Free Talker's Redemption by Amy Lane Page B

silence, and he had to jerk his body back in real time.
     
    He didn’t even notice that he made the other two people in the room jump.
     
    “I was raped,” he murmured, as though he’d always been able to say it. “About eight months ago, I went on a date with Trevor Gaines, and he thought we were going to do it, and I chickened out, and he raped me.” He swallowed hard, because this next thing was something Brian knew without words and Doc Sutherland had been trying to tell him. “It almost killed me. Not the thing, but….” He shuddered, still lost in the taupe of the wall across from him. “The fear, the loneliness—all of it. I….” I danced in the morning when the world had begun….
     
    “Tate,” Doc Sutherland said gently. Tate jerked, but the doc didn’t look surprised. “Buddy, we need you to focus.”
     
    “Is he okay?”
     
    Tate wasn’t sure what he’d been doing when his head had filled with Lyndie’s little hymn, but it seemed to have freaked the nice detective out.
     
    “Is Brian here?” Tate asked back, only partially rhetorical. “Is Brian here? Is he holding my hand? Is he telling me it’s all good? Because if that’s not happening, then buddy, I’m not all right. See,”—and suddenly he felt totally and completely focused—“that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I was not all right when Trev was done with me. I was…”—suicidal—“just so fucking lost. And every night, I’d come home, and I’d think… I’d think, ‘You know? I’ve got a razor in my drawer. It wouldn’t take very much, and then… then I’d just be cold for a while, and it would all be okay.’”
     
    Doc Sutherland’s hand started rubbing warm, soothing circles on his back, and Tate let him. He couldn’t look at Melville—just couldn’t.
     
    “And the only thing that kept me from doing it, from getting up and finding the razor, was that I knew Brian would be checking on me. He’d check on me every night, you know, because we were roommates and he was my friend, and I had no idea he’d been breaking his heart over me for months before I just kited off with fuck-face-douche-nozzle Trevor Gaines. And even that didn’t matter, because he still… just needed to see that I was okay. And because he’s the one who would have to live with it if I wasn’t, I just kept being okay.”
     
    Melville made a throat-clearing sound, and Tate turned to him, begging him inside to just please, just listen, just… just shut up so he could get this out. Doc Sutherland saved him. Oh God, maybe no one was around that night with Trevor, but Talker was starting to understand that maybe that night had been a fluke. Maybe he had people who would have been around if they could have, because right now, Doc certainly did ride to the rescue.
     
    “Be patient, Detective,” Doc said quietly. “He’s getting to it.”
     
    Maybe Melville was a decent guy—or maybe he just really didn’t want his shoes puked on—but he backed off.
     
    “See,” Tate said nakedly, looking at Melville and thinking, I bet he has kids. I bet he has a son, and he’s wondering what it takes to make a good kid into a pathetic fuck up who would puke on a cop’s shoes and ink his face like a freak. Take a good look, Detective. I’m all I can be.
     
    “See,” he said again, jerking himself out of his own head, “I couldn’t have faced Trev again. I couldn’t have. Now maybe. I couldn’t face him tonight, but….” That was before I puked on the bad cop’s shoes. “Now, maybe I could see him and not just… just check out and panic dive into my own head and never come out. But not then. So, I’m going to guess….”
     
    “Guess?”
     
    “I don’t remember. I was… I was so far down the fucking rabbit hole, I barely even remember seeing the scars on his hands. But Brian doesn’t go looking for trouble, right? And he was dropping me off at the club every day. And if it happened at the club, I’m going