Finding Eden(8)

There was an odd gleam in John’s eyes at the opportunity Paul’s rebellion presented, a sadistic glee in his voice as he said, “The old man is gonna be holding you down for me, not the other way around. Forget fixing my car, I want in.”

“Ask me if I care,” Paul said rather than cower the way John wanted him to. “I hate to ruin the party but you can’t hurt me, Johnny. None of you can.”

“Peter is in there waiting to do the old man’s dirty work and I was gonna cut you a break because three-on-one just ain’t sporting, but not anymore. We’re making you cry this time, pretty boy,” John said, his eyes still narrowed in fury. “We’re making your pussy ass cry tonight if it kills us.”

“I hope you’re right.” Paul turned away from John, heading toward the house, feeling as if he needed to cry more than anything. He wanted it desperately, an outlet for the pain crushing his heart, making him feel as if he couldn’t breathe. He had no memory of crying, not once for the length of a truly brutal childhood, but he was desperate enough for it now to try just about anything. “Come on, asshole,” Paul said as he stepped onto the porch. “Come make me cry—I dare ya.”

*

Late at night, when his life got too hard to bear, when his father’s ranting drowned out his mother’s soothing attempts to keep a nasty drunk content, Danny would start reading. He didn’t stop until his eyes were heavy and the words blurred.

He’d been doing it since he was very young, hiding from reality in books. It was a dirty secret of his, a passion for literature. If something like that had gotten out, expectations might have been made of him. He could have found himself signed up for college, a fate worse than death for someone like Danny, who naturally rebelled against rules. He’d barely made it through high school. Teachers telling him what to do and how to do it, he hated everything about the educational system.

But despite a rabid loathing for structured education, Danny did have a very well-used library card.

That was how Paul found him, sitting up in bed reading Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment by the light of a small lamp on his bedside table. Resisting the urge to shove the book back under the mattress, Danny gaped at his best friend as he maneuvered through his bedroom window with an ease and grace that shouldn’t have been allowed a man with his broad build.

“I’m starting to feel like your girlfriend.” Danny frowned, not loving this new habit Paul was developing of dropping in whenever he felt like it. While Danny wasn’t huge on jerking off, preferring the real thing that was often readily available to him, there was always the off-chance he could get caught doing something more embarrassing than reading Dostoevsky. “What’s up?”

“Sorry,” Paul said, seeming to have the same realization as he studied Danny lying in bed in his underwear. “I should’ve knocked or something. Did I inter—”

“It’s all right,” Danny assured him, wanting to stop that conversation before it started. He closed the book and put it on the nightstand. “I was just reading.”

“Really?” Paul asked, pulling back with a frown as he stared at the thick hardback novel. “I didn’t know you read.”

Danny gave him a droll look, refusing to acknowledge that with a response. Paul winced, looking away, shifting from one foot to the other. That was a bit odd, as if he had something he couldn’t quite say. They’d been best friends since kindergarten. There wasn’t much Paul hesitated to say to him.

“What’s wrong?”

Paul looked back to him, his face painted in shadows from the near darkness of the room, showing hesitance. “I sorta got kicked out.”

“What?” Danny jumped out of bed. Paul was easily the strongest person Danny knew. If something happened to have him searching out Danny’s help in the middle of the night, he couldn’t fathom how bad it had to actually be. His worst fears were confirmed when he saw what the shadows had hidden. Red, swollen skin was just giving way to bruises that decorated his jawline, his cheekbones and his left eye. His family was usually a little craftier. The bruises were normally strategically hidden under clothes.

That realization had Danny jerking up Paul’s shirt without a care for personal space. He stared in horror at what he saw. “Holy shit,” he rasped, his mind moving on fast-forward as he stared at the battered, damaged skin that had been tanned and beautiful just a few hours earlier. “What the fuck did you do?”

“I just…” Paul started, pulling his shirt out of Danny’s grasp and pushing it down self-consciously. “I didn’t feel like pretending. I didn’t wanna give him what he wanted…not this time.”