Page 11 of Wild Fire

JJ gets that. He’s got issues, too, though his are of the marital kind, not the my-veteran-firefighter-father-tried-to-kill-me-in a-fire-because he-found-out-I-was-gay kind.

That’s a special issue I wouldn’t wish on my worst fucking enemy. And don’t even get me started about my mother and her bullshit. At least JJ is lucky enough to have siblings to share his trauma with. I don’t. And since both my parents are dead, well… that’s also why JJ happens to be the only person I can talk to about this part of my life. I know his secrets and he knows mine. Ours is a mutual friendship built on shitty parents, fires, and pretending our problems don’t exist.

Until one of us needs to let the steam out once in a while to someone so we don’t explode.

His silver-spoon husband’s a fucking idiot, by the way, and he deserves so much better. But I guess I’m not one to talk, given my exes are also manipulative assholes, so I keep my mouth shut about that.

Most of the time.

I look at the clock. He’s probably sleeping right now since he works in the morning. Calling him would probably wake his ass up, and he’ll be a total grump going in tomorrow, and it’ll be everyone else’s problem, so I decide not to call him. He’s naturally grouchy on a good day, but when he’s tired? Dude’s worse than those guys in the Snickers commercials crying for a candy bar.

It doesn’t take me long to pull up to Shadows & Sin, being it’s the half-way point between my place and the firehouse. Which is how I ended up there in the first place when I started this job at 99.

It’s been almost two years since I’ve been here. Even after the insurance company “reassigned” Cal, I couldn’t find the courage to go back. Not after he’d soured my memories there, too. Sometimes I wish I never set foot in the place, because if I hadn’t, I would have never seen Cal’s submissive side and I could have lived my life in total ignorance, and maybe things would be different.

But I also know I wouldn’t have found what I needed—a way to deal with my feelings and my desires—after everything I’d been through.

Therapy never did shit. I tried. For years, I tried talking about what happened, to any professional who’d listen, but every time I opened up to a therapist or doctor, or hell, even a room full of fire survivors and bereaved children in a dilapidated Catholic church hall, all I got was judgment.

Like what happened—my dad’s actions, his drinking, his hateful behavior—was my fault. Because I chose to be gay when I knew he was a drunk asshole with more issues than Vogue. I didn’t know coming out to him would turn him into a raging homophobe after he caught me holding hands with a guy, for fuck’s sakes. How the hell was I supposed to know that? We’d always been close, and I thought I could tell him the truth. That if I told him the truth, he wouldn’t be so pissed. But sixteen-year-olds aren’t exactly known for their sage wisdom.

I tried working out, too, to escape the haunting memories. Drinking—like him. Though I guess I didn’t get his alcoholic genes because drinking too much and blacking out was enough to turn me off from drinking for nearly a decade. Aside from my bar confessionals with JJ, and the occasional round with the guys, I stay away from alcohol if I can help it.

I don’t like the feeling of not being in control, especially of my own fucking body. But nothing dulls the pain like I need it to. Not like domination does.

Something in me shifts when I access that part of me. It’s like I become someone else, and that’s the only way I can forget. For just a little while, I can just… be free. I can make my sub obey my every demand, I can make them mold to my will. I can give them what they need, what they crave, and know their satisfaction is because of me.

For the briefest moment, I fucking matter to them in the most intimate, profound way. And even if it’s pretend, for the duration of a scene, I don’t feel so broken.

But Cal took that from me, too. He poisoned the one thing, the one place that made me feel safe. Because every time I drove past the neon red sign, all I could see was him, his hands and ankles bound in leather, his beady eyes staring at me through the slits of his pup mask, waiting for me to command him like the animal he was.

And I hated it.

I hated him for what he did to those victims, for what he put them through in the name of his own greed.

For what he did to me.

But most of all I hated myself for allowing him to break me in the first place.

I turn the car off, but I don’t get out. Instead, I stare at the parking lot full of cars, at the ominous red neon casting a glow over the pavement beneath it, the word Sin bright like a beacon.

My father’s voice echoes in my head, venomous as always.

You will repent for your sins, August!

I blink, forcing the memories away. That’s why I’m here.

To forget.

To escape the darkness threatening to pull me under. My mind wanders to earlier; to Nate.

Mr. Bright Eyes.

Part of me wants to reach out to him; offer to help, though I know I shouldn’t. Sure, it’s not all that farfetched that I might do something like that; I’ve checked on survivors before, so it’s not like I’d be doing something out of the ordinary. But it’s more than just curiosity about the guy’s well-being or seeing how he’s doing.

I want to touch him. Run my fingers through his hair—which must be soft as hell—and hold him against me until he unravels all that tension he’s carrying. Something tells me the fire isn’t his first catastrophe.

Which is precisely why I should not text Lacey at the tender hour of twelve-thirty and ask about him.