Page 76 of On The Run

Max took a second to just watch me. I met his eyes, my tongue popping out between my teeth. I still hadn’t been able to get my septum re-pierced, but I planned to as soon as it healed. It wasn’t even that I loved it that much. I was just not letting the bastard take one more thing from me. I was considering getting another piercing, or maybe a tattoo, just to spite him some more. I hoped the fucker was turning over in his grave.

Max finally started the car and drove away from my therapist’s office. “I think it has too. I’m so proud of you, Aiden.”

I flushed and looked out the window, uncomfortable with the praise. I started therapy last week. My therapist was an awesome woman who specialized in patients with trauma and PTSD. Right now, I was going twice a week and doing another virtual session with Pops. Every time I left, I felt completely raw and exhausted, but I really believed it was helping. Neither Pops nor I had ever had a chance to get any help dealing with everything. We’d been in survival mode for so fucking long, and now that it was finally done, we were both struggling with how to deal with it.

I didn’t know how to stay in one place, but Max made me want to learn. Max and Gray. Pops and I temporarily moved in with Max, and I knew Max wanted me to stay even after we were healthy enough to live on our own, but I hadn’t made the decision yet. There was no question in my mind that I wanted to be with Max, but moving in permanently? I just wasn’t sure if I was ready for that. And I didn’t know if I could leave Pops. All the nonsense with Giovani had set Pops back a lot, and he hadn’t been well since.

That was the main reason we moved in with Max. I just wasn’t stable enough yet to be Pops’s sole caretaker, but I didn’t want him rotting away in a hospital bed. Plus, Giovani terminated our lease. Kai offered to talk to the landlord, but it was low on my list of priorities at the time. I was concerned about some of the possessions that magically disappeared overnight, but Aspen and Maddox from RAM were working on recovering those. Most of the items weren’t personal, but I had a feeling we would never get any of our photos back. I was so fucking numb those first few days that the shock of it barely registered, and when Max suggested moving into his place, I readily agreed. As much as I hated relying on him for everything, we would never have made it without him. And Gray had been a champ. His whole life had been turned upside and he hadn’t even blinked. In fact, he and Pops had totally bonded, and on days when he was struggling to even get out of bed, it was Gray that gave him hope and made him smile.

“I know this type of therapy is gonna take a while. It’s a pain, and it doesn’t happen overnight, but the physical therapy? That I wish would go faster.”

Max shook his head, but I saw the small affectionate smile. “You know you have no one else to blame but yourself, love. We all told you to be careful.”

I rolled my eyes behind Max’s back. He was right, but still. “I know, but ugh. I’m so over this fucker controlling my life. Even after his death, he still has a hold on me.”

Max placed his hand palm up on the console in between us, an invitation for me to take it. I didn’t hesitate. It was still hard for me to comprehend that I could have Max. That I could actually live my life without fear and have a chance to fall in love. Of course, that ship had already sailed, but I still hadn’t gathered up the courage to tell Max that when I wasn’t drugged up on pain meds.

“It’s going to take time,tokki. I know it sucks and you just want to move on, but unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way. But you’re putting in the work, you’re making progress, and I am so fucking proud of you. You just need to find a way to be proud of yourself as well.”

I slumped back into the car seat, letting Max’s words sink in. Was it even possible for me to be proud of myself? I wasn’t sure if I had ever been before. To me, all I saw were my faults, all the things I hadn’t accomplished, all my mistakes. Was it even ok for me to see my accomplishments? Was I allowed to count the small amount of progress I’d made since I escaped that bunker as something to be proud of? It sounded ridiculous, but I didn’t know. Maybe Max was right. Maybe I should be proud.

We drove the rest of the way home in comfortable silence. My mind was going in a million different directions, but as much as I tried to stay focused on the conversation that Max and I just had, I kept drifting back to one thing. In the three weeks since I’d been home, Max and I hadn’t been physical together at all. With the exception of a few fairly chaste kisses and snuggling on the couch together, we’d done nothing. And I was going crazy. My virgin ass had one mind-blowing but relatively tame experience in the department of sex, and I was desperate for more.

For the first week and a half, I couldn’t even get hard. I had no interest in masturbating, let alone anything else. Not that I could do anything since I was on restrictions. And if I wanted to ignore the doctor’s advice, Max would never let me.

