Ethan (Alluring Indulgence) (27 page)

“You
were in a car accident that year, right?” Ethan asked, clearly having an
exceptional memory.

“Yeah,”
he said, forcing a hint of a smile on his lips. “Bunch of us were out fucking
off. Black ice caught us by surprise and the truck we were in flipped. My arm
was crushed. That was the end of my football career.”

“Do
you miss it?”

“Football?”

“No,
high school,” Ethan barked with a laugh. “Of course football.”

“Not
really, no.” That was only a partial lie. He missed the thrill he got when he
went out on the field, the roar of the kids and their parents. There was no
doubt Beau had thought he’d be off to the NFL eventually just like everyone
else had, but that dream came to an abrupt halt because they were out being
idiots after a freak ice storm.

“What
about you? You play sports?”

“Nah.
I was too involved in FFA to take on sports.”

“So,
you wanted to be a farmer, huh?” Beau joked, spinning his beer bottle in his
hands.

“Nope,
just knew I had to do something to pass the time. I always wanted to go to work
for my brothers.”

“You
mean for yourself?”

“I
guess I don’t see it that way, but, yeah. I wanted to work at Walker Demo.
Fixing things has always been a hobby of mine.”

Beau
nodded, understanding completely. He’d been the same way. When he wasn’t
playing football, he spent time at his uncle’s shop, working on cars and some
of the heavy equipment. Usually anything to keep him away from the cold chill
of his parents’ house.

Their
food was brought out just in time. Beau enjoyed the steady, easy conversation,
but he also felt as though they were dancing around the subjects that were most
important. Specifically, Beau had questions he wanted to ask because, until he
knew the answers, he didn’t know how to map out what the future might hold.

Not
that he should’ve been mapping out anything. He was supposed to be enjoying the
moment, getting to know Ethan on a comfortable level. But for some reason, Beau
wanted to know him on a deeper level. What made the man tick? What made him
hide even when they both knew his parents and his brothers would be nothing but
supportive of him?

The
conversation continued over dinner, mostly Beau relaying incidents from high
school, all usually involving Zane though the man never seemed to get caught.
He was almost as bad as the twins when it came to practical jokes.

Once
their empty plates were cleared away, the waiter brought two more beers, and
Beau settled in. They had nowhere to be and no one to worry about, so it seemed
that talking – outside of the bedroom – was the ideal way to spend the evening.

Even
if Ethan wasn’t going to like the direction Beau was headed with the
conversation.

“What’s
wrong?” Ethan asked, tipping his beer bottle to his lips. “I see the wheels
spinning. You’re going to ask me something, and I’m not gonna be happy about it
am I?”

Beau
smirked. “Probably not, no.”

“Get
it out there,” Ethan said softly. “I know you have questions, I just can’t
promise I can answer them. Not easily anyway.”

Did
Beau really need the answers? Couldn’t he just be satisfied with moving forward
in the direction they were going?

No,
unfortunately, he couldn’t. Especially since the direction was going to be much
like it had been if he didn’t dig deeper. And quite frankly, Beau wasn’t all
that keen on the idea of spending the rest of his life hiding who he was from
those he cared about. It was hard enough to watch Ethan do it.

Beau
paused for a moment, trying to choose his words carefully. “The other night, at
Moonshiners. Reardon mentioned something about his family.”

Ethan’s
eyes narrowed, and his lips formed a hard line. Clearly Beau had hit a sore
spot. Ever since Reardon made the comment, Beau had wondered what he was
referring to. It was evident based on his reaction that Ethan knew exactly what
he was talking about.

Ethan’s
sharp inhale caught Beau’s attention and he looked up, watching and waiting. He
could see his brain working overtime, knew he was about to say something, but
Beau wasn’t sure whether it was going to be a story or simply a fuck off.
Either way, Beau wanted to know where he stood with Ethan, and this was the
moment of truth. If he wasn’t willing to open up at this point, Beau knew there
was probably no hope for the future.

“Jimmy
Reardon has a younger brother. His name was Gavin.”

