“Wait up,” he said firmly. “One minute we were talking, the next you hare out of the car, and we’re done for the night—”

“You don’t want to hear what I got to say.” Liam was able to talk and try to wriggle out of Marcus’s grip.

“Do I want to hear about whatever hate crime had you running? Hear about something that gets you hiding and nervous? Of course I don’t. I want to get to know you better, but the coward in me doesn’t want to hear about you being hurt. But I need to, and I’m sorry if something I said or did made you think I didn’t care.”

“You don’t have to care,” Liam blurted out.

“Okay,” Marcus said in a soft tone, “let’s go back in the car, and talk. Okay? We can just talk.”

Liam nodded and allowed himself to be led back to the car. He was in and by instinct he buckled up. Marcus closed his door and wriggled until he could face Liam.

“I’m only doing this because…” He stopped. This honesty shit was fucking hard. He should keep his mouth shut, get with the kissing, and maybe find out what it was like to have nice sex instead of what he’d known before. He was opening himself up to ridicule, and he hated making himself so damn vulnerable.

“Because?”

“I have to get all of this out, then it won’t eat away at me inside.”

“I’m listening.”

Liam breathed deeply and the let the air out in a noisy huff. “I was sixteen when I left home.”

“You left? Or you were asked to leave,” Marcus summarized.

“Yep. Asked is a good way of explaining it. I’m not the only gay teen who finds out family love isn’t all it’s cracked up to be stacked up against the Bible. Simple for them. I wasn’t too broken up about it, not like I ever fit into the family anyways.” He wasn’t lying. Even as a small boy he’d been the odd one out. “I just went south, ended up as a seasonal worker at Bar Five and learned my horses. Seemed like I had a knack for it, and I suppose you could say that I finally found my space.”

“But you left.”

“Yeah, didn’t have much of choice, one way or the other, I was clocking out of the Bar Five. Got myself on the radar of the owner’s oldest son, Hank Castille. How I managed it I don’t know, even at sixteen I was scrawny and openly gay because I didn’t know otherwise. He had his eyes on me, and not long before my seventeenth birthday was the…” He stopped again. This was supposed to be easy. It was simple four letter word, and he’d made so many inroads to being healed. Marcus gripped his hand the same as when they were in the restaurant. It was comforting, a solid presence in amongst the chaos in his head. Actually saying the words was damn hard—way harder than it had been to tell Jack and Robbie.

What did he have to lose? Marcus could listen and try to accept, or he could drive Liam up to the ranch and leave. Liam wouldn’t need to see him again, but outside of Hank’s brother, and now Jack and Robbie, he’d told no one else.

“Was what?” Marcus prompted.

“He raped me.”

Silence. Marcus squeezed Liam’s hand tightly. “Go on.”

“What else do you want me to say? It happened again, at least three times that I recall in detail, I just rolled over and let him because he hurt me and I was… God… then when I was unconscious…look…you don’t need to know all the details. Finally one night I couldn’t handle it anymore, so I decided to end being scared. I had a knife…”

“You were going to kill him? Hell, how did you wait that long?” Marcus said fiercely.

“Kill him?” Liam snorted a laugh. “Six foot of muscle and me this scrawny, useless kid that only ever felt brave around horses? I didn’t try to kill him.”

He pulled his hand away from Marcus and turned over his arm. Hidden under the shirt he knew what Marcus would be able to see in the daylight, but not now in the dark of the car only lit by soft moonlight. All Liam could see was Marcus’s facial expression as he pulled back the material and encouraged Marcus to touch the raised lines.

Marcus inhaled sharply. “No,” he said softly.

“It’s okay, the knife actually wasn’t that sharp.” Liam huffed a laugh. “Couldn’t get it right. Hank’s brother Darren found me, sorted me out. I stole money and ran. All the way to my parents, who hadn’t undergone some transformation about their son being an aberration and still didn’t want me.”

“Didn’t you go to the cops?”

“I tried. After the first time I froze, then I showered and scrubbed and cleaned every inch of me. I was scared to report him. The second time, the third time… I couldn’t say a word to anyone. But you have to understand, he was my boss, and he gave me all this bull about it being my fault, and fuck, I believed him. I was seventeen. Still a kid.”

“What happened then?”

“I backed down, ’cause, yeah, I did deserve it. My jeans did have holes in them, and I did smile a lot. I did that, y’know, smiling.” He looked up at Marcus and there was incredible pain in his eyes. “I smiled so much. I led him on. A cock tease.”

“Fuck that,” Marcus cursed. “You didn’t.”

“I know that now, but it was easy to believe the worst, yeah? I’d already been rejected by my family, why wouldn’t it be my fault? By the time I actually talked to the cops they looked on it as me crying wolf, I didn’t correct them.”

“Shit,” Marcus cursed. The noise was loud in the car.

“Ask me, then.”

“What?”

“Ask me why I didn’t run before. Why I let him hurt me.”

Marcus looked horrified at the question. “I don’t have to ask that. You were looking for family, didn’t matter what you found was evil, it was still somewhere to be.” Marcus threaded his fingers with Liam’s, then smiled softly.

“No one’s ever put it like that before.” Liam forced the self-pity back down where it was normally hidden.

“You left in the end, you somehow managed to get yourself away, and I want to shake this Darren by the hand for saving you for me.”

“For you?”

Marcus chuckled and laid a hand flat on Liam’s chest. Liam moved a little so he was half facing Marcus and waited.

Marcus whispered, “Do you feel anything in here for me? Just attraction. Or you want to have some fun. Or that I could be a friend? I can work with any of that.”

Liam nodded. He pressed his hand over Marcus’s. “Attraction. Need. Friendship. But what I can’t bear to see in your expression is pity. Promise me you’ll never pity me.”

Marcus stole a heady kiss, then moved back. “I promise.”

“You want to come back to my tent?”

Marcus nodded, then turned to start the engine. “I can’t wait to see this tent,” he laughed.

When they were back and the car parked, Liam and Marcus held hands all the way to the tent, and Liam switched on the small heater and shut the tent flaps. Together they lay under the single sleeping bag on the small camp bed. It wasn’t exactly what Liam expected would be available if they’d gone back to Marcus’s place, but just for hugs this close, it would do just fine.

They lay quietly talking for a long while, and when dawn painted the sky with soft amber, Marcus left. They kissed one last time, and when Marcus left it felt to Liam like he’d taken a little piece of Liam’s heart with him for safekeeping.

Chapter 11

~October~

Robbie stood at the door of the apartment that he and Eli shared, and for a second he felt sad. A lot had happened since he’d started at the D, and things changed even more the day Eli moved in. Before Eli, Robbie had space in his closet and in his bathroom. He had peace to read and could eat all the crap he wanted. Eli took up most of the closet, had products in boxes in the bathroom, always wanted to chat when Robbie was reading, and hell, he was all into healthy eating.

Robbie wouldn’t want it any other way.

“Ready to go?” Eli said from behind him.

“In a bit.”

Eli moved to stand in front of him and cradled Robbie’s face in his hand. “You sad you’re leaving here?”