More recently, however, I found myself getting turned on and hard again. Max came out of the shower the other day in nothing but a towel, and it set me off so fucking badly that I had to sneak into the bathroom to quickly blow my load. I’d never had to do that before, but I’d been finding myself getting hornier and more desperate the longer I lived with Max without touching him.

So, two days ago, I had my appointment with my regular doctor and I got the all clear on most sex acts. I still had to take it easy, and there were certain positions I had to avoid, but there was plenty we could do. I didn’t think I was ready for anal right now anyway.

Even though I got the go-ahead, when I got back to Max’s, I froze. And yeah, I used the fact that both Gray and Pops were home as an excuse, but that was only part of the problem. Really, they wouldn’t have been an issue at all, since they both slept like the dead and Max had a lock on his door, but it was viable for the moment.

I just panicked once I had the chance to act on my desires. All of the hype, all of the very detailed scenarios that played through my head during my extremely long showers, me practically begging the doctor to clear me, and when I finally had it, I chickened out.

I couldn’t even tell you why. I just panicked. When I had my appointment today with my therapist, it was the first thing that came out of my mouth when I walked in.

“I want to have sex with Max. Do you think that’s healthy this soon?”

Much to the credit of my therapist, she didn’t even blink. “Did your medical doctor clear you for those activities?” she asked with a completely straight face.

When I told her that he did, she asked me to walk her through my concerns. Problem was, I wasn’t even sure what they were. It was almost like a block in my head was telling me I was still too much of a mess to take that step. But after talking it through with her, I felt better. She explained that there was no timeline for these kinds of things. As long as we kept communication open and discussed any fears or insecurities, it was completely up to me. I was mentally sound and completely capable of consenting, so if we were both ready for that next step, then she didn’t see any issue with it.

Our talk gave me the confidence I needed to take that next step. Before I left her office, I took a few minutes to make some plans, and if all went well, Bronx would be coming for dinner and then offering to take Gray for an uncle bonding time sleepover. Pops would be there, but his new medication usually knocked him out by eight and he was down for the count, so we’d be good to go without the worry of interruptions. Now, I just had to count down the hours till we could finally be alone.

Max pulled into his driveway. “What do you want for dinner, love? I can cook, or we can order in.”

That’d become our thing since I was released from the hospital and temporarily moved in with Max. We’d been cooking together most nights, often with Gray as well. When I wasn’t up to it or felt too weak to stand, I’d just sit on one of the barstools at the counter and cut up vegetables or whatever. Once or twice, my thumb, which for some reason was my only limb that experienced nerve damage from the extended bondage, was acting up, and I ended up just sitting there and keeping them company. But the times I was able to help had been the highlight of my days. I hadn’t been able to go back to work yet, and we were still trying to figure out how to right the issues with my school since the fucker withdrew me, so cooking with Max and my two therapy appointments had been the only breaks in the monotony of my days lately.

But today, I was too on edge to cook or even watch Max do it. I was typically pretty worn out after my in-person sessions, so I knew Max thought nothing of it when I told him I wasn’t up for cooking today. He didn’t need to know it was because I was terrified I would get a hard-on while we were pressed up against each other cutting vegetables, and I didn’t want to deal with that.

“Can we just order in?”

Max kissed the top of my head. “Sure,tokki. How about that new Jamaican place? My dad raved about it, and you know how picky he is about any Jamaican food not cooked by him or his mom.”

I smiled, strangely comforted by the fact that I did know that. Max’s parents had been a fucking godsend in the last few months. I was blown away when I heard that they went to Denver to stay with Pops when I was still missing and touched to tears when they showed up at my hospital room with Gray a few hours after Max and I had that talk.

And since then, they’d been stopping by a couple of times a week to help around the house and with the cooking and Gray. They even took Pops to his treatment appointments. I had no idea how to handle how accepting they’d been of not only me, but Pops. We just threw an entire dumpster fire on their normal, peaceful lives and they didn’t even blink. I’d cried more times than I wanted to admit thinking about it. How could there be people like Pops’s parents who openly shunned him for his sexuality, who completely turned their back on him when he begged for their help after things got bad with Giovani, or the sperm donor himself, and then there was Max’s family. We were complete strangers to them, and they didn’t hesitate to welcome our homeless, messed-up asses into the fold with open arms. It was hard to wrap my head around it.

“Sounds good. Can you make sure to get extra, so I have leftovers tomorrow when you go back to work? I have physical therapy and Pops has a doctor’s appointment, so I want something quick.”

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