Page 1 of Confessions of Pain

Prologue

Gabriel

I’d just sneaked back into my room, squeezing my body through a bedroom window that was borderline too small for me to get back into. I was flying high, my body still vibrating from the endorphins of sexual satisfaction and pure undiluted love. It was my graduation night. I’d finally made it out of high school, and it was the first time Kelsey and I had gone all the way.

Since Kelsey was younger than I was by almost a year, I had wanted to wait until I graduated high school to finally make him mine. And until he was old enough too. It had been difficult—sometimes almost impossible, but we’d done it, and it had so been worth the wait. I could still smell him on me, and as I stood in the middle of my room, contemplating never bathing again, because I didn’t want that scent to ever go away, I heard a loud banging on the door. I was thinking that whoever was on the other side needed to tone it down, because that damned door was barely hanging on the frame as it was.

My old man let out a string of curse words that might have made some people blush, but was normal for him, as he staggered across the living room to open the door. How could one man make so much noise when it couldn’t have been more than five steps from the couch to the door of our tiny home?

No, not a home, but the place we lived in. It had never felt like a home—even before that night. I had never had a real home—a refuge, a sanctuary like I’d heard other people talk about. And definitely not the cushy mansion Kelsey lived in.

I walked over to my closed bedroom door, cracked it open, and listened to what was going on. The fact that anybody knocked on our door at all was a strange occurrence, not to mention the fact that it was almost eleven o’clock in the evening. Our only visitors, albeit rare, were the other local residents of our trailer park, and I was certain the bulk of that group were already passed out drunk or stoned on drugs by that time of night.

I’d heard my father yank the door open and bellow, “Stop the fucking banging already! You’re gonna wake the dead!” Then he belched and the room down the hall got suddenly quiet.

“Is your son home, Jebediah?” a stern voice I didn’t recognize asked.

“How the hell would I know, Sheriff?” my father countered. “It ain’t my place to keep up with him. The bastard’s eighteen years old,” he said. It was a sorry excuse to not having a fucking clue where his son was or what he was doing, for basically not giving a shit about him, but that was my dad.

My entire body tensed up when I’d heard the voice ask about me. What the hell? I hadn’t done anything wrong. Why would the sheriff be looking for me? A chill of terror washed over me. What if something had happened to Kelsey after I’d left him? We’d only been about a half a mile from his house when we’d parted ways, him on his Ninja motorcycle and me walking. I’d had over five miles to walk to get back to the rougher side of town and then another fucking ten minutes to try and wrangle my ass through the bedroom window. I didn’t own a watch, but calculating it in my head, I told myself it couldn’t have taken me more than forty-five minutes. Fuck, did he have a wreck? I just knew he’d had a wreck. I was too freaked out at the idea of Kelsey being hurt to even wonder why the sheriff would notifyme, of all people. Unless Kels had asked for me—oh shit, had he asked for me? I had to get to him.

I had been about to yank my door open and go racing down the hall when the next voice—the next words—had caused me to freeze in my tracks. My blood chilled. My heart stopped beating. The voice belonged to Kelsey’s father, and he sounded positively furious.

“Maybe if you’d known where he was, you could have kept him from raping my boy, you son of a bitch!”

Rape? I stumbled to a halt and stood there frozen. They thought I hadrapedKelsey? My mind whirled around what I’d heard, desperately trying to come up with a logical explanation for what they were saying. It couldn’t be what I was thinking…it couldn’t be. Kelsey wouldn’t have said that. He would never have lied about me that way. I loved him. We loved each other.

“Raped your boy? What the hell? My boy ain’t no faggot! I’d kill him myself if he was!” my father roared. His words hurt me but didn’t cut nearly as badly as thinking that Kelsey had told someone I’d hurt him. It wasn’t like I’d lived my life thinking I was loved by my parents and was suddenly faced with the possibility that I might lose that love if they found out I was gay. No, I’d known they didn’t care much for me, but I’d thought Kelsey loved me, and I couldn’t wrap my mind around why he would betray me that way. I felt like my heart was breaking.

“He told me so himself. Are you calling my boy a liar?” Kelsey’s dad countered in a voice loud enough that the entire trailer park had to have heard him. “Think about it, Jebediah! You and yours are nothing but trash in our county. My boy is a part of the upper crust of society. Who in the hell do you think is more believable? My boy or yours?”

I could feel a blush burning my cheeks and pain ratcheting through my chest when I heard the father of the boy I loved saying the words I’d always believed in the back of my mind. Iwasn’tgood enough for Kelsey. I had fucking known it, but I’d wanted him so badly that I had let him convince me that I was worthy of him.

“Just go get your boy, Jeb. I’m going to have to take him in and question him.” I finally figured out the other voice was our local Chief of Police Jackson Solomon.They’d come for me. I was going to go to jail for rape. Kelsey had told his father I raped him! The pain in my heart was so bad that it threatened to take my breath away, but I knew I didn’t have time to wallow in my despair. There was no way I was going to prison for something I didn’t do. I eased the door shut and turned the lock. It wouldn’t hold long, but it might buy me some time. If they thought I was locked inside, they wouldn’t look for me outside. With a moment I didn’t really have to spare, I glanced around my pathetic room and wished I had time to grab some things to take with me. I didn’t have much, but there were a few things that would have made my run from the law a fraction easier. The only thing I took was the seventy-two dollars I’d saved and hidden from my old man. I’d planned on buying Kelsey something nice with it, to prove how much he meant to me, but now I would use it to run from Kelsey’s lies.

I scrambled out my bedroom window as I heard them banging their fists against my door. And I ran for my life.

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