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His shoulders slumped, and the tension ran out of his body like a balloon deflating. Suddenly it was as if all the walls around him had collapsed. I saw into his very soul, the tiny corner he’d reserved for himself. He was lonely and so tired of fighting, and my heart broke seeing him struggling so much.
“You ever think that life would be so much easier if we could change something about ourselves? Some detail that always stops us in our tracks?” I pointed at the wall and my computers.
He probably didn’t understand what I was getting at, but it was one of the things we had in common. Once I got a thought in my head, I obsessed about it. It consumed me. It was why I worked hard to make sure I had some sort of balance between my work and life. If I held down a proper job, I’d never stop. At least the one I did have allowed me to turn work away when I needed a break. Ry was similar in that he focussed on a challenge until he perfected it—navigating my yacht, flying my plane, working on my cars, you name it.
Actions were easy for him. They were fine. But he didn’t show his emotions. He buried them instead. He shut down and kept working, masking whatever the feeling was until he was a powder keg ready to blow.
Just like now.
His nod was small, but it was there. “But I can’t.”
“I know. We probably shouldn’t want to either. But sometimes it’s nice to imagine we could purge it from ourselves. We can shove down the feeling, but the peace never lasts.”
“Yeah, if only it did.”
“You know, if it’s just a matter of doing something, you can do it,” I hedged.
“I know what you’re doing, Zali, and yeah, no. Not this. I can’t just do it,” he snapped back, the tension in him running hot again.
I walked over to him and rested my hands on his hips, rubbing my thumbs along his waistline. “Why not, Ry? As long as you aren’t hurting anyone, why can’t you?”
“Because I’d disappoint them. It’s not what a man does.” His eyes widened just a fraction and he continued quickly, as if trying to take back the words that had slipped out. “It’s not what they’d want me to do.”
He walked away from me, crossing his arms over his chest like a shield as he went back to the window. He rested his forehead against it once more. He was determined to run away from me, but I wasn’t going to let him. The only way this conversation was going to be over was if he walked out of the room, but while he was here, while he was still engaging with me, it was still open for discussion.
“I’m just gonna come right out and say it instead of dancing around this.” He went rigid again, and my heart twisted. “You were right about me hating society’s rules. They’re bullshit. The idea that a woman can’t be with more than one man because it makes her a slut? Fuck that.” I pointed my thumbs at myself and added, “It’s my body, and I won’t have some middle-aged white fuck-face bloke with a pot belly, sitting behind his middle-class desk, driving his beige sedan to church on Sunday with his Stepford wife and two point five kids, tell me otherwise just so the patriarchy can control a woman’s body.”
I sucked in a breath and clenched my jaw while fisting my hands at my sides. Anger sang through my veins, my racing pulse helping it along the way. I pointed out the door to my other guys.
“They think that Flynn’s not manly enough because he doesn’t have big muscles. They think any queer man is a pussy because they like dick, yet they wield theirs over women, thinking they’re the fucking second coming. But they’re running scared. They’re all terrified of what they look like to others. All their hatred, all their vitriol are their insecurities mirrored onto everyone else. Instead of encouraging people to be themselves, they try to put us in boxes and trick us into believing the grass was greener back when society looked like it did in the good old days. It’s all completely fucked up.”
I threw my hands up in the air with a huff.
“Those fucking rules are there to keep people who aren’t like them down. They’re there to make people so desperate to be included that exclusion becomes bad. You become an ‘other.’ Well, fuck that,” I hissed, my voice verging on a shout.
“You know why I do what I do? To show those bastards that they don’t have everything right. That there is actual scum in this world, and we should be focussing on destroying them, not shooting down people who just want to live their lives. Why can’t you do what makes you feel good? The truth is, you can, but society has us all fucking brainwashed. Everyone’s too scared to step out of the lines. I call fucking bullshit. I choose to live outside the lines. You can too.
“And if they’re disappointed in you because of it, fuck them sideways. Out of everyone on this fucking yacht, you are the one they should be most proud of. You are the best man I know. You would do anything for someone you love. You take care of us all. You protect us. You have this quiet confidence and this calmness that makes me feel safe. I trust you like no one else. If anyone is disappointed in you for any reason, they aren’t worthy of you.”
The silence that followed my outburst was deafening.
The others hadn’t come into the office to see why I was practically shouting, and I had a feeling that was very intentional on their part. They knew Ry and I hadn’t talked, and they were giving us the space to do it. But had I completely destroyed any chance of him opening up?
I looked at Ry, and he was thunderstruck, pale and standing stock still with his mouth open. Sometime when I’d been ranting, he’d turned to face me, but he was barely standing now. He was using the window as support, leaning back against it, his hands pressed to the glass to stop himself from sliding down them. It was as if I’d sucked the rage out of him, channelling it like a conductor, letting it surge through me, and there was nothing left to hold him up.
“I want to,” he whispered, his voice hitching at the end. “I want to be free.” His chest rose and fell, his breathing choppy. Colour slowly returned to his cheeks, and the hunch in his shoulders lessened. It was as if a weight had been lifted from him and he was no longer drowning.
“You can be yourself with us. I promise you that.”
“I keep telling myself that I don’t want it. But I do.” He went back to gazing out the window, and it took so long for him to speak again that I thought that was all he had to say. “I’m scared I’ll lose them. I’m scared they’ll think I let them down, that I’m not the man they taught me to be, and they’ll walk away.”
I went to him and wrapped my arms around him. “Your uncle?”
“Yeah, and Tom and Chris. Mum too.”
“It’s scary,” I agreed, pressing a kiss to his chest. “Thank you for telling me.”
He wrapped his arms around me, clutching me as I held onto him. His grip was tight, as if he was trying to stop me from pulling away. “I shouldn’t want anything like that.” He huffed out a laugh, but it held no humour, only pain and disappointment.
