by Lucy Lennox
Chapter 33
Nico
West was being so damned sweet. Didn’t he know that wasn’t going to help me be strong?
“I want this to be as easy on Pippa as possible,” I said, feeling my throat tighten. “I think it’s best if you handle it. You’ve been there for her all along, and you knew Adriana best.”
He opened his mouth to argue with me, but I cut him off. “Don’t. I’ve seen enough since coming back to know Adriana was different with you than how she was with me growing up. I don’t know why she was the way she was when I was younger, but it seems like maybe she’d finally come into her own in the past couple of years. That’s the Adriana you knew. I never knew her like that.”
One of West’s large, warm hands came up to cup my cheek. “I wish you had. Will you tell me why you never told her where you were all those years? Why you never contacted them?”
It felt strange to want to tell him the most shameful part of my past. For just a moment I wondered why I felt like confessing it to him. But then I laughed at myself. It was so obvious. As soon as I told him my secret shitty past, he’d know why I wasn’t relationship material. It would make my leaving that much easier.
“I was a prostitute.”
There was a beat of silence while I waited for the condemnation. Perfect Dr. Wilde from his perfect family wouldn’t be able to wrap his head around—
“And?”
My head snapped up to stare at him. “And… I slept with men for cash and food. Sometimes just for shelter and protection.”
I could see West’s jaw ticking and knew he was having trouble holding in the judgment.
“Even more reason to call home and ask for help,” he said slowly.
I laughed. “Yeah, right. ‘Hi, Mom? It’s me. Your fifteen-year-old son. I know you guys didn’t want to have a gay kid or a petty criminal for a son, but let me tell you what I’ve been up to lately. A few blow jobs, some solicitation busts. Oh, but don’t worry—there’s one cop who lets me suck him off in exchange for not taking me in if I’m lucky enough to get busted by him instead of the real hard-asses.’ West, if I thought I was an embarrassment to them before, can you even imagine how I felt once I learned what it was like for me on the streets?”
West’s jaw was doing more than ticking at this point, but he was doing his best to keep a neutral look on his face. I wasn’t fooled. He had to be disgusted. Who wouldn’t be?
His silence continued, so I threw up my hands. “See? Exactly. They probably would have reacted the same way. Silence. Disgust.”
I stood up, intent on finding my clothes and getting the hell out of there, but West’s strong hands clamped around my waist and he spun me to face him.
“I’m not saying anything because if I open my mouth I want to scream, Nico,” he admitted in a broken voice. “I can’t bear the thought of you alone on the streets having to do that to survive. I can’t bear it.”
West pulled me in close until I stood between his feet, his face pressing into my chest. My arms wrapped around his head and neck, and I threaded my fingers in his hair. Within seconds, I felt hot wet tears soak through the worn T-shirt I had on and I realized he was crying for me. West was crying. For me. It didn’t make any sense.
“Why are you crying?”
“You deserved better,” he croaked. “Every kid deserves better.”
I tried to push him away by his shoulders, but he held tight. “Don’t feel sorry for me, dammit. That’s not why I told you.” My voice came out thick and mean through my teeth.
I continued to struggle against him, wanting to get away as quickly as I could so I would be able to breathe again.
“Don’t,” he growled. “Don’t push me away for the millionth time, Nico. Just let me be here for you. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. And for fuck’s sake—I’m not asking.”
I was taken aback by his tone and managed to settle down out of sheer surprise.
“Jesus, finally,” he muttered, nuzzling back into my chest. “You’re like a fiery redhead but without the red.”
I snorted. “Doctor Hilarious, I presume?”
“Shut it. We’re having a moment here. Don’t ruin it.”
I ran my fingers through his thick blond waves and thought about how amazing it must be to have someone like West all the time. He was going to make some lucky bastard happy one day.
