Chapter Twenty-Five
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He nods, and I briefly consider giving him some bullshit answer. I could tell him I was lying—they would have hurt me very badly, I would have felt each and every blow, it would have been agony. I could tell him I had lied to get him to go because I would have. But I didn’t have to.
It’s comical we’re having this conversation while we’re both naked. I could draw the sheet up to cover myself, but I’ve never been terribly modest. Physical nudity is nothing compared to the raw vulnerability I’m about to visit upon myself.
“Have you ever heard of a condition called congenital insensitivity to pain?”
He blinks, parsing the words before nodding slowly. “Yeah.”
“You know what it is?”
“Yeah. It’s when you can’t feel—”
His eyes get wide, wider than I’ve ever seen them, and I hold back the sigh that’s dying to escape. Wait, just wait.
“You’re trying to tell me you don’t feel pain?”
His words are doubtful, and the narrowed eyes and cock of his head echo the sentiment. Yes, I know it sounds like science fiction or like some madcap government experiment gone horribly awry or like a plot point of a middling police procedural. It’s likely all those things, but it also happens to be my life.
“I don’t feel physical pain, no. And no, I won’t demonstrate.”
His complexion takes on a greyish cast. I’m thankful for it. “People ask you to do that?”
“When I was a kid. Before I learned to keep it to myself.”
And I had. Slicing my arm open with a proffered pocket knife. Taking a swing of a bat directly to the gut. I’d been perfectly willing to let a kid slam my fingers in a door, but a teacher had realized what was about to happen and stopped it.
“Who knows?”
“My mother, obviously. My doctors. Matthew.” My grandparents and my father had too, but they’re gone now. It’s possible some members of my father’s family might know, but I’ve never spent much time with them and never once after my father died. Pretty sure that was my grandparents’ doing.
“Does India know?”
“Yes, although I honestly think she forgets sometimes.” I smile and shake my head, recalling how she’d kicked me under the table the last time I saw her. Matthew had scolded me for the bruise. “Do you want to talk about India instead of the very private information I’ve shared with you?”
His eyes have narrowed, brows creased, and he’s staring into space as if he’ll find the answers there. He won’t. I’ve looked. “No, I’m…I’m trying to get my head around it, you know? It’s hard to imagine what that would be like.”
“I understand.”
It’s precisely like me trying to imagine how pain feels. I can’t. I have no frame of reference.
“But you’re a sadist.”
“I suppose.”
“How can you enjoy causing people pain if you have no idea what it feels like?”
A question I’m not thrilled to answer, but it’s better than him vaulting out of my bed and calling me a freak, so I’ll take what I’ve been offered. A chance to explain.
“It fascinates me. Always has. I understood from an early age I had best learn how to fake it convincingly. To do that, I had to watch people very, very closely. Something that was an instinct for everyone else is a learned response for me. Something as simple as saying ‘ouch’ when I stub my toe took I don’t know how many hours of practice. The timing, the pitch of my voice, what my face was supposed to look like—all of that I had to learn.”
My most vivid memories of my father are of him pointing out people in pain. He taught me how to watch people, to record endless details and use them to my advantage. To move in a world I don’t belong in.
I took in all that information, filed it away. Practiced endlessly in front of a mirror and tried to figure out what the scale was. Papercuts and stubbed toes were the hardest to learn. They don’t look like they should hurt so much, given how minor the injury, but those are what get people cussing and hissing in pain.
“But you like to hurt people?”
“I do.”
“Why?”
I’d like to turn it back on him, ask him why he enjoys being hurt, but I know what he’ll say. It’s what most of the masochists I know tell me: I don’t know. I’ve always been this way. It feels good. It turns me on.
I could say the same. I’d like to think if my parents’ genes hadn’t combined in this particularly freakish way, I’d still enjoy it. It’s not just that, though. It’s difficult to untangle the threads, but I’ve tried.
“Some of it’s the same as you. I enjoy it. But I suspect some of my motives are more…sinister.”
