Brody groaned. How much had Aden seen, heard?

“Am I interrupting something?” Aden asked, no expression on his face.

Oh shit. He’d seen and heard enough to get the wrong idea.

“Yes,” Matt barked.

“No.” Brody was flushed with a mix of anger, confusion and acute embarrassment. “Matt, I want you to leave right now.” How many times did he have to say it? At least his fear was sliding away now Aden was there. Just as long as Aden didn’t leave.

Matt finally moved away. “Me? You’re joking. I’ve come all this way to be with you.”

“I want you to go.”

“Brody.” Matt’s hurt voice and it didn’t work.

“Get out,” Brody said.

There was a long silence and Brody hoped Aden didn’t try to fill it. This was something he needed to handle on his own.

“We need to talk,” Matt said finally. “Get rid of him.”

“No.”

Brody watched the darkness sweep over Matt’s face and felt goose bumps erupt on his skin.

“Give me your number and I’ll call you,” Matt said. “We can have a meal. Discuss things.”

“No.” Brody stared straight at him.

“I love you.”

Brody said nothing. He felt nothing except for relief that Aden was still there.

“Brody.” Matt tsked, disappointment in his voice now. “You owe me a chance to explain.”

“I owe you nothing.”

Aden walked forward when Brody had expected him to walk out. “Brody knows your number. You don’t need his. If he wants to call you he will. Maybe. Though I don’t think he should. Bye.”

Matt stepped into Aden’s space and Aden didn’t flinch, his arms hanging loose at his sides, eyes narrowed. Aden was tall and skinny. Matt was taller and well-muscled. Older and stronger. Much as Brody hadn’t wanted Aden to interfere, he felt a thrill of pleasure that he had.

“You don’t tell me what to do,” Matt said quietly but Brody knew that tone, recognized the menace in it.

Aden smiled. “I haven’t. Brody wants you to leave. I’d love you to stay. You seem to think unasked for pain is fun and I have qualifications in torturing. I’m always looking for volunteers. Want to come next door? We can play water boarding.”

Matt gave Aden a vicious glare before he turned. “I’m disappointed in you, Brody. I’ve given up everything for you. You could at least talk to me.”

Brody just wanted to get rid of him. “I’ll call you.”

Matt snatched up his bag and stalked out. A moment later came the sound of a car driving away. Neither he nor Aden had moved. Aden was staring at him and Brody couldn’t read the expression on his face. When Aden turned, Brody’s heart lurched but after the door closed, Aden had stayed inside with him.

“You’ll call him?” Aden frowned.

“I just wanted to get rid of him.”

“So you won’t call him.”

Brody shook his head.

Aden smiled. “Are my chips ready?”

Brody let out a strangled laugh. “Soon. I just need…” He looked down at his ripped shirt, the blood on his chest, the bite marks Aden would be able to see. “I opened a bottle of wine. Want to pour a couple of glasses?”

Brody bolted to his bedroom, ripped off the shirt and pulled on a dark blue T-shirt. He wiped a smear of blood from his mouth and went back to the kitchen. Aden was sitting at the table. He’d poured the wine but not drunk any. Brody had taken the trouble to make everything look nice, a candle ready to light, and Matt had ruined the evening. He took too large a gulp of wine and coughed.

“And I thought I had issues,” Aden said. “Sip wine, don’t gulp it, you pleb. Didn’t they teach you anything at vet school?”

Brody sighed. “I’m pretty sure my issues have yours beat.”

Aden smiled. “You’re wrong, but I’m not going to argue about it.”

Brody turned on the heat under the pan for the steaks and heated up the oil for the third cooking of the chips. “Are you a good listener?”

“Completely crap.”

That made Brody laugh.

“But there’s fuck all on the TV so…” Aden shrugged.

“Why did you stay? Why didn’t you walk out?”

“Because I know his type.”

“He’s not a bad man. Shit, yeah he is. Why am I defending him?” Brody put the steaks in the pan and stepped back as the oil spat.

“He says he loves you, but he doesn’t. What you’re hiding under that T-shirt isn’t love.”

Brody bristled. It was fine for him to criticise Matt, but not Aden. “You don’t understand.”

“Love? No, you’re right. I don’t understand love, but if you loved him, I’d be the one you wanted to leave and he’d still be here with you.”

Brody touched his chest where he’d been bitten. “This is just the way we were. We got lost in each other.”

