d seen the older man in Brody’s hall, he’d been taken aback, then alarmed by his intensity. He wore smart clothes and spoke like a BBC news presenter, but appearances were deceptive. The guy had been poisoning Brody from the day he’d touched him.

But Brody had no idea how bad Aden would be for him
.
Even with his month trying to be good, Aden was not the solution to Brody’s problems. The irony was that Aden would probably have been better for Brody if he’d been his normal self. Fun to fuck around with for a while. Now, if Aden let anything happen, he ran the risk of making Brody’s life worse.

He hadn’t told Brody the truth about his past. He hadn’t been lying about Bradshaw, but he hadn’t been the first. No one was ever going to hear about that. Part of him was disappointed Brody had let himself get used for so long, but he’d been a kid and the teacher had mesmerised him. The teacher wasn’t just a nuisance, he was a threat. Aden hoped Brody meant what he’d said about not calling him.

Though who was he to judge weakness? He’d fucked up his own life by letting his past mess with his head. Brody had made mistakes, done some stupid fucking stuff, but at least tonight he’d told the teacher to leave. Just as long as he didn’t take him back.

Because you’re going to be in his life?

No, but…
Maybe Raphael would let him stay if he and Brody fell in love. Yet how could that happen? No one returned after they died. Why should Aden be an exception? If he was, and it was a big if, they’d probably take his memories to stop him revealing what happened after death.

Fuck it, what a mess.

Aden pushed his empty plate away. “That was really good. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. You want something else? Food,” Brody added quickly.

Aden raised his eyebrows. “What else are you offering?”

“Ice cream.”

“I’ll pass.”

Brody’s gaze skittered away from Aden’s face and he got up to put the plates and cutlery in the dishwasher. When he began to wipe down a counter top that didn’t need wiping, Aden knew the guy was having trouble.

“What’s wrong?” Aden asked.

Brody sighed. “I feel like a stupid wanker.”

“You are a stupid wanker.”

Brody spun round.

“Join the club.” Aden pushed to his feet. “There’s an upside to making a mistake, and that’s recognizing you made it and not doing it again.”

“I did do it again. And again. And again.”

“You drew the line when you moved here. Draw it again now. You don’t have to call him, don’t have to see him. He’s history. Leave him there.”

Brody tossed the cloth in the sink. “You make it sound easy. I’ve known him so long.”

“And how many of those years were happy? There are a lot of things in life that are hard. This isn’t one of them. Don’t open the door to him. He’s not good for you.” Aden finished off his wine and put the glass on the counter.