Page 57 of All Twisted Up
He frowned. “I know, right? Anyway, by that time, I had no friends. I hadn’t ‘acclimated’ to my new environment.” He made air quotes and then dropped his hands, twisting them in his lap. “All I wanted was to be a normal kid. I began to think there had to be a way out of going to Harvard. Back in Alameda, I was good at sports, so I joined several prep school sports teams.” He laughed. “Fuck, I even joined the lacrosse team to try to get my father to see who I really wanted to be…not the guy who was expected to go into business and join him in D.C.”
“But…your mother—”
He shook his head. “She was a full-blown alcoholic by then. She never made it to my games or showed much interest in me other than a passing pat on the back, followed by platitudes. I know now that she was probably going through something similar to me…but she clearly handled it differently.”
“I should say so,” I said, hating what Nash had gone through. I said nothing more, letting him lead up to why his father had branded him with something so ugly.
“I began ditching school, driving across the bay to San Francisco, and picking up one-night stands. By the time I was seventeen, I was sneaking out almost every night, stealing cars from the fleet my father kept in our ten-car garage. He’dconfiscated my car keys at night because of bad grades. He was pretty strict and a total hypocrite in my mind.”
Nash took a deep breath as he continued. “Anyway, I was too young to get into bars, but one of the guys at prep school knew a guy who made fake IDs. The bars we went to didn’t look too closely at them because I always had tons of money to throw around. The guy I ditched with became addicted to drugs.” He took a deep breath. “And I…became addicted to sex.”
“Jesus, Nash. It’s a miracle you survived.”
He nodded, squeezing my hand, allowing me to pull him back down to the bed. I slid my arms around him, pulling him close, not wanting to let go. “Tell me what happened. Why did your father brand you?”
“One night around three in the morning, he was waiting for me when I finally made it home. I’d been partying all night, falling asleep and waking up in some dive bar’s backroom way past my curfew, but hopeful that it was still safe to go home and not get caught. I knew my mother would most likely be passed out drunk and my father was supposed to be in D.C.”
I stayed perfectly still. “But he was home when you finally got there,” I concluded.
Nash nodded. “Yeah. He and three other guys dragged me out of the car as soon as I rolled through the gate. One was the bodyguard who traveled with my father all the time. Another worked in our stable.”
I tightened my arms, saying nothing.
“They dragged me out to the stable and held me down while my father started screaming at me. He told me he knew where I’d been going…that he’d put trackers on all his cars and when Iadmitted I was gay, they pulled off my clothes and put that brand on me.”
“Christ.”
“They must have been planning it for a while because he made a big show out of how he’d made the brand just for me.”
I felt nauseous.
“He made me choose between taking the brand or getting a hot poker. I knew what that meant, so I chose the brand.”
I shook with outrage, feeling sick inside for the young man who’d been made to choose the lesser of two evils. I was silent for a few moments before speaking again. “How old were you?”
“Seventeen,” he said so quietly, I could barely hear him.
Outrage threatened to swamp me. “You weren’t even an adult, Nash, and it sickens me that those grown men thought it was just fine to do that to a teenager.”
He laughed bitterly. “He kept telling me that he was doing it because he loved me, that he was teaching me the difference between right and wrong, and was making sure I didn’t turn out to be a sissy.” The word made me flinch as he rolled on the bed, forcing me to reposition my arms, still holding on.
“That wasn’t love, Nash,” I said quietly. “That kind of maliciousness comes from evil bigots.”
He nodded. “I know. If he really loved me, he wouldn’t have done that. He changed when he became rich with all those powerful people talking in his ear about what a great man he was. I think he stopped seeing his son when he found out I was going to gay bars and gave in to his darker side. Who the fuck knows.” He reached out and trailed gentle fingers over the side of my face. “When I see you with your family, I realize that’s what love looks like, Joshua.”
I smiled sadly, wanting sobadlyto tell Nash that he’d already become an integral part of my family…that if he let us, we’d keep his heart safe. If there was ever a man in this world who needed to be loved, it was this kind, sweet man in my arms. Instead, I reached up, trapping his fingers against my skin to keep the connection between us. “I can’t imagine anyone who loved their child doing something like that to them, Nash. You were an innocent kid who only wanted to be loved and understood.”
He nodded, breaking eye contact and rolling to his back where he stared up at the ceiling. “I was.”
I watched his eyes fill with tears for a few seconds before he wiped them away. I desperately wanted to take his pain away but knew there was no way to do that except to be honest. I reached over and ran a hand over his chest. “You know, now you have a family, Nash.”
He glanced over with a question in his stormy eyes.
“Your brothers love you. They’d die for you and if you’ll let us…Meggie, Pete, and I would love you too.”
He looked a bit skeptical. “Love…me?”
“Yeah.” I held his gaze as long as I could before finally breaking eye contact and looking away.
