The doctors date, p.22
The Doctor's Date, page 22
Chapter Twelve
THOUGH IT wasn’t on his workout schedule, that night after dinner Owen donned a pair of shorts and a sweat-wicking shirt and went to the basement. Putting his earbuds in, he adjusted the treadmill settings and started his run, knowing immediately where his mind was going to wander.
John Jean Andreas.
He hadn’t expected the man would appear to witness their kiss, but if he had, he would have made it more of a spectacle. It’d given Owen icy pleasure to shelter Erin, to stare the man down. It felt so good to win.
Finally.
He wiped sweat from his brow as he fought the incline, but he pushed on, fueled with the rush of victory. He had no doubt a retaliation was coming—a man like John Jean would insist on it. No matter. Owen was ready.
John Jean couldn’t hit Owen with anything he couldn’t counter. Money? Owen had enough nobody could threaten him. Power? He had what he needed and didn’t crave anything further. Owen could protect his friends, or they could protect themselves.
Bring it on, bitch. I’m hungry.
The wild card, he acknowledged as he rinsed off in the basement shower, was Christian West.
Owen would put all his money on West being the embezzler, but this was because Owen hated the man and wanted him responsible for everything evil in the world. West had been a friend of his father’s. Owen could still hear the sound of the asshole’s guffaw drifting up the stairs of his childhood home, could hear the way his voice had pitched low the night he’d advised William Gagnon how to best cover everything up, to keep from making a scene.
Owen had too much of an emotional reaction to West, and he needed to keep himself in check. He couldn’t let the man get to him. He had to focus on Erin, who was rattled from the day, and who definitely deserved a better kiss than the one he’d received in front of all the nurses. Owen hoped he wasn’t mad. Or he was the kind of mad that would result in a refreshing fight.
Erin didn’t seem angry when Owen found him on the couch in the living room, watching another home makeover show with Jared. He was completely engrossed in it, his face twisted up in longing, and when Owen came up behind him, he didn’t react, not until Owen touched his shoulder.
“Oh—hi. How was your run?”
“Good.” Owen plunked into the space beside him. “What have you two been doing?”
Erin didn’t look away from the television. “We just started watching this after the dishes. Do you want to watch with us?”
Owen sat with them, though mostly he watched Erin. The naked need in his boyfriend’s face tugged at him. After an hour, he suggested they go upstairs, and Erin didn’t fight him.
Owen rubbed idly at Erin’s neck. “We still need to put your room in some kind of order.”
He expected Erin to bristle, but he only sagged deeper against Owen. “Can I stay with you tonight?”
“Anytime you want.” Owen kissed Erin’s hairline and led him down the hall.
When he was alone in a room with Erin, Owen felt like a teenager whose limbs didn’t work right. Though as soon as he focused on his lover, his doubts fell away. Particularly tonight as he saw how much Erin needed him. Erin looked lost, descending inside himself. Owen took Erin to the bed, where he arranged his boyfriend on the pillow and spooned behind him, wrapping him in a cocoon.
Owen ran his free hand through Erin’s hair, tangling his fingers. It was one of his favorite sensations. “Talk to me.”
“I feel… cold. Sharp, as if there’s a knife against my stomach, but I can’t get away from it no matter where I turn. It’s so stupid. What do I have to be afraid of? I don’t understand. I hate this. I feel so out of control.”
That’s what you’re afraid of, love. Losing control. Owen pressed a soft, lingering kiss at the back of Erin’s neck, drinking in the scent. He descended into the feel of Erin’s hair, the smell of it. If he died right now, his heaven would be Erin’s hair.
He let out his breath and gathered Erin closer to him, shutting his eyes.
You need to tell him everything. You need to let him know exactly why you understand.
Owen was terrified. But he was ready. He wanted to tell Erin everything.
How should he start?
Maybe he should simply dive right in. His stomach lurched at the thought, but after one more whiff of Erin’s hair, a deeper tangle of his fingers, he was all right.
