Page 19 of Confessions of Pain

Chapter 6

I turned the engine of the rental car off and studied the slip of paper Barb had given me that contained Kelsey’s home address. Squinting in disbelief at the small but tidy house in front of me, I shook my head in shock and then tapped the side of the GPS. Yeah, like that fixed everything. The GPS was right, no matter how many times I tapped it, turned it off and on, or frowned at it. Scowling at the house again, I realized this could only mean one thing: Barb had sent me to an address where thugs were probably waiting to either kill me or, at the least, beat the shit out of me. I guess I needed to issue some kudos to the older lady, I never really saw it coming. I wasn’t usually caught so flat-footed when it came to dangerous situations.

Fuck.

I sat in the car a few more minutes and contemplated what my next move should be, before I finally muttered out a “fuck it” and threw the car door open. Maybe the tiny Norman Rockwell house was one of his many properties, the one where he went when he wanted to get a taste of what the other half lived like. Nah, somebody was going to whip my ass.

Let them try. My last twenty-four hours had me spoiling for some hand-to-hand combat. Maybe this would be exactly what I needed to calm the fuck down and start moving down the lane of getting Kelsey out of my system for good.

There was a black wrought-iron fence encircling the house and lawn, but the gate wasn’t locked. Before opening it, I glanced around for a snarling guard dog, rattled the gate to ensure one wasn’t sleeping peacefully under the porch or in the backyard, and then let myself onto the property. The walkway to the front porch was made from paving stones that someone had laid with painstaking perfection. The lawn was green and rose bushes grew beautifully around the cozy porch in front of me. The furniture on the porch looked comfortable and cute, decorated with colorful throw pillows, but was definitely refurbished with antiques. I would like to tell myself none of it reminded me of Kelsey, but that would be a lie. He’d loved roses, insisting on taking cuts of different colors and giving them to me with a shy but sweet smile. I’d scoffed at them at first, hurting his feelings with my macho arrogance that demanded I ignore the way the beautiful flowers in the hand of the even more beautiful man had made my heart tumble wildly in my chest. One look at his sad pout and I’d caved. My perceived manhood wasn’t worth hurting the boy I loved. Now, years later, my eyes soaked up the beauty of God’s creation and I knew this was, indeed, Kelsey’s home. I couldn’t begin to explain why someone of his wealth lived in the cozy-looking home, but that didn’t matter, Kelsey’s name was stamped all over everything, from the roses to the large metal angel wings fastened to the wood siding of the white house.

Angel. He’d been my angel at one time. He’d basked in the pet name I’d given him, blushing furiously each time, but his blue eyes would darken a shade, letting me know how much he loved me calling him my angel.

I frowned. No, that had all been a lie. He was no angel. Angels didn’t lie the way Kelsey had. Angels didn’t break hearts the way Kelsey had broken mine.

Much more comfortable with the wave of fury that had accompanied my reminder that Kelsey was nothing more than a very pretty liar, I banged on the front door. Hard. Hell, the pounding caused several neighbors to look over in my direction. I ignored them and waited.

Nothing. No sounds of movement from the other side of the door. Nothing but loud music blaring from somewhere in the back of the house. No curtain fluttered. No one peeked out the window. I banged again…and kept banging. After several long, uncomfortable minutes of my punching match with the wooden door, I finally stopped. Eying the sturdy door, I wondered if I could knock it off the hinges. Yes, that was a bit of overkill, but I still considered it. He had to have heard me and was choosing to ignore me, probably lounging on his couch hoping I would disappear like I’d done years ago.

Too fucking bad. I wasn’t leaving this town until my heart, soul, and mind was finished with Kelsey Morganston once and for all. As a last ditch effort before knocking the door down, I reached down and twisted the doorknob…which turned easily. He didn’t even lock his fucking doors?

I pushed the door open, peeked inside to make sure he wasn’t on the other side waiting to bash me on the side of the head with a baseball bat, and when I’d decided it was safe enough, I walked inside and closed the door behind me. First things first, his scent, which I had memorized from our brief encounter yesterday, floated around my nose and reminded me of what I couldn’t have…what I had never really had.

I squashed that potential pity party down and looked around the front room. Like the outside, it looked cozy and extremely neat and cared for. There was a big screen television on one wall, a large well-worn sofa opposite the television, and a sturdy coffee table in between them. There was a recliner in one corner and then the remainder of the furniture looked like…cat furniture? Two cat towers sat side by side in front of a window and then a few other cat necessities were strewn about the room, including several comfy cat beds, a tunnel for them to crawl through, and some toys. Well, I guess it was safe to assume he still loved cats.