Beau
caught the use of past tense mixed with present, but he didn’t say a word.

“Gavin
was…” Ethan paused, taking a pull off of his beer as he stared down at the
table. “Gavin was the first guy I was ever with.”

Understanding
dawned immediately, but Beau didn’t speak up, not wanting to interrupt.

“I
was nineteen and Gavin had just turned twenty when we…”

Again,
Ethan trailed off, and Beau tried to read between the lines but he had no idea
how to fill in the blanks. He tried to nurse his beer slowly, wanting to be
patient with Ethan, but he found himself fidgeting.

“Anyway,”
Ethan began, his eyes looked glazed as though he had disappeared somewhere in
the past. “I fell in love with him. I lost my virginity to him.” Ethan took a
deep breath and continued, “One night he asked me to meet him at the lake.
Since we’d been doing that every night for almost a full week, I agreed without
question. When we got there, he wanted to talk. That’s when he told me that he
wasn’t gay and that he hadn’t meant to sleep with me.”

Hadn’t
meant
to? How the hell was that possible?

“He
said it was a mistake and told me that I shouldn’t have forced him. I didn’t
force him, Beau.” Ethan looked directly at him, his eyes almost crazed for a
moment. “I swear.”

The
last two words were a mere whisper, and Beau wanted to reach out and take
Ethan’s hand but he didn’t dare. They were in a restaurant, and he knew Ethan
would panic if others were around, so Beau gripped his beer bottle tightly in
an effort to keep from doing just that.

“That
night, Jimmy showed up. Before I knew what was going on, he was beating on me.
With a fucking baseball bat. Gavin stood by and watched, but he didn’t try and
help. He didn’t even try to stop his brother. I thought I was going to die that
night.”

Ethan’s
usual deep baritone was raspy, like his throat was closing up and the words
were painful to get out.

“They
left you there?” Beau couldn’t hold back the question. The outrage that erupted
in his gut was so powerful, he was surprised his beer bottle didn’t collapse
into shards beneath his death grip. The son of a bitch beat Ethan and left him
for dead. And the man Ethan loved had fucking watched?

“Yeah,
they left me there. Luckily I had my cell phone. I managed to call Sawyer and
he found me, took me back to his house. Greyson wanted to take me to the
hospital, but I refused.”

Greyson,
the paramedic.
Shit.
Ethan must’ve been bad off for that to be
necessary. Being that Beau was just a couple of years younger, he wondered how
he’d never known about this. Surely he would’ve remembered something that
horrible happening to one of Zane’s brothers.

“I
stayed with Sawyer for a couple of weeks. Refused to see my parents or my
brothers until I healed enough that I could brush off the questions.”

“No
one knows about this?” Beau knew his skepticism was apparent.

“No
one besides Sawyer, Jimmy, Greyson and Gavin.”

“Where’s
Gavin now?” Beau asked, knowing that the answer wasn’t going to be a simple
one, like “he moved” or “he went off to college”.

“Gavin’s
dead.” The clouds in Ethan’s eyes disappeared and were replaced with
devastating sadness.

“Dead?”

“Gavin
killed himself a month after that.” The words were a tormented rasp that Beau
barely heard.

“I
loved him. I even tried to forgive him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Did
you…” Beau couldn’t even get the question out.

“Did
I what?”

“Were
you the one who found him?”

“Yeah.”
Ethan glanced down at the table for long minutes, not saying a word.

Beau
considered changing the subject, but they had made it this far. Ethan had been
holding this inside for so long, he only prayed that, by urging Ethan to tell
the story, he was able to alleviate some of Ethan’s pain. He doubted it would
help, but he still hoped.

“Gavin
texted me. Told me he was willing to talk, but I had to come to his house. I
didn’t want to and told him as much. There was no way I was going to risk
running into Jimmy. Anyway, I couldn’t say no because I wanted to see him.

