Nurture

by Sarah Masters

  “You did good, Paul,” Connelly told me as he reached to undo the belt still tying me to the bed.

  What the fuck did he know? I thought about Carl, the horrific, demon fight he’d put up to get free. Had he recognized him? It hadn’t taken me long to place Vic in the park in the khakis and T-shirt, so Carl wouldn’t forget him easily either. And my noticing Vic back then had been the last straw, the cause of the fight between me and Carl and the rough and frightening abuse that had finally made me leave. It seemed like this whole mess had started that night, though I knew that wasn’t true. Vic’s haunted expression as we’d driven by hadn’t been the start. It had just been the tipping point.

  Connelly’s tentative and careful touches shot pain up my arm and time bungeed, bouncing me backward, darkening the room to the pinpoint of Carl’s last attempt to own me.

  I looked back to Carl in time to see his hand come up again, heavy with the weight of black metal and hatred. I half expected him to point it at Vic, and opened my mouth to warn him.

  Too late.

  Gunshots were loud. Bullets hurt. Even ricocheting off the bedpost and mostly missing, only passing through the flesh just above my wrist, it fucking hurt. Surprise choked off my voice.

  Vic shouted. Connelly kicked at Carl’s hand, then at the gun he dropped.

  The gun. He fucking shot me.

  “He was going to anyway,” I reminded myself in a whisper.

  Connelly unfastened my bonds and pressed the sheets to the free-flowing blood at my wrist.

  The sound of Carl’s laughter echoed through my head a long time after I couldn’t logically hear it anymore.

  Now that Carl was gone, Connelly backed off, leaving room for Vic on the bed next to me.

  “Thanks, Chewie. Get these louts out of here, will you?” He waved vaguely around at the lingering uniformed men and perched protectively between me and them.

  “He needs a bus, Vic.” Connelly gripped Vic’s shoulder and he squeezed.

  “Yeah,” Vic said. “Send them up.”

  Connelly sighed. “Two minutes.”

  “Yeah.” Vic hadn’t taken his eyes off me once Carl was gone. His gaze was a little unnerving.

  “I’m fine,” I tried to reassure him.

  “You are not.” Vic touched my cheek. “Did he hurt you?”

  I shook my head, which made it swim, and I winced but held up my bleeding wrist. “Just a flesh wound.” Even I didn’t laugh at the tragic joke.

  Vic just pulled me into his arms and held on. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you had to go through this. I’m sorry.”

  “Stop it.” I had to push him off. “Just stop.” Once free of his embrace, though, I didn’t have the heart to say what I really wanted to. That it was my fault. That I hadn’t been good enough for Carl. “It just happened,” I said lamely.

  “Paul…”

  “How long?”

  “How long what?”

  I closed my eyes and dropped my chin to my chest so there was no chance of getting distracted by his fathomless eyes. “How long have you known about him?”

  “I didn’t know anything definite, except that you were in trouble with him. I didn’t know he was our guy for sure until your credit card turned up. When the bodies started to pile up…” He shuddered and the entire bed shook.

  I needed to see him again. “So why were you watching him? How did you know everything about me?”

  “Gut feeling. I can’t explain it. I never could, and trying would have got me a long medical leave I didn’t want. If I’d been able to find a way to prove any of it, I would have. He was too careful. Until…something stressed him out. Once he snapped, I had to do something.” Now he swiveled his head down and away. “I’m sorry, Paul. I was too quick to haul you in. I wanted you where you’d be safe. I—” He sighed. “I made a mess of it. I should have found the stressor, figured him out first, and I would have known not to let you do this. I would have known how close he was to snapping.”

  I chuckled and marveled that it didn’t sound completely hysterical. “You.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. You were the stressor. We drove by you in the park. He freaked out when I watched you. It was…ugly. Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore, does it?” This time, I reached up and touched his face, wishing I could smooth away the worry and strain. His features relaxed under my fingers. His eyes, one minute brittle and glittering, turned soft, dark, and filled with a need I understood. “I was never going to be enough. He was so broken.”

