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Aled dropped his arms, sent Ronny a scathing, sideways look, and went to move on.
“Did he tell you about his self-harm?” Ronny called after him.
Aled stopped, nearly choking on his own spit. He turned back to Ronny with narrowed eyes, wondering whether he was serious.
Ronny grinned smugly at him. “Obviously he didn’t,” he said, taking a few steps to catch up to Aled. “When Jamie and I first got together, he was a mess. He was still dealing with the way his conservative family rejected him for being gay and still expressing that internalized homophobia by cutting himself. I stopped all that.”
Aled’s body went hot and cold. From the way Jamie was now, he never would have suspected anything of that sort in his past. Which could mean Ronny was lying.
“You’re bullshitting me,” he said, flinching like he would turn and walk on. His feet stayed right where they were, though. There was something about the look on Ronny’s face that was drawing him in too much to leave.
Ronny snorted and rolled his eyes. “You seem to think I’m some sort of cartoon villain idiot who is so jealous about an ex leaving me that I can’t do anything but stalk him to try to get him back,” he said.
“He doesn’t want you back,” Aled said, no longer certain he was fully aware of the situation.
“I care about him,” Ronny said with unusual candor. “I cared about him even before we started dating. He was my friend, one of the only friends who understood what it was like to be gay in a conservative world. I want him to stay safe. I don’t want some kid with problems of his own to cause Jamie to backslide into destructive behavior.”
Tendrils of panic shot through Aled. He couldn’t, in good conscience, reply that Jamie wouldn’t do that. He didn’t actually know what Jamie would do.
No, that wasn’t right. They might not have known each other for a terribly long time, but Aled felt like he knew Jamie’s heart and core.
“He told me that the two of you broke up because you tried to dominate him out of the bedroom,” he said quietly, peeking around to make certain none of the students rushing between classes was listening to them. “He didn’t want that.”
“I did try to control him outside of the bedroom,” Ronny said. “For his own good. He needed that control. He had none.” He paused, looking surprisingly vulnerable, like he didn’t want Aled in his business, before going on. “Jamie and I have known each other since we were kids. My parents are ridiculously wealthy, and so are his. His father is a viscount and claims to be good friends with Charles and Camilla.”
Aled’s eyes went wide. Jamie was some sort of aristocrat?
“Of course, there’s a world of irony in the fact that parents from a class that is so notoriously bent as the aristocracy would reject their son for liking cock, but there’s no accounting for people. I saw what he went through. I was there to pick up the pieces when it broke him. So don’t go telling me that I’m just some overbearing dom who can’t handle having his ego crushed when a sub leaves him. Jamie was my friend. What else was I supposed to do but catch him when he fell?”
Aled was speechless. He couldn’t even form thoughts about the whole thing. If what Ronny said was true, it changed everything. It might even change his relationship with Jamie.
He was saved from his shock by the campus bell chiming the hour.
“I’ve got a class,” he said, miserable about using the excuse to step away from Ronny. He felt as though the conversation were unfinished, or as if he’d lost an argument.
“Might as well give up now,” Ronny called back to him. “He’ll come to his senses and return to me before long anyhow.”
Aled clenched his teeth, fighting the urge to turn around, march back to Ronny, and explain all the reasons that was bullshit. So what if the two of them were lifelong friends? So what if Ronny had been there when Jamie needed him? Obviously, the whole thing had gone sour, Ronny had turned into the worst sort of dom, and Jamie had wanted out. And as Aled well knew, the traumas of someone’s past didn’t define who they were in the rest of their life.
He only felt worse as he headed into the building where his next class was held, though. Nothing about the information Ronny had given him felt right. Ronny could very well be lying. In fact, Aled was counting on it.
He made it almost all the way to his classroom before deciding there was no way he would be able to concentrate on Intro to Sociology. It wasn’t even directly related to his course of study. So instead of joining the others in the classroom, he kept walking down the hall to the open student lounge with wide windows that looked out onto the square.
He pulled out his phone once he’d settled in a corner, looking out at the autumn leaves and rushing students, but instead of calling Jamie, he hesitated. He wasn’t sure he was equipped to leap right into asking Jamie to explain his past and whether he’d had a problem with self-harm.
A moment later, inspiration struck, and he dialed Kit’s number instead.
“Hello? Aled? Is something wrong? Dawn?” Kit answered after only a few rings. There had been times in the past when Aled had needed a family friend in a hurry and Kit had rushed to help, but it had been ages.
“No, it’s not Dawn,” Aled said. “It’s sort of me.” He let out a heavy sigh and sank to sit on the windowsill.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Kit said, his voice strong and sure, exactly what Aled needed.
In an instant, Aled went from feeling like a grown man struggling to make sense of his lover’s past so that he could be what Jamie needed him to be to chewing his lip like he had when he was a teenager. “I just stumbled across Ronny while walking across campus here, and he…he told me some things about Jamie that I didn’t know.”
Kit let out a breath. Aled could hear sheep around him and guessed he was in his barn, working. He felt bad, but not bad enough to tell Kit it could wait until later and to go back to work.
“Which part did he tell you?” Kit asked. “The bit about his parents being nobs—and I mean that in more ways than one—or about how Jamie and Ronny got together?”
