“I’m sorry I wasn’t honest and I’m sorry that you hate me for lying to you. I’m sorry that I made you think there was this great person here with you when I’m really just a piece of trash and I’m sorry I’m not good enough anymore. I’m sorry I just told you I’d help with the new barn and now I’ll be letting you down. I’m sorry.”
“Stop,” Vince whispered, the pain of knowing now for a fact that Dustin had been forced to do what Vince had always worried he’d had to do laced through his voice. “This doesn’t change how I feel about you at all. I love you. I’m glad you’re telling me this, and I know it has to be hard, but don’t you dare talk about yourself like that. You are the bravest, strongest guy I know. You did what you had to do to survive and no one can fault you for that. I already thought that maybe you had to do something like this when you were out there, and I’m relieved to know it was a safer environment than what I had assumed. I’m glad you worked for someone who tried to keep you safe.”
“Not safe enough,” Dustin whispered. “I only decided to leave when the last guy nearly dislocated my shoulder and then gagged me with my own underwear. I got scared and left the next morning. Carlos saw me leave with my backpack and said to come back when I needed to. That was it. I should have told him about the guy but it was Carlos’s friend. Everyone knew that. No one told Carlos how violent the asshole got. He’d hurt everyone, not just the guys. Wasn’t about guys or girls, it was about getting off on the other person’s pain.”
“So you bought bus tickets out of the city?” Vince asked gently.
Dustin nodded. “Got stranded though, that first night. It was the last run of the night and it was raining. Cops told me I couldn’t sleep at the bus stop, so I started wandering through the rain. Some older guy pulled over and offered a place for the night, at a price. Didn’t have anything to lose. I didn’t even care if he killed me or something. I don’t think I really wanted to die, just didn’t care if I did. But this guy was nice. Even made sure I enjoyed it too, which doesn’t usually happen. Kept calling me ‘son,’ though. I didn’t like that. And he didn’t have condoms. Guessing that’s probably how I ended up sick.”
“You’re not sick,” Vince told him for what felt like the millionth time.
Dustin seemed to pretend not to hear him. “In the morning he let me take a shower, bought me breakfast at McDonald’s, and gave me some money before dropping me off at the bus stop again. Didn’t even make me do anything else with him first. It was weird but I wasn’t dead and I had money and food. Not enough money to go farther than the racetrack, though. I wanted to spend my last dollars at the casino, thinking maybe I’d win something, but they wouldn’t let me in. I was eighteen but only had my expired learner permit as ID. So I camped in the woods across the street and stole from the stores down the road when I needed to. So that’s the whole story. Now you know everything.”
As soon as he finished, he broke down into sobs.
Vince pulled him close, unable to stand the pain he was seeing Dustin in. “I got you,” he whispered, suddenly realizing there were tears in his own eyes. “I love you and you’ll never have to live like that again. You are the bravest person I know for doing what you had to do, and for getting out. This doesn’t change anything about how I feel. I swear, Dust. Don’t be afraid of me thinking less of you, because I don’t. God, I don’t. I love you.”
Dustin threw his arms around Vince and continued to cry. Vince held him, gently reassuring him and rubbing his back and shoulders. After several minutes Dustin finally relaxed and leaned back against the couch.
“I hope I don’t get sick,” he muttered, wiping his eyes.
Vince got up and went into the stalled part of the trailer and returned with a muck bucket. He set it down beside the couch, then changed quickly into his pajamas.
“Let’s stay down here tonight,” he suggested.
“You don’t have to stay with me,” Dustin argued weakly.
“I want to,” Vince assured him.
They spooned together on the couch with Dustin on the outside edge in case he was sick. Vince held him close to comfort both of them. Dustin woke twice in the night with nightmares that caused him to need the muck bucket each time. Vince stayed there with him both times, running a soothing hand down Dustin’s back and holding him again when he was done.
In the morning Vince left to take care of Xander, and when he returned to the trailer he found Dustin nibbling on toast. Vince sat down beside him and gently gripped Dustin’s knee.
“Feeling any better?” Vince asked.
Dustin shrugged. “I guess. Physically, yeah. Mentally… I think so. I’m glad I finally told you and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I should have.”
“It’s okay,” Vince assured him. “I’m glad you decided to tell me.”
“Sometimes it’s easy to forget about all that,” Dustin said quietly. He was playing with his toast now instead of eating it. “Not forget it, I guess. Just push it out of my mind. But when I do think of it, I feel dirty and worthless.”
“You are neither of those things, Dust,” Vince murmured. “You’ve been through some tough times, but you made it through and you are loved. A lot. I’m not leaving you.”
Dustin nodded, tears glistening in his eyes. “Thank you. I’d be really upset if I had to stop helping you with your showing and with the plan for home. That’s in addition to fucking unbearable heartache.”
“I highly doubt I could ever leave you,” Vince assured him. “Don’t ever worry about that. You’d have to leave me. And I wouldn’t let you go without fighting first.”
Dustin smiled faintly. “I saw that when you thought I wanted to leave. But I don’t.”
