We started for home with heavy hearts. We’d stayed longer than planned, maxing out the vacation time I’d saved up. Though we’d booked one double room and one single, we’d all stayed together in the double every night.

The martial arts center was closed over the holidays, and Danny had gotten a coworker to take his classes for the rest of the time.

He’d also been putting off photoshoots right and left, and had to schedule them all for the end of January. As soon as we got back, he started packing his bags all over again, planning to leave the very next day for two weeks of catching up on modeling jobs in Karlsruhe.

His students complained when they learned they were stuck with the sub for the rest of the month, and Danny began to realize that there weren’t enough hours in the day for both jobs. He was also driving Christina to work at the gym three times a week, but I started handling at least that part for him.

Generally, he enjoyed coaching more, but modeling paid a lot better, so he refused to cut his hours on either. Stubborn as he was, he kept on trying to do everything at once.

 

We hadn’t had a second alone during the entire vacation—Christina had been around day and night. When we finally got into bed the evening we got home, I practically jumped him.

He let me remove his shirt without protest. He was doing well with that by now, and he didn’t have a problem with touching, either—at least, as long as I gave him time to prepare.

He laid on his back and eyed me warily as I sat down on him. It was a long time before he managed to let go of my wrists, but he finally did, spreading his arms out to show me that he trusted me, that I had free rein. Feeling him trembling as he attempted to suppress his rising panic, I made sure not to bend over him too closely, so that I wouldn’t restrict his freedom of motion any more than necessary.

 

When I returned from the bathroom, Danny was already dressed again. He was lying on his back with his eyes closed, clearly fighting back the childhood memories welling up within his subconscious. Submitting to me like that had been difficult for him, and I wanted to give him a few minutes to himself.

It was then that I made a huge mistake.

I just wanted to switch off the light, and to do that, I had to climb over him. I supported one hand on his left forearm, swung my leg over to straddle him for a moment, and held his right wrist with my other hand. Holding him down like that was a complete accident, and I didn’t stay in that position for more than a second, but it caught him completely off guard.

That one moment was long enough. He cried out and jerked himself upright so fast that I went tumbling backwards onto the floor.

As I climbed back into bed, stunned, he wrapped his arms around his knees and began sobbing loudly, rocking back and forth. He couldn’t help it—his past had come back to him with such force that he was left completely defenseless. He sat there like that for several minutes, crying helplessly.

I stared at him in shock. “What? What is it?”

He shrugged, seemingly confused himself by his own reaction. “I don’t know.”

Years later, I came across a report saying that it was common for people who had been abused as children to burst into tears after sex without being able to explain why. According to the report, they usually experienced it for the rest of their lives.

If that information was out there back then, we certainly weren’t aware of it. His violent reaction was frightening to both of us.

I sat down beside him, took him into my arms, and let him cry it out, murmuring words of encouragement all the while. “It’s okay, everything’s okay. It was an accident, I’m so sorry.”

“Nothing happened,” he said in a distraught voice. “I know that, but I still can’t stop bawling.”

After a while, Christina joined us in the bedroom, sitting on the other side of Danny. She stroked his back silently, without asking any questions. It took what felt like years for him to be able to look at me again.

“I’m sorry.” He wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands. “I’m so screwed up. Even if I lived to be a hundred, it wouldn’t be enough time for me to learn how to be halfway normal.”

I snorted in outrage. “You don’t have to be sorry for anything! You’re perfect just the way you are. I love you. I’ve never gotten along with normal people, anyway.”

The three of us slept in one bed again that night, with the windows open, despite the cold. Christina and I cuddled up close to Danny so that we could benefit from his warmth, and we had two thick down comforters on top of us. We wouldn’t have been cold had we been in Antarctica.