Page 36 of Forced to Share
Austin huffed a laugh, looking away for a second before grabbing my hand and shoving it into the sticky, wet front of his pants. My eyes widened at the realization of what he was telling me. He didn’t need me to get him off, because he’d already come. He’d been so turned on by providing for me, it had pushed him over the edge.
Instead of saying anything, I did the only thing I could think of doing. I kissed him again because I was addicted to the taste of Austin Bennett, and if we were really going to figure out how to make this work, I wanted to savor all these little moments to make them last until we got to be together again. We had to. Tomorrow was never promised.
Iwas still an insanely nervous wreck, my heart thundered in my throat as we descended the stairs. Austin held my hand, and a huge part of me wanted to yank out of his grasp, but he was confident that Leah would have our backs if his parents had anything negative to say.
The second we rounded the corner to the kitchen, the feel of everyone’s eyes on me was enough to make me sweat.
I’d never felt more picked apart in my entire life. I thought it was bad enough the day I’d arrived at the Bennett house.
No one said anything as Austin and I made our way across the kitchen to grab food. Everything had been set out buffet style. I was impressed with his mother’s patience to put something together like this every day. If this was what Austin and Leah had grown up with, they were spoiled. I was so used to grabbing a bowl of cereal in the mornings as a kid, and now as an adult I didn’t normally eat breakfast at all.
The room stayed eerily quiet as Austin and I loaded our plates with cut fruit, English muffins, bacon, and sausages. It remained that way while we prepared our cups of coffee and then made our way to the table.
Leah was back to resting her head on the wooden surface, no doubt feeling the wine she’d guzzled down the night before. She lifted her head just enough to give me a weak smile when I sat next to her.
“Morning.” Her voice was rough, and the first thing anyone said to us.
And just like that, the seal was broken, and the questions started.
“What the hell happened?” Mr. Bennett seemed more upset than anyone. He leaned back in his chair, his arms over his chest as he scowled at me.
Leah sat up, her eyes wide as she stared at her parents. “Can you guys calm down? It’s fine. I’m not even upset, so there’s no reason—”
“But he came here with you. You were engaged.” Now it was Mrs. Bennett’s turn to cut her off.
Fortunately, the argument didn’t last long. Austin stood from his seat, resting his hands against the table, and cleared his throat loudly.
“Would you all stop it?”
The room fell silent again. All eyes turned to look at Austin, who had his head bowed as he huffed a few times, clearly irritated that no one seemed to be asking things to him directly.
We all sat there watching him for a moment as he gathered himself, his fingers flexing against the dark wood of the kitchen table. When he finally lifted his head, his eyes searched the table, making contact with everyone before he finally opened his mouth to speak.
“You all sat around just yesterday and listened to me talk about this guy back in Berkeley that disappeared, and now you’re wondering why my sister isn’t upset that something is obviously happening between me and her ex-fiancé.What none of us realized was that when Jeremy walked into this house, he was the one person that vanished all those years ago.”
I shrank in my seat because that had the potential to go a lot of ways. Austin’s parents had been upset to see that he’d been hurt by someone and they hadn’t known about it. Now they knew that I was the person who had hurt not one, but two of their children.
And that wasn’t missed.
Mr. Bennett turned his glare in my direction, and I wished that the floor would open up swallowing me whole. I’d give anything for the ability to disappear.
“In my defense...” God, my voice was so high-pitched and squeaky, like I was terrified that one wrong word would set off an avalanche, then there’d never be any hope of winning this family over. “I was going through... a lot.” I took a deep breath because I could do this. It was now or never, both Leah and Austin deserved to know the complete explanation about why I’d moved my entire life across the country.
“I knew that I was different my whole life. My family was extremely conservative and religious. I’m talking, the type of people who went to church multiple times a week and even found extra excuses to attend church-based events.There’s nothing wrong with that, but I learned fairly early on that their love was conditional.”
Everyone stopped moving, seeming to catch on to the seriousness of what I was saying.
“There was a girl who came to one of our church events and brought one of her friends with her. They were holding hands, which was innocent enough. Friends do that, especially at younger ages. All my parents could focus on was that it was two girls who were holding hands. It made them disgusting. They were just begging for attention and that God was going to send their souls straight to hell.”
Leah’s hand landed on one shoulder, and Austin’s landed on my other.
“I couldn’t get behind that. Who wanted to believe in so much hate. They were friends. Who was disgusting just for being affectionate with someone they were close to? And then by the time I went to high school, I met Samuel. He was a boy in my math class, he was always really nice to me. We started hanging out a lot, he’d come to my house...”
My eyes burned remembering the last time Sam had come to visit. We’d been best friends for most of high school until my parents found out that Sam liked boys. They had a lot of issues with him after that and forbade me from ever seeing him again, going so far as to move us into an apartment across town transferring me to anotherschool. Turns out that I didn’t need to share that part of the story. Mrs. Bennett was up and out of her seat, pushing her children out of the way and pulling me from my chair to wrap me in a tight hug.
“I’m so sorry, sweet boy. No one should ever have to go through anything like that. Love should be unconditional with your children. I can’t imagine living in fear of what your parents would think.”
It was nice that she understood, my eyes burning as I struggled to hold in tears. I wasn’t able to talk about the reason I moved, ever. To finally have it out in the open was sort of freeing. She was right that I shouldn’t have been afraid of my parents, but I was.
