Chapter 36
Beau
One way or another, tonight was going to end in a disaster. I felt it in my bones even as I wished I would be proven wrong. Gordon hadn’t recounted his phone call with his son to me, but whatever had transpired between them, had been enough for him to fly off the handle. He was gripping the steering wheel as though it was the only thing keeping him in control. Seeing him like this made me a little uneasy, not because I believed he would lash out at me, but at what a confrontation between him and Eric would be like.
Gordon never quite laid to rest what his friend had done to us. He still felt betrayed by it and thought his friend should have had his back.
“I’ve heard him speak homophobic slurs before,” he had told me once when we were in bed. “I never did pay them particular mind. If you’ve lived around here as long as I have, you’d know how common it was. You learn to ignore it. I never knew how he seriously felt about this and I can’t think why he feels so serious about it.”
“Hello.”
“Drew,” I said, breathing a grateful sigh when the policeman answered his phone. He sounded cranky and muffled, but he had answered.
“Who’s this?” he asked.
“It’s me, Beau,” I replied, “Gordon’s boyfriend. Can you meet us, please? I’m so sorry to call you out of bed, but it’s urgent.”
“What’s going on?” he asked, and I heard the rustling of bed sheets. “Is Gordon in some kind of trouble?”
“He might be,” I answered frankly, staring at my boyfriend’s clenched jaw. “Ollie called him some minutes ago, and Gordon is convinced he is in trouble.”
“Where are you now?”
“Gordon’s driving us to Eric’s house. Can you get there soon?”
“Yes, give me a few minutes. Whatever you do, don’t let Gordon confront Eric until I get there.”
“I’ll try,” I told him. “But get there as quickly as possible.”
I hung up the phone and tried to find out what had made Gordon so upset.
“What did Ollie say when he called?” I asked Gordon as soon as I hung up the phone.
He replayed the conversation to me before ending with, “you should have heard him. He sounded awful. Plus, he was crying. I know Ollie, and he’s a tough kid. He doesn’t cry for just anything.”
We continued the drive in silence while I kept hoping Drew would get to the destination before us. He didn’t. Some fifteen minutes later, we drove into the driveway of Eric's home. Thinking about what had happened the first and last time I had been here, still left a bad taste in my mouth. I couldn’t blame Gordon for feeling the way he did. If Eric found out his son was gay, would it help him to change in favor of his son or would he give the boy the same treatment he had given us? Since he had ignored acknowledging the boy was his son for so long, I doubted he would be so generous now.
“Drew thinks we should wait on him before we do anything rash,” I cautioned Gordon as he flung his door open and climbed out of the vehicle.
“You’re free to stay here and wait for him, but I’m going to ensure my son is alright. In fact, this is what I should have done a long time ago. He belongs home with his family. Not here!”
He marched up to the front door of the house, and I followed. While I would have preferred to wait for Drew to arrive, there was no way I would allow Gordon to confront Eric on his own. We climbed the porch together, and I pushed my hands into the front of my pockets while Gordon rang the doorbell. It rang several times, but no one came to the door.
“Maybe nobody’s home,” I said.
“He has to be here,” Gordon insisted. “I’m not leaving until I know for certain. I’ll search the damn house from top to bottom if I have to.”
“What are we going to do? Bust the door open?”
“I know where he keeps the spare key.”
I groaned and followed Gordon around the side of the house where the pool was. Being the voice of reason in this relationship wasn’t going to work when Gordon was adamant about something.
Chapter 37
Gordon
I could sense how worried Beau was, but I didn’t have the time nor the mind to reassure him. With the phone call still fresh in my mind, I just wanted to get Ollie out of this house and back home. At the poolside, I located the rock where Eric always left his spare key. More than once he’d asked me to do things for him when he was out of town, and this was always where he left the spare key.
“This is trespassing,” Beau said behind me. “We could really be locked up for this Gordon, but since I know I can’t get you to change your mind, let’s do this as quickly as possible and go.”
I turned to him then and saw he was as tense as I was. I couldn’t ask him to do this with me. If we were caught, he would face harsher penalties since he was not originally from here. He had just had his contract extended. All that fight would have been for nothing if we got caught doing this.
“I’ll go in alone,” I told him. “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
He shook his head. “You go, I go.”
“Beau, that’s risky for you in your situation.”
“It’s risky in any situation. The more time we spend arguing about this Gordon, the more time it gives Eric to return.”