“You don’t have a sinister bone in your body.” His scoff pulls up the corner of my mouth in a skeptical smirk.
“Says the man I had in so much agony you were begging me to stop?”
“Not the same. You’re not malicious.”
Oh, my darling Allie.
“No? What if I told you I fantasize about beating people to death? That there is the thinnest thread that keeps me from violence at any minute? That I take only men as play partners not just because I prefer them for sex, but because their bodies can take more abuse? There’s an animal inside me, Hart, and it should scare you. Because it sure scares the living hell out of me.”
He studies me, his eyes so dark in the dim light I can barely tell the irises from the pupils. “Do you want me to leave?”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“That’s the only answer you’re going to get.”
He stares at me, unblinking. If he thinks he’s going to intimidate me into answering, he’s wrong. His jaw tenses, the fine muscles flexing, his broad chest rising and falling too far for normal breaths. Frustration pours off him.
“Could you, for once, tell me you want me?”
“I tell you that all the time.”
“Yeah, you want me for sex. You want to hurt me. Control me.”
I swallow the “everything” that wants to push out of my mouth, and instead I let that cold, indifferent part of me show. I don’t like that he’s rendered me so vulnerable, and though I should be seeking his affection and sympathy—because that will make him like me, he won’t hurt me if he likes me—I can’t do it. “What else is there?”
“You feel affection for people. I know you do.”
“I’m quite fond of you. Is that what you want to hear?”
“No.”
I expect him to climb out of my bed, pull his clothes onto that beautiful body of his, but he sits there, his gaze unwavering. How has he not left yet?
“How’d you get so good at this? If you don’t know what it feels like?”
My eyebrow tugs up, and I smile. “You think I’m good at this?”
“You know you are, you narcissistic bastard.”
True on both counts, I suppose. He should try walking around effectively bulletproof and see if that doesn’t give him a bit of a swelled head. I should scold him for his impudence, but we’re not playing right now. He can, and should, ask me whatever he likes, however sick it makes me.
“I think that’s precisely what makes me so good. I can’t rely on how I would feel. I have to pay attention to how my partner is actually feeling. That’s the only information I get.”
I gather up the scraps like a magpie. A starving, bewildered, wrathful bird.
“How’d you end up doing this, anyway? It’s not like it’s a major in college or something that would come up during career day or some shit.”
It surprises me that he’s taking us down this path instead of steering me back to more prying questions about my-so-called “condition.” Makes me grit my teeth when anyone refers to it that way. If I have to deal with this thing that makes me extraordinary, then let it make me exceptional instead of afflicted. The big cat’s out of the bag now, so may as well let the kittens follow. “Well, it was either this or be Batman.”
I’d given that a try while I was in high school. I was angry, so goddamn angry for being different, for being separate, for not being allowed to confide in anyone other than my mother for fear it might literally get me killed. My mother, god love her, was trying to keep me safe. Had moved to Philadelphia after I was old enough to know better than to tell anyone so I could have a normal life. Well, as normal as life gets for the inexcusably wealthy.
I missed my father. And because I was an idiot—okay, teenager, but honestly, same difference—I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t talk about it. No, instead I got it into my thick skull to devote my days to making a dead man proud. So I played vigilante around 13th Street in case some idiots wanted to prey on the less-than-sober leaving the gay clubs.
Hadn’t been half-bad at it, really, though it’d almost killed my mother. Coming home looking like I did—bruised and bloody and so keyed up she must’ve thought I was on some crazy good street drugs—would’ve scared any parent shitless, never mind mine, who didn’t have the same tools at her disposal to make me knock that shit off. Pain is an excellent deterrent, and I was completely undeterred. How do you bargain with a kid like that?
That was how I’d met Brandy. He’s the one who’d made all the difference. In all probability, I would’ve gotten myself killed eventually.
Allie’s teasing voice reminds me of what we’d been talking about. “Seems to me most of your clients already think you are Batman. Also, you do kind of look like a Bruce.”
