Leo(A Sign of Love Novel)(56)

"We played pool for a little bit and I finished my first drink and she poured me another. She was making all these shots, bending over the pool table and it was weird, but the alcohol started numbing me and so it was easier to pretend it was normal." He lets out a humorless laugh and then looks down.

He sighs and he's still looking away from me but continues his story, "After a little while, she started rubbing up against me, touching me. I was a young, horny kid with two drinks in me and I was confused and struggling with what was happening with this woman who I thought had taken me into her home to mother me."

He sighs again, "Shit, this is hard."

I want to touch him in some way, but I instinctively know that that's not the right thing to do so I remain silent and still.

Finally, he continues. "Finally she just got completely naked and bent over the pool table and started begging me to take her. She seduced me, but I didn't resist very fervently. I f*cked my new mom over the pool table in the basement while my new dad was at work. How f*cking sick is that?"

Tears are rolling freely down my cheeks now and I choke back a little sob.

He continues staring ahead when he says, "We ate dinner that night as a family and my dad toasted to their 'new son!' I could barely keep the food down. I f*cking hated myself and all I could think about was how I had done it once again. I had let down someone who loved and trusted me. Again."

He pauses for several minutes. "They had tried for several years but never could have kids. Phil made it clear to me that he was thrilled to have a son now who could one day take over his company. We had talked a lot before that day, and he made me feel good about myself, like he thought I was smart."

I manage to ask, "I thought you told me your adoptive father worked in a hospital here."

"He did. The x-ray technology that's now used by Homeland Security, started out as medical equipment."

I nod. "Sorry, go on, Leo," I say quietly.

A look of pain crosses his face when he hears me say his name, but he continues.

"Anyway, that afternoon in the basement was all it took to make me realize that once again, people only wanted to use me. First, my birth parents to take care of my brother and to take their anger at the world out on, and now these two people. My new mom for obvious reasons, but then it was also easy to twist my new dad's interest in having a son just to use as a work horse, someone to train and mold into what he wanted me to be.

"No one ever cared about who I was, just what I could do for them, except you, Evie, and my brother, Seth. And now I had destroyed both of you. I had promised Seth I would take care of him and now he was rotting in some state run facility somewhere and I had no idea where, and I had promised you I would save myself for you, be true to you, and it only took less than a week for me to betray you. I honestly thought about slitting my own wrists I hated myself so much."

I grab a tissue from the box on the table next to my couch and blot my cheeks. "Leo, surely you know now that she took advantage of you, right?" I say quietly.

His face gets hard. "I know what all the psychology books would say about it and yeah, she was wrong. But I could have resisted more. I could have run. I could have… I don't know. But I could have done more than I did. And not only that, Evie, but it didn't stop that day. It happened regularly until the day I moved out and went to college. Even then, she tried to continue things, but I could successfully avoid her then. She claims she's in love with me and that she knew it the minute she saw me at the foster home. How twisted is that? Jesus. I was 15." He scrubs his hand down his face.

I cringe. "You didn't think you could trust me enough to tell me?" I ask softly, a sob making my voice hitch.

"A million times I thought about how I could explain to you what happened. I needed you so desperately, I thought I would die of the longing. But what was I supposed to say? I couldn't even make sense of it myself, much less try to explain it to you. I was just so deeply ashamed.

"And eventually, I considered the longing my penance for being me, someone who destroyed the people he loved. The thing I couldn't get around was what my silence must be doing to you."

He stares straight ahead, stoic. "Eventually though, I convinced myself that being apart, you had a fighting chance. I figured I was broken and that some people can't be fixed, or if they can, it's only by love so big it destroys the fixer. I couldn't destroy you any more than I thought I already had, Evie. I convinced myself that knowing the truth about me would have hurt you more than leaving you alone.

"I just wanted to disappear. But, you also have to understand that I hated myself for leaving. And I suffered as much as you did.

We’re both quiet for several minutes, me still blotting my eyes, absorbing his answer, when he continues.

"I grew six inches the summer I moved to California and I started playing sports, working out. It helped a little as an outlet, and I continued through high school, but it didn't help enough.

"I started drinking, doing drugs, partying, using girls. In part it was all because I despised myself and I craved anything that would numb my pain, but in part it was because it made Lauren livid to see me go through one girl after another and I had grown to despise her, too. She's a manipulative bitch. She was lying to Phil, she…"

I interrupt him. "She's a pedophile, Leo."