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“So I had this plan all set to go when I got home. I was going to tell my parents I fell off my bike and that was how I got hurt. I figured they’d take me to the hospital because I could tell my nose was broken and Jimmy had twisted my arm so hard, I heard something snap. I think the pain made me pass out for a while. When I woke up, I was alone. It took me almost an hour to walk my bike home. My parents were waiting for me in the living room. When they saw me, all they did was shake their heads. My mom was crying but I knew the tears weren’t for me. They werebecauseof me.”
I hadn’t understood what Theo was talking about until I heard the name Jimmy. Jimmy Cornell was Ford’s older brother. The abusive prick was currently spending time behind bars for brutally attacking his own mother, but it had been Ford who’d suffered most of his life under the heavy hands of his drug-addicted brother.
I barely had time to register that whatever had happened had likely included Ford as well. I had a million questions, but I didn’t want to interrupt Theo to ask them.
“I guess Jimmy or his mom must have told my folks what had happened… or at least the version of events they wanted them to know.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, unable to hold to my vow to keep my mouth shut.
My voice made Theo jump, but thankfully he stayed where he was. “It doesn’t matter,” he said with a shake of his head. “I was sent to Oregon the next day. Our pastor knew about a place out there that could fix me. I don’t remember much about the first couple days because I was pretty heavily drugged since they had to rebreak my arm and nose to set them. When I woke up, I was in this dark room with just a bed, toilet, sink, and closet. I called out for hours, but no one came. I thought maybe I was in jail or something…”
“It was a gay conversion therapy camp, wasn’t it?” I asked.
Theo nodded. He was silent for a long time before he looked at me and said, “I kept trying to tell them that they couldn’t fix what wasn’t broken. I knew who I was. I was okay with it even if the people around me weren’t. I’d never bought into that bullshit about going to hell because what I was doing was a sin. But it didn’t matter how many times I said it, they kept me there. I was still a minor, so it was like a license for them to do anything they wanted to me. No one ever came to see me, not even my parents. I asked for a lawyer, but that just earned me some kind of punishment like no food for a couple days. I did manage to sneak a call to my parents once and begged them to come and get me. The call got disconnected but Father Abbott found out about it anyway and punished me by giving me extra chores and stuff. I remember one of the kids whispering to me that I was lucky that extra chores were all I’d had to do. I didn’t know what he meant until a few years later when Father Abbot had me moved to a different place. One higher up in the mountains that made the first one look like a beach resort. I never saw any other kids there, but I could hear them… their… their screams.”
I didn’t point out that he seemed to be excluding himself from that last observation. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and promise no one would ever hurt him like that again, but I didn’t dare touch him for fear of losing him completely. My entire body was shaking violently with the need for vengeance on Theo’s behalf.
I could tell he didn’t want to share any details about his captivity with me—and that was exactly how I saw it—so I asked, “So whatever happened with Jimmy also included Ford?”
Not surprisingly, Theo tugged his hand free of mine, but I was glad that not only did he stay where he was but he didn’t start digging his nails into his arm again.
“We’d meet at this athletic shed at my school. We were just kissing and stuff but I really… I really wanted to, um…” If Theo’s cheeks hadn’t already been red from the anguish of reliving the memory, I was sure he would have been blushing. “Ford swore to me that he wanted it too.”
“And then Jimmy walked in on you,” I observed as things began to make sense.
“Ford had no choice,” Theo murmured.
My heart sank as I realized what he wasn’t saying. “Ford hurt you,” I said simply.
Theo finally looked at me. All the pain he was feeling was right there in his face, in his eyes. But he hadn’t shed even a single tear.
Not one fucking tear.
He was still burying every ounce of pain he’d lived through during and after that incident.
“You don’t know what Jimmy was like, Lincoln. The things he did to Ford…” Theo shook his head and returned his gaze to his feet. He swiped at his eyes.
So tears for Ford but not himself.
“What did Ford do to you when Jimmy found you together?”
Theo violently shook his head. Before he could reach for his arm, the one that took the brunt of his anger, I grabbed his fingers between mine. I forced myself to draw in a deep breath before saying, “Today would have been my brother’s twenty-seventh birthday.” I could feel Theo’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t look at him. “I couldn’t save him either.”
There were several beats of silence before Theo squeezed my hand and said, “I was on my knees and had just pulled Ford’s pants down when Jimmy opened the door. I didn’t even realize we weren’t alone any longer. Ford punched me, knocking me to the ground. He… he, um… he called me some names and then hit me again. Kicked me too. I figured out later that he probably needed to convince his family, Jimmy in particular, that I’d come on to Ford… had forced myself on him.”
I shook my head because my brain couldn’t process the Ford I knew being capable of such atrocities.
“Did you ever see each other again after that?”
Theo shook his head again. “Not until this past winter when Ford and Cam showed up on my doorstep. If it had been while we were still kids, I probably wouldn’t have understood, and I would have slammed the door in his face. But just seeing him there, the look in his eyes… I knew he’d relived that day and much worse from the moment Jimmy threw open that door. And when I saw the way Cam looked at him, the way he lookedoutfor him, all I could think at that moment was that he’d finally made it. Ford had found the life he’d deserved.”
“You forgave him,” I murmured.
“We do what we need to survive. It took me a long time to learn that.”
I wondered if Theo was talking about himself or Ford. Probably both.
Theo scanned the woods around us, but I wasn’t sure if he was really seeing them or something else. “Forgiving Ford was one of the easiest things I’ve done in a long time.”
