Defiance (The Protectors #9)(60)

A sob tore free from him, and when he curled his body so he could press his wet face against my chest, I gladly held onto him. I dropped a kiss to his head. “It’s okay, Nathan.”

He shook his head. “No. My father…he threatened to send Brody to one of those places where they pray the gay away…”

I stiffened at that. “Conversion therapy?” I asked.

Nathan nodded. “Brody begged my father not to. He promised he’d overcome it. My father was paranoid that it would somehow be leaked to the press, so he agreed to have our minister meet with Brody. It lasted weeks. Brody met with him night after night for hours at a time. He…he never told me what happened during the sessions, but I didn’t even recognize him when he was deemed cured. It was like he was just this shell of himself. We barely talked after that. The plan had always been for us to go to college and law school together, but he convinced my father to let him go to Yale while I attended Princeton. He came out again to our entire family a couple months after graduating from law school. I cut him out of my life after that. Told him he was a sick fuck and we were no longer brothers.”

I sucked in a breath. It was hard to link the man in my arms to such a cold act of cruelty.

“It should have been harder,” Nathan murmured. I could feel moisture seeping through my shirt and realized Nathan was likely still crying, but silently.

“What should?” I asked.

“Coming out for the first time. It should have been to my father or someone like him.”

“Is that what you think Brody would have wanted? For you to suffer like he did?”

“No, Brody’s too good of a man for that.”

We both fell silent for several minutes until Nathan said, “Everett told me about him and your brother.” Nathan shifted enough so he could sit up. His wet eyes connected with mine. “Will you tell me about him? Your brother, I mean.”

I wanted to tell him no, because I knew what talking about Pierce would do to me. But I found myself nodding my head instead and when I opened my arms again, Nathan settled himself back against my chest.

His weight on my body and the feel of his heartbeat against where our hands were joined on my chest made it much easier to open my mouth and start talking.





Chapter 21





Nathan





“From the time I was old enough to say his name, I wanted to be just like Pierce. I idolized him and literally followed him everywhere. My mom used to love to tell everyone the story about how she came into my room one morning to find me missing from my crib. She and my dad had already called the cops by the time they found me asleep on the floor next to Pierce’s bed. From that moment on, wherever Pierce was, I was. Even as he got older, he spent more time with me than he needed to. If he was going to meet friends to shoot some hoops or whatever, he took me along. When I was old enough to play, he let me join in. If I had to choose between hanging out with my own friends or Pierce and his, I always chose Pierce,” Vincent explained, his voice soft and reverent.

I knew exactly what he was talking about because I’d had that kind of closeness with Brody. But knowing that there’d been a pretty sizeable age gap between Vincent and his brother made it all the more amazing that Pierce would have been so devoted to Vincent.

“Our father had been grooming us for the army from day one and even though I wasn’t in the same unit as Pierce, I had aspirations to achieve the same rank as him and in the same timeline.”

“He was a colonel, right?” I asked.

“Yeah…he was well on his way to becoming one of the youngest generals in the military. Which was why it didn’t make sense when he told me he was leaving the army instead of re-enlisting when his tour ended.”

Vincent’s finger began stroking against mine where I was holding his hand against his chest. I wondered if he was even aware of the self-soothing gesture.

“I thought maybe he’d done it as some kind of tribute to me.”

“Because of what the army did to you and David?”

I felt Vincent nod before he said, “Yeah. David had been gone for a few years by then and I had no interest in re-enlisting, even if the army would have made that offer. So I was actually pretty pissed at him for throwing away his career.”

“He didn’t do it for you,” I murmured. “He did it for Everett. So they could be together.”

Another nod, but this time Vincent didn’t say anything.

“Did you know about them?” I asked.

“Not until after Pierce’s death. I’d known Pierce was gay…he came out to me after I was kicked out of the military. But I didn’t find out about Everett until I went to the cemetery a few days after Pierce’s funeral.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Pierce was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. When I got there, there were Secret Service agents everywhere. They wouldn’t let me past a certain point at first. When I told them who I was and that I was visiting my brother’s grave, they let me through. I’d figured some bigwig was visiting a loved one who happened to be buried near my brother, but it turned out to be Everett and he was standing over Pierce’s grave.”

I felt my throat tighten at the thought of Everett saying his goodbyes to the man who’d meant so much to him. The man he’d been ready to change his entire life for.