  Vic nodded slightly.

  “I’m not like him.” I shuffled forward a bit, until my thigh pressed to his knee. “He had to do it all himself, didn’t he? He had to fight whatever it was all on his own. He couldn’t, wouldn’t tell me any of it.”

  “And you?”

  I took a deep breath, let it out, and gave in, leaning the rest of the way until my head rested against his chest and my weight settled into his strength. “Maybe. Just not today. There’s a lot, though, Vic. Why you’d want someone as ruined as me…”

  “Shhh.” He ran his hand down, flat and warm over my spine. “You didn’t let him ruin you. You wanted to help him, in the end. I’m not stupid. I know you think you could have done something more for him. Sometimes love just isn’t enough.” He leaned back a bit and lifted my chin so I was looking up at him. “Sometimes it is.”

  “Is it?”

  The proof was in his kiss. As I sat there amidst the shattered remnants, guilt churning my gut into a nauseated mass, he didn’t demand anything. He didn’t want anything but my permission, and when I nodded and his lips touched mine, it was the most natural thing in the world to lean on him and let him take all that away, even just for that moment in time.

  Sometimes, the moment that changes your life is dramatic and tragic and filled with gunfire and blood. And sometimes, it’s a glimpse of a face through a car window, something you almost miss, something that couldn’t possibly mean anything at all.

  Epilogue

  I watched Brian limp to Lil’s side and the familiar twist of guilt stabbed at me, even through the layers of safety and cottony understanding the two of them and Vic had swathed me in over the past months. It didn’t always show, this remnant of Carl. Only when it rained and Brian remembered the scrape of Carl’s knife. He twisted a bit and stretched, and patted Lil’s arm when his lover reached to steady him.

  “Fuck off,” Brian said good-naturedly.

  Lil stuck out his tongue.

  “We’ll see you at the pool tomorrow, yeah?” Brian asked, turning to look at me where I was still ensconced on the couch with Vic wrapped around me.

  “Yeah.” I got up from the warm haven of Vic’s arms then walked them to the door.

  “And don’t forget you have to meet me right afterward,” Lil warned.

  I nodded even as a fair amount of heat drained from the room and I shivered.

  “This is a good thing you’re doing, Paul. You need it as much as these kids do.” Lil rubbed a hand up and down my arm. “And I’ll be there.”

  “You offering your petticoats to hide in again?” I asked.

  “No.” He actually pulled me into a hug and spoke over my head. “No more hiding. That’s what this is all about. You share your story, and teach them it isn’t their fault.”

  “I know.” I’d dropped my voice to a whisper.

  Lil tightened his arms fiercely. “It isn’t.” He pushed me away from him, still gripping my shoulders and glaring into my eyes. “You’re going to say it over and over again until you believe it. Carl made his own choices. Whatever he thought his reasons were, he made his own choices.”

  “I know.” I pushed Lil’s hands away and backed up a few feet. “I know.”

  “Lil.” Brian’s warning voice sifted through the growing buzz in my ears, and Vic’s warm bulk loomed behind me.

  “I’m fine.” A firm shake of my head dislodged the fuzzy filter, but I still backed up to prop myself against the doorframe, settling
the solid wood between my shoulder blades. “Public speaking,” I said lamely, even though we all knew that wasn’t the issue.

  Lil took a moment to smooth non-existent wrinkles out of his skirt before fixing me with that intense, no-nonsense look of his. “I know what I’m talking about.”

  “You’ve been there. It works. You can’t stay silent forever,” I parroted his litany of justification at him.

  “Until you say it out loud, you can always find a reason to believe it wasn’t what it was, that it didn’t happen, that it was your fault, or a dozen other things to keep it from being real.” He glanced over at Vic then back at me. “Until you call it what it is, there’s always the chance it will happen again. Your father, then Carl.” His lips twitched into a half smile. “You lucked out with Vic, but these kids, they might not be so lucky. They need to know it’s safe to say it out loud, to look at it, see it for what it is and know how to avoid it.”