I shoot him a withering glare to cover up the bloom of pleasure that Hart thinks I’m good at my job, and he grins back. “At any rate, yes, that’s how I ended up doing this. Prep school by day, kink by night. I was lucky I looked older than I was and that I had a friend who would vouch for me.”
Friend is perhaps a strange word for my relationship with Brandy, but the closest to what Allie would understand.
One night when I’d been playing paladin, I’d happened upon some assholes who were roughing up a skinny kid in an alley. Naturally, I went all early Steve Rogers on the guys and earned myself a few broken ribs and a quality shiner before it got broken up by a couple of cops. Despite my injuries, I managed to give them the slip and ignored their threats to shoot, because what the fuck did I care? Fucking shoot me.
The next night I was at it again, and one of the cops managed to run me down, tackle me. After he’d cuffed me and dragged me up to standing, he…stared. Dark eyes and hair I could tell was red even in the glow of the streetlights, he looked me up and down and not in the way I’d gotten used to men looking at me in this neighborhood.
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”
Of course my bluster didn’t make him blink, and the fucker still wouldn’t stop staring at me. “You grow up in Philly, kid?”
“Manhattan.”
“Your dad a cop?”
“None of your business.”
“If you want to get out of here without a record, it fucking is. Answer my question.”
So I had. “Was.”
He’d looked at me for a long time, and I probably should’ve been scared, but I wasn’t. Just pissed. I wanted to spit in his face, but I knew what could happen to a brown kid dressed like I was. Nothing good. So I waited. And waited. Until he finally opened his mouth.
“You look like a guy I used to be on the force with. Back when I worked for NYPD. You any relation to Javi Reyes?”
He must’ve known by the way I looked at him or something, because all of a sudden, he looked sad. And old. Way too old to have known my dad. My dad had a goddamn Tom Selleck mustache; he couldn’t get old like this joker. In reality, he never had.
Guy undid the cuffs, and in the split second before I beat it, he said, “Name’s Brian Brandon.”
I did not give a fuck what his name was, so I ran. Even though I wanted to ignore it, I heard him anyway. “Your dad used to call me Brandy.”
Over the course of a few months, I’d run into Brandy while I was out on my caped crusader missions. He’d cuff me—when he could catch me—and we’d talk, sitting on trashcans or leaning up against a Dumpster in dark alleys. Probably looked far more sinister or sexual than what was actually going on.
He never brought me in, but he did lecture me. Tried to get me to knock it off, but even then I knew better. So he’d asked me why, and when I didn’t answer, Brandy started guessing. He never could keep his mouth shut. Fucking Brandy.
One night when he found me, I’d had the shit kicked out of me pretty bad. Split lip, bloody nose I was lucky wasn’t broken, and an eye that would turn black and swollen overnight. Brandy didn’t even bother cuffing me that time, just hauled me over to his squad car, shoved me into the front seat, and broke out the first-aid kit he carried to clean me up.
I didn’t flinch when he ran the alcohol swab across the gash over my eyebrow.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, kid? Do you like being hurt?”
All I did, all it took, was looking in his face and not saying a damn word. He stared at me, shook his head, and ran a hand down his face, looking like he was going to live to regret whatever came out of his mouth next.
“Fine. You want to get hurt? Fine. But you’re not going to get killed doing it. Javi would roll over in his grave, and neither of us want that. So here’s what you’re going to do. You wear jeans and a black T-shirt. You got black boots?”
I nodded.
“Then wear those too. You meet me at the corner of 13th and Sansom, ten o’clock Saturday night. It’s either that, or the next time I catch you, I’m bringing you in. Got it?”
There really hadn’t been a choice, and the rest, as they say, is history. History I’m not quite ready to share with Allie, but maybe someday I will because I think Brandy would like to meet him. Scratch that, I know Brandy would love to meet him and give me a hard time.
