TABOO: THE COMPLETE SERIES(4)

We parked the car in the lot and took the elevator to my floor. There was hardly anyone around, and that was a good thing. I wasn’t in the mood to be polite.

Jake stepped into the apartment and looked around. “You must be loaded.”

It made me laugh. “Loaded?”

“Yeah, you know. Rich.”

“I know what loaded means, Jake.”

“Oh, I thought maybe…”

“Come through here,” I led him to the rooms. I opened the first one next to my bedroom, and hoped the housekeeper had done her job. Thankfully, for once she managed to get the room in some semblance of order. Jake went straight to the bed and sat on it. “There’s enough space for us both,” he said. I had a clear view of his chest, the rises and falls of the bone structure underneath his sternum and the navel with a belly button that invited me to think of fantasies I had long since forgotten.

“Goodnight, Jake.” I closed the door and took a deep breath. Fuck. It was going to take a lot of self-control to not say yes to that.

You saved me.

There was something heartbreaking about those words, and about the forlorn look in his eyes. No wonder he thought that, considering his own father was used to hitting him.

I vowed to find out more when he woke up.

Why he didn’t want to go home.

No one ever saves me.





JAKE


I had to get out of Trey’s apartment. There’s wishful thinking and then there’s pure unrealistic expectation from some guy you’ve barely met to get you out of the hell that you were born in.

My hell is my own.

Only reason I didn’t come home last night was because Colton was sleeping the night at a friend’s house and I wasn’t worried about my father selling off my fifteen year old brother to some pervert for Jack and Coke.

Which is why I completely lost my shit when I came home to find my father and Colton in the living room with strange men.

“Oh hey,” Dad said gleefully. “My older son is here! Come here Jakey I want you to meet some friends.”

Friends. Yeah right. The only friends my father had were the ones that bought his son’s blowjobs. “Why aren’t you in your room, Colton?” I spoke directly to my brother who was sitting with a weird looking guy of about thirty, who wore a colorful sweater that made him look like a garden gnome. “You have term papers coming up, don’t you?”

My brother was completely clueless about my father and our lives. I don’t think he’d been exposed to things like I had been. Even his friends were mostly nerds which was one of the reasons I felt like I didn’t need to worry. Yet.

“I was studying,” Colton replied. “Dad said I could take a break.”

I couldn’t believe my brother was growing up so fast. Seems only yesterday that we were hiding under the bed from Dad’s beating. Now, he’s talking back to me. Go figure. “Go to your room, Colton.”

But before I could hear his response, my father stood from where he was sitting and came up to me.

“Where were you last night, Jake?” Dad asked when I said nothing to his guests. “And whose clothes are you wearing?”

I had grabbed Trey’s shirt when I left his place today, and that’s what I was wearing. I didn’t think he would notice. Should have known my father has an eye for detail. Especially when those details are important for whatever it is he needs. “What’s Colton doing here?” I asked.

“Meeting my friends, Jake. What else would he be doing?”

“What’s the matter, Dad?” I couldn’t keep it bottled up any longer. “Nineteen too old for you, that you had to bring a fifteen year old kid in here?”

At this, Dad hit me. His fist landed square on my jaw, and I felt dizzy for a second.

Colton saw this and ran up to his room without a word. I heard him locking it. My father looked pissed. “You better behave, Jake. Or I’ll pound some sense into you. Don’t go crying around to your faggot friends then! The kind that don’t let you come home all night and let you wear their shirts!”

I wiped the blood off my mouth. “Don’t worry, Dad. Nothing happened. Your investment is safe.”

I could see my father gearing up for another hit, but for some reason he didn’t do it. Maybe he was saving up for later. “Leave,” he said simply.

I was happy to oblige.

Upstairs, I knocked on Colton’s door a million times before he actually let me in.

Even his room had changed. Where was I when this happened?

“Hey,” I said, closing the door behind me.

Colton said nothing.

I sat on his bed and he stayed where he was, leaning against the desk.

“Are you angry at me?” I wanted to know.

“What do you think, Jake?”

“Please tell me why.”

He rolled his eyes. “Forget it.”

“Colton?”

He glared at a poster of Scarlett Johannsson in a Black Widow costume. “You think I’m still a stupid kid!” he said. “I might have been, a billion centuries ago, but I’m fifteen now!”

“Noted.”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not.”

He paused and I saw the emotional turmoil going on inside him. He was struggling with something. “Colton, what is it? You can talk to me.”