“You’re into pain? Okay. What are your rules? What’s not acceptable? What’s your safe word?”

“We… There was no safe word.”

“So this isn’t BDSM. He isn’t a Dom and you his sub. It’s about him being cruel to you, controlling you, hurting you. That’s not love.”

“You don’t understand,” Brody snapped the words again.

“Help me understand.” Aden picked up his wine. “Explain how what you have or had is love.”

Why not tell him? Why not reveal all his dirty little secrets? Brody had hoped Aden would get into bed with him tonight. Now he didn’t think it would happen. Maybe that made it easier to let Aden see the sort of guy he’d have been getting into bed with.

Brody lifted his T-shirt and exposed the bite marks, the indentations of Matt’s teeth clearly visible. “What do you think when you see this? About me. About him.”

“I’m not averse to biting or being bitten. There’s pleasure to be had in both. Moderate pain can turn someone on just as much as a talented mouth or tongue. Biting’s a way of saying you want to devour someone, which is fine as long as your name isn’t Hannibal Lecter. But the guy went too far. You let him go too far.”

Brody pulled his T-shirt back into place and turned to the stove. “He’s bigger than me.” He cringed at the whiny sound of his voice.

“Yeah, he is. That makes it even more important you have rules, or at least understand each other’s limits. There’s things you shouldn’t do. You don’t surprise someone with a hard bite, you ease into it, making sure your partner’s into it too. Breaking the skin is unacceptable. He was asserting his dominance and wanted to cause pain not pleasure. Well, if he’s a sadist it might have been pleasurable for him, but it wasn’t for you.”

“How do you know he surprised me?”

“I saw him arrive. Heard some of what was said.”

Brody turned to look at him. “You still came in?”

“Hey, you promised steak and triple cooked chips—right? And I don’t share.”

Brody smiled. He put the plates into the microwave to warm and couldn’t help wondering what might have happened if Aden hadn’t come round. What if Matt hadn’t listened to no? Christ, he wasn’t listening to no. There were plenty of other times when he hadn’t, except Matt had always convinced Brody that he’d not meant no. Only when I was a kid. I’m not that pathetic. He’d talk to Matt in some neutral—safe setting and make it clear it was over. Brody waited to feel the pang in his chest and nothing happened.

“Do you have any freaky exs?” Brody asked.

“No. I’m the freaky ex. I…tend…tended not to hang around long.”

Was there a warning in there? “How much did you actually hear?”

“You telling him to go. A lot. Him not going. A lot. How does the ex who owned Captain fit into this?”

“Peter.” Brody chewed his lip. “When I met Peter, I thought I’d finally broken Matt’s hold. Peter and I had two great months, getting to know one another, having fun, me thinking maybe I’m not the fuck up I thought I was. Being with Peter made me see what a mess I’d made of my life, the stupidity of being with Matt in the first place, my continued stupidity in the way I kept letting him back in.”

“Sounds like Peter was good for you.”

“He was.” He took a deep breath. “Then he died, and Matt came back. I moved here to get away from him. The first time I’d gone somewhere and not told him. Though coming back to Surrey was a risk because this was where it all started. I hoped he’d leave me alone.” He gave a short laugh. “I should have known better. The TV thing was a mistake.”

“How?”

“Henrik had signed to do it before I went to work for him. He thought I’d be surprised and pleased when I found out, but I worried Matt would see it. I tried to wriggle out of being filmed, but not hard enough. Matt knew I didn’t get on with Des. I was relying on that to put him off the scent. That was another mistake.”

“How did you meet this guy?”

“I’m not sure I want to talk about it.” Brody swirled the chips in the fat to keep them separated as they crisped up.

“Why not?”

He kept his back to Aden. “Because I don’t come out of it looking good and every time I’ve told someone, not that I’ve told many, something bad has happened. Des guessed without me telling him and told our parents. That was not a good time.”

“How long has this been going on?” Aden asked quietly.

“Thirteen years. Since I was fourteen.” He took the steaks off the heat and set them aside to rest. When he turned Aden was staring at him.

“I was ten,” Aden said. “Not that this is a competition. And it only went on a matter of months.”

Oh God. Ten? “Matt was thirty.” He gave Aden a questioning look.

“Bradshaw was fifty-four. I stabbed him with a pair of scissors.” Aden exhaled.

Brody should have tried that with Matt, except he’d probably have liked it. He scooped out the chips onto kitchen paper to drain off the excess oil.

