Worth Keeping (11 page)

He closed his eyes tears seeping between childish lashes, smearing his cheeks with salty essence like the come he was so often expected to swallow. He hated that even more than this invasion of his body. Having sweaty, dirty cocks in his mouth, feeling the bristle of hair scraping his cheek as the men forced themselves deeper into his throat. And then finally, the gagging as they shot their semen into his mouth, slapping him if anything got missed or he spat it out.

The room was quiet after his words. Nick didn’t want to look up at Owen for fear of what he’d see on the other man’s face. Disgust, pity, revulsion—he wouldn’t be surprised. “Most of the scars you see are from those times. The cigarette burns, the cuts…all part of some man’s fun and something to do with a young boy. Some of them I did myself. I cut myself to get rid of the bad feelings I had.” He closed his eyes. “I was raped and abused in any way they wanted. Barb would watch them do it.”

Nick remembered days and nights spent with any sharp object he could find, finding solace as he cut deep into his flesh. He’d welcomed the feeling that he was still alive and the pain had taken his mind out of his memories for a while.

Owen’s breath shuddered softly and Nick looked up in apprehension. Tears rolled down Owen’s cheeks, steady trickles from beautiful green eyes. Nick was breathless with wonder that someone he didn’t really know that well felt this depth of emotion for him. He reached up, tenderly wiping away the tears away with his thumb. Owen held onto his hands like a man falling off a cliff with only Nick to hold him back.

“It went on for about three and a half years. Then when I was thirteen I’d had enough. I’d already tried to cut my wrists once but my mother found me. I didn’t realise you should do vertical slashes so I didn’t get it right.” He still felt disgust for his inability to kill himself then.

“That time she had one of her friends take me to hospital, it was so bad. They called social services and wanted to take me away from her but her friends stole into the ward in the middle of the night and took me out, back home.” Nick’s voice was bitter. “She didn’t want to lose her cash cow. I was popular with her friends.” He winced as Own gripped his hand tighter. “So when she took me back, I decided the only way to die was to get someone to do it for me. Barb had a boyfriend—and I use that term loosely. He was more her pimp. He availed himself of my services too.”

Nick shifted in discomfort as he leaned back against the couch. Socks jumped onto the back and sat there watching them. Owen let go of Nick’s hands, moving closer to him, pulling him against his chest. Nick sank into the other man’s warmth, hearing the steady beat of Owen’s heart. Owen had positioned himself so that Nick’s left ear was against him and Nick was grateful to him for remembering his deafness.

“What did you do? You were thirteen years old. How could you have faced all that and stayed sane?” Owen’s voice was choked.

Nick gave a grim chuckle. “I was a basket case. A suicidal, angry, puberty-ridden ball of angst. I couldn’t see any way out of what I was going through other than dying. One night after Roger and his friends had finished using me I taunted him and really got his goat. We were at one of his flats in the middle of Manchester City. Roger had a knife obsession. He loved steel, loved cutting me. I thought it was only a matter of time before he pulled it out and finished off the job properly.” Nick smiled tiredly against Owen’s warm chest. “He just needed the right trigger. I told him he was a fucking queer, a fag and he loved sucking cock and sticking it to other men. He never saw himself that way. It was just young boys he liked and he hated anybody calling him any of those things. He got so angry he took out the hunting knife he had and sliced me open. That’s the scar down my right side. Then he beat me so badly I could hardly walk and left me to die in an alley.” His voice trickled to a whisper. “I just wanted to leave this world and go anywhere else. I couldn’t have done another day like that.”

He was covered in his own blood lying between two pieces of cardboard in an alleyway. The alley stank of urine and beer, of human waste and garbage. He couldn’t move. His arse burned after being raped by at least two men; he couldn’t remember anymore. His leg was twisted awkwardly beneath him and his head hurt. His right arm was as useless as a lump of meat and the pain in his side was agonising. His eyes were swollen shut, and all he could see were thin slivers of light from the street lamp. He vaguely heard a harsh breathing above him—above the pain in his body and in his soul. He was deadened, praying for death to claim him. It would be better than this existence. He felt a surge of triumph that his plan had worked.

