Page 4 of Stranded
He shifted, crossing his legs like women did. The short ruffled pink mini skirt he wore rode up his slender thighs encased in fishnet stockings. His sheer black lace top was indecent. He might as well have come here naked. Earlier when we were leaving the house, I’d refused to take him in my car looking like that and had demanded he change. He didn’t have a functioning car since he’d wrecked the one I’d bought him two weeks ago, and it was in the garage. For sure, I’d thought he would have no choice but to change.
I’d been dead wrong.
Aiden had called one of his one-night stands to pick him up. Loathe to have any of them at my home, I’d caved in and grudgingly took him as he was with us to the therapist. He’d been pissing me off since we got here with his suggestive movements and that pout.
My stepson was driving me out of my goddamn mind.
This office should have been the right place to talk about how angry he made me just by existing, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t ever talk to anyone about how the sight of his firm, bare thighs made my mouth dry. Or how hearing his high pitched moans put images in my head that didn’t belong there.
It wasn’t that my dick didn’t work because of what happened during my last tour. It refused to function because my stepson broke it.
“I just don’t know what to do anymore,” Melodie said. “They don’t get along. If I wasn’t at home, they’d have killed each other already. This isn’t the way I want my son and husband to live.”
Despite this being a judgment-free zone, the way the therapist, Eva, looked at me said it all. She thought it was my fault, never minding I was the most reasonable one in the office. If my stepson covered up, I wouldn’t have to notice the wayhis short skirts played peek-a-boo with the underside of his ass cheeks.
No stepdad should know his stepson was wearing a thong. That was a hill I was prepared to die on.
“Jackson, Aiden,” Eva said in her soothing therapist voice, which for some reason irritated me today more than usual. “I hope you’re listening to what Melodie is saying. Your animosity toward each other has designated her to the role of referee in your relationship, and this would be exhausting for anyone. Jackson, how does that make you feel?”
Here we go again.
She didn’t really want to hear how I felt about this whole situation. I already had to deal with counseling for my PTSD. I didn’t need this extra psychoanalyzing.
“It’s not Jackson’s fault,” Melodie said. “He’s been through a lot. He’s always been active as a Marine. He thrived on the thrill, but because of his accident, he’s had to walk away from that life. It’s affected his relationship with my son, and with me too.”
I straightened my spine, wanting to snap at her not to mention my impotence. After a year of visiting every doctor I could think of, I still couldn’t get hard without medication. It was embarrassing enough that two people in the room knew about my problem. This stranger didn’t need to know as well.
“I see,” Eva said.
She studied me as if she could see into my soul. I refused to let her in. She didn’t know the first thing about the reason I was here or what I had been through in the Marines.
I knew she wanted me to open up, but I couldn’t. Not here, not now, and definitely not with a therapist who clearly didn’t understand the Corps or what it meant to transition back to civilian life.
“Jackson, how are you coping with being out of the military?”
I tried not to roll my eyes. “The Corps,” I corrected quietly. I already talked about it to a shrink and didn’t need another one. What did she want me to say? That I missed living life in the fast lane? That I didn’t know how to relate to my stepson and my wife? The only thing connecting my wife and me had been the sex, and we didn’t even have that anymore.
When I was deployed and came home, it’d been so long since we’d seen each other, all we did was fuck before I left again. Now that I couldn’t get hard, we had nothing in common.
“It’s fine,” I replied.
“Jackson, this is a safe space where we can talk?—”
“We’re not here to discuss my career. You want me to get along with my stepson? Fix him.”
“What exactly is it about your stepson you want to fix?”
“Do you need me to tell you? Look at him!”
She angled her head in Aiden’s direction, then leveled her gaze at me. “All I see is a young man who is expressing his sense of style. Why do you think that’s wrong?”
“Because it is.”
If he didn’t dress like that…
I shook my head.
“It’s a waste of time,” Aiden said. “He won’t admit he’s a homophobic, transphobic asshole.”
