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angry, just worried. Glenn glanced at James again, felt his heart trip in his chest as the need to comfort nearly overpowered him. Instead he looked at Xavier and tipped his head towards the kitchen, then turned and walked away.
Xavier joined him in the kitchen a few minutes later. Glenn pulled out a chair and sat, even though he would have preferred to stand. Somehow it seemed like a big testosterone match, though, with both he and Xavier standing and staring at each other. Glenn didn’t want this to become some territorial bullshit; he wanted James to be able to heal, to smile and laugh again—and love, he didn’t forget that part. He wanted James’ love.
“Have a seat,” he finally said when Xavier continued to hover. Once Xavier had taken the chair across from him, Glenn brought his arms up to the table top and folded his hands together in front of him on the cool surface. He looked Xavier in the eye and waited a heartbeat. “I think James needs professional help.”
Xavier sat back and growled as he narrowed his eyes at Glenn. “Professional help didn’t work out so well last time, did it?”
Glenn shook his head. “Not like that, not where he’s basically committed against his will. Out-patient therapy, probably a few times a week. He was having a panic attack, I think, when we came in. Maybe even some PTSD, and I wouldn’t rule out depression and anxiety, either.” He shrugged and tried to keep his voice even, calm, when inside he felt like there was an emotional riot going on. “I’m not a psychiatrist, so I couldn’t say for sure, but I do have some experience with mental illness—”
“He’s not mentally ill,” Xavier snapped, nearly coming over the table as he bent forward, glaring at Glenn. “He’s got some problems, sure but—”
“Just let go of the label,” Glenn snarled back before he took a steadying breath. “Stop thinking about mental illness like so many people do. It isn’t something sinister, brought on by the devil or whatever. It’s an illness, like diabetes or heart disease or cancer, and it needs to be treated. It doesn’t make the sufferer a weak person, or permanently damaged or any of that other crap society seems to encourage us to think. And like many other diseases and illnesses, in many cases it can be treated, managed, sometimes even cured depending on the circumstances and severity.”
Xavier’s shoulders drooped a bit but he still didn’t look any less angry. “So you’re saying there’s a cure for schizophrenia and—”
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Glenn wanted to roll his eyes so bad his head hurt. “No,” he said as he slashed a hand through the air. “Stop twisting my words. Lots of people suffer from depression at least once in their life. Many people never have a repeat episode. Does that mean they were cured? Was it a temporary illness? Situational or biological? I don’t know, and I don’t know if anyone has solid answers there. I told you, I’m not a professional here, but I can see that the man I care a great deal for needs help. He’s suffering, and bickering over what he’s suffering from is a fucking waste of time. James needs help. Didn’t Chase say he hadn’t left this apartment for days?”
“Yes, but where would he have gone anyways? To our house? Why, when we come here—”
“Do you know that panic attacks are linked to agoraphobia? They can be the cause for panic attack sufferers refusing to leave their house,” Glenn said, digging out what little information he had on the subject. “They’re so afraid of having a panic attack in public, they just don’t leave. What if,” he couldn’t quit keep his breath from hitching, “what if that’s what’s happening to James? Are you and Chase just going to let him hide away for the rest of his life? Don’t you want to make sure that isn’t what’s going on here?”
“He might be right,” Chase said from behind Glenn. Glenn twisted around in his chair, surprise no doubt widening his eyes since they felt near to popping out of their sockets. Chase looked pale, worried as he entered the room. “I mean, sure, I want to keep James safe, but even I know that ‘safe’ doesn’t mean letting him hide away from the world.
Or from Glenn, who I think has James’ best intentions at heart.”
Glenn fairly glowed from that acknowledgement, and he smiled for the first time in he didn’t know how long. “Thank you, Chase. I really do want to help him. Maybe it’s easier for me to see what might be going on since I’m not as close to him as you and Xavier are.”
Though I want to be. Jesus, I want to be.
Chase plopped down in a chair and rested his head in his hands. “I know,” he mumbled before scrubbing at his face. “I know you do. I don’t know why he’s so freaked out by you—” Chase picked his head up so fast Glenn heard his neck pop. “And I’m not saying this…this panic attack or whatever it was, was caused by you. If you’re right about the whole thing, it might have been the thought of leaving the apartment that did it. Did James ever have a panic attack when he was around you?”
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“No.” Glenn didn’t feel any hope because of that, though. “He was medicated heavily a lot of the time, except when I interviewed him. Even then he was medicated, kind of loopy from it, and he still looked scared when I was in the room. I don’t know why.”
Chase grunted and shrugged his shoulders. He threaded his fingers through his hair and gave the strands a hard tug before lowering his hands to the table. “It wouldn’t necessarily have to make sense to us, or maybe not at all, considering what’s happened to him and what he may be dealing with mentally. Who knows what he sees or thinks when you appear. It might throw him right back to the night he was rescued, or to things that happened to him before that…” he trailed off, looking dangerously close to being physically ill. Xavier scooted his chair back and was behind Chase in an instant, his big hands rubbing Chase’s shoulders.
