Manson must have noticed a change in me.
I wasn’t sure how he knew. When he came into the garage the next morning, I had a fresh mug of coffee on my tool bench and the orange kitten in a large cardboard box nearby. The sides were low enough that she could see me, but not enough for her to attempt an escape. Jess had named her Cherry, and I thought the moniker suited her.
None of the guys had been surprised when I brought home a kitten. Not even slightly. Apparently I was losing my touch, or I wasn’t as subtle as I thought I was. Manson saw me walk in the house with Cherry last night and all he’d said was, “About damn time you got a cat.”
Vincent was instantly obsessed with her. Jason made a face and said the last thing we needed was a cat shredding the furniture with its claws, but I still caught him making friends with her by offering her bits of lunch meat from his sandwich.
“How’s the fluffball doing?” Manson said, squatting beside the box to offer Cherry his hand. She let him know what she thought of his intrusion with a loud hiss. “Grumpy, isn’t she? No wonder you two get along.”
“She’s a warrior,” I said, looking down at the tiny spitfire proudly. Introducing her to the dogs last night had been one of the funniest things I’d seen in a while. Jojo, as expected, feared her. Haribo ran in circles around her, barking, while she faced him with claws out and her tail puffed up. He hadn’t even been brave enough to get within swiping distance.
They would get along just fine.
But Cherry was still small, and I didn’t want to leave her alone while I worked. So there she was, peering around the garage, standing up on her back legs to see more of her new domain. I had music on but I wasn’t blasting it; the little one needed time to adjust to all the new sights and smells.
Manson was usually the one to turn the speaker on, preferring to work with sound rather than silence. I’d never cared much either way, but today, the upbeat playlist felt right. It kept me going, kept me energized.
But it wasn’t the only thing energizing me.
You deserve to heal, Lucas. You deserve to be loved.
Those words refused to leave me the fuck alone. They’d been stuck in my head for days, intruding to the front of my mind every time a text from Jess popped up on my phone, every time I saw her face around the house.
It made me mad, at first, because what the hell did that even mean? Life had nothing to do with deserving. You get what you get and you deal with it. Implying anyone inherently deserved one thing or another felt naive, like a child’s dream.
No one deserved shit. Life was unfair. You fight to survive or don’t.
But then the anger dissipated. I didn’t know if I deserved anything, but I knew the boys deserved someone who didn’t fly off the handle at every random provocation. Someone who didn’t push them away the moment things got too raw. They deserved better, Jess deserved better. Maybe I deserved better from myself.
The wrench slipped from my hand and clattered on the ground, making Manson flinch in surprise. “You good?”
“Yeah, yeah…shit.” Crouching down to pick up the wrench, I paused for a moment. My brain was a wreck, wildly fluctuating between giddiness and despair. Jess loved me — fucking hell. She wanted me to improve — Christ, it was too hard.
She wasn’t the only one who wanted to see better from me. Not just better from me, but better for me.
I wasn’t a good man; I never had been. But Jess made me feel like I was; like I could be.
Left to my own devices, I would have let myself wallow. Fuck it all, I was trash and I’d stay that way. But I couldn’t do that, not when I had people around me who cared about me so damn much. People who could soothe my pain, who didn’t judge me for how much I struggled.
Trust was terrifying. Intimacy even more so. But I was learning to be vulnerable. Maybe this was what it felt like to heal. It was stunning.
“Hey, Manson?” He nodded his head to acknowledge that he’d heard me. “I think I want to go to therapy.”
He paused, reaching over to turn the music down before he turned to look at me with a stunned expression. “You…you what?”
There it was, my chance to take it all back. Deny I said anything. Shut the fuck up.
Not this time.
“I want to try out therapy. For my…you know…all the trauma and shit. I think maybe if…if I talked to somebody, maybe they could tell me how to get the fuck over it…or something.”
Yeah. Okay. That wasn’t so bad. It didn’t kill me. He wasn’t scoffing at me.
Manson looked elated.
“Well, yeah, of course, that’s good. I can get you my therapist’s number —”
Closing my eyes, I counted to ten. Forcing myself to make that phone call would take a while. What was I supposed to say? Hey Doc, I’m pretty fucked up and I guess I’m supposed to talk to someone about it. Want to hear about some child abuse? Also, my brother was that murderer all the papers talked about, so do you mind if I dump all my confusion about that on you too?
“I’ll call for you,” Manson said quickly. “I’ll set up the appointment. Will that work?”
Clearing my throat, I gave him another nod. If I were to think seriously about what I did and didn’t deserve, I didn’t feel like I deserved him. I didn’t deserve that level of patience or empathy. But maybe thinking that was part of the problem.
I walked to the front of the garage so I could light up a cigarette. My hands were only shaking a little. It could have been worse.
Manson came to join me, silent, as I smoked. He’d always been good about that, always willing to share the quiet with me. Words were hard, and I hated feeling so many conflicted things at once without a way to make sense of them. But his presence was stable. It was one of the few things I’d ever counted on.
“I’m proud of you,” he said, and I groaned.
“Can’t you punch me in the gut instead?” I said. “It would be a lot easier to take than…than whatever you’re doing right now.”
He chuckled, shaking his head as I offered him the cigarette. “You’ll survive. What made you change your mind about therapy, anyway?”
“Jess said something,” I muttered. “She said a lot of things yesterday.”
