Dirty Laundry: A Tucker Springs Novel #3

wasn’t really hungry, not with all this crap churning his gut, but he loved that look on Adam’s face—quietly determined, a little bit ticked off on Denver’s behalf—and he took a bite.
    “The thing with Sonny,” he went on once his mouth was clear, “is that he didn’t hit me. I wish he would have, though, because I would have left him then. But he messed with my head instead. Pointed out all the things wrong with me. Made it clear I’d never get anywhere without him. Made me remember how much I needed him. We played some games—he was kind of in the scene, as they say, a little bit of BDSM, but I found out later nobody liked him, not anybody who was for real in the scene. Sonny was one of the guys giving BDSM a bad name, but I didn’t know that. Anyway. We played master and slave games, where I was his slave, but I think that was our whole relationship, and not in a healthy way. He needed me to need him, or he wasn’t okay. I wasn’t right in the head either over it—I wanted him to tell me what to do, and I think maybe I wanted him to tell me I was fucked up.”
    Denver grimaced. “Sorry. That’s a lot worse than OCD. But it’s true. I got away from him, and I came here and straightened my life up. I’d already been into bodybuilding, but I got way into it here. For a while I did a little bit more of the BDSM thing, kind of like a cleanse, to figure out how Sonny and I had been doing it wrong. Mostly I was building my body and keeping my head straight, and I decided I wasn’t going to do relationships anymore. Just fucking on the side.” He sighed. “Then I met you. That’s my story. I never finished high school. I let some jerk push me around for four years. I’m not really smart, and I don’t have any wild and exciting future like you do. I do think I have my head in the right spot now, but you don’t have to tell me you could do a lot better than me. I already know that for myself.”
    He stopped, not letting himself add anything more to that, and waited.
    Adam stayed quiet, not saying anything, not moving, but he wasn’t tense, just pensive, as far as Denver could tell. Eventually, he pushed the pizza box aside and moved closer to Denver, who was still half-lying on the ground. He touched Denver’s chest, stroking it gently, watching his hand as he spoke.
    “A therapist I used to have always told me that when our brains aren’t healthy, we look for unhealthy relationships.” He laughed, a soft, sad sound, and shook his head. “I think I knew Brad was wrong for me a long time before he broke it off. Part of me knew he was best at being the voice I had inside my head, only on the outside, telling me I was bad in all the ways that felt familiar. Why that’s better sometimes than people who treat us right, I don’t know. When we’re broken, it’s like it’s scary to hear we might be fixable. Or maybe that we don’t need to be fixed, that we can be okay as we are. That’s actually hardest for me. The idea that I might have to live with being OCD.” He snorted. “There’s no might about it. It’s my brain, and I don’t get a second one. But I don’t know. It’s like if someone’s riding you, it’s like there’s hope. Like there’s that one magic insult that would unravel everything and make me normal.”
    Denver caught his face. “Baby, you don’t need to be normal.”
    “I want to be.” This came out in a whisper, out of the bottom of Adam’s soul.
    It was about then that Denver realized Adam didn’t give a damn about any of his own confessions. Denver had given him the worst, and all Adam could do was fixate on how his own dirty secrets were still going to drive Denver away. It made him want to laugh, maybe cry just a little. “So what’s normal, baby?”
    Adam had been leaning over Denver, and at this point he came all the way down, resting his face against Denver’s chest, speaking low and quiet into his shirt. “A guy who doesn’t have to talk about how OCD runs his life. A guy who doesn’t have to explain why he can’t have his boyfriend over to his house. A guy who doesn’t have to make sure his shoelaces are tucked into his shoes before he can go to sleep at night.”
    That one made Denver pause. “Really?”
    Adam buried his face in Denver’s shirt.
    Denver smiled and bent forward to kiss his hair. Life. It was so damn funny, sometimes. “I got news for you, baby. That normal guy you’re talking about?” Adam nodded. Denver kissed his