“Do you know,” Chase began only to stop and clear his throat. His green eyes were dull and he blinked rapidly, dispensing the moisture gathering there. Glenn’s stomach burned and he wished he could stop the question he knew was coming. “Was he sexually assaulted?” Chase rasped.
Thoughts of privacy flitted through Glenn’s head, but these were the two other people in this world he knew cared for James as much as he did, if not more. And they needed to know, probably, but it felt like a betrayal, sharing James’ secrets. No, Glenn realised, it felt like sharing James’ shame, and there should be none of that. Not from James, who was a victim, and not from Glenn or anyone else who loved James. Still, he hoped James would understand, eventually.
“He said he wasn’t raped,” Glenn gritted out, the words scraping him raw inside.
“There was semen found on him, chest and arms, old and…newer.” Glenn closed his eyes and willed down the nausea that was roiling in his gut. “The doctor at the hospital examined him after James had been tranquilized, and he didn’t find any tearing or swelling—any evidence internally of rape, but he did find scars, from his penis back to his buttocks. Sexual assault, torture, I don’t know what else because James refused to talk about it.” Glenn couldn’t get more specific, he just couldn’t, not without hitting something. “And I am guessing you’ve seen the others, the ones on his chest and back?”
“You fucking bastard!”
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Glenn barely had time to turn his head before a fist slammed into his cheek. He hit the floor a second later, his head spinning and his ears ringing. He opened his eyes just in time to see James launch himself at him.
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Chapter Nine
The depth of the fury inside James would have scared him had he been able to think, but he couldn’t. All he saw was a red haze, all he heard was his shame being spilled out to the only people he trusted. Chase and Xavier hadn’t known just how fucked up he was, not really, but now they did, all because Glenn Shearing couldn’t keep his goddamned mouth shut!
The first punch sent a satisfying jolt of pain from James’ fist up to his neck. The pain fuelled the anger churning and boiling over in his mind, and James roared as he leapt, coming down on Shearing, his fists flying, curses and spit flying from his mouth. Tears streaked his cheeks, but those he didn’t notice. All that mattered was making sure Shearing shut up, that he didn’t tell anyone else.
Afterwards, he couldn’t remember anything. One second he’d been full of a rage so intense he’d seen nothing but red, something he’d always thought was an exaggeration when other people mentioned it happening. He had never lost control of himself, not like that, and it scared James more than almost anything else he’d ever experienced.
He slowly became aware of the cool hard surface beneath his ass, and the fact that his eyes were closed. James blinked them open cautiously and found himself looking at Chase, crouched in front of him. Disoriented, James struggled to make sense of where he was and finally realised he was sitting at the kitchen table in one of the battered wooden chairs.
“Are you okay now?” Chase asked, and the hysterical laugh that slipped past James’
lips added another layer of fear to his heart.
“No,” he admitted, Chase’s worried look having shoved back the laughter. James averted his gaze and spotted Xavier at the sink with Glenn, wiping at the man’s face with a damp hand towel. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” James whispered, although that wasn’t entirely true. He knew he was broken, maybe irreparably. The anger he’d felt had morphed into mortification at his actions, and James dropped his gaze to his hands, folded on his lap. His stomach somersaulted when he saw his abraded knuckles. Chase didn’t say anything, and James thought he must be hopelessly screwed up, and he didn’t want to be.
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Everything was such a mess in his head, and he hadn’t had the chance to deal with it, not when he’d been doped to the gills until he’d been freed from his second prison.
Some small part of himself knew he needed help, he understood he couldn’t keep everything inside and buried—it wouldn’t stay buried, all the bad things that had happened.
They kept bleeding out into his attempts at normalcy, undermining his fledgeling confidence and hopes until neither existed. He couldn’t talk about the things that had happened to him, much less deal with them.
Chase reached up and cupped his cheek, tugging slightly. James dared to look at his friend again and felt some of the ice coating his heart melt away at the concern and love in the man’s gleaming eyes. “I know you don’t believe me, and it sounds trite, but it will get better. You will get better. I understand you couldn’t tell me what—” Chase stopped and bit his bottom lip, glancing aside in the direction where Glenn and Xavier stood. “I do understand, but you can’t keep up like this.”
He shook his head, closed his eyes, and sighed all before meeting James’ gaze again.
He placed one hand over James’ heart. “I suck at this. I’m probably doing it wrong. What I mean is, I believe the man I’ve known and loved for years, the man who has been my closest friend, who’s always looked out for me—I know he’s in here.” Chase’s fingers pressed lightly, as if he were feeling for James’ heart through his chest, or maybe stimulating it to beat again. “I believe he’s here, wanting out, just waiting to make sure it’s safe again.”
Chase’s green eyes swam, moisture gleaming before it trickled down his cheeks. “It’s safe here, James. All of us, even Glenn, want you to be safe. We want to help.”
Hearing Glenn’s name didn’t rouse the usual feelings of fear and anger it usually did.