Vince kissed Dustin’s cheek. “Glad to hear it. If you ever want to talk more about it, don’t be afraid to.”
“Thank you,” Dustin murmured. “I’d kiss you but my mouth still tastes like barf.”
“Then I’ll take kisses later. Maybe after I win this afternoon.”
PART OF him was a little worried about competing without much sleep again, but Xander never stumbled and Vince never had to fight to stay on. He even remembered the courses perfectly. He still didn’t win, but took third place.
There was only one more week of competition following this one, and the venue was still using him and Xander to hype up the series. Now the talk was that he was very close to hitting the million dollar mark for winnings solely from this show, which would be a record for the sport itself. There was a huge crowd each day Vince competed, and it looked like more vendors had been coming in to take advantage of the extra spectators.
Even if he was being used as free advertising, Vince didn’t care. He was there to compete, and he was happy to be helping out the venue that was giving him the chance to do so well.
Chapter Seventeen
DUSTIN DIDN’T add any additional details regarding his confession from Tuesday night until Friday. Despite Vince’s assurances, Dustin had remained quiet and a little distant, until Vince had decided to prove his word by making love to him. Vince was relieved when it seemed to have the desired effect, because he didn’t know what else he could possibly do to make Dustin believe him when he said he still wanted him. Dustin curled up against him afterward, completely relaxed for the first time in days, and murmured a simple “thank you.”
He fell silent long enough for Vince to think he was asleep until he lifted his head a little and spoke again.
“That first girl you helped, Carla? She reminded me a lot of one of the people I considered my friends when I worked for Carlos. Her name was Tanya and she was this bubbly little black lesbian who never shut up. But I liked that she would just talk and I could listen to her and tune out the rest of my life. I guess her dad ran off and her mom ODed on something, heroin maybe. She didn’t want to be in the system so she ran away before anyone found her. Ended up working for Carlos so she didn’t get into the drug world and end up like her mom. When I knew her she’d been there for
five years and didn’t want to do anything else. She’d been there since she was sixteen.”
Vince ran a hand down Dustin’s back as he listened, trying not to think too much on the fate of someone like this Tanya.
“Said she was good with letting guys get what they wanted from her, but Carlos had some special where customers could pay to be with two girls at the same time. She had talked Carlos into making her the default choice as one of the girls, so she got her fun. I guess straight guys like watching girls make out and have sex for them.”
“Including those assholes from the diner, I would say,” Vince murmured.
Dustin nodded. “My only other friend was Luke. He was a lot quieter than Tanya, and she got on his nerves like she got on just about everyone’s. He was also super smart so I never understood how he hadn’t found a way out yet, though he always complained that it was impossible to find a legit job without a place to live. Once you started working somewhere else, Carlos kicked you out. Luke was kind of like Tanya in a way, though. He was straight but he wasn’t against guys using him because he was number one on the list whenever the super rare female customer showed up. I guess he had one regular who showed up when her military husband was overseas because she didn’t want to risk something with anyone other than someone she paid for. As far as I know he was the only straight guy there, but supposedly a few other guys were either bi or just okay with being with women because there was also this live sex thing that people could pay to watch.”
Vince tried to push that twisted image from his mind. “So what’s Luke’s story?” he asked gently.
“Sort of like mine. Super religious family who kicked him out and a religious neighborhood where no one would take him in. Religious school where his friends couldn’t offer an accepting place to stay. But he was kicked out for telling his parents he didn’t believe in God.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
Dustin nodded. “I met him when he was nineteen and apparently he got kicked out at seventeen, like I did. We became friends because we had so many similarities to our stories. I had a crush on him for a while, but knowing he was straight kept me to myself. He and Tanya had rooms right around mine, and at first it was really weird to be friends with people who you heard having sex all the time. Then I thought about how they could hear everything that went on in my room. They probably also heard me crying by myself all the time for the first month because I hated myself so much. Maybe they tried to be my friends out of sympathy. Either way, they kept me alive.”
Vince felt his heart breaking almost as badly as it had when Dustin had started telling him everything days ago. He twisted his neck to give Dustin a kiss on the forehead.
“I’m glad you had people who cared,” he murmured.
“Me too,” Dustin whispered. “Leaving them behind was hard, but I had to move on and get away from people who were complacent with just being used all the time.”
“I’m glad you did. I’d hate not to have met you.”
Dustin leaned up to kiss Vince firmly on the lips. “Me too.”
DUSTIN SEEMED to be much more like himself on Saturday. They wandered the showgrounds like they usually did, watching some of the other classes and scouting out the vendors among the booths that seemed to constantly change. They also talked to some of the people they knew and strangers who were always interested in talking to Vince.
As they were finishing lunch at a table outside one of the food booths, Dustin asked a question that made Vince truly believe Dustin was over whatever doubts he’d had about Vince’s love for him.
“Would you ever consider getting a puppy?”
Vince stared at him, though only mildly surprised. Dustin had spent quite a while with his hands in the puppy playpens that the local animal shelter had set up at their adoption booth.