I took a moment to imagine what it would be like to be that person—to be the guy West chose to share his life with. I imagined long nights of feeling his hands on my skin, his lips on mine, his cock wedged so deep inside me that I felt full and complete. I imagined lazy Sunday afternoons watching football games on television, Friday nights eating over at Doc and Grandpa’s with all the crazy Wildes. Visiting the local park and pushing our children on the swings or taking them down to the marina and teaching them how to drive a boat. I imagined being able to walk through Hobie, through the world for that matter, proudly displayed on West Wilde’s arm.
It was a pipe dream—I knew that. It was a fantasy future that people like me didn’t get. West needed someone more like himself—a successful professional who had his shit together and could talk about literature and symbolism, not someone like me who got a cheap-ass college degree online after six years of trying for it. He needed someone who had a pedigree, not a tattoo of a gang symbol buried deep under one of a cheesy-ass phoenix.
I realized West had snuck his hands under my shirt and lifted the hem to investigate the ink on my abdomen.
“Will you tell me about your tattoos now?” he asked, as if reading my mind.
Ah, there was another prime example of my being broken, flawed, and fucked up.
I swallowed. “I might need a drink for this story,” I admitted. “Except I only just got rid of my headache from last night’s drinking a few hours ago.”
“What if we pulled a ‘reverse dinner’ and loosened your lips with whatever’s in that bakery box instead?” West’s grin was mischievous, and I leaned in to drop a kiss on his lips.
“Deal. Lead the way.”
Once we were back in the kitchen, I removed the little cake from the box. I felt a little shy presenting him with a cake I’d painted specially for him, but his reaction took away my hesitation.
He looked at it reverently before glancing up at me with shining eyes. “Are you freaking kidding me? You did this? Oh my god, Nico. We have to take a picture of it for Doc.”
West scrambled over to find his phone. After texting pictures to Doc, he looked up at me with flushed cheeks.
“We’re not eating it. We can’t. It’s too pretty.”
“Oh yes we are. I’m starving and Rox makes killer cakes.”
I began searching through drawers for a knife and fork, but West tackled me to the floor before I had a chance to find them.
“What the hell?” I asked, laughing as he tried a ninja move to pin my legs between his.
“Don’t touch my cake,” he growled before leaning in to nibble on my neck. “Or I’ll have to punish you.”
His fingers were searching for ticklish spots on my ribs, and I was having trouble catching my breath. “Promise?” I gasped.
“A spanking maybe,” he said in a sultry voice. “On those tender butt cheeks of yours. Hmm… do I start with the peacock or the snakes? Who’s been naughtier?”
I felt my other cheeks heat at the suggestion. “If I can’t have cake, what can I have?”
West pinned me with his eyes. “What would you like, Nico?”
I felt my entire body coil in anticipation at the sound of my name on his tongue. It was one hundred percent sex. How the hell did he do that?
After quirking an eyebrow at him, I responded with, “Chili.”
He barked out a laugh. “No. No fucking way. Forget about it.”
We stood up laughing, and West moved to the fridge to pull out whatever it was he’d planned on cooking. It turned out to be steaks on the grill. He’d already fixed a salad and had a bowl of fruit
cut up.
Once we had everything cooked and served, we sat next to each other at his heavy kitchen table. The one we’d fucked on just an hour or so before.
“You’re blushing,” he teased.
“Yeah? Well, your pupils are dilated, and it’s making me wonder if I have time to eat my dinner before you pounce on me once more,” I grumbled. “I’ll never look at this table the same way again.” I ran my hand lovingly over the satiny wood finish to the sound of West’s chuckles.
We ate quickly by unspoken agreement and left the dirty dishes for later. West pulled me over to the sitting area and settled us both under a quilt on the sofa.
“Tattoos,” he reminded me.
As if I’d forget.
I began to tell him about my original trip out west when I left town. How I’d spent most of my cash on a bus ticket to San Francisco with the hopes there would be resources for gay teens in the city. I couldn’t imagine where else to go that would be relatively safe for someone in my situation.