Brandy lives in Haverford now. He’s got a nice spread he wouldn’t be able to afford on his PPD pension, but it’s a perk of saving a rich kid from himself, I suppose. I visit him sometimes when I’m back on that coast, although not as often as I used to and not nearly as often as I should, considering I owe him so much.
As grateful as I am to Brandy—and I am—I can’t stomach being around him for long. He makes me feel like I did back then, and I don’t want to feel that way. Like a scared, fucked-up, and seriously angry kid. I was so fucking reckless. Maybe worst of all, he still talks about my father, and it makes me angry. Which is stupid. I should cling to the old stories as hard as I can, not let any particle of them slip through my fingers like sand, but I get so goddamn jealous that Brandy had more time with him than I ever did. Also, I don’t want to hear anything that’s going to make my dad less than a hero in my eyes. I’ve seen too many people I admire and respect fall, fail, do things that make my brain buzz with incredulity—how could you do that?—betray my good opinion of them. Can’t there be one person on earth who I get to look up to? Even if he’s a false idol, I want someone to worship.
Before Allie can tell exactly how lost I’m getting in those old memories, of how exactly a friend of my father’s introduced me to the world I now call my home, I need to move this conversation along. India had understood. I don’t know Allie would. Middle-aged guy bringing a sixteen-year-old boy to a kink club? In other circumstances, I’d be skeeved out or at least cautious myself. But for me, finding kink is the reason my mother still has a son, and I won’t brook anyone talking smack about the man who did that for me.
“So, anyway, by the time I was in college, I was pretty well-versed, and I wanted more than anything else to share it with other people. Other people who must have been seeking as much as I was. Unlike me, they hadn’t found it yet. That’s how I met India.”
He nods, drinking up the droplets of information I’ve meted out. It’s a lot to process. Then he looks at me again with that steady, earnest gaze. “When you said earlier that there’s an animal inside you and I should be afraid?”
This is it. This is when he gets dressed, calls me a freak, and walks out. That’s what he should do, but I’m too selfish to tell him to leave. “Yes, I remember that quite clearly.”
“Thing is, I don’t think there’s an animal inside you.”
I open my mouth to protest that he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, but he cuts me off before I can. “I think there are two.”
That’s…not precisely reassuring. “What makes you say that?”
“I mean, there’s definitely a part of you that has some serious bloodlust. I saw it in some of the guys I served with, the ones who were itching for a fight, who would look for any excuse to get violent. We kept an eye on those guys and stayed away from them at the same time. That’s who you reminded me of tonight with those muggers. You wanted to fuck them up.”
Yes, I had. Would’ve delighted in beating both of them into a bloody pulp, so damaged and broken from my handiwork you wouldn’t have been able to tell where one body ended and the other began.
“But you never look at me like that. Yeah, you want to hurt me.” He smiles then, the sheepish one that says he’s still unsure how he feels about enjoying that as much as he does, but, oh, does he enjoy it. “But not like that. You don’t want to kill me. I know what that looks like, and that’s not you.”
Hard to argue with that. Not only does the idea of anything serious happening to Allie make me upset, but the idea of me being the one harming him? I would never do that, in reality or even in fantasy.
“So maybe that’s the other beast, the one you let out to play. And I…I like that one a lot, and I bet a lot of other people do too. So don’t use that as an excuse. You might have the potential to be dangerous, but you’ve got that shit under control. I refuse to be afraid of you.”
I cock my head at him, because…hell. I’ve convinced more people than I can count that all of their fetishes, impulses, inclinations, and desires are all okay. It’s how you act on them that makes all the difference. Which I’ve applied to myself: I keep that beast on a leash. Here Allie is, though, telling me, no, there’s two of them—one of which I set free to run about the earth with other people who want to play and the other that’s never let off its lead. It’s a shift. A small one, perhaps, but one I appreciate because it lets me wipe out the occasional voice in the middle of the night that tells me I should’ve sacrificed myself a long time ago.
I can’t say thank you for that, though. Don’t want him to lose confidence in me. Instead, I issue an invitation. “Then perhaps you’d like to play again?”