A noise to my left alerted me that I was no longer alone in the living room but before I could determine who or what made the noise, I felt sharp pricks start stabbing my legs. Not having a clue what I was being attacked by, I looked down, prepared for the worst, and nearly burst out laughing when I realized it was five tiny kittens rappelling up my legs, kitty claws digging straight through my dress slacks and into the skin of my legs. With sheer determination possessed only by a kitten, they kept crawling up my legs and I was forced to reach down and start gathering them in my hands before they hit the promised land and stuck their claws into something way too sensitive for such a weapon. As tiny as they were, it was easy to gather them up in my hands and really take a few seconds to check them out. They were nothing more than tiny piles of fluff with big eyes that were blinking at me like I was some kind of freak of nature. They were cuter than…well, cuter than anything I’d ever seen before.

They wiggled and squirmed in my grasp, but since their weaponry had retracted, I felt fairly safe to take a few seconds just to admire their cuteness. I’d only had one pet in my entire life and I hadn’t had her very long. My hasty escape had prevented me from taking her when I’d left and, to be honest, I’d refused to allow myself to even consider what happened to her after I was gone. My parents weren’t pet lovers. Of course, they weren’t children lovers either. Snowball had been my last pet and I didn’t see another one anytime in my near future. Ethan, Jeremiah, and Titus were dog men, so I hadn’t bothered trying to add a cat to our family, even though I’d always loved them. A meow, soft and scratchy, drew my attention to the spot next to my feet and when my eyes landed on the fluffy white cat, watching me with familiar pale blue eyes almost as beautiful as Kelsey’s, my mind propelled me back in time in an instant.

“Sooooo, you know my birthday is coming up in a very short, will-fly-by-be-here-before-you-know-it six months, right?” Kelsey said, with one of his beguiling smiles that always led to him getting what he wanted from me.

I felt a moment’s panic, afraid that he was going to ask for something I couldn’t afford to buy him, but that fear evaporated in a split second—that wasn’t Kelsey. He would never ask for material things. My baby was more of a ‘take me to see the stars’ than a ‘take me to an expensive restaurant’ kind of guy. Of course, that was a hell of a good thing because I was, as usual, broker than a butt crack. Being from one of the poorest families in town was definitely a liability when one was dating the beauty from one of the richest families in town. Yeah, definitely a liability. I was fairly certain Kelsey didn’t consider it a liability, but I sure the hell did.

Smiling, I asked, “Are you angling for a gift, angel?

Soft laughter, music to my ears, tumbled from puffy lips that were a bright pretty pink because I’d just spent the last forty minutes kissing him with all the stamina of a seventeen-year-old boy. “Well, yeah, I guess I was.” Blue eyes fringed with long lashes glanced up at me as he added, “There’s something I want and I only want it from you.”

I sure the fuck hoped a body could survive with all its blood flowing straight to the cock area, because that was exactly what was happening with me. Between those lips, his come-hither eyes, and me already having a damned good idea where this conversation was headed, my cock had gone from flat to fat in record time.

Playing dumb, I asked, “And what might that be, angel? I already had an idea of what I wanted to get you, so you might be out of luck this year.”

His eyes narrowed and he walked me backward off the trail we’d been hiking on and didn’t stop until my back was flat against a tree and his lean length was pushed against me. His smaller, more compact body felt like what I knew Heaven had to feel like.

He stood on tiptoes, nibbled at my bottom lip, and whispered, “I was hoping you might finally turn me into a man.” His slender hand reached down to cup my junk through my jeans. “Please tell me you’re finally going to give in to my begging and fuck me. Please,” he whispered again before diving in for a kiss.

For a few, blissful moments, we simply devoured each other’s mouths—tasting, teasing, and tormenting. Kissing Kelsey always had the same effect on my body: it made my heart want to explode with love. I loved him. I wanted to spend the rest of my life proving how much I loved him.

When I heard him whimper with need, I maneuvered us around until his back was against the tree and I was the one pushing against him. Never breaking our kiss, I cupped his ass and then lifted him off the ground. When his legs wrapped around my waist, a possessive growl rumbled in my throat. Our cocks, both burning and rock-hard, pushed against each other and begged for attention.

“You’re too young,” I panted against his lips. He wasn’t much younger than me, only about eight months, but he seemed much younger…much more innocent. I wasn’t worthy. A huge part of me was terrified that the ugliness of my life would somehow rub off on Kelsey as he spent more and more time with me. If we were to have sex, would I ruin him forever?

“Don’t start that shit with me, Gabriel. You aren’t much older than me.” Bumping his head against my forehead, he whispered, “You know I love you. I’ve been in love with you forever. It hurts when you act like I’m not mature enough or man enough for you. Yeah, I get it, I’m smaller than you and I’ve led a sheltered life, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I feel…that I don’t know what I want.”

Kelsey always pushed for sex—had always acted as if he knew what he wanted and was determined to go after it with the same enthusiasm he used with everything else.

“I love you too, angel. You know I do. Six months until graduation and your birthday happen to coincide. See, even the stars are lining up. Six months and you’ll be mine. Forever.”

I felt his pouty lips curve into a smile against my neck and all the tension fled out of his lean body. With those words, with that promise, I had managed to erase his worries.

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