But when I’d gotten to San Francisco, I’d discovered things weren’t like I’d imagined. Obviously.
“I figured it out eventually,” I explained. “I found a group of homeless adults who banded together to look out for each other. They tried protecting me, but they couldn’t feed me or get me clothes or anything else I needed. And I got to a point where I convinced myself that I was horny enough to actually want to suck someone off, so why not at least get paid for it?”
I shifted on the sofa so I wasn’t facing him. He pulled my back against his chest and lay down behind me under the blanket while I continued talking. One of his arms was wrapped around my chest, and my fingers idly trailed up and down his exposed arm hair.
“So it wasn’t that bad really. I was mostly freaked about getting some nasty disease, so I was very careful with condoms and stuff. I refused anything more than oral for as long as I could, but then… well, shit happened.”
I felt his body stiffen behind mine and knew he wouldn’t want to hear any more details of my time on the streets. Hell, even I didn’t want to hear them.
“Anyway, I met Griff and busted my ass to keep him from falling into the same line of work. There was a nice cop named Brady who was sweet on him and eventually got him into this great program at a youth shelter that was different from some of the others. That’s where he met the Marians, who ended up taking him in and adopting him.”
“What about you? You didn’t want that too?” West asked.
“No, hell no. The idea of another set of parents or stepparents or adoptive parents having any say over my life made me crazy. No way. So I kind of fell into this limbo of having one foot in the shelter and one foot on the streets. And that’s how I met this guy named Donny Jessup.”
I thought back on the man and felt some of the old familiar tendrils of insecurity sneak in around the edges of my consciousness.
“Who was Donny?” West asked.
“He was this rich, older guy Griff used to call Richard Gere. Not that he was as beautiful as the actor, mind you, but he pulled the whole ‘wanting to save the prostitute routine’ with me. Only it didn’t start off nearly as romantically as the one from the movie.”
“What happened?”
“It started off with him spotting me outside a club one night with a client. The guy I was with pulled me into an alley, but before anything happened, Donny came up and told the guy to get lost. I was too overwhelmed by his audacity to react at first, and somehow he got the guy to leave. Eventually I came to my senses and barked at him about losing me money. Then I’ll never forget him reaching into his wallet and pulling out a crisp hundred-dollar bill.”
West made a grunt of disapproval, and I felt his arms tighten around me more.
“He started off so different from anyone I’d ever known. He told me he didn’t want any sexual services from me, he just wanted me to sit with him while he had dinner at a nearby diner. I was starving—honestly, it felt like I was always starving as a teen—so I agreed easily. We sat and talked for hours. He did most of the talking, really. When he’d first approached me in the alley, he’d been wearing a fancy business suit. But once we were in the lights of the diner, I could see he was covered in ink. It peeked out from his collars and cuffs and intrigued me. It turned out, he owned a tattoo shop nearby—one I’d seen plenty of times and knew from its reputation it was successful.”
I threaded my fingers through West’s and brought his hand up to my mouth for a kiss. He didn’t resist.
“He ended up making me an offer. If I let him use me for tattoo practice, he’d let me stay in the back storage room of the shop for a few nights and buy me some clothes and shit. I was floored. No fucking way could I be so lucky. The guy even told me I could choose where on my body the tattoo would go, even though I couldn’t choose the design. Well, what the hell did I care? I’d pick a spot on my back and never see the damned thing.”
I blew out a breath and tried to stay calm. Just remembering Donny made me angry.
“Little did I know it was a gang symbol. He’d been hired to ink it onto new members and was terrified of screwing it up, hence the need for a human practice session. Once I learned what it was, I demanded he cover it up with something else. He agreed. As long as I’d let him practice a few more designs on me as well.
“I went along with it. He kept offering me more and more in exchange for letting him practice on me, and once I got a certain amount of ink, I just didn’t give a fuck anymore. I was fascinated with the process and wanted to learn how to do it myself. By then, we were sleeping together and he was letting me live in the back room of the shop indefinitely.”