“Only nail scissors. Maybe just as well they weren’t bigger.”

He knew what Aden was doing, feeding him scraps to encourage him to talk and he was surprised to find he wanted to talk.

“I reached my teens with no one guessing I was into boys,” Brody said. “I was the freaky swot. The one who always had his head in a book. Never fiction. I wanted to know everything and have the answer to any question. The boy who was too busy studying to make time for play. When I wasn’t studying, I was with animals.”

“Fuck, we are nothing alike. I was too busy going out to bother with studying.”

“Yeah, well maybe I’d have been better to find out about life outside of my little world before I got drawn into Matt’s.”

He put the plates of food on the table and sat down.

“This looks great,” Aden said. 

Brody wondered if he could make himself eat. He’d been hungry, but now he had no appetite.

“Matthew Frazer-Hamilton came to my school as a chemistry teacher. He was different, funny, smart and he liked me. He got me. He brought me books to read, arranged work experience when he learned I wanted to be a vet. He cared. He was the best teacher I’d ever had.”

“And the worst.”

“I suppose that’s true.” Brody took a deep breath. “The day it started… We were alone in the lab after school. I’d stayed to finish an experiment. He put his hand on my hip and squeezed. He said he had something to show me in the storeroom and I had this sick thrill inside. Excited dread, knowing it was wrong and yet wanting it so much.”

He glanced at Aden. “Does that make me bad?”

“No.”

“Matt closed and locked the door. I just stood there. He reached down and I watched him stroke my groin. My cock went rock hard the moment he touched me. I saw the wedding ring glittering on his finger, and I didn’t care because he wanted me.”

Aden showed nothing on his face. Just sat twisting the stem of the wine glass in his fingers, swirling the wine, and never taking his gaze from Brody’s face.

“He unzipped my trousers, took out my dick, dropped to his knees and sucked me off. It was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I couldn’t believe the way it felt. When I’d come—embarrassingly fast, he leaned against the wall, took out his cock and kept saying my name over and over as he jerked himself off. His face when he came… agony, ecstasy, but then distress. The whole encounter couldn’t have taken more six or seven minutes. He looked distraught, and I felt guilty. I thought it was my fault he was upset. I said I was sorry.” He pressed his lips together. “I was stupid.”

“You were a kid. He knew how to play you.”

“He wasn’t playing me. He loved me. I believed him. But he had a wife, children not that much younger than me and he’d lose them and his job if anyone found out. I understood that. It had to be a secret. We had to be careful.”

“Eat,” Aden said.

Brody managed a couple of chips. Maybe it wasn’t the right sort of love, but Matt had loved him. Still loved him in his way.

“The police took me to Bradshaw’s home after my parents died,” Aden said. “He was an emergency care worker with a wife and teenage kids. She was okay. So were the kids, but him… He waited until it was just him and me in the house. No love involved. No telling me I was special, that he couldn’t help himself, that I made him want to risk everything.”

Brody released a shaky breath. Matt had said all that.

“Bradshaw raped me, said if I told anyone, I’d be the one in trouble. No one would want me. But if I let him play with me, he’d give me presents. My gift for him was the knife I used on him the next time. He thumped me and knocked me out.” Aden laughed. “I eventually told my social worker Bradshaw was abusing me and he didn’t believe me.”

“Eventually?” Brody watched him eat. Aden chattered as if he was telling him about something he’d seen on the TV. Every word that came from Brody’s mouth felt as if he was pulling it out of setting glue. He ate a few more chips. They tasted of nothing.

“I wasn’t speaking at the time I went into care. After my parents died, it was several months before I uttered a word.”

Oh God. “Was the guy okay?” Brody asked, then wondered why the fuck he’d asked that.

Aden shrugged. “Yeah. I’d been aiming for his cock and missed. I wish I’d hit it because maybe then it would have made a difference. Instead, after that he just made sure there were no weapons handy and he tied me up.”

Ten years old. What trauma had made him mute? Something in the way his parents died?

“So the teacher kept messing with you,” Aden said.

“Yeah and all I could think about was when it would happen again. Break times, lunch, after school. We couldn’t keep our hands off one another. Once he sent me a note in the middle of a maths lesson telling me to come to his room. Jesus. The risks we took.”

“Taking risks is exciting. You both got off on that. I still do. Maybe you do too.”

Maybe he had until the incident in the alley.