“When
I got to his house, his front door was standing open. I called out, fully expecting
another setup, but there was no one there. The idiot that I was, I walked in
the house and went in search of Gavin. Something pushed me forward, telling me
I had to find him. I knew before I even walked in his room what he’d done. He
had overdosed on some prescription pain pills that his mother had. He was dead
when I got there.”

It
was Beau’s turn to look down at the table. Gavin Reardon had killed himself.
Had he done it because he was gay? Beau knew the unfortunate statistics of
suicide. He’d read about them. And young gay men were amongst those with the
highest suicide attempts.

It
was disheartening.

The
waiter interrupted them when he brought the bill, but Beau paid him no mind,
nor did Ethan. He wanted to show Ethan that he could share his story, and he
could still move forward.

It
might not be easy, but it had to be done.

♂♂

Ethan
could hardly swallow past the lump in his throat. He was angry, and he was sad
at the same time. He was pissed that Beau had gotten him to open up about
something that he didn’t want to talk about. On the other hand, he felt
somewhat lighter, even if his heart still ached for Gavin.

No
one knew exactly why Gavin took his own life because he didn’t leave a note.
Ethan had a theory, not that he would ever share it with anyone. It was obvious
Gavin was gay and coming out didn’t seem to be an option for him. Especially
after the way Jimmy had reacted to Ethan.

If
he thought about it, Ethan was pretty sure Gavin had loved him. Although the
memory was fuzzy, Ethan was almost certain Gavin had told him as much the first
time they made love, but again, he would never know for sure.

And
it was true, the bullies were everywhere, especially in their small, redneck
town, and it didn’t help that Gavin’s own brother was amongst them. But Ethan
still carried the guilt because he felt as though he could’ve stopped him.
Could’ve made him understand that everything would be all right.

But
would it have been all right? It surely hadn’t been for Ethan. He’d had to keep
himself locked up in that proverbial closet so that he didn’t draw attention
from the Jimmy Reardons of the world or he risked something far worse than some
cracked ribs, a broken nose and a busted face. He’d been lucky. The evil still
lurked everywhere he turned.

Ethan
drained the rest of his beer and spun a knife on the table as he tried to
collect his thoughts. Staring back at Beau, he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean
to tell you that now.”

Beau
gave him a questioning look as he pushed his beer away. “Would there have been
a better time?”

He
heard the annoyance in Beau’s usually calm tone.

No,
there certainly wasn’t a good time to talk about Gavin and all that had been
lost back then. Not only had Ethan been beaten, but he’d lost the only man he
had ever loved. It was the one and only reason he didn’t fall in love. He
didn’t want strings. Nothing to bind him to someone so tightly that he would
ever feel that kind of pain again. “No,” he said simply.

“I’m
glad you told me, E,” Beau said, and his hand moved across the table to touch
his.

Ethan
didn’t pull back, unsure why not. Had he been thinking clearly, he would’ve
looked around to ensure no one was looking, yanked his hand as far back as he
could. But for some reason, he needed Beau’s reassuring touch, needed
everything Beau had to offer him even if he had nothing to give in return.

“Let’s
get out of here,” Ethan told him, forcing a smile.

Beau
nodded as he pulled his hand back to his side of the table. Ethan snatched the
check off the table and tossed his credit card in the folder.

While
they waited for the waiter to do his thing, Ethan stared at his hand, feeling
the loss of Beau’s warmth and realizing just how much he missed his touch.

A
short while later, Ethan was walking into their hotel room with Beau right
behind him. He was emotionally drained, and he was pretty damn sure he’d ruined
Beau’s night. He had tried to apologize again, but Beau had shut him up with a
glare.

Glancing
at the bed, he suddenly wished they’d opted for two double beds. He doubted
that Beau would want to be anywhere near him at this point.

Dropping
onto the edge of the mattress, Ethan removed his boots, his socks, and then
pulled his shirt up and over his head. Scooting back on the bed, he propped
himself up on a pillow and tried to relax on top of the comforter that was
still rumpled from their earlier encounter.