Owen heaved a shuddering sigh. “My poor Nick,” he whispered, stroking Nick’s hair. He kissed the top of his head softly. “What happened then?”

“Don found me.” Nick’s voice softened as he thought of his adoptive father. “He was one of the policemen who came to see me in the hospital the first time, before I was taken out. I liked him. He seemed to give a damn about me. It was he who organised to have me sent into care when I recovered. Then I was taken from the hospital and Don tried to find me.” He heard the amazement in his voice at the man’s care for him, someone he barely knew. It still overwhelmed him, even now. “For three days he followed my mother and Roger around, trying to track me down, to find out where Barb had me. He figured out a few of the places I might be and he was on his way to one to see if I was maybe there.”

“He found you in the alley then?” Owen kept up his soothing stroking of Nick’s scalp. Nick nodded, shivering at the rest of that memory.

“He’s finished. He’ll die soon; bleed out from the cut you gave him. Leave him. The cold will do the rest.” The gruff voice of his mother’s current boyfriend echoed in his ears. The other man laughed softly.

“His mum will be pissed when she finds out what you’ve done, Roger. That’s her meal ticket you’ve just shagged, cut and beaten up. She’ll have to work twice as hard now. Barb won’t like that.”

“Fuck her, the slag. She’ll do as she’s told. Now come on. Let’s get out of here. We’ve taken out the garbage.”

The men’s footsteps slowly faded as they left. He lay there as it got darker, feeling the cold claim him. He heard a rustling in the newspaper. In the dark he saw two pinpricks of light approach his face, and saw the face of a large black rat as it sniffed him. It approached his face. Its incisors looked huge in the dimming light through the blood that covered his eyes. He felt a surge of fear at the thought of being eaten alive. That wasn’t the plan. He tried to scream but the sound wouldn’t come. He tried again.

“I screamed. There was a rat and I thought it was going to eat my eyes out while I was still alive. I wanted to die but not that way.” He shivered in repugnance at the memory of the rat’s yellow teeth only centimetres away from his face. “Don heard me and got me to hospital and then went looking for Barb and Roger to arrest them. But they’d scarpered when they saw all the ambulances and police cars in the street.”

“Did he ever find them?”

Nick nodded grimly. “Oh yes, he found them.” He didn’t want to talk about that part of the story now. That could wait. He’d bared his soul enough for one night.

“And Don stayed by you while you got better and then he obviously adopted you.” Owen shifted, pulling Nick closer to him. Nick felt a gentle kiss on his hair and he smiled. He felt more at peace with this man than he had ever been.

“Yeah. When I was fifteen he formally adopted me. I wasn’t an easy case to deal with but he stuck by me. He got me into therapy and into a special school where I could get some culture. He basically picked me up when I self-destructed.” He lifted his wrists and stared at the scars with darkened eyes. “Which I did often.” He shuddered. “I have scars on my legs and hips from self-harming. But each time Don just patiently waited for me to get over my episodes and then he’d carry on. No judgement, no recriminations.”

He loved Don MacKenzie in a way he’d never experienced before. “He spent a fortune on therapy, hospital bills, special away camps for troubled teens, anything he thought could help.” He hesitated, not knowing whether to share the next bit with the other man.

Owen prodded him gently. “You want to tell me something else, sport? I can hear you do.”

Nick shifted, sitting up to finally look at Owen’s face. He saw only compassion and understanding on his face. “Don knew that sexually I was a mess. I thought that being what I was when I was younger, being used by men, had made me gay. I firmly believed it. Even though I’d never really had any feelings for girls. But I thought that was because I was too young. So I punished myself. I used razor blades and anything sharp to cut myself. It made me feel that for once I was in control.”

Owen reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind Nick’s ear, then caressed his cheek. “So you thought they’d turned you into a homosexual?”

Nick nodded. “When I turned sixteen, I was so messed up. I didn’t know what to do sexually, what was considered the norm, what was deviant, what a gay man should be doing with other gay men. I had no point of reference really other than what was done to me, which was that anything went.”

Owen winced at that statement. Nick carried on. “I tried sleeping with girls but nothing worked. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even get hard. I was fine with men but I fought it with every fibre of my being. I wanted to be a normal heterosexual man because I thought that was what I should be.”