“What did I say?” Aden asked.

“Nothing.” Brody swallowed hard. “Matt kept telling me he shouldn’t be doing this, that he couldn’t help himself, that I was irresistible.” He took a deep breath. “He said no one could know, but he wished he could tell everyone how he felt about me, wished the world would understand how real our love was for each other. About a month after it started, he told me to persuade my parents to let me go on a school ski trip he was helping with. I’d never shown any interest in skiing, but I took on a job in a shop, pretended I earned more than I did and Matt gave me the rest. 

“The first afternoon we were there, was the first time he…fucked me. Until then, we’d done everything but. He gave me something to sniff, told me it was harmless. The amyl nitrate helped me relax, but he was too desperate. I had to shove my hand in my mouth to stop myself crying out. Even though he’d hurt me, I still wanted him.”

He gave Aden a defiant look. Brody wasn’t going to blame this all on Matt. “When I got back home, Des knew something was up, but not what. He saw the bruises. I said I’d kept falling on the slopes. Later, without skiing as an excuse, I had to lie about the state of my body, invent accidents, but sometimes I had too many bruises, or bite marks, and I forged letters to get out of games. Matt told me the marks meant I was his. I was a sick fuck because I wore them like a badge of honour.”

“You were a child. You knew no better.”

“I did know better. I was as much in thrall as him.”

“Did he promise you’d be together eventually? When you were older? When his kids had grown up? When his wife would understand he was bi?”

“No, he never did.” Brody gave a short laugh. “That’s what I wanted to believe, that when I left school and went to college, we’d live together. I hated it when he talked about his wife. Knowing they were still sharing a bed, having meals, doing stuff together…it made me feel sick. His wife got pregnant again and even that didn’t stop him or me. Then Des saw him look at me one time when we were in Caterham. Matt was with his wife but Des guessed. He’d known I was having sex with someone, but not who.”

Brody took a deep breath. “He told our parents. They went crazy. I tried to explain how we felt about each other. Telling them it had been going on for almost four years made it worse. My mum sobbed. I begged them to say nothing. I convinced them my life would be over if they spoke out. There was no chance of anonymity. People would know. I’d have to leave school. My chances of going to Veterinarian College would be finished. My dad went to see Matt and the next day, Matt resigned. I guess my dad had threatened to tell if he didn’t. Two weeks later, my parents died in a car crash. Des was old enough that we could stay together on our own.”

“Oh shit. That must have been tough.”

“It was, but I… I blamed myself. Our parents were upset because of me. Not upset, devastated. They blamed themselves. Des blamed himself for telling them. Blamed me because I was the root cause. The awful thing was I was more upset about losing Matt than I was my mum and dad, and Des knew it. All my dreams about waking up with the man I loved, eating breakfast with him, I watched them disintegrate. Being apart from him just made me want him more. After the funeral, he came to see me. Promised that even though he’d be living a long way away, he’d never let me go, that he’d never forget me, and I’d be with him always. Words that have come back to haunt me.”

“He ruined your life.”

Brody bristled. “I made it as a vet. I worked—”

“I’m talking about your personal life.”

Aden was eating, but slowly, and watching Brody all the time. Brody tried to eat and couldn’t, but when Aden reached across the table to fork a piece of steak into his mouth, Brody bit it and chewed, made himself swallow.

“Maybe if I’d never seen him again I’d have been okay, pulled myself together and got on with life. I was miserable, but I worked hard while Des kept the farm and livery going. My parents left it all to him. They’d changed their wills a couple of days after they learned about me and Matt.”

“They trusted your brother—”

“And not me.”

“I was going to say they trusted your brother to look after you. They didn’t trust the teacher who was fucking you. So when did you see him again?”

“A year later. Toward the end of my first year of college. I’d just caught the bus to go back to my room and he was standing across the road. He saw me, knew I’d seen him. I got off at the next stop, feeling as though all my internal organs had liquefied, and he’d gone.” Brody huffed. “By the time he turned up at my bedsit, I was desperate for him, and it all started again.

