Page 39 of Declan
Chapter 10
Declan
Kyler fell asleep not even ten minutes after we had sex. I held him close to my chest and rested my face against his nape.
And I waited. Waited for the disgust to rise within me, the one that made me feel ashamed and dirty for giving into my urges.
Every time I fucked a woman, I hated myself afterward. The same happened when I fucked men, too, but it was a different kind of self-hatred. I felt that way with women because I knew I was lying to myself. I felt that way with men because of how right it felt to be with them and then memories from my childhood would re-enter my mind and chase away the euphoria.
I’d grown up bouncing between foster homes. Most of the homes had been bad, but only one had been truly awful. Punishments where Mrs. Reese, the foster mom, had locked the kids in dark closets, sometimes for hours, and not let us eat dinner. She’d swatted our hands with wooden spoons and had wrapped belts around our necks when she thought we were back talking her.
When I was fifteen, she’d caught me kissing one of the boys in the home who was a year older than me.
“You think this is natural, boy?” she said, gripping my arm so tight I cried out. “Boys aren’t ‘sposed to like boys.”
She’d then made me and Casey, the other boy, beat each other up. At first, neither of us had done anything. I hadn’t wanted to hurt him any more than he’d wanted to hurt me. But when she’d started burning us with the lit end of her cigarette, we’d begun throwing punches, exchanging one pain for another.
Casey had beaten me so bad I’d blacked out and woken up in the hospital.
Mrs. Reese lied and said Casey had attacked me out of nowhere and that he’d been a violent boy. She’d put on a huge pity show. Casey had been kicked out of the home and sent to juvie.
I’d envied him. Juvie had been way better than the shithole I’d been in. I’d had to stay with Mrs. Reese for nearly two more years before one of the other kids in the home told one of their teachers about the abuse, and we’d all been moved to a different home.
However, Mrs. Reese had a lot of time to drill her disgust into me within those two years. I hadn’t been able to look at boys around her. I’d had to keep my eyes on the floor. Anytime she believed I was looking at a boy, she’d lock me in the dark closet.
I still seemed to be there. In the dark closet with no way out.
Because of her, I had a warped sense of myself. Before she’d instilled the shame in me, I’d accepted that I was gay. Casey and I’d talked about our attraction for each other, and we’d come to terms with it. As confusing as it’d been at the time, it’d also been exciting, just like new, young love was supposed to be.
Mrs. Reese had taken that excitement from me. She’d ripped away my pride and replaced it with hatred and fear. She’d taught me that loving other boys was wrong. Disgusting. That I’d be better off killing myself than giving into the temptation.
I knew she was wrong. That she was an evil bitch.
But…the damage had been done. As much as I tried to fight it, the shame would surface every time I slept with a man. Nearly fourteen years later, and that bitch still had a hold on me, still managed to get into my head.
I was better than I used to be, but I still hadn’t found a way to love the man I was.
Kyler sighed in his sleep and scooted closer to me.
My heart beat a little faster and I held him more securely. His wavy, light-brown hair fell into his face, and I brushed it aside. I studied him, looked at his long dark lashes and freckled cheeks, ghosted my fingers over his tanned skin and to the end of his adorably sloped nose, and traced lips that were just as soft as they looked.
I waited for the shame to take over and make me feel sick. That revolting feeling that made me claw at my skin and sometimes stand under a hot shower for an hour, just to try and cleanse myself.
It never came.
I looked at Kyler and only felt happiness.
I felt alive, like I’d existed for years but never knew what it was like to truly live until a freckled beauty with gray eyes came into my life.
I can’t be with him.
I wasn’t ready to come out. I didn’t know if I’d ever be. One amazing fuck wouldn’t change that. Maybe the shame hadn’t caught up with me yet, because I was still on a high from the mind-blowing sex.
I carefully unwound myself from him and slipped out of bed to go to the bathroom. I grabbed a washcloth and ran it under warm water before returning to Kyler and cleaning him as best as I could.
He made sleepy sounds before rolling over to his stomach.
His bare ass looked damn amazing, and it took every ounce of willpower I had not to crawl back into bed with him.