Owen nodded. “It must have been very confusing for you. Not knowing what you were supposed to be because of what you suffered.”

“Don found this sex therapy clinic in Montana in the U.S. It was a camp for abused men and boys who needed help afterward. It focused on helping you come to terms with what you’d been through and find your own sexual identity. It was a very unorthodox camp.” Nick grinned, remembering his weeks there. “I was there for about six months. It was a bit like a fancy brothel really.” He smiled faintly, waiting for a reaction and wasn’t disappointed.

Owen’s eyebrows virtually disappeared into his hairline. “A brothel? What, like with prostitutes?” His indignant tone made Nick chuckle.

“No, it was rather more than that. They were called active sexual therapists. They would teach you about sex by doing it with you, teach you about how ways to give and receive pleasure in a way you were comfortable with. Based on how you reacted to men or women they tried to guide you into a path that felt right for you. Coupled with counselling and self-help sessions for the cutting, they helped me understand I probably didn’t turn gay; I was all along. It was intense and at first I rebelled at everything they did. But they were patient and finally I realised that being a gay man was what I was supposed to be anyway.”

His face shadowed. “The only thing I refused to do was allow myself to be penetrated, cock or fingers. I don’t like people too close behind me. It reminds me too much of that time and I have panic attacks. They tried to help me with that but finally they just said it wasn’t going to be.” His tone had an air of helplessness. “Rimming is fine, I’ve learnt to bear that to a point but nothing else but tongue goes inside me.”

Owen reached over, cupping his face. “Nick, that’s fine. God, I can totally understand that. Not so much that you won’t do it to another man, but I
do
mostly get it.”

“I can’t perform that way,” Nick said his voice quiet. “I want to, but my cock just won’t get hard. I tried with my ex, Brad, but it just didn’t work out.”

Owen’s eyes searched his. “Why aren’t you with Brad anymore? Not that I’m complaining.”

Nick pulled away, his body language tense. “Brad was…difficult. “ He swallowed. “He was a year younger than me; we were together for nine months and during that time, the man owned me. I swore I’d never to be someone’s toy again but with him...” His hands twisted against each other.

Owen reached out and stilled his hands. “You let him use you?” he asked quietly.

Nick nodded. “He was abusive. Physically and mentally. Don tried to get me to leave him within the first two months we were together but I wouldn’t.” He attempted a smile and felt his lips twist. “I thought I was in love for the first time and needed him. After a month together I told him about my past and I thought he understood. He was so patient and at first he didn’t try force me into anything. Then a few weeks in he started sniping, trying to convince me to do things I didn’t want to. When I didn’t, he’d sneer, tell me how useless I was. How I was so damaged no one else would ever want me and I should be glad I had him.”

Owen gripped Nick’s hands tighter. Nick saw the rage building in his body at the thought of Brad’s cruelty. “Nick, you know that isn’t true.”

Nick’s eyes were distant. “But I believed him. I didn’t think I’d ever meet someone who’d understand.” His throat closed up. “Then he got tired of waiting. He tried to force me into anal sex with me as the bottom and I lost it. I fought back, but he’s damn strong. He lifted weights and he’s a damn big guy. He beat me so badly he burst my eardrum. I managed to get out the house and call Don. He took me to the hospital. But it wasn’t the first time Brad had been violent with me.”

Nick took a deep breath. “Don wanted me to press charges. I refused. There was no way in hell I was going to have my past dragged through the mud and have Brad reveal everything he knew about what I’d been through.” His voice was fierce. “It’s enough it was in my head, let alone in public.” He smiled faintly. “For a short while after that, Don made it his mission to make Brad’s life a misery. He’d get pulled over in his car for no reason, be subjected to breathalyser tests. Every foot he put wrong, Don was there, making sure he got his just deserts. Don even warned Brad’s prospective new boyfriends about his violent tendencies and his need to control everything and own people like he thought he did me.”

The whole thing with Brad had been a living nightmare and Nick knew Don was still scared that one day Brad would find him and hurt him as he’d promised to do. Nick still saw Brad’s face, contorted in fury as Nick had packed his things.