Heat
infused his body as he remembered what it felt like when Beau had been balls
deep inside him, staring straight into his eyes as though he were the only man
in the entire world who had ever meant anything to him. It was nice to hang on
to that dream for a while because he sure as shit knew it wasn’t a reality.

“Lose
the jeans,” Beau told him, but Ethan didn’t make a move to comply. He was
emotionally and physically exhausted.

He
watched as Beau stripped down to bare skin. Despite his own reluctance, his
body had other ideas as soon as he got an eyeful of the perfect male specimen
that was Beau Bennett.

“Well,
if you won’t do what I ask, then I’ll just have to do it for you,” Beau said as
he moved around to the side of the bed Ethan had claimed.

Watching,
his breath lodged in his chest, Ethan couldn’t deny the intense satisfaction he
felt when Beau unbuttoned his jeans and then carefully pulled them down his legs
until he was laying there as naked as the day he was born.

But
that’s where Beau’s seduction ceased. Ethan stared in disbelief as Beau moved
around to the opposite side of the bed, pulled the blankets back and then
crawled in beside him.

“Come
here,” Beau said curtly, trying to push the blankets out from under Ethan.

Not
wanting to cause any more problems for the night, he did as Beau asked and
situated himself beneath the blankets and then flipped off the lamp on the
bedside table.

“I
said come here,” Beau told him, his command leaving no room for any
misunderstanding.

Before
he had the opportunity to move, Beau was pressed up against him, his hard chest
against Ethan’s back, his firm, solid thighs brushing up against the backs of
his own.

God
it felt good to be held. Just to have Beau’s strong arms wrapped around him.
Their fingers twined together and Ethan held them close to his chest, breathing
slowly, deeply.

“Thank
you for sharing with me tonight.”

Ethan
laughed without mirth. “Thanks for letting me ruin the night.”

Beau
tugged his hand, forcing him over onto his back, and Ethan stared up into
Beau’s dark eyes, the faint light coming in through the open curtains making it
possible for him to see somewhat.

“You
didn’t ruin anything, E. Just being here with you is more than I ever
expected.”

Ethan
swallowed, unsure what to even say to that.

“Now
sleep. I’m right here if you need me.”

Ethan
nodded, not sure whether Beau could actually see him or not. Turning back to
his side, he snuggled in deeper against Beau, wanting – no, needing – to feel
him.

♂♂

Beau
didn’t close his eyes, didn’t even try to sleep. He simply held Ethan in his
arms, breathed in his intoxicating scent and sent up a silent prayer, thanking
God for giving him this.

He’d
spent his entire life confused about who he was, about what he wanted, about
what would possibly make him happy. He’d found clarity when V had so graciously
convinced Zane to give Beau what he needed. And true, he had needed Zane. But
not for anything more than clarification on what he’d believed for a long time.

Was
that wrong? Maybe some would see it that way.  Not Beau. And he knew from their
last conversation that Zane didn’t harbor any ill feelings toward him. They
were friends, as close as brothers, and he cherished that relationship, but no,
like he’d told Ethan, Beau didn’t love Zane. Never had loved him other than
like family.

Then
again, it had taken Ethan letting Beau in, giving him this chance for him to
realize what true love felt like. And this… what he felt for this amazing man
was real and true and powerful.

Regardless
of how he got here, Beau was just thankful he was here. Here with Ethan.

After
months of wondering whether he was chasing his own fucking ass, something had
told him to keep at it because the end result was going to be worth it.
Whatever had spurred him on had been right. Ethan was worth it. Every ounce of
love he felt for this man was worth it.

Hearing
Ethan’s story, witnessing his pain… that had been a wake-up call for Beau. It
explained so much. Ethan wasn’t in denial, although he’d probably say he was.
He knew
who
he was, he just hadn’t come to accept all of himself.

Maybe
Gavin was to blame. Or maybe it was Jimmy. Either way, those men had altered
Ethan’s world. Jimmy with his God complex, thinking that he had the right to
dole out punishment because someone didn’t measure up to what he believed to be
the norm. And Gavin for stealing Ethan’s heart and breaking it into a million
pieces.

