Page 86 of The Laughing Game

“Yes. I thought, at the time, that he was helping in his own particular way. But now I’m starting to wonder if Gideon is right about my father possibly sabotaging me.”

“Do you think your father would do something like that?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, then went quiet. After a few moments, he started talking again. “My father sent me away to boarding school when I was six. I didn’t want to go. What eight year old wants to leave the only home they know to stay at school night and day for eight months?”

“Not many.”

“I certainly didn’t. I begged my mother to let me stay, but she said that it was my father’s prerogative to send me. I didn’t even know what that word meant.” He sighed. “But by then it had become obvious that my autistic younger brother would likely never speak or function in a normal way and I think that was a big blow to them, especially my father. He didn’t want me brought down by my younger sibling’s disability. Which in retrospect seems even more hideous than it did at the time.” He shrugged. “Or perhaps, they simply had their hands full.”

“Oh jeez. That’s pretty rough. Was it terrible?”

“Angel, those first few weeks were hideous. I missed my mother and my home so much. Not my dad, particularly. But everything else that was familiar. I got used to the place. It wasn’t a bad school—they did their best for us—but I’d have preferred not to have lived there. And I didn’t understand why you’d go to the trouble of having a child if you didn’t want them to live with you. It didn’t make sense.” He offered me a sad smile. “So, I figured it must have been because I wasn’t a very good child, and they regretted having me.”

“Oh, V,” I said, my forehead creasing with sympathy. “No.”

“I was very young, and confused, and homesick. I decided that I would do everything in my power to prove my worth. I put everything into my education. I maintained excellent marks across all subjects. I was determined to show my father how valuable and accomplished I was, so that he’d let me come back home.”

Vihaal frowned and shrugged.

“Of course, all that served to do was confirm to him that he’d made the right choice to send me there. Because to him it looked like I was thriving.” He gave me a somewhat more cheerful look. “I suppose, in a way, I was. But in other ways I was seriously deprived. I didn’t have many friends, because the other students were intimidated by me.” He laughed. “Even at eight, I was a bit of an ass.”

I grinned, trying to picture him that young. He continued.

“I don’t think I bullied anyone overtly. But I’m sure there were some contemptuous glares at opportune moments. And perhaps some unkind words.”

I gazed at him, trying to imagine it. “Did you eventually figure out a way to be happy there?”

He thought for a moment, staring out of the windshield at the back of his store.

“Happy? No. But I found a way to survive, and I did become popular, eventually, although I held most of my cards close to my chest,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.

“The gay thing, or the kink thing? Or both?”

He gave me a cheeky smile that made my heart ache. “Oh, Angel. You do ask the most entertaining questions. Well, I figured all of that out by the age of fourteen, I suppose, one way or another.”

“You little devil.”

He actually seemed a bit embarrassed. “It’s amazing what you can get away with if you motivate people properly. I won’t say anything more, but just know that I had partners at school, and we had fun, and we parted on good terms. But it was all on the QT. From other boys and from the staff, obviously.” He shrugged and traced the steering wheel with the tip of his index finger. “I’m sure there were rumors.”

“I can imagine,” I said.

“Can you?” He smiled at me in a coy way. “What do you think the rumors about me were, Angel Barnett?”

“That you were a sex god with a pair of handcuffs under your pillow,” I stated, without having to think about it.

He smiled wider.

“Well. Maybe not a sex god…but a lesser, equally as compelling, entity.”

Vihaal sighed and leaned toward me, taking my chin in his fingers and kissing me hard on the mouth, then pulling back.

“Am I a sex god, Angel?” he asked, in such a serious tone of voice it gave me shivers.

“Well,” I said, trying to quell the excitement in my gut. “It’s easy to get on my knees for you.”

And there was that smile again, the one that took over his face and made fireworks go off inside me.

“We should get home. Gideon’s probably waiting,” Vihaal said, still staring at me with intense emotion.

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