I laughed, remembering the shit hole. “I fucking loved it. My very own room all to myself. Except when he was in there, of course. Which was pretty much whenever the fuck he wanted to be. But at that point, I’d started to fall for him. He was everything I wasn’t—strong, handsome, successful, rich, poised. And the fact he wanted to be with me, to take care of me, was like the greatest feeling ever even if he didn’t return my feelings or want something real and committed. As humiliating as it is to admit now, I was happy with whatever bits he gave me. I felt pretty sure that was all I deserved.”
West shifted again behind me and moved a hand to rest on my cheek. I nuzzled into it for a moment before continuing.
“But it weighed on me after a while, you know? Like, I didn’t understand how he could be so sweet and tender to me sometimes but not want to be with me other times. It was confusing. So I finally got up the nerve to ask him about it, expecting him to say he was married or in a committed relationship or too old for me. But he said he wasn’t. That wasn’t it. He was having trouble coming to terms with me as his boyfriend because he was afraid of what people would think of him if anyone found out he was dating a whore. His word, not mine.”
“Oh Nico, fuck,” West said. “What a dick. I’m so sorry.”
“That’s not the worst part,” I admitted.
Chapter 34
West
Listening to Nico talk about his past was excruciating. I couldn’t stand thinking of him alone and vulnerable like that—taken advantage of by who knew how many men. And what were the chances no one had ever hurt him physically? God, it was too much.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what he thought was the worst part.
“I stayed,” he confessed quietly. “I stayed because he seemed to truly feel bad about it and he promised to try harder.”
“Oh, baby,” I murmured into his hair.
“Right?” he asked with exasperation. “I mean, who believes that bullshit?”
“Lonely teenagers who just want to be loved, Nico.”
“But he at least pretended to try for a while. Took me out more, had me over to his place more and more often. Until one night we were walking back to his place from eating out at a restaurant nearby and ran into his friends. I knew it was going to be trouble because I recognized one of the guys from having… you kn
ow… slept with him, or whatever. Anyway, Donny immediately pulled away from me, and when the guy asked him when he’d started having to pay for sex, Donny laughed right along with him. Said I was worth every penny. Said his friend should take a turn with me and see.”
My heart dropped. “He didn’t stand up for you?” I asked, wanting to kill the slimy motherfucker.
Nico shook his head. “Nope. I was so upset I bolted. Went straight to Griff and bawled my fucking eyes out.”
“I’ll bet Griff wanted to murder the bastard,” I muttered.
“Yep. Wanted to rip his balls off with his bare hands. But I told him I needed him too much to let him go to jail for assault.”
“You’re lucky to have a friend like him,” I admitted, taking a moment to be grateful Nico had Griff in his life. I wanted to send the guy fucking flowers for being there when Nico needed him most.
“Yes, I’m very lucky. Griff’s the only guy besides Donny I’ve given a fuck about since I left here. Everyone else has just been a warm body.”
As much as I assumed he didn’t intend the words to include me, they still stung. I must have gone still or something because he turned around quickly in my arms, eyes wide and lips open in apology.
“Not you. I didn’t mean you, West,” he said before sighing. “But that’s why I’m a little freaked out.”
“A little?” I teased quietly, forcing myself to take a breath and relax.
“I like you more than a little. Which means I’m freaking out more than a little.”
I leaned in and nuzzled his nose. “So why the bare spot over your chest?” I asked.
“Because no matter what he ever did to me with the tattoo machine, I reserved the spot over my heart for myself. One day I’ll know what to put there, and it will be just for me.”
Nico was wearing an old T-shirt of mine from medical school, and I ran my hand under it to find the bare patch of skin I knew was there, over his heart. His eyes locked on mine as my fingers caressed his chest.
“I’m glad you kept a part of yourself just for you,” I said quietly. “You’re so fucking strong.”
