“Not much else to do, I guess,” Jackson said. He gestured at his phone. “My parents are having my truck shipped down to me from Wyoming. Just so I’ll have it. That’s the kind of folks they are.”
“That’s expensive.”
“They do all right. Besides, it’s not about the money. It’s about getting me what I need to enjoy my time at home.” That brow furrow came back, as did the flattened lips. “They asked about you. I told them when we got matched, but not when I found out it was-”
“A mistake?”
“A little odd,” he amended.
My heart did an excited flip. “Good term. What did you tell them when they asked about me?”
“Nothing. Thought I’d wait until, you know.”
“I know.”
He struggled with the topic and probably himself for a few heartbeats. Then he dove in. “I don’t know what to think, Bastian. About any of this. You’ve got a lot to gain by stringing me along into a match. They’ll forgive those student loans. You get money, maybe enough to replace this beater we’re riding in. You get healthcare. Then I’m gone for months at a time, and you can do whatever the hell you want. I won’t know. I’ll be on Mars.”
“Just like Owen?”
An explosive breath burst out of him. “Yeah. Just like Owen.”
I took one hand off the steering wheel to touch his arm. “I’m not Owen.”
“No. You’re maybe some straight guy who might be willing to suck dick in exchange for the other benefits.” He triedso hardto sound like a man of iron, hard and rough-edged and uncaring. A man who’d use harsh, almost insulting phrasing to give me a push and see if I dislodged so easily.
All I heard was that pain he’d endured and the song of shattered trust. And I knew what I had to do. To gain trust, you have to offer it. If you want a person to be vulnerable, you must first show your own belly.
“I’m not a straight man,” I told him. “I’m bi. Pan, probably. I’ve always known it.”
I knew what he’d say next. In fact, I counted on it. “How can you know? You’ve never tried it. Don’t get me wrong, here. I’m all for discovering yourself and learning about what you want. But I don’t want what happens when a guy decides he’s ‘bi’ because he got a boner thinking about a friend once. He tries it, figures out it wasn’t what he wanted after all, and then? You said it. Heartbreak’s the worst, and I don’t have it in me to take another ration of that shit. I can’t be your introduction to cock when it’s my marriage on the line.”
Time to give him one of those tear-soaked secrets I hoarded. I took a deep breath to steel myself. “When I was twenty-one, my parents threw me out. I said that. The life choice they didn’t like was that I’d kissed another man at a party. They found out and called me home the next day to confront me about what happened.”
“How’d they find out?” Jackson asked. His tone had softened, from that raw-edged crassness to a subdued query.
“Grapevine. My father has friends at that college. A student I knew was talking about it before class started, you know, ‘And then Bastian kissed Mark, can you believe it? I told him he should and he finally did,’ that sort of thing. The professor overheard and told one of the faculty, who told my father. No one’s fault but mine.” I kept my eyes on the road so I wouldn’t look backward at the memories of what came next.
Jackson turned his phone over and over in his hands. “And your folks flipped.”
“They wouldn’t have if I’d said what they wanted to hear.” Another deep breath. Adrenaline had kicked up in my veins, as it always did when I told this story. “My father sat me down in the study. That was the official ‘you’re getting a talking-to’ room. He said he’d heard what happened at the party. That another man had kissed me. He understood I probably hadn’t asked for it, and that I shouldn’t be ashamed of what that man had done. It wasn’t my fault. All I had to do was say the word, and he’d prosecute that man as far as he could. Get him thrown out of school. See to it he was disgraced. Life would go on as usual if I just denied I’d kissed another man.”
Those memories never faded. My father, angry beneath the calm veneer, the outrage leaking out into his voice. He didn’t know why he was angry yet, because he didn’t know if I would engage in the time-honored family tradition of rug-sweeping yet. He had offered me an out. A way to save his respect for me. He towered over my sitting self and threw me a lifeline that would pull me out of trouble and keep me in the family’s good graces.
Staring into his hard, cold blue eyes, I thought about it. It would have been so very convenient for us all if I had grabbed at that sliver of salvation. Years later, my parents would have convinced themselves of the lie they wanted to sell.That time Bastion kissed a manwould becomethat time a very improper man kissed Bastian at a partyand my sin would wash away.
“You didn’t,” Jackson stated.
“No. I didn’t.” The breath I sucked in quivered. “My father had always intimidated me. His expectations,bothmy parents’ expectations, had cowed me into doing exactly what they wanted me to do with my life. No confrontation with them had ever ended well. I sat in that study, eaten alive with fear, and I wanted to lie. Instead, I told them the truth. I’d kissed Mark myself. Rolled up and planted one on his lips. More than that, I’dlikedit. I wantedmoreof it. I felt more in a kiss with a man than I ever had with a woman. Women were nice. I enjoyed them. But that one kiss? He could have done anything he wanted to me if he’d promised me another one. That was how the world I knew ended.”
Jackson’s knuckles whitened as he gripped his phone. “They threw you out because you wouldn’t lie to them about wanting men.”
“Yep. Really conservative, my parents. Traditional values, and we both know what that means. They’d already paid for that semester of college, and my dorm room, so I could graduate on schedule for my initial degree and didn’t lose the roof over my head right away. After that? I had to swap universities and take out loans.” I tried to shrug. I always tried to shrug when I had to talk about this. It came out a stiff twitch as the rest of the memories tried to play in my head.
This time, though, a warm hand on my forearm startled me out of them. I glanced over to see Jackson’s incredible green eyes ready to catch mine as his hand settled on my arm. “Hey. You listen to me. Your parents areshit.All right? They’reworsethan shit, ‘cause shit’s useful and they’re not. You didn’t do anything wrong, and they don’t fucking deserve you.”
If I hadn’t been driving, I might have broken right there. Instead, I dredged up a wan smile. “Thanks. I mean it. So, no. I’ve never had sex with a man. After that, it just- It hurt to think about. Women were safer. Until I saw your picture. I was lost when I watched your video. Women might be safer, but I don’t want to be safe anymore. Unless it’s safe with you.”
His hand gripped my arm, almost a spasm as my words hit. His expression opened up, the lock he’d kept on it ripped away. I could have died for the smile he hit me with.