Page 91 of Played
I blow out a breath and down the Scotch he poured me when I got here twenty minutes ago. He asked me what was up, and I unloaded everything. “I know.”
“I can’t believe you’ve held that in for all these years.”
“Actually, I had extensive therapy. Then I held it all in.” I laugh, trying to ease the tension.
“What a degenerate piece of shit.” He shakes his head and downs his own Scotch. “Why didn’t you ever tell your brothers?”
Immediately, my hackles rise.
He holds up a hand. “There is absolutely no judgment from me, Mase. I get why you didn’t tell me, but… You’re all so close. I assumed…”
I tell him about the day it happened, how determined I was to tell my family and ruin Kyngston Worthington III, and then how we were all shattered by my mother’s news. “I couldn’t do that to them, Ty. They needed me. Mom needed me. If she’d known what he did…” I pour myself another drink from the bottle onthe table. “You never met her, but my mom was the kindest, toughest woman on the planet. She could make grown-ass men tremble with fear.” I smile, recalling the time she chewed out our pediatrician in front of an entire waiting room full of patients for misdiagnosing my strep throat as attention-seeking. “Sick or not, that woman would have torn Kyngston Worthington III a new asshole before slitting his throat and burying him in our garden. I kid you not.”
“Sounds like an incredible mom.”
She was the best, and I wish he’d known her. “Yeah, she was.”
He gives me his undivided attention, his eyes never leaving my face. “What about later? After your mom passed?”
I take a gulp of the Scotch and relish the familiar burn in my throat. “You mean did I think about telling anyone? Yeah, a few times, but after Mom died, there was the whole thing with Mad, and…” I shrug. “There never seemed to be a good time to open up that old wound, you know? I was dealing with it. At least I thought I was.”
He nods. “I get that.”
“And also…” I swallow hard. This is hard to admit, even to myself. “I felt ashamed, Ty. As a rational man, I know I have absolutely no reason to, but it’s not easy telling people I was raped by my secret boyfriend’s dad and that I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop him.”
“I get that too, buddy.”
He sits quietly, letting me process. One of the many things I love about Tyler is that he only gives advice when it’s asked for. “Wise men don’t need it, and fools won’t heed it,” he told me when I asked why he’s like that. Although he did once give Nathan a piece of advice that my older brother still thanks him for whenever he’s had a Scotch too many.
“You think I did the right thing keeping it to myself?” I ask.
His bright-blue eyes narrow. “I think you did what you needed to do to survive, and how can that not be the right thing?”
“And King?” I wince. “I walked out on him, Ty. He just found out his father is a rapist piece of shit, and I up and left.” I drop my head into my hands.
“You had every right to leave, Mason, and you know that.”
“I feel like this whole mess has fucked everything up.” I sigh and lean back against the comfy sofa.
Tyler comes to sit beside me, placing a comforting hand on my thigh. “While you weren’t wrong for leaving, it sounds like King had a lot to process. And yeah, maybe he could have handled it differently and begged you to stay. But would you have?”
“I have no fucking idea. But it felt like he gave up on us so easily. Again.” Pain lances through my chest.
“It couldn’t have been easy for him to hear what his father did to you. Maybe he was doing what he needed to do.”
“No.” I shake my head. “He couldn’t stand to look at me. Every time he looks at me now, all he’ll see is what happened to me. What his father did.”
“You don’t know that.”
“What if that’s what I see?” I say, admitting a deeper fear. One I’ve been afraid to admit aloud until now, and I can’t help wondering if King is thinking it too. “What if the next time I’m on my knees for him all I see is his father’s disgusting fucking face?”
“Has that ever happened before?”
I sink deeper into the chair with a heavy sigh. “No. But I could always separate them before. It was like there were two different versions of me, and now King knows both of them.”
Tyler wraps his arm around my shoulder and drops a kiss on top of my head. “It will all look better in the morning, buddy. I promise.”
“Yeah?”