Brody sagged. “I was such an easy going kid. I didn’t throw tantrums, lose my temper. I wanted him to be like that and sometimes he was nice, but it was just part of his method of controlling me. Kind, angry, cruel. I never knew what I was going to get. He confused me. But I’d grown up. I thought I knew what I was doing now, knew how to handle things. I thought, this time he’s mine. He’d moved to the town to be near me, then told me he was still with his wife, still saying he couldn’t hurt his kids, that we’d have to wait for the littlest one to grow up, that we had to be careful. All the same crap, but he made me believe I was worth loving, worth the risk to him. I felt guilty, but it didn’t stop me. I was as obsessed with him as he was with me. I’m ashamed of the way I behaved. That shame weighs me down as if I had a mountain on my back.”

Aden said nothing. Brody wasn’t sure what he wanted him to say.

“Matt didn’t know how much I’d fucked around before he came back into my life. I’d been careful to use protection, but not careful with my body. I did bad things. I let guys do bad things. Hurt me. I was out of control, driven by guilt and shame and need. I studied like crazy, was the perfect student, but it was like I had two personalities. Good boy and bad.”

Aden let out a choked laugh. “At least you had a good side. I was all bad.”

“You’re not all bad, but I’m definitely fucked up. Maybe forever.”

“Not forever. You wanted him to go tonight. You told him to go.”

“He didn’t though. Not until you came in.”

“You were determined. I heard it in your voice. He’s a big guy and he’s a bully.”

“Yeah.”

“All those years ago, he turned you on,” Aden said quietly. “Literally turned you on. All that pent up teenage frustration, that need to be what your body was telling you to be, and he opened the door to our world. And to his world. An obsessive one where pain was a reward, controlling you his game. He abused you physically, sexually and emotionally. He made you think that was what you wanted. Then he left without closing that door, left without turning you off, setting you free.”

Brody stared across the table. Aden had understood. “Is that what happened to you?”

Aden shook his head. “Different reasons for the way I behaved, but maybe a similarity in some of what we did. Sex without commitment. Quick hard fucks in bathroom stalls, in alleys, in parks. I never found myself a guy like you did in Peter. I’m sorry you lost him.”

“All through the time I was studying, Matt was around. Calling me up at random, meeting me when he wanted sex. We never went anywhere, never did anything other than fuck. But he sometimes left it months between visits. He moved away and I thought I was free of him, but he kept coming back. I could have asked to move to a different college but I didn’t.”

Brody knew he was talking himself out of anything happening between him and Aden tonight or maybe ever. Hardly a chat over dinner. Brody was unloading his sad fucked up life.

“Stop blaming yourself,” Aden said.

“Who else is there to blame?”

“You act like a victim, then you become one. Leave the past alone. You can’t change anything. Just learn from what you did.”

Why not tell it all? What was there to lose now? “Those times when Matt was out of my life, I became obsessed with picking up guys at clubs, then using Grindr. I don’t know what I was looking for.”

“Something new?”

“Except looking for easy, casual hook ups as the norm isn’t healthy. Searching for a guy who might be sexier, funnier, better looking, more into me—where does it stop? My life was crazy enough with Matt, but hooking up several times a week isn’t right either. Unfaithfulness shouldn’t be a normal part of gay life. I know that’s not what I want.”

“What do you want?” Aden asked.

Brody hesitated, but he’d said so much, why stop now? “To find a guy I can be with forever. Doesn’t everyone want that? Isn’t that the whole point of life?”

Aden didn’t answer and Brody needed him to.

“What about you?” Brody’s heart thumped.

“I’ve never looked for forever. I like Grindr. Easy lays. What’s not to like? I was never looking for more than a quick fuck. But the teacher is not your forever. He’s a user. In that, he’s like me. He’s come back with barriers down. Wife out of the way. Kids no problem. He expects you to fall in line. What you want doesn’t matter. It never has.”

“You heard all that?” Brody sagged.

Aden shrugged. “I heard enough to know he’s a prick.” He paused. “Does he have a big cock?”

Brody laughed and felt weight lift from his shoulders. “Big enough.”

“Not big enough to make this right. Fucking you around. Coming into your life and then buggering off again.”

“When I began working in Leeds and Matt wasn’t around, I spiralled out of control. I knew if I carried on like that, I was going to have a breakdown. Then Matt inadvertently did me a favour. Nine months ago, he turned up late one night and nearly killed me. That time I swore it was over. I found another job and came here. I hoped I’ve never see him again.”

“You’ve grown up and he hasn’t. Eat.”

Brody cut into his steak.

“This food is too good to waste,” Aden said. “It’ll take that bad taste out of your mouth.”

“I know he’s wrong for me.”

“Good. Trouble is, so am I.”