Page 1 of Fallen Rook

Chapter One

Enzo

“Hey, killer, lookin’ good in those slutty sweatpants!” A drunk guy in a fishnet top stumbled past me on the street. “Buy you a drink?”

I buried my fists deeper into my hoodie’s pockets and tipped my chin down, ignoring him. My ears were hot, even though the temperature was deep into the negative.

I tried to push down the familiar feeling of claustrophobia, like I was trapped inside myself, itching to tear my skin clean from my body.

I had been trapped for a very long time.

Tonight, I was finally breaking free.

What do you do on the night you buried your abusive father? This is a multiple-choice question, and one that requires some attention:

A. Mourn said father with your family and friends. I mean, he still sired you. That’s gotta count for something, right?

B. Seek urgent help in the form of intense therapy to deal with all the shit he put you through.

C. Go and get your dick sucked by a dude, because up until now, you never dared to try from fear he’d catch and kill both of you.

If you answered A or B, congratulations, you’re a normal, sane person.

If it’s C—ding, ding, ding! Welcome to the sexually oppressed, religiously traumatized club. We have cookies (but zero appetite).

I knew I was making a mistake as I trudged my way to a low-profile gay club in Hell’s Kitchen. It was too dangerous for me to show my face at a place like this, considering my profession and family pedigree.

Which was why I concealed myself to the max to protect my anonymity.

I wore a white Yankees baseball cap and a faded black hoodie. Gray sweatpants and a pair of green Adidas tennis shoes. It was the kind of getup I wouldn’t normally be caught dead in. I usually dressed nice, in designer Chelsea boots and tailored chinos and shirts that cost more than the average Manhattan rent. And my hair was always tousled to messy perfection.

A few standout traits made me recognizable no matter what camouflage I donned. I was uncommonly tall, standing at six four. And I had a sick physique even a baggy hoodie couldn’t hide. I’m talking broad-as-fuck shoulders and defined abs you could grate cheese on.

People noticed me everywhere I went, for better or worse.

While I was already regretting my dumbass decision, I still couldn’t back down from it.

It was time I figured out what was going on with my dick. A dick that’d been increasingly reluctant to go on playdates with my usual hookups. My cock had always been a bit of a snob—preferring my hand to anything else, really—but I’d been going on three-month stretches of dry spells lately. Which was frankly blasphemous, considering my age and looks.

I didn’t even know if I was gay. All I knew was that I couldn’t be fully straight, because if I were, sex wouldn’t be so…taxing.

I liked it more than leg day, but less than cheat day. Food wasn’t supposed to be better than sex, right? Every red-blooded man I knew would eat pussy over steak. Not me, though.

I’d had a longtime girlfriend before, high school through early twenties. Her name was Adriana. We’d had sex, but I found it just okay. I’d get hard, and even orgasm, but once it was done, I was glad I’d bought myself a few more days of not having to do that again.

The first clue to the fact I probably wasn’t straight was when she and I were doing a marathon of Outer Banks, and she gushed about how cute Chase Stokes was, a notion I wholeheartedly agreed with.

Both Adriana and I had glanced at each other at my confession, then looked away quickly; a blush had blossomed across my face. It was obvious that I, like her, found him attractive.

The relationship ended on a pretty bad note when my older brother, Achilles, screwed her to break us up so I would come out of the closet. His fucked-up version of being supportive, I guess.

Shockingly, his plan to try to drag me out of what he deemed my sexual confusion kicking and screaming by obliterating my already shaky trust in humans didn’t work. If anything, it just convinced me that my family was as unprepared as I was to confront whatever was going on with my sexuality.

For a while, I thought I might be asexual, but that didn’t track well with the fact I found plenty of people attractive. I had also been jacking off like the entire state of Texas was in desperate need of a sperm donation since I was a teenager. I loved masturbating. And I loved porn. Especially threesome porn. And, well, maybe the girl wasn’t always necessary. But it still felt safe that one was present in every video.

Because then I could tell myself that I wasn’t watching gay porn.

Because I wasn’t gay, you see. Not even a little bit.