Page 55 of Damian & Jun: Episodes 1-4
And his own body, from his core to his thighs to his feet and all through his arms, up to his face, and the pulse in his head from running in the cold, was awake and real.
“I’ve never told you how I met Richard.”
“No.”
“I was seventeen, so seventeen years ago. My older sister had just had a kid, a girl, Armada.”
“That’s not a name of a person.”
“Tell that to my sister. She was probably high when she picked it. Armada was sick. My father was on another bender, spending all our money. I’d just gotten fired from a job at this burger place because someone ruined my uniform and I didn’t have money to buy another one. My sister told me to be a fucking man and do something. I didn’t know what to do. So, I went for a walk. A long walk. I didn’t find anything. And I knew I didn’t want to go home with no money and listen to Armada cry all night because I couldn’t fucking provide for her. There was this construction site I was walking past, and I saw a man with a nice-looking truck there alone. I figured if he had a truck that nice, he could afford to lose something. So, I pulled out a knife, walked up to him, told him to give me his wallet.”
That had been the first night he’d felt the power of Richard’s body, the grip of his hands on his wrist, turning the knife away from them both, spinning him around, his back hitting Richard’s rock-hard chest. Those days, Richard’s muscles had come from reroofing houses and hard manual labor, back before he and Linda had unexpectedly inherited Reevesworth Industries. Richard hadn’t needed the money or power to be himself. He had been, at his core, the man he had chosen to be. And that presence had overwhelmed teenage Damian, cloaking him in the kind of calm and power he had never met before.
Jun’s eyes were blown wide. “You? You robbed him?”
Damian shook his head. “I didn’t get the chance. He had me before I could even finish my threat. I thought I was fucked.”
“That was Reevesworth?”
“Richard, yeah.” Damian grimaced. Jun seemed to be in shock, just standing between Damian’s arms. “When I say I want your mess, Jun, I mean it. I know what mess is.”
“But how…how did you become…this?”
Damian laughed, low and dark. “Richard. A lot more Richard.”
“He rescued you?”
“Not that night. That night, he showed me mercy. He asked me why I needed the money, and I couldn’t lie. I told him the damn pathetic truth. He took my knife and my wallet with my school ID, and he offered me a job with a fifty-dollar advance. Told me to show up the next day or he’d report me to the police. So, I did.”
“And that’s how…you…”
If only it had been that simple.
“No. It got worse. The more money I made after school working on Reevesworth’s construction site, the angrier my father got and the more my sister demanded I pay for things. And the more she looked at me to take care of what everyone needed, the more my father drank. I wouldn’t give him my money. And one night, it came to a head. He came home drunk, slapped Armada in her high chair so hard it fell over, and I had enough. I saw red. Or more like black. I don’t remember when I hit him the first time. I just know that at some point we were outside in the front yard and I was standing over him, hitting him, again and again, and I realized I was bigger and stronger than he was.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No. I might have, but Dalia called the police on me. They arrested me and took me down to the station. I thought I was going to go away for attempted manslaughter. That’s what they said. In America, we get one phone call. I couldn’t call my sister. She was the one who called the police on me and not our dad. I didn’t know anyone who could help, so I called Richard.”
“He came for you.”
Damian nodded. Even after all the years that had passed, it was hard to speak of how it had felt to see Richard in a suit, walking through the door, eyes falling to where his hands had been cuffed to the table.
“He was so calm. He asked me questions, and then he told me he’d see me the next day in court. There was a man named Franklin with him. They talked to the judge. There was a lot of talking. That time and a few times later. I didn’t understand most of it while it was happening. At the trial, they convinced the judge to release me into their custody. I wasn’t allowed near my father, but the judge listened to me when I said I was afraid for my niece. He promised to send CPS out to check on her. He ordered me to stay away from my father for the next five years. Then they took the cuffs off me and let me go.”
Jun blinked, slowly. “So your father wasn’t dead?”
“No. He lived. And my sister stayed with him. With her kid. She’s had five more, actually.”
“And Richard, did you, were you…lovers, then?”
“No,” Damian laughed and shook his head. He tugged Jun over to a bench. “I was under eighteen and a mess. I worked for him, and he found me a sort of halfway house to stay in with other men working at the site. He made me get my GED, and he arranged financing to get me into college.”
“Arranged?”
“Richard wasn’t rich back then. He was working because he had to, like everyone else. I was in my second year of college before he and Linda were told they were inheriting Reevesworth Industries.”
“So, you…were with him…before?”
