Free Please Save Me (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) by Becca van Page A

to be around him, too. Even my own fucking mother.
    “When I was eight years old, that ‘pearl,’” he spat, “raped me. He held me down and sodomized me. My mother walked into my bedroom and took one look and walked back out. Not once did she ever ask me if I was all right, and she didn’t call the authorities to have him arrested. Until the day I turned thirteen years old, that fucking bastard used me for his own sick pleasures. By my thirteenth birthday, I’d grown and developed a little muscle. So when he came for me that day, I fought him. I laid that motherfucker out, and then I lit out of the house so fast I didn’t even take the time to put on any shoes.
    “I lived on the streets for a week, until the day I got caught stealing because I was hungry. The policeman who came to arrest me took one look at me, took me into his home, fed me, clothed me, and put a roof over my head. That day was the best day of my life. He took me to counseling, got me through school, and here I am. The man you think I am, the half man you claim to love standing before you.”
    Steve eased his hold on Selina’s arms, breathing heavily as if he had just run a marathon, and cringed when he saw the red marks he had left on her skin. He looked deeply into her tear-filled eyes, expecting to see revulsion and for her to back away from him. She surprised the hell out of him when she wrapped her arms tightly around his neck and her legs around his waist and clung to him.
    “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that, but I’m especially sorry the one woman you depended on to keep you safe failed you. Please, don’t ever think what was done to you alters the way I feel for you. You were a child, for God’s sake. There was nothing you could do to stop what he was doing to you. You have nothing to feel guilty or ashamed of, and if you want to place blame, put it where it belongs. On him and your mother.”
    Steve didn’t know what to feel. He had expected verbal recriminations, revulsion, and pity. Never had he expected that she would lay the blame where it truly belonged, on the people who were supposed to love and protect him. The cold casing around his heart shattered in an explosion of acceptance, and he sunk to the floor with her still wrapped about him. Burying his face in her hair, he gave way to the bitterness which he had stored up and kept inside for so long. He cried for the loss of his innocence and the lack of control he’d had over his own life, and he cried for his deceased mother, who should have stepped in to protect him.
    Another pair of arms wrapped around him from behind, and he felt the acrimony he had lived with so long wash away. The gaping hole in his heart began to fill with joy, excitement, and happiness as the two people in the world he held most dear comforted him.
    By telling Selina what he had been through, he had purged the animosity from inside him and was left with only acceptance. Acceptance of him by Gary and Selina as they sat on the cold tile floor and hugged. He was surrounded by warmth, and he let them give him what he had yearned for and needed for so long. He wasn’t about to push them away again. Fear had ruled his life since he was eight years old, and that fear had been swept away forever with their love and acceptance.
    He felt as if she had just saved him from a long, hellish path of bitterness, and maybe if he hadn’t opened up, eventually he would have self-destructed. He had always had a fear that Gary would find someone else to need and love, and that terror finally drifted away.
    “I love you, Steve,” Gary whispered.
    “Same here, honey.” Selina lifted a hand to cup his cheek. She wiped away his tears and placed the most reverent, love-filled, gentle kiss on his lips, which made him gasp for a deep breath.
    “Ditto, sugar,” he heard himself say and gave her a chagrined smile, because he hadn’t known he was going to say that until the words left