Dirty Laundry: A Tucker Springs Novel #3

couldn’t.
    Except he wanted it so, so much.
    Denver studied Adam a moment, quietly thoughtful. “Hmm. Well, that’s a hard one. Because you want to know if it’s okay, but I can’t tell who you want it to be okay for. You sound like a little boy afraid he’s going to get in trouble for sticking his hand in the cookie jar.”
    Well, that wasn’t too far off the mark. Adam nodded.
    “That’s just the thing, boy.” The corner of Denver’s mouth lifted, and he stroked Adam’s cheek. “Who is it you think is watching you and judging you? And why do they get to matter more than what you want?”
    The words should have made Adam feel better—he could tell—and yet they made him feel more tangled and bad inside. “I can’t trust what I want,” Adam whispered, and when he spoke the words he knew they were true. “Not always.”
    Denver’s hand didn’t leave Adam’s cheek. “Can you trust me?”
    Adam didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
    “Then ask me, Adam. Say the words.”
    Adam swallowed. Then he swallowed again. Then he said, “D-Denver? Is it okay to ask you to punish me for things that don’t have anything to do with us? Is it okay that I want that so badly?”
    Denver’s thumb stroked Adam’s cheek. “Yes.” He leaned forward and brushed his lips against Adam’s own. “And yes.”
    Adam sank into Denver, as much as he could while still tied up. I love you , he thought, wondering if he should say it out loud. He tasted the words, but they were too scary just now, so he kept them to himself.
    Denver glanced at him, smiling softly.
    Maybe, Adam thought, like so many things, Denver already knew.

Denver didn’t just love being with Adam, he loved who he was when they were together, and more and more, who he was when he was on his own, just because Adam was in his life. The only hiccup was the damn studying thing, because as much as he tried, he couldn’t seem to get the swing of it.
    He wouldn’t let himself complain about how awful it was, either, because Adam worked so hard to help. After scouring about ten manuals on the GED, Adam could have opened a clinic for how to pass them. He made note cards. Spreadsheets. He had a fucking binder full of notes and charts and exercises. He tried eighty times harder than Denver ever could. And every time Denver tried to do the work he needed to do in order to pass the exams, he couldn’t.
    It was just like high school. Fuck, it was like elementary school. He’d look at the words, at the numbers, the pictures, and they’d swim. One second his brain would be thinking about the letters and the next it would be off in space. Or he’d be able to focus on the words and it would just refuse to soak in. Nothing could get through his stupid head. Worse, if Denver let himself be frustrated, let it show, Adam took it as a personal failure.
    So Denver didn’t let himself be frustrated, not in front of Adam, and he never said no to a study session, even when he’d rather be hung upside down over a pit of starving gators and have his toenails pulled out one at a time.
    Some of the shit was probably sticking, somewhere, but Denver couldn’t shake the idea that this was all a fantastic waste of everyone’s time, especially Adam’s. He did not do school. He never had. School had forever been where he failed the most spectacularly. He was just dumb.
    Adam refused to believe it. “You aren’t dumb. You’re amazingly smart, so much smarter than me in so many ways.” When Denver snorted in laughter, Adam turned to steel. “Don’t laugh. You’ve seen how my anxiety cripples me. You don’t have that at all. You don’t get paralyzed or anxious. You just get angry. Do you have any idea how jealous I am of you?”
    “You have all the book smarts,” Denver tried to argue, but now it was Adam who laughed.
    “Yes. And if I want to hide out in libraries and colleges, I’ll be just fine. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to simply go to Lights Out and meet you that first time? How much hell I’d have been in if you hadn’t intervened at the Laund-O-Rama? That’s my life .” He tapped his binder. “You have to get over this one hurdle, and you’re going to have everything you ever wanted. I wish it were as simple for me as taking a test, but it’s not. I’m never going to be cured. You don’t cure anxiety. You live with it.”
    Denver became quiet in the middle of that speech, and when Adam finished, he stared at him for a moment longer,