“I told you before about my dad.” Exhale. Inhale. He could do this with Erin. “There’s more to the story. It was bad when I was younger, but it slowed around fifth grade. It was right—” He swallowed, anchored himself, drew on Erin’s hair again. “It was about the time my mom signed me up for private violin lessons. They were with this professor at the college, but she wouldn’t give me a ride there. I had to practice there as well, in a special practice room, and I always had to walk to and from the college. One time someone gave me a ride, and she was furious with me. I never accepted another ride.”
His whole body tensed, trapped in the arc of the story.
Erin stroked his arm, and eventually Owen could continue.
“My dad slapped me around sometimes, and the two of them always fought. Sometimes he’d come home from work parties, and my mom would get angry at me and send me to my room, locking me inside. My dad would bang on the door, but she must have hidden the key. I was scared. I wanted him gone. When she wasn’t around, I fought with him, trying to get him to hit me so I could turn him in, but he’d never do it so it left marks, not enough. By the time I was in high school, they divorced, and he left town. It didn’t get any better, though. We pretended we were fine, but at home everything felt heavy, like I was choking.
“My refuge was violin. I had the same teacher and practiced at the college. I practically lived there after school. I applied for scholarships, and I got every one of them. I picked the best school for music, one far away. I was getting out of Copper Point, and I couldn’t wait. And then.”
He shuddered, not sure he could do this after all.
Erin lifted his hand to his lips and kissed it. Held it there, waiting.
Owen focused on the warmth of Erin’s breath on his fingertips, let it carry him away. “Two weeks before I was supposed to send the deposit for college, she confronted me. I came home, and she was sitting at the piano. She’d been drinking. She told me she didn’t want me to go away for school. She told me I owed her and had to do what she asked.” His throat became thick, and he felt flat, not wanting to finish, knowing he had to. “I was angry and didn’t understand. I told her no. So she explained that the reason I had lessons so often, why I had to walk to them, was because she’d used the time to make sure he beat her instead of me. Beat her and did… other things. She told me more than I should ever have heard, in a way that stripped off pieces of me I can never get back. She made it clear my escape, my solace, my joy, had been at her expense. And now she wanted repayment.”
Erin clutched his hand. “Owen.”
Owen couldn’t return his grip. He could only forge ahead. “She apologized the next morning when she was sober, but she didn’t say I could go wherever I wanted to college. It was clear I was still supposed to stay. I don’t think she truly meant the apology either, only knew she shouldn’t have said it, much as she was secretly glad she had. It didn’t matter anyway. I knew I could never play the violin again. I wanted to smash it, but I couldn’t bear to because it was a gift from my instructor, so I returned it and asked him to contact the college to decline the scholarship and my admission. I moved out of the house the second I was eighteen, got a job while I went to college in Madison, and as soon as I had money, I sent it to my mother. I calculated the cost of my lessons over the years, and with part-time jobs, I gave it to her. When I told her the only way I would speak to her was if she went to a therapist with me, she went back to drinking. Once I was a doctor, I found her the best therapist in the city she was living in at the time—she’d moved away by then—and told her I’d pay for her therapy. She’s never gone. I haven’t spoken to her since. I haven’t played violin since the day she got drunk and told me what she’d done, not until the day of the auction. I never told anyone why except my therapist, not even Jared and Simon. They only knew it was something serious and I didn’t want to talk about it.”
He could breathe now, so he did, a lungful of the sweet smell of Erin’s hair. “That’s the story of me and the violin.”
He felt better. Lighter. He kept breathing, holding Erin close, letting the dark memories slough away.
Eventually he realized Erin trembled in his arms. Owen stroked his back, trying to soothe him. “It’s okay.”
“That should be my line. Why are you the one comforting me? What happened to you is awful.”