“I don’t like this,” I said with a frown but stopped haranguing him about going in with me. If we stood here arguing all night, we’d never get this done. We returned to the porch, and I unlocked the front door. The house was in darkness, but I could see a faint glimmer of light coming from upstairs.
“The house seems empty,” Beau said in hushed tones.
He was right. The house did seem empty, but the glimmer of light upstairs was odd in the otherwise dark house. The light wasn’t bright, but the house was dark enough for me to notice it.
“Ollie!” I called because I had no desire to be unannounced if someone was in fact here. “Son, are you here?”
The house would have been silent except for Beau’s deep breathing. He rested a nervous hand on my back. The gesture was meant to be comforting, but it was more distressing that I didn’t get a response from my son. Probably Beau was right, and nobody was here. Still, that glimmer of light bothered me.
“Do you want to go check it out?” Beau pointed up the stairs, and I knew he had the same thought I did that the light felt out of place.
I led the way up the stairs, Beau behind me. At the top of the stairs, I paused, the memory of Barbara’s dead body in Charlie’s arms hitting me hard. I was scared of what I would find. Ollie’s words screamed of ending his life. The stillness of the house, the darkness, that one sheen of light played on my emotions.
“Are you okay?” Beau asked when he came up behind me.
“I don’t know what I’ll find,” I whispered back, staring dead ahead at the hall to the door where the light streamed under. Everything was too quiet. Deathly quiet.
“I’ll go ahead of you,” Beau volunteered. I nodded and allowed him to lead the rest of the way. I hung back when he reached the door and knocked. “Is anyone here?” He frowned and glanced at me. “Do you hear that?”
At first I didn’t, but then I moved closer to the door and heard muffled sounds, like a moan.
Beau turned the knob and pushed the door open. Light spilled out into the hall. “Oh my God!” My heart fell at Beau’s horrified outburst. I dreaded what he saw. “Gordon.” He strangled out my name.
I rushed by him to enter the room. I stopped short, drawing a painful breath. Ollie was lying on the floor. Naked. Bruises and blood covered his body in several places. He was curled up in a fetal position, his hands over his head as though still warding off another attack. I couldn’t move. It hurt to breathe. I didn’t know if he was breathing or not.
“Ollie!” I rushed over to my son, dropping to my knees beside him. Up close the damage was even worse. I had to pry his hands away from the defensive stance over his head. It hadn’t helped him much it seemed. His face was busted up and swollen with purple bruises. His lip and nose were still bleeding which meant the wound hadn’t been inflicted very long ago.
I tenderly touched his face. “Ollie, son, I’m here.” I knew now why he had called me. Why he had sounded so awful and in pain on the call. Why hadn’t he told me what Eric had done to him?
His eyes were swollen but the eyelids shifted. “Da-ad?” His bloody lips barely moved with the word. He sucked in a deep breath that caught on a sob. “Da-ad?”
“Yes, son. It’s me. It’s me.”
I had forgotten about Beau until he approached us, bearing a large towel he must have retrieved from the closet. “Here. Cover him.” I glanced up at him and saw tears were streaming down his cheeks. It was exactly how I felt except my hurt was also tainted with anger and the need to avenge my son.
“Everything hurts,” Ollie sobbed, burying his face in my thigh. “It hurts to breathe.”
I blinked away the tears. “I know. I know. We’ll get you to the hospital so it can stop hurting, and I swear I’ll make him pay for this if it’s the last thing I do.”
“I’ll drive,” Beau volunteered.
“Okay.”
I couldn’t let my rage take over although I wanted to let out my frustration and anger. I had to take care of Ollie first and ensure he was okay. The towel secured around his waist, I lifted him, and he cried out from the pain of it. His arms went around my neck, reminding me of how he would hang from around my neck when he was a little boy. My hands secured around his thighs to keep him from jerking too much, I got to my feet and nearly dropped him when I saw the evidence on the floor of what Eric had done to my boy.
My legs went weak, and my knees buckled. When Ollie emitted a painful groan, I barely straightened, so the both of us didn’t end up on the floor. Beau, who stood at the door holding it open for us, didn’t quite stifle his own sob. His face went pale, and for a minute he looked like he was going to throw up.
I shook my head at Beau for him not to say anything. I couldn’t take the comforting words right now. I didn’t want anyone to tell me how much better this would get with time. Nothing could ever erase this from my mind. Nothing could have ever made right the injustice my son had faced tonight. At the hands of the man who was convinced he was Ollie’s birth father. What kind of sick person would do this? If he was right about Ollie’s parentage, what sort of demented father could do this to his own son?