AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He planted his feet and dropped his arms. “You make it sound so easy. Tell me, when exactly was the right time to bring up my past? When we met? When we became friends? How about when you found out I went to N.A.? Brick doesn’t even know the stuff I’ve done.” Though he realized now his friend would never judge him for it.
Neither would Matt. Even after everything went down, it was never about Matt judging him.
“I planned to tell you. Once we—” Made love? Screwed? “—slept together. I knew you deserved to know, but I never got the chance. Or maybe I just put it off because I didn’t want to face it. We’re talking about the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“I told you everything going on inside of me. I kept waiting for you to tell me whatever it was you were holding back, and you never did.” Matt shook his head, his hand hovering over his mouth. “I was afraid to ask.” He dropped his hand and lifted his chin. “But I’m asking now. Please tell me.”
“I’m not trying to take anything away from the stuff you’ve had to work through.” Robby needed to make him understand. “But the problems I had with my exes weren’t like the ones you had with Patty.”
Untucking his long sleeve T-shirt from his jeans, he pulled it over his head and dropped it at his feet. Slowly, he turned, giving Matt a full view of the crisscrossed path of scars across his back, before he faced him again. “You think I ever wanted you to see this?”
Matt’s eyes shone as he gritted his jaw. “Who did this to you?”
Robby shrugged. “Mostly a guy named Harry. He was a friend of John’s, and sometimes, they used to trade. Me for Harry’s boyfriend, Parker.”
Matt sucked in a breath. “Steve’s boyfriend, the one who took me to the club.”
“We used to be friends, sort of, but his life went one way, and mine went another. I got out, and he didn’t. I don’t know if he hates me for it or what. But, yeah, Harry was pretty sick, a sadist. He didn’t think of us as human. We were just things. To screw or to hurt or humiliate. The guy was dead inside. We were like ants burning under a magnifying glass. He got off on making me cry, bleed, hurt. I only went to him a few times—Parker lived with him for months. Who knows what that does to someone?”
“This guy, Harry, is he the guy you were talking about? The one…”
“I killed? Yeah.” His body shook as he said the words out loud, but Matt didn’t shrink back this time.
He’d never admitted what he’d done to anyone. He couldn’t even bring himself to pray about it. “I did a lot of drugs by then, just to get through it all. The night it happened, though, Harry had invited a bunch of guys over, and I was there as a party favor.”
Robby sank down onto the sofa next to Matt and stared at the floor. “I’d coked up plenty before I went, but it didn’t help much. It was like having four Harrys all at once.”
The memories bubbled close to the surface. “I knew he roofied me sometimes, and it was a blessing really because at least I don’t remember everything. I know there were videos he posted online. They’re probably still out there somewhere.”
Matt tried to take his hand, but Robby pulled away. The idea of anyone touching him right now made him physically ill. “That last night, I think our drinks got switched or something because I remember everything. But when it was all said and done, and the other guys had gone, Harry was practically unconscious.”
He relived the events as he recounted them aloud.
Every part of him hurt. The cold trickle of blood dripped down his back from the flogging. He’d be shocked if his ass wasn’t bleeding too. Even his own prep couldn’t prepare him for taking on so many men at once. They were all gone now, except for him and Harry.
Every move was agony. It hurt to swallow, a reminder of the guy who choked him when he came. It hurt to sit, to walk.
He pulled a bag of cocaine and a razor blade from the back pocket of the jeans he’d discarded on the floor.
Then, Harry laughed.
It was a drunken, filthy, and cruel chuckle, and it broke something inside of him.
He looked at the stocky, hairy, smelly bastard, reclining naked on the sectional couch, and all he could think of was making it all stop.
Clenching the blade, he strode forward, leaned over, and sliced. Everywhere he knew the blood would run quickest.
Harry was dead before he could even think about what he’d done. When it finally sank in, he carefully wiped his prints off the razor with a paper towel, then pinched it in Harry’s own hand.
He scrambled into his clothes and left the bastard in a pool of blood rapidly sinking into the upholstery.
“I went back to John’s, packed a bag, and never looked back.”
A lone tear trickled down Robby’s face before he swiped it away. Apparently, he was still capable of crying. “It took me a while before I could stop thinking about the coke all the time, especially when the memories got bad. But my meetings made all the difference. I haven’t gotten high since, and I haven’t cut myself either, no matter how bad it gets.”
“Cut yourself?” Matt’s voice remained even, but judging by the look in his eyes, it cost him.
Robby took a deep breath, then held out his arms. The shiny, silvery-white lines chronicled his last few months as John’s item for trade. “I never wanted you to see. Every day I look at these, I’m reminded how weak and pathetic I was back then.”