“My parents are broken people with significant flaws. My mother did her best, which in the end wasn’t good. She should have left him and taken me with her when I was young, but she didn’t want to abandon her position and give up her status. My father was under a lot of pressure, which is no excuse to behave the way he did, and I’m fairly sure his father beat him far worse than he did me. I’ve done what I can to stop the cycle they set up for me. I went to bales of therapy in college. I still see someone a few times a year to make sure my thinking is on straight. I take my meds. I undo the bad patterns of thinking when I recognize them.” He wrapped his legs around Erin. “I’m doing my best to open up to you.”
Erin turned around so he could nestle into Owen. “I hate the idea of you bearing this all alone. Of her taking something you loved so cruelly away from you. No wonder you looked the way you did at the auction. Except… you’re so good, Owen. I know hearing those words is painful for you for some reason, and I’m sorry if my saying so rubs salt in a wound, but it’s such a sickening thing for you to have your talent stolen like this. It would be different if you didn’t enjoy it, but I know you once did. I saw it, I swear. Am I wrong?”
“No, you’re not. I did enjoy it—which is the trouble. Her one sentence poured acid over my joy and ate it away, made sure I could never enjoy it again. The concert on Valentine’s Day proved it. Every note was pain. Every time someone says I played well, I see my mother’s drunk, twisted face, describing the things my father did to her, letting me know this was the price for my joy.”
Warm, wet drops fell onto Owen’s neck—Erin’s tears. “It’s not right. She should never have said such things to you. It’s wrong. Utterly wrong. You shouldn’t have to feel that way.”
Closing his eyes, Owen leaned into Erin, tangling his fingers into the hair at Erin’s nape.
You shouldn’t have to feel that way.
The words kept echoing in his head. Other people had told him the same thing in different ways, different orders of words, but Erin saying this, with his heart so broken, healed Owen as nothing else had.
Drawing a long breath, Owen curled his body around his lover. “Intellectually, I understand she didn’t have the right to say such things to me. My emotional comprehension of this, unfortunately, is something else entirely.”
“I remember how you looked when you were young, playing in the mansion, as if the violin was the most important thing to you in the world. I hate how she stole it from you. Her cruelty is as bad as your father’s abuse. She invalidated your solace. She took away your protection—your mother and your violin. I can’t stand it.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.” Owen’s whole soul eased at Erin’s outrage on his behalf. “Part of why I told you this story is to say I empathize with the feeling of knowing something doesn’t need to bother you while at the same time acknowledging that’s all it does.”
Erin smoothed invisible wrinkles on Owen’s T-shirt. “I’m afraid my father will take you away.”
“He can’t. No one can. And I have no intention of going unless you ask me to leave.”
“I understand it… in one sense. But as you said, another part of me can’t stop being afraid.” Erin buried his face into Owen’s chest. “I thought I’d made my peace with how I grew up. However, the more I spend time with all of you, particularly with you, the more I realize my peace was incomplete. I hadn’t admitted to myself how lonely I was. I can’t pretend I’m fine anymore, and now I’m terrified.”
Owen stroked Erin’s hair. “Did your father frequently take things he knew were important to you?”
“That’s the thing. He didn’t do it as deliberately as you’re implying. I mean… sometimes it felt like it. But it wasn’t as if I was living out Oliver Twist, or The Little Princess.”
Erin seemed uncomfortable, as Owen was when people pushed him about the violin and he couldn’t handle it. Owen softened his tone. “Tell me more about the loneliness. Or tell me whatever feels right. I don’t want to make you talk about something you don’t want to talk about, either.”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember much of being at home or school when I was younger than thirteen. Everything is grayed out, only these vague concepts and fragments. I’m not saying I can’t remember what happened to me. It feels as if it’s a film reel from the 1970s, run too fast with poor sound quality. It doesn’t feel threatening, but it also doesn’t have much detail.”
