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Maybe it’s just as simple as having a horrible family with terrifying secrets. Maybe he just no longer wants to remember. My family wasn’t rich, but we were loving and kind. I know all too well that can be a rare gift.
“No,” Trey said, brushing tears away from his face and sniffling. He sat up straighter, composing himself. “You need to hear this. You’re my husband. You need to know. I should have told you sooner.”
“Okay,” Connor said softly. “But know we can stop anytime you want if this gets too painful.”
“I’m a big boy. And strong.” Trey blew out a quivering sigh and paused to stare into the fire.
He began again.
“Okay, so you know how appearances can be deceiving? That chestnut, I suspect, was coined for my family.” He looked away again and then, as though drawing on inner strength, he started talking fast and with resolution. He stared off into the distance, seeing things Connor couldn’t see.
“The secrets of my family all revolved around my dad. And my mom, who aided and abetted, even though she’d say when it all came down, she knew nothing about what was going on behind the closed mahogany doors of our house. She was willfully ignorant. She didn’t see because she didn’t want to see.”
Trey paused for a long time, staring at the floor.
When he picked up the thread of his story, his voice was deep—and dead. There was no emotion. And maybe that, Connor thought as he listened, was simply self-protection coming into place. Numbness.
“My dad started abusing both my sister and myself when we were little kids. The first time I remember I was about eight. Elizabeth was a few years older, and I think she got the worst of it—it had been going on for her for years. I found out later the assaults late at night started for her—” He let out a shaky sigh and Connor feared he would start to cry again. “I can’t even say it. It makes me sick. Still.”
He shook his head. “Look. My dad, a prominent surgeon and philanthropist, had a darker-than-black side. He didn’t just abuse us sexually and psychologically; he was involved with one of the largest child pornography rings in the Midwest. This was back in the days when Polaroids and videotapes were swapped and sold. My dad was a hub for this kind of thing.”
He stopped again for a very long time. Connor was about to tell him he didn’t need to go on, but Trey looked up at him. In the firelight, his eyes were bright with tears. “We were his stars. Should I tell you what he did to us? What he made us do to each other?” Trey lowered his head.
“No. I can imagine.” And Connor could. It nauseated him. He wanted to power wash his brain to rid it of the images that were suddenly, and unbidden, arising.
“This is why I didn’t want to be Bruno Purdy anymore. You might have even seen a news story about it when everything broke wide open when my sister finally told a guidance counselor what was going on. Google us and you’ll see.
“I just wanted to separate myself. I always meant to legally change my name, but it’s been surprisingly easy, for the most part, to just be Trey, so I never got around to it. I’m sorry if you feel—and your daughter feels—I was deceiving you.
“It wasn’t deception. It was a way to keep myself sane. An alternate reality from the horror and nightmare of my childhood and teenage years.”
“Oh my god,” Connor whispered. He held Trey close and told him, “You don’t need to say any more. I’m sorry I made you revisit this pain, which I can’t begin to imagine. But it’s okay. You’re safe now.” He squeezed him tight and listened to Trey sob.
It all made sense now. Of course, Trey wanted to distance himself.
Who wouldn’t?
Chapter Fourteen
TREY GLANCED OVERat Connor to make sure he was asleep. His chest rose and fell and his face was slack, a little drool leaking out of the corner of his mouth. His eyes moved rapidly back and forth beneath their lids.
Connor was not only asleep, but deeply so.
Good.
Gingerly, Trey rose from the bed. He slipped on the robe he’d left on a bench by the door and went out of the room, closing the door so softly there was barely a click.
In the guest room that doubled as Connor’s office, he made sure the door was locked. And then he sat down at the desktop Mac and brought up Firefox, which he’d deliberately set to not store his browser history. He had no stored favorites, of course, but he knew the sites he trafficked most on by heart. His favorite was called Silver Daddies. As the name implied, it was a hookup site for May-December connections.
Trey was more on the May side than the December, although he didn’t kid himself. Honestly, December was looming just around a bend in the road ahead. But the guys on the site didn’t have to know that. His profile pic was a close-up of his chest, shaved hairless. He’d had an old trick, a graphic designer, Photoshop a bear claw tattoo on his right pec. The other pic was of him with a black baseball cap, face lowered so…well, there was essentially no face.
The photos pulled, even though there was no genitalia or bare ass and nary a face to be found. The guys on the site didn’t seem to mind, happy to fill in their own fantasy faces and more.
If things got more heated and serious with a guy with whom he was chatting, he could privately exchange more revealing photos. He had a lot of those, thanks to his whoring around.
He endeavored to keep himself safe from detection by listing his location as Miami, Florida, and his occupation as truck driver. No one questioned him on the details. They simply passively accepted them as the truth. Not because they were particularly credible, but because these guys were desperate to believe. A sexy truck driver was too butch to resist. They wanted to believe so much, they did.
It’s so easy to lie.