“What’d she say?”
Manson had told me when he confessed his love to her. It freaked me out. Knowing he was in love with her while believing she could never love me too hadn’t been fun to deal with. Polyamory wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine, it took work. We had to deal with those uncomfortable feelings when they arose.
“She loves me,” I said. It made me grin like a fool as I raised my shaking hand for another drag on the cigarette. “She said that I deserve to heal. But what if I can’t? What am I supposed to do then? What if I sit down on that damn couch and spill my guts and even a doctor can’t help me?”
“Then we’ll find you a new therapist,” he said. “You’re going to have to be patient with yourself. It’s going to hurt. But you’ll get there. I know you. You’ll be okay.”
His eyes were so dark they were almost black. It was the first thing I’d ever noticed about him: the way he looked at the world, the way he looked at me. He looked at me like I was something worth saving, something good.
He reached up, and his thumb traced from the corner of my mouth across my lips. “She’s right, you know.”
I gave a quick, abrupt shake of my head. “I doubt that.”
“Maybe. But you believe in it enough to try.”
I hated the fear that squeezed around my lungs, how it demanded I reject this. It wanted me isolated, hopeless, angry and scared. That fear had damn near won. But I wouldn’t let it. Not now, and never again.
I drew closer to him. He and I had been vulnerable with each other before I even knew what that meant. All those nights we’d laid in the Bronco curled against each other, with one thin blanket and our body heat as our only defense against the cold. I thought of the bruises he’d drunkenly kissed. The promises. The tears we’d never let anyone else see.
“I’m not good at doing shit for me,” I said, my voice low and thick with the effort. “But I’ll do it for her. And for you. For all of us.”
“I’m just glad to see you doing it,” he said. “Regardless of who or what it’s for. You’ll figure it out.”
“You better stop talking like that or you’re going to get me choked up,” I said.
But it was too late for him to stop.
He kissed me slowly, almost lazily. His mouth was all minty, like he’d just brushed his teeth. I probably tasted like ash and black coffee, and I drew back from him suddenly, self-conscious.
He pulled me right back, demandingly. His kiss was deeper this time, authoritative as he shoved me against the side of the garage. He kissed me like he was hungry for me, and he pushed up my shirt with his hand so he could run his fingers over my chest.
He found his initials, carved into my skin, and traced them. If the cuts didn’t scar when they healed, I intended to tattoo his initials there instead. He’d left his mark on me in a thousand invisible ways; I wanted at least one that was perfectly visible, one that could never be erased.
“Don’t be gentle,” I said. He was touching me so tenderly and it exacerbated the emotions I was struggling with. I didn’t want to think I just wanted to feel.
He nuzzled against my neck and shoulder, making soft sounds of satisfaction as he kissed me. “Don’t be? Why?”
Stupid question. He knew the answer.
“Don’t deserve it,” I said, because that was the easiest way to explain it. That was the simplest thing I could water my response down to: gentleness was not something I’d been given, and it frankly wasn’t something I felt like I deserved.
I was an angry, violent person. I was harmful and dangerous and —
“You do deserve it.”
I stiffened, and he caught my wrists and pinned them to my sides as he continued to slowly, gently kiss my neck.
“I thought I told you to cut that shit out.” My words dripped with bitterness and I hated myself for it. Hated how petulant I sounded, how miserably angry.
“Since when do you tell me what to do?”
His response cut me to the quick. My first feeling was regret, because what the hell was wrong with me that I was talking to him like that? Then came fury, rebellion, because no one was in charge of me and I wasn’t going to just roll over and submit.
Then came fear, because I’d barked out words without thinking and that carried consequences. I wasn’t afraid of Manson himself, not truly. I wasn’t afraid he would hurt me, even though he could, and had, and would gladly do so again because it pleased both of us.
It wasn’t about fear of being beaten, like it had been with my father. I’d blurt out things to my Pops and just brace myself. Wait for the blows to start coming. I learned to blot out the pain, ignore the humiliation. Pretend it didn’t matter.
I wasn’t afraid of Manson abusing me.
I was afraid of him finally having enough, and walking away. It made me feel like a manipulative asshole. He deserved better, yet I expected him to stick around? How fucking toxic was that?
“Get out of your head, pup.”
Manson was looking at me sympathetically, but with a small smile that softened the pity. He laid his hand against my cheek, and I leaned into his warmth.
“Please don’t.” I inhaled shakily and a pathetic whimper accompanied my exhale. Furious with myself, I clenched my fists. “Don’t…don’t…”
“Don’t be kind to you? Fuck that.” He looked at me like I was something precious, something amazing. “You’re scared, I get it. Things are changing, and change is hard. Even good change is so damn hard. I know. But you’re loved. You’re cared for. Every change that comes, we’ll handle it together.”
I was still shaking my head, stuck in a spiral. He pulled me away from the side of the garage, walking me backwards as we moved inside. He kept me upright when I nearly stumbled, guiding me with one hand on my waist and the other still cupping my face. When I finally bumped up against something, I looked back and realized that it was Jess’s BMW he’d pushed me up against.
“I’ve got you,” he said. He pulled off my shirt, tossing it carelessly to the floor. Then his hands spread over me, and I hissed at the cold touch of the car against my bare back. But he just laughed gently, and said, “I’m going to fuck those nasty thoughts out of you.”
