Ethan (Alluring Indulgence #5)(97)
Author: Nicole Edwards

Beau paused for a moment, trying to choose his words carefully. “The other night, at Moonshiners. Reardon mentioned something about his family.”

Ethan’s eyes narrowed, and his lips formed a hard line. Clearly Beau had hit a sore spot. Ever since Reardon made the comment, Beau had wondered what he was referring to. It was evident based on his reaction that Ethan knew exactly what he was talking about.

Ethan’s sharp inhale caught Beau’s attention and he looked up, watching and waiting. He could see his brain working overtime, knew he was about to say something, but Beau wasn’t sure whether it was going to be a story or simply a fuck off. Either way, Beau wanted to know where he stood with Ethan, and this was the moment of truth. If he wasn’t willing to open up at this point, Beau knew there was probably no hope for the future.

“Jimmy Reardon has a younger brother. His name was Gavin.”

Beau caught the use of past tense mixed with present, but he didn’t say a word.

“Gavin was…” Ethan paused, taking a pull off of his beer as he stared down at the table. “Gavin was the first guy I was ever with.”

Understanding dawned immediately, but Beau didn’t speak up, not wanting to interrupt.

“I was nineteen and Gavin had just turned twenty when we…”

Again, Ethan trailed off, and Beau tried to read between the lines but he had no idea how to fill in the blanks. He tried to nurse his beer slowly, wanting to be patient with Ethan, but he found himself fidgeting.

“Anyway,” Ethan began, his eyes looked glazed as though he had disappeared somewhere in the past. “I fell in love with him. I lost my virginity to him.” Ethan took a deep breath and continued, “One night he asked me to meet him at the lake. Since we’d been doing that every night for almost a full week, I agreed without question. When we got there, he wanted to talk. That’s when he told me that he wasn’t gay and that he hadn’t meant to sleep with me.”

Hadn’t meant to? How the hell was that possible?

“He said it was a mistake and told me that I shouldn’t have forced him. I didn’t force him, Beau.” Ethan looked directly at him, his eyes almost crazed for a moment. “I swear.”

The last two words were a mere whisper, and Beau wanted to reach out and take Ethan’s hand but he didn’t dare. They were in a restaurant, and he knew Ethan would panic if others were around, so Beau gripped his beer bottle tightly in an effort to keep from doing just that.

“That night, Jimmy showed up. Before I knew what was going on, he was beating on me. With a fucking baseball bat. Gavin stood by and watched, but he didn’t try and help. He didn’t even try to stop his brother. I thought I was going to die that night.”

Ethan’s usual deep baritone was raspy, like his throat was closing up and the words were painful to get out.

“They left you there?” Beau couldn’t hold back the question. The outrage that erupted in his gut was so powerful, he was surprised his beer bottle didn’t collapse into shards beneath his death grip. The son of a bitch beat Ethan and left him for dead. And the man Ethan loved had fucking watched?

“Yeah, they left me there. Luckily I had my cell phone. I managed to call Sawyer and he found me, took me back to his house. Greyson wanted to take me to the hospital, but I refused.”

Greyson, the paramedic. Shit. Ethan must’ve been bad off for that to be necessary. Being that Beau was just a couple of years younger, he wondered how he’d never known about this. Surely he would’ve remembered something that horrible happening to one of Zane’s brothers.

“I stayed with Sawyer for a couple of weeks. Refused to see my parents or my brothers until I healed enough that I could brush off the questions.”

“No one knows about this?” Beau knew his skepticism was apparent.

“No one besides Sawyer, Jimmy, Greyson and Gavin.”

“Where’s Gavin now?” Beau asked, knowing that the answer wasn’t going to be a simple one, like “he moved” or “he went off to college”.

“Gavin’s dead.” The clouds in Ethan’s eyes disappeared and were replaced with devastating sadness.

“Dead?”

“Gavin killed himself a month after that.” The words were a tormented rasp that Beau barely heard.

“I loved him. I even tried to forgive him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Did you…” Beau couldn’t even get the question out.

“Did I what?”

“Were you the one who found him?”

“Yeah.” Ethan glanced down at the table for long minutes, not saying a word.