  “Stop it.” I pushed off the wall and squared my shoulders. “I’ll be there. I’ll do it. I don’t have to like it.”

  “But you do have to believe in it,” Vic said from where he perched on the edge of the hall table. “They’ll know, when you get up there and say ‘he did this to me, and I didn’t deserve it’, if you actually believe what you’re saying.”

  “Both of you. Just stop.”

  Brian shuffled over and pulled me into a tight bear hug. For a fractured second, I needed him off me, then it passed and I returned the embrace.

  “Just tell them the truth, Pauly,” he said. “Easy.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “In your dreams.”

  “Let’s go, Bri.” Lil snapped a slap across Brian’s ass that made him yelp, and tossed me a mock glare.

  I grinned. “Better go before Grizzelda over there starts frothing at the mouth.”

  “Mmm.” Brian sauntered out of the door. “I love it when you get all possessive.” He winked at Lil.

  “Of course you do.”

  Their banter trailed off down the hallway, and it was the best unspoken advice they could give. I closed the door behind them then turned to Vic.

  “Dishes?” I asked.

  His gaze drifted over me, flicked to the kitchen then back to me. A little shrug lifted one shoulder and he smiled. “They aren’t going to crawl away in the night.” He held out a hand.

  I watched the way his muscles rippled ever so slightly and his fingers curved into a relaxed invitation. How many times had he offered that hand, and I gave nothing but a smile in return? Not that we hadn’t been together over the past eight months, but the number of times I accepted that offer were far outweighed by the times I hadn’t. When I studied his face, I could see he didn’t expect me to accept now, either.

  “Why are you with me, Vic?”

  He slowly dropped his hand back to his side. “It isn’t obvious?” he asked gently.

  I shook my head, having the hardest time not wrapping my arms about myself. There was a block I couldn’t get past. I stood there, cold and vaguely frightened while he offered all the warmth and safety a body could want. So why couldn’t I just accept it?

  “At first, when you didn’t even know I existed, it was because you needed my protection. You didn’t know you needed it, and there was no way I could do anything about it, but I could see it. And when you did see me”—he shivered and lowered himself onto the arm of the couch—“that evening in the park, you looked right at me, like you’d suddenly found something, and I knew.” He shrugged, and the motion gave him a fleeting aura of helplessness. “Why do you stay?”

  It’s safe.

  And it was that, but seeing into him, seeing his heart and soul right there in his eyes, just for me, I had to admit there was more to it. “How long would you wait?” I asked.

  His frown was puzzled, and horror raced through me when I realized I’d asked that out loud.

  “There is no waiting,” he said simply. “It isn’t about waiting to get what I want. I have what I want. There’s nothing to wait for.”

  “But I haven’t— We haven’t…” I clamped my jaw shut.

  In eight months, he’d settled for kisses and caresses and cuddling and never asked for anything I didn’t offer.

  He lifted his shoulder again then let it drop. Standing, he held out his hand. “Love isn’t all about sex, Paul.”

  This time, I bypassed his hand entirely and settled against the warmth of his body. His arms folded obligingly around me.

  “What Lil said about making it real.” I leaned a little to stare up at him. “Saying it out loud.”

  “You don’t have to talk about anything—”

  “I love you.”

  His mouth clamped shut, and he looked into my eyes for a long moment.

  I squeezed him tight, trying to meld my body into his. “This is what I want to be real. You. Me. Us.”

  He floated one of his big hands over my back. The other he sank into my hair and pressed my head to his chest.

  “Solid enough for you?” he asked gruffly.

  I nodded, pressed into him, and twined my arms around his waist, telling myself I didn’t need to hear the words back. He’d done nothing but prove how he felt for months now. It was time I reciprocated, and for once, the thought didn’t bring a host of gut-churning insecurities along with it. A few minutes of standing like that separated the disappointment from the next step, and I was nearly ready to move when he did.

  He lifted his hands to cup my head and tilt my face. I flowed with his movement, wanting his touch, still feeling the contrast between the dry, calloused warmth of his skin and the hard, demanding memory of Carl’s. I wondered vaguely, as his lips brushed mine, if that contrast would ever fade.