Sure,
Beau’s heart went out to Gavin. He’d been young, confused, and probably in love
with someone he knew his family wouldn’t accept. Too bad it didn’t sound like
he had a sturdy support system to get him through the confusion. And just like
so many unfortunate others, he’d taken his own life. Beau couldn’t even imagine
the pain Gavin had been in at the time. He was likely confused and watching his
own brother beat the man he loved had to have been hell.

And
maybe Beau had it all wrong, but he didn’t think so.

Unfortunately,
Beau couldn’t change the past, didn’t have an option to fix what had been
broken. But he was here now. He could love Ethan with all that he was and hope
that was enough.

Did
that mean he’d have to live his life hiding out with Ethan? Pretending that he
didn’t love this man? If he left it up to Ethan, he was sure that would be the
plan.

Beau
wasn’t sure he could do that. He wasn’t built that way.

He’d
spent his life in a house where love wasn’t shared freely, and generally it was
only given when something had been proven. Since the moment his football career
came to an abrupt halt, Beau wasn’t sure his father had even said the words. He
sometimes wondered whether Ben even felt them. Beau loved his parents, but he
didn’t look up to them the way he did Zane’s parents.

He
wanted the type of love that could be shared freely and openly. Like Travis and
Kylie and Gage had. The three of them had gone against the norm, but their
families accepted them. And more importantly, they accepted each other. And
Travis and Gage were the type of men who would stand up to the world and tell
anyone who didn’t believe in what they had to fuck off. Beau wanted a man who
would stand up for him, a man who wasn’t ashamed or scared of what they shared.
Because Beau was that man. He would go the distance to ensure Ethan knew he was
loved and to make sure no one harmed him.

Above
all else, Beau would take care of Ethan. Emotionally, physically. It’s what he
wanted. Hell, it was what he needed.

He
didn’t think Ethan was ashamed of who he was, and he knew damn good and well
that Ethan was strong enough to stand up for himself and those he loved. The
question was whether he would be able to or not. Would the pain and fear from
his past always cripple him to where he felt he had to hide?

“Are
you awake?” Ethan asked, rolling over onto his back.

Beau
shifted with him, refusing to let go. “Yeah, I’m awake.”

“Tell
me what you’re thinking about.”

Beau
wasn’t sure he could explain it. Knew he didn’t want to. Not if it meant
risking what they were sharing at the moment.

“You,”
he said truthfully. “I’m thinking about you.” Kissing Ethan’s hair, Beau
gripped him tighter.

“Well,
then we have something in common,” Ethan said quietly.

“Yeah?
You’re thinking about you too?” Beau teased, hoping to pull himself out from
under his pressing thoughts.

“Yes,
as a matter of fact,” Ethan replied, rolling over to face Beau fully.

Beau
chuckled and settled into the bed so that he could pull Ethan closer.

“Now
tell me what you’re thinking about,” Ethan told him.

“How
I don’t want this to end.” There. He said it. If that sent Ethan running, he’d
just have to deal with it.

Silence
descended, and Beau’s heart raced as he waited for Ethan to say something.

“I
don’t want it to end either.”

Well,
that’s definitely not what he expected him to say.

“What
does that mean for us?” Beau asked, curious as to where they were headed from
here.

“I’m
quite content just like this,” Ethan said, his arm sliding over Beau’s stomach
in light, gentle strokes.

“What
does that mean when we get back home?” Beau knew he was pushing the
conversation in a dangerous direction once again, but he couldn’t help himself.
He wanted to know.

“Nothing
is going to change for me, Beau.”

And
that’s what Beau had been afraid of. Ethan wasn’t willing to change for anyone.
He was obviously satisfied with the way his life was, and Beau wanted more than
a discreet affair. He wanted the whole nine yards. Unconditional love. A
family. All of it.

He
was tired of wasting time. Love had evaded him because he had been too confused
to know which way to look and now that he knew without a doubt just what true
love felt like, he wanted it.

Permanently.

“I
understand,” he whispered, not willing to destroy this moment.