Instead, at this moment, James felt oddly numb, almost to the point of total disaffection. That disturbed him so much he felt panic trying to swell up again. Chase murmured something, James wasn’t sure what, then the hand pressed to his chest pushed just enough to remind James to breathe.
James did, deep and mostly steady, letting the air chase back the panic, glad and surprised it seemed to do just that. That small bit of control, of keeping his body from going haywire and tripping out on him again, gave James the smallest measure of encouragement.
“I want to…” James stopped and swallowed, the movement burning down his throat all the way to his stomach. He coughed softly and tried again. “I want to get—” better? The words www.total-e-bound.com
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didn’t seem right, didn’t seem enough. James tried to figure out how to say what he wanted to explain, but there was nothing that fit.
For a man who’d once been the silver-tongued champion in the court room, it was frustrating to the point of wanting to punch something, but he’d already done that, taken out his anger and pain on someone else. Yes, he’d been angry, furious even at Glenn spilling his secrets, but a small part of him was now relieved it was out. He couldn’t hide from it anymore, and there’d been more than once he’d wanted to confide in Chase but hadn’t quite known how, especially not when he couldn’t say the words.
But what had truly set him off, he knew now as he sneaked a glance at the older man, was knowing that Glenn knew. James should have figured it, had suspected, but the need he’d seen in Glenn’s eyes on more than one occasion had given James hope that the agent didn’t know. Because he couldn’t want me if I was damaged, right? But as his eyes met with Glenn’s for one brief moment before the older man turned his head away, James had to wonder if he’d been wrong about that all along, and maybe Glenn had wanted him even if he was a mess.
James looked back at Chase and felt a tiny kernel of hope warming in his heart. He swiped at the moisture on his friend’s cheek. “I think I need help,” he admitted, and the words, instead of ripping him open like he feared, seemed to lift some of the weight off his shoulders.
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Chapter Ten
Chase leading James into the bedroom was his cue to leave. Glenn set the towel on the counter and forced his gaze away from James’ lean, defeated-looking form. Oh, he knew James wasn’t defeated, he just wasn’t sure James knew that yet, and he was afraid the man would condemn himself for what had happened moments earlier. Glenn didn’t want that, but he didn’t think now would be the best time to try to reassure James that he understood why he had just kicked his ass.
Xavier glanced at his partner’s retreating form before sighing and rubbing at his forehead. He groaned as he scraped his hand down his cheek. “I didn’t realise—” Xavier stopped, his lips thinning as he fisted his hands. “I thought James was just—that he needed time. I didn’t know.”
Glenn shook his head and immediately regretted it as the room tilted. He slapped a hand to the countertop as his legs wobbled. James packed quite a punch. “He could have been recuperating, and maybe he was, to an extent.” Pain radiated up Glenn’s jaw and across his cheek. In a flash his entire head throbbed, and his vision sparked with flecks of grey.
He felt hands on his arms, then a strong body against his as Xavier moved closer and held him upright. “You need to sit down. He really did a number on you.”
Glenn blinked and started to shake his head again before catching himself. The image of James’ furious expression materialised in his mind and he went cold inside. As angry as James had been, as hurt, he didn’t know if he could hold on to the hope that had driven him thus far. Even t
hough he’d only had the best of intentions, he didn’t think James would ever forgive him. He just hadn’t thought Xavier and Chase realised how seriously James was hurt, or how much he needed professional help, and hadn’t known how else to make them understand. And they were responsible for him, in a way, taking James in and—
“I need to leave,” Glenn gritted out, pushing against Xavier. The man was a damned mountain of muscle, and didn’t seem inclined to step back, but he did eventually, glaring at Glenn with a mix of concern and irritation. “No, you should be monitored in case you have a concussion, not to mention I saw James hit you here,” Xavier brushed a hand over Glenn’s www.total-e-bound.com
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side, lighting new waves of fire along his ribs. “Do you think anything’s broken? Should we get you to the hospital?”
“No!” Glenn shoved at Xavier’s hands and managed to put a good foot between them finally. “A hospital would want to know what happened, and I’m not even going to risk James getting in trouble for this. And—” Glenn dredged up a glower of his own, even though it set a thousand pinpricks of agony throbbing in his face. “I’m capable of taking care of myself, despite the fact I didn’t fight back against James. He had a right to be angry.”
Xavier arched a brow and crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t think all that anger was because of you. It was just directed at you.”
Glenn hoped that was the case, but with the way James had always been so skittish and fearful around him, he couldn’t quite believe it. He averted his eyes, unwilling to risk Xavier seeing the hurt and longing there. “Maybe, but I obviously disturb him and I don’t know why. It’s probably best I stay away for a while.” He’d go back to his hotel room and down a handful of ibuprofen, then try to figure out if he should make ‘a while’ into something more permanent. Just because he had some strong and, he suspected, enduring feelings for James didn’t mean the other man would ever reciprocate. As a matter of fact, after what had just happened, that last bit seemed extremely unlikely.
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