  His kiss curled my toes. It always did, but it was different this time. The spring-like tension I’d grown used to, the compacted awareness that allowed him to pull away if he detected the slightest hesitation on my part, wasn’t there. He’d committed this time, and when his tongue swiped across my lips, I opened. Immediately, he filled my mouth with the warmth and goodness I hadn’t quite admitted I was craving.

  I groaned, and the pressure of his hands and his kiss intensified.

  I searched up under his shirt for more of that warmth, and his breath hitched when I found skin with my cold fingers. I pulled him closer.

  “Air,” he rasped, after what felt like forever and wasn’t nearly long enough.

  “And here I thought the lightheadedness was all you.” I continued to rove my hands over his back as he chuckled, and the laughter vibrated against my chest and tingled through my palms.

  He pressed his lips to my hair. “Mmm.”

  This was a new sensation—that I could make him speechless had my heart fluttering in odd ways and prompted me to see if I could do it again. I pushed my hands up until he had no choice but to let me remove his T-shirt. Acres of dark, smooth skin spread before me. He was just tall enough that my lips came even with his collarbone when we stood straight, and I’d already discovered how easy it was to make him swear simply by applying my teeth lightly along the delicate skin there. And this time, I was not going to leave him wanting.

  By the time I’d traveled the length from his left shoulder to the little divot between the bones, he was breathing hard and moaning, tangling his fingers in my hair. Clipped curses dropped off his lips.

  “Bed,” he said.

  It was a command, albeit a whispered one, and I took a moment to suckle his throat and decide how I felt about it. The moment stretched a little too long, and he tugged at my hair, lifting my head.

  The pain wasn’t intense. Just there. My breathing stalled, and I tightened my fingers on his back. It took a heartbeat, and a good look into his deep eyes, to identify the scorching sensation racing through my gut as desire, not fear.

  “Bed,” he repeated, a little louder. “Now.” He dug his fingers into the back of my skull until his lips were crushed over mine again, and desire raged into a full-blown hard-on and
consuming need.

  I stumbled a bit when he turned me around, propelling me gently but firmly toward the hallway and the bedroom at the end of it.

  He nudged the door closed with a foot as we entered, already turning me back for another kiss. One hand left me for long enough to flip on the light switch.

  “I want to see you naked,” he said, gaze raking down my body. He pressed a hand to the bulge between my legs and squeezed.

  “Angh… Vic.”

  “Naked.”

  I nodded and yanked my sweater over my head then tossed it on the floor.

  He watched it fall, and I made a motion to pick it up. He hated mess. For him, I could be not messy.

  He clamped a hand around my wrist, though, drawing my attention back to him. He had huge hands.

  “Naked.”

  “’Kay.” My heart hammered as I fumbled one-handed with my belt, and my fingers slipped on the cold steel of the buckle.

  “Scared?” His voice had lost the hard edge of command, but he still watched me, his stare intense and unrelenting.

  I paused for a breath, considering the question. “No.” The flutter of haste and breathlessness wasn’t fear. Not with him. Not this time.

  Finally, the intensity broke and he smiled. “Good.”

  A firm shove sent me back onto the bed and I grunted, but he didn’t give me time to find my balance, just shoved again, sprawling me onto my back so he could climb on top of me. As his weight settled over me, I let out a breath and spread a hand on his broad chest, following the line of contrast between my pale skin and his dark with my gaze.

  “You know what I want?” he asked as his hips ground into mine in a slow, steady rhythm.

  “To make me come in my pants?”

  He blinked, laughed, then kissed me. “No. Well, maybe.” He smoothed his hand up my chest, lingering over my pecs and nipples, and watched its progress as he talked. “I want to make love to you. A long, slow fuck, watch the way your skin turns pink, and listen to you mutter.”

  “I do not mutter…oh…fuck.”

  He was sucking on one nipple and grinding me into the mattress with the pressure of his hips. His cock slid along mine as he gently undulated his body. Even through our clothes, the heat and pressure were enough to make me groan.