“Some of this is your brain’s defense mechanism. I have the same kind of film reel effect over holidays and birthdays, all the things Simon and Jared remember so fondly with a warm glow. Mine feel flat and mostly invented, which is eerie since usually my memory is so strong. It bothered me until my therapist helped me accept it was maybe a good thing I didn’t remember everything clearly, that this was my brain doing its job. It’s the same thing as the way mothers who go through childbirth without anesthesia will talk about the pain and remember it in this abstract sense but not actually remember the pain itself. They remember they had it, but the pain gets erased. Some of it is helped by the postnatal hormones, but a lot of it is the brain.”
He wasn’t surprised this didn’t comfort Erin much. “Then why did I have the reaction I did today? Why does it make me think about being young, about being afraid to go home from school?”
“I don’t know. But I’d love to hear about it. Any of it.”
Erin snorted derisively. “What, my days at school? Going home for break? Which pathetic tale do you want? I hated my boarding school, where I didn’t have friends, but at least there I was alone among people. When I went home, I was alone in silence. For the first few years, I kept hoping my father would notice me, that if I kept my grades up and joined the right activities, he would praise me and take me to dinner, but he never said a word. The only time he paid me any attention was… oh.” Erin’s fingers stilled. “I’d forgotten.”
“What had you forgotten?”
“I can’t believe I didn’t remember this before. I made a friend, and he happened to be from a town a few hours away. I was so excited and proud of my accomplishment I told my father while I was home on break. Except for some reason my father didn’t care for the idea and told me not to speak to the boy anymore. I think he didn’t care for the family. I was stunned, and though I told him I wouldn’t speak to the boy, I knew I wouldn’t obey my father. Benjamin was the only friend I’d ever had. I wouldn’t turn him away. Except when I went back to school, Benjamin had already abandoned me. Somehow I knew my father was behind it. I was never so devastated in my life.”
Shutting his eyes, Owen held him close. “I’m sorry.”
Erin curled his body tighter to Owen’s. “I hid everything from my father after that, and when people attempted to befriend me, I was so paranoid about hiding them they tended to drift off on their own. When my father introduced people to me because of business, I knew they were only paying attention to me because he wanted them to.” His inability to speak to Owen the day on the ridge made sense now too.
Owen lifted Erin’s face to kiss him lightly. “You know, I’ve thought this before, but though we both may be in our thirties, it’s as if we’re a pair of teenagers. That’s what you make me feel like, at least.”
Erin smiled. “So the hospital is our high school hallway?”
“Convince me it isn’t.”
Erin laughed, and Owen did too. Erin nuzzled his nose, ran his hands down Owen’s face.
Owen’s mind raced. “We should do the things with each other we didn’t get to do in high school.”
Erin lifted an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“I mean let’s get a do-over. What were the things you missed out on that made you regretful or sad? I know you have things. I sure do. We should tell each other what they are, then try to do those things together.”
“Hmm.” Erin laced his fingers behind Owen’s neck. “I’m embarrassed at how boring I am. I always dreamed of a date. Being picked up at my house, driven somewhere fancy, taken to a nice dinner when dressed up, having my heart flutter over a set of candlesticks.”
“Nothing embarrassing or boring about that. I’m in.” Owen rolled onto his back, drawing Erin into the crook of his arm. “I dreamed about Valentine’s Day. I think they’ve banned it now, but Copper Point High used to have flower deliveries at school, and I was always the one who didn’t get anything. Even Simon and Jared got friend flowers from girls.”
“They didn’t get you anything?”
Owen laughed. “We were out, but we weren’t suicidal. The administration wouldn’t have permitted gay deliveries back then anyway. They would have been too afraid of someone complaining.”
Erin traced the line of Owen’s sternum. “Some of the things I wanted had nothing to do with romance. I simply wanted to have friends over to my house. To have friends I could invite over.”
“You have them now.”
“It still feels strange to me, though. They feel borrowed.”
“Then you should practice doing more things with them without me so they feel like yours.”
“It makes me nervous.”
“I know. But it’s okay to be nervous.” Owen kissed Erin’s hair, lingering in the curls. “Your dad can’t take me away. I’ll tell you as many times as you need to hear it. I’ll never be impatient with you for being worried about it.”
