Stone
I EASED OUT OF BED where Beulah lay sound asleep. She hadn’t moved in over an hour. My eyes had remained open and staring at the ceiling. Not wanting to wake her with my restlessness, I decided that getting up was the best idea. Holding her after our lovemaking had been reassuring. She wasn’t gone. She wasn’t leaving me.
Telling her the truth had been hard. It was a secret I’d held close for so long that sharing it with someone was a huge step for me. I’d debated telling her, knowing deep down she’d stay with me no matter what. I had also known I could trust her. Even if she chose to leave me she’d never share my secret.
For the first time in my life I had someone who was there for me. Someone I could lean on, share things with, and know they were by my side. The moment I saw the doubt in her eyes, I cracked. I couldn’t handle that she trusted Jasper. I had to get away so I could work through it without her there, tearing me apart with her pleading eyes.
I never told Jasper about Hilda. He had been there when Hilda acted inappropriately around me though. Once he had asked if I was banging my stepmom. I’d scowled at him in disgust. The moment she’d become my stepmother it was over. Not that she didn’t try to change that.
After Wills was born she got worse. When he was only four months old, she came looking for Jasper and me downstairs. Wearing nothing, she had made it very clear that she wanted us both. At the same time. Jasper’s eyes had bugged out of his head. He’d played with her tits that were still massive from the milk. My father required she nurse Wills for at least six months. She hadn’t wanted to. That didn’t stop her from showing me her swollen breasts more than once in her attempt to get me to have sex with her. Jasper was mesmerized. He was begging me to touch her. When he put his mouth on her nipple to try her milk like she suggested I told her to leave.
Instead, Hilda had straddled Jasper’s lap. He was ready to fuck her right there with no concern for his life if my father came downstairs. He had told me I needed to taste her which disgusted me. She was possibly the mother of my son and she tried to get two sixteen-year-old boys to have sex with her while a nanny took care of Wills.
I had to stand, point at the door to the stairs and threaten if she didn’t get her ass out of the room that I would call my father. That worked—Jasper didn’t want anything to do with my father’s temper and Hilda had all but run out of there.
Later that night, Jasper asked me if I’d fucked her before. I told him I hadn’t. I wasn’t admitting that to him or anyone.
He didn’t ask me about Wills until he turned two years old. Wills looked exactly like me. It wasn’t obvious or abnormal to anyone else because we were half-brothers. However, my father’s unsaid accusations were obvious. He would glare at me and I knew he wondered.
Hilda soon became another ex-wife and my father’s newest girlfriend was even younger—only a few years older than me. According to the prenup, Hilda had signed without even reading it, Wills was to remain with my father. She could have fought him in court. She was his mother and the prenup was ridiculous. She never debated and left her son there. She rarely even sees him to this day on her designated weekends.
Wills was living my life and I hated it. I didn’t want that for my son. Wills didn’t have a Geraldine to come along to fill in the loneliness and isolation. He had a stepmother who acted as if he was a hindrance. She never wanted him around and swore she wasn’t having kids. The idea of her stomach being anything but flat was unacceptable to her.
I grabbed Wills’ photo album from my closet and took it with me to the living room to look over his photos. I’d taken him to the Central Park Zoo and a movie while I was in Manhattan. He’d talked nonstop about his new school and his new friend George. I listened as he shared every aspect of his life with me. I understood his babbling. When Geraldine would take care of me as a child, I talked to her like this. I had needed someone to listen about my life and to care.
When I dropped him off later that day, he’d held my neck tightly and told me he loved me. The hunger to be loved and wanted was so familiar to me. I’d been that child once. Taking him and running was so damn tempting. But I knew my father would have Wills within hours and I’d be thrown in jail. I had to fight my father the right way. I had to be smart. And if Wills wasn’t my child, I had to find a way to save him anyway. A life with my father would ruin him. I didn’t want him to be like me—hard, cold, unable to trust. He still had joy in his eyes, they held hope for more. That would eventually get beat out of him and I had to save him before that happened.
If he was mine, I would never be able to forgive myself for leaving him. Even though I had been a victim. I was just a fifteen-year-old boy that succumbed to a thirty-year-old woman sucking his dick and offering sex to him. It had been a mistake that possibly made me responsible for bringing a life into this world, only to hand him off to a life of hell. I didn’t regret Wills’ life. He was a great kid, but the circumstances he’d been born into could very likely be my fault.
When you’re fifteen, you don’t think about the circumstances that might result from your actions. I had been horny and in lust with Hilda. She was the adult and her actions should have concerned her, but she hadn’t cared. She only wanted what made her feel good. It was always about her and what she wanted.
Wills suffered because of that.
I had cursed myself thousands of times over the years for being so damn thoughtless. Berating myself wouldn’t change anything. What had been done was done. I had to save him now.
My whiskey wasn’t gone, but it was low. Shay had left a few glasses in the bottle. I poured one and walked out to the balcony. The night air was warm as I looked out into the darkness. Wills had never been to Savannah. I’d never been allowed to take him outside of Manhattan. He’d like it here. I’d made a list of things I wanted to take him to see. I’d told him about the city more than once. He would listen with his eyes wide with wonder.
The door behind me opened, and I turned to see Beulah walking out in nothing but the shirt I had been wearing earlier.
“Are you okay?” She yawned and her hair was messy from sleep.
When she was near me, I was okay. Touching her, being near her, it always helped. She made me forget for a moment. She reminded me of happiness. She showed me that life could be bright.
I set my drink down and held a hand out to her. She slipped her hand in mine and I pulled her toward me. She came willingly. Without saying anything I moved her to face the railing and then slipped my hands up her hips to find her naked underneath the shirt. Without direction, she widened her stance and put her hands on the iron railing in front of her and lifted her bottom up.
Rubbing my hand from her backside to the front, my fingers dove into her wetness. Her body responded to my touch with a jerk and she moaned. Playing with her for only a moment, I watched her wiggle and squirm. The sounds she made and how she felt as I commanded her with my hand had me so damn hard I couldn’t take anymore. I pulled my erection from my boxers I guided it to her open warmth that waited for me.
Her loud cry as I entered her hard and swift was exciting. Taking her outside with her sounds of pleasure echoing in the night around us, I lost myself with each thrust. She was what fixed me. She was what would be my healing.