Page 37 of Damaged

Silver was quiet for a moment before he said, “Okay.”

I expected Silver to move so we could easily switch spots, but he surprised me when he began to climb over me. He froze the moment his body was lined up with mine. No doubt he was remembering the previous day. I sure as shit was.

Thankfully, the young man hurried to get over me so he could sit behind the wheel. My dick was already at half-mast but as soon as I remembered the conversation we’d been having, I felt my dick deflating.

I reached across him to flip off the switch for the autopilot and told him just to keep the boat headed straight. It wasn’t until his body began to relax several minutes later that I broached the topic again. “Your parents… they didn’t leave you with Ivan, did they?”

Silver didn’t respond, but there was no missing the tension that was starting to coil throughout his body again.

“They sold you to him, didn’t they?” I probed.

I was sure he wouldn’t answer. He was once again wound tight but steering the boat seemed to be doing what I’d hoped it would. There was no feeling like the one you got when you were in control of a boat out on open water. I only hoped that some of that control would make it easier for Silver to answer my questions.

The young man nodded. I thought that was the only response he was going to give me but then he quietly said, “Not for money, though. They ran out of their…”

When he hesitated, I considered his words before supplying, “Drugs.”

Silver nodded again. “They called it medicine.”

“Do you remember any of the time you spent with your parents before they?—”

“No,” Silver said adamantly. “Why does it matter?” he snapped. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel, but he remained focused on the water in front of us. There wasn’t another boat in sight.

“You said you felt like you’d been on a boat before even though you couldn’t remember ever actually having been on one.” I paused to give him time to digest my words before continuing. “This morning you disappeared. In your mind. Like you were remembering something.”

Silver finally looked at me. “I told you it was nothing. It was probably just something I saw on the internet or TV,” he said. I could tell from his voice that his stress was building.

I could have ended the conversation there but if my suspicion turned out to be correct, it was something Silver deserved to know.

“What did you see?” I asked. I slid closer to him, enough that our thighs were touching. I practically had to pry his left hand from the steering wheel. I surrounded it with both my hands and began rubbing it, hoping the move would help him relax. I was glad when he didn’t jerk it away.

“Some people at a table. Eating. Kids laughing. I don’t know,” he responded in frustration.

“Have you had any other strange sensations like that?” I asked.

“Cartwheels,” Silver said simply.

“Cartwheels?”

“I know what they are. It’s like the boat. I can’t remember ever doing them but there’s this feeling…”

“Like you’d done them before?”

It took a long time for Silver to respond. “I’m not sure.”

I was surprised when he looked at me. “How do I know what they are, Dalton?” he asked, his voice full of confusion and fear. “Cartwheels… how do I even know that word?”

I began stroking the inside of his wrist in the hopes of calming him down. It took a while for it to work, but I could tell he was still trying to control his emotions as he stared at the water in front of us.

As much as I hated to do it to him, I needed to know the truth. It didn’t matter why I needed to know; I just did. More importantly, though, he needed to know the truth.

“Silver,” I began carefully. “Is there any chance that the people who took you and sold you to Ivan weren’t your real parents?”

Chapter 12

SILVER

I was so shocked by the question that everything instantly went numb.

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