Chapter 16

“I guess he inspired me. I didn’t start experimenting until after he’d gone, and he was much more exaggerated than I’ve ever been. But he opened my eyes to other possibilities.”

Luca needed courage for the next part, so he tilted his head up and looked into Gus’s eyes. His husband seemed to understand because Gus leaned in and took Luca’s lips in a searing kiss. There was nothing gentle about it, only raw passion and an insistent tongue. Gus threw his leg over Luca’s hips and rubbed against him.

Luca broke the kiss when his lungs burned with oxygen deprivation, and they both gasped and breathed heavily. Luca touched his own lips, wondering if they were as red and puffy as they felt.

“Wow,” he whispered.

Gus was usually tender and loving and didn’t show this animalistic side often. What had triggered it now?

When his breathing had calmed, he continued. “After Edgar had been gone for a few months, I found one of his skirts in my closet. It was a black and white plaid skirt. Short and pleated and really cute. And I…I tried it on. It was the only time I ever wore a skirt. I didn’t like it; it didn’t feel like me. But I had to try.”

Gus hummed in encouragement.

“There was a knock on my door, and…” Luca’s voice trailed off. He would never forget what happened next. Even now, as he was safe in his husband’s arms, his stomach twisted into a knot. “It was my mother,” he whispered.

“What? Oh, no!”

Gus’s arms tightened around him. Luca felt a tender kiss on his forehead and closed his eyes as he thought back on what happened next.

At first, Luca had been happy to see her—he hadn’t heard from her since that last day when he’d picked up his things. He’d thought that her showing up in his dorm must mean she’d changed her mind and wanted him back in her life. And maybe it had, but Luca never found out.

She’d stood there and stared at him, her gaze, black with rage, had swept over his figure, taking in what he’d been wearing. She had focused on the short skirt showing off his long hairy legs, and she’d started screaming.

Every word that had come from her mouth had crushed Luca’s hopes just as effectively as if she’d torn his heart from his chest and stomped on it. Her voice had grown more and more shrill, and his door had still been wide open, so everyone on his floor had heard her every word. But the only thing Luca had heard was that one word.

Freak. 9: That’s No Way to Make a Baby

Gus gritted his teeth and fought to keep calm, but every word that fell from Luca’s mouth only made him angrier. And when his husband trembled in his arms as he told his story in a strained voice, when his voice broke on the word freak, Gus wanted to kill someone. Preferably his mother-in-law.

But this wasn’t his trauma. What Luca needed was his calm and support, not his outrage. So he kept touching, letting his love flow through his hands into Luca’s body. He kneaded Luca’s neck and let his fingers follow along the spine all the way down to the swell of his husband’s ass. He murmured encouraging nonsense in Luca’s ear and kissed the top of his head. They almost never lay like this. Since Luca was much taller than Gus, their positions were usually reversed. Gus had to stifle a giggle at the thought of Luca’s feet hanging off the bed. This wasn’t the time for laughter.

“I didn’t hear from her again until graduation. She called me out of the blue and asked if she could attend. I…I couldn’t say no, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted her there. She’s my mother, and I love her. I just wish she’d try to understand.”

Luca sounded so small and uncertain, so different from his usual loud and bubbly persona. Gus was grateful he hadn’t known about this earlier when Giovanna came to see him.

“I’m so sorry,” he mumbled, not knowing what to say to make Luca feel better, but filled with a desperate need to comfort him.

“She only came for the ceremony. After, she said she was proud, gave me a gift, and left. I guess I should be happy I was wearing the gown so she couldn’t see the cute pink sweater I had on underneath,” Luca said with a bitter laugh.

Gus couldn’t take it anymore. He slid his hand up Luca’s body and tilted Luca’s head up. He sprinkled kisses all over his husband’s face: on the tip of the nose, on the eyelids, and on the corner of his pouty mouth. He rubbed their cheeks together.