“I never considered it,” he replied honestly. “With all this traveling I don’t know how we’d train a puppy.”
Dustin didn’t look at him and played with the straw in his cup as he spoke. “The lady at the booth said they’re all partially trained because they live in foster homes. And I’ve been reading about training anyway. It’s not an overnight thing but it seems straightforward enough. I’ve seen so many other people with dogs around here that it can’t be that difficult to travel with one. If you don’t think it’s a good idea, though, that’s okay. Getting a dog was just one of the things I always wanted to do.”
He didn’t need to say that his parents—or his dad, really—would never have allowed it. Vince could assume that easily enough. He finished his lunch and gathered up his trash.
“Then let’s go adopt a dog,” he said as he pushed his chair back and got to his feet.
Dustin jumped up. “Seriously?”
Vince smiled at him. “Of course.”
With a bright grin lighting up his face, Dustin grabbed Vince into a tight hug and kissed him. Vince smiled even brighter at the pure happiness he was seeing. God, he loved Dustin.
The lady at the animal shelter tent smiled at them when they got there. “I had a feeling you might come back.”
Dustin glanced at Vince. “I convinced him to let me get one,” he stated, still grinning. “They haven’t all been adopted, have they?”
“Of course not,” she replied, looking a little sad, Vince thought. “These three right here still need homes.”
Dustin knelt next to the round pen where three puppies were wrestling with each other, and Vince watched one puppy bound over to him before the others. It was mostly tan with a white spot on the chest and a white stripe down the muzzle. There was a pink collar around the neck, which Vince assumed meant that the puppy was a female. She started playing with Dustin’s hand before the other two puppies even realized a human was there. When Dustin picked her up, she cuddled against him and licked his chin.
“I think I’ll go with her, since she chose me,” Dustin declared with a laugh. To the puppy he added, “Hey, that tickles!”
The woman smiled. “A good choice. She is a sweetie. I’m sure her brothers will be scooped up soon too. Let’s get all the details done with.”
They were given a lightweight leash to go with the collar, along with a small bag of puppy food and a few toys and treats in a gift bag. There was paperwork too: copies of the adoption papers, medical history reports showing what shots had been given when and that she had been spayed recently, plus some reading material about how to train and care for a puppy.
“And here is the schedule of when she should get her future shots. You’ll need to check your local laws about getting her licensed when you get home too. She will likely keep you up these first few nights because she won’t be used to being away from her brothers. I suggest crating her at night, though you may be tempted to let her sleep with you to be more comfortable. She isn’t completely housebroken, and puppies get into everything when they wander unsupervised.”
“Thank you,” Dustin told her, shaking her hand.
Vince shook her hand too. “I’m sure she’ll do really well.”
It was still early in the afternoon, so Vince let Dustin take the truck to visit the nearest pet supply store while he kept the puppy busy. He ended up taking a picture of her and sending it to Jane with the message, Look what we just got.
Her reply came faster than he had expected.
So cute! What’s the name?
Don’t know yet. Dustin’s choosing. He’s buying supplies for her now. Technically she’s his.
How’d he talk you into that?
Guess he just smiled at me.
You are so fucking in love.
No way to deny that. Yes.
Are you guys planning on getting married yet? You’ve been together longer than Scott and I and you know it’s legal in NY.
Vince looked at the puppy, who had fallen asleep in the shade under the trailer. He adjusted his seat on the hard ground with a sigh and leaned his head back against the smooth metal of the trailer behind him. He should have seen this comin
g for a while now. It was Jane he was talking to, after all.
Haven’t talked about it. Too much travel. No time.
Even to him it sounded like a lame excuse.
All she sent back was a slanty-mouth face, whatever that was supposed to mean.
He hasn’t said anything. Don’t know how I’d even start that conversation.
Not to mention he was afraid of being let down again. It didn’t matter how real things were with him and Dustin, it didn’t mean Dustin was up for marriage.
But you want to.
It wasn’t even a question. She knew him way too well.
Kind of, yeah.
Buy him a ring.
Wasn’t that what you did when you proposed to a girl? Guys weren’t supposed to get other guys rings, right?
Why?
You saw how he reacted to seeing my ring. I think he’d be really happy that you were that thoughtful. Then when you eventually have the conversation you have something to give him so he knows you’re serious.
Vince thought about it and had to admit she had a good point. It couldn’t be that difficult. Buying a ring didn’t mean they had to talk about it tomorrow. He could find the right time, or Dustin could bring it up. Or they could keep things as they currently were and not ever take it to that “official” level if they didn’t want to. Vince was fine with how things were.
But he certainly wouldn’t object to marrying Dustin. Thinking about it scared him and made his heart soar at the same time.
This conversation, though, was too much for him. So he quickly said good-bye and deleted all the messages. It wasn’t like either Vince or Dustin snooped through each other’s phones—they had more respect for each other than that—but Vince had nothing against letting Dustin use his phone if he wanted to. No reason for him to accidentally see the conversation and wonder why Vince had given such a lame excuse or why he hadn’t said anything yet.
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