Follow the River

The fragments of my nightmare pull me from my slumber, and I find myself disoriented when I crack open my eyes. My vision is blurry, but even still, I can tell I’m not in River’s bed.

Oh, right.

The blanket fort.

I tense. I haven’t had a nightmare since the night I found myself crawling into River’s bed last week, my mind begging for an ounce of peace. We’ve spent every night together in his room after that. And for some unknown reason, it seems to keep the nightmares at bay.

It’s as if my demons can’t catch hold of me when he’s around.

Guilt rises in my throat when I think about all the nights I probably kept him awake with my screaming and shouting when we first arrived.

He’s been so fucking good to me, even though I don’t deserve it.

I roll to my side, praying to any God who might answer that I didn’t wake River with my flailing while I rode out the memories that plague me, even in my sleep. It’s still mostly dark, so I know it must’ve been only a couple hours since we fell asleep. Maybe three in the morning. But even in the dark of night, I can usually see him, hear him. Like a patch of brightness in my black reality. A calming melody in my silent world.

He just exists on a different frequency.

Reaching an arm over, I find the blankets beside me empty, but warm.

“Riv?” I call out, my voice hoarse with what I hope is just sleep, and not the remnants of my screams from the horror story in my mind while I’m unconscious.

“I’m here,” he whispers from the entrance of our make-shift fort near my feet. I lift my head to see his shadowy form squatting down in just his underwear. After crawling in beside me, I quickly curl into his side, relishing in the warmth and security his body provides me when his arm is wrapped around me. The hard planes of his muscles mold against mine and I run my fingers over his abs, the pads tracing each individual indentation.

The level of comfort and contentment flowing between us begins to relax my racing heart. It’s all because he’s here, holding me, keeping me safe, even from myself. This is a feeling I can’t imagine living without ever again.

It scares the fuck out of me.

At some point, he became a necessity, even when he was never meant to be anything more than an enemy.

“Where’d you go?”

“To brush my teeth, since I was a little occupied before we went to bed and forgot,” he murmurs, his lips brushing my forehead.

“This late?”

He’s quiet for a moment. “Yeah. You kind of woke me up,” he says slowly. “But it’s okay. I don’t mind.”

Just as I feared.

“I’m sorry,” I mumble into his chest, pressing my cheek into his pec.

Silence settles between us, nothing but the sounds of our breathing and the soft sounds of River’s “Mellow” playlist coming from the Google Home in the kitchen, still playing on a loop from earlier. Just when I think he’s passed back out on me, his soothing voice speaks out again.

“Are you ever going to tell me what the nightmares are about?”

I freeze.

Fuck.

My nightmares have been my affliction since the time I was twelve. It is recurring, coming to haunt me on a regular basis. I think I can count with my fingers the number of times I’ve slept in peace without them.

Seven of them were this past week, with him.

And then when I was eighteen, after a night I wish I could forget, a new nightmare began to torment my dreams. The night I watched my friend Deacon die, overdosing on the very drug that ran my life for years.

So they take turns now, and I never know which will rear its ugly head on any given night.

I take a deep breath, inhaling his scent, to put me back at ease.

I’ve told this story, my story, twice.

Once to a person I trusted with my life, but no longer have a relationship with.

Once to a person who betrayed me in the worst way possible.

And somehow, I find myself opening my mouth, and my soul, to spill one of my darkest secrets to man beside me.

“I was nine and a half the first time my stepfather molested me,” I say softly. So quiet, if Riv wasn’t right next to me, he would have missed my admission. It would have drowned beneath the sounds of The Fray’s “You Found Me” playing faintly from the speaker.

He tenses as he processes the words, but quickly relaxes and begins to run his fingers through my hair. The desire to nuzzle into his contact shoots through me, but if I don’t get this out now, I never fucking will. I take a deep breath and continue. “At first it was just hand jobs. He would jack me off, then make me do the same to him. That wasn’t so bad. It’s not like I was old enough to understand what was happening. Though, soon enough, I did know better. Yet he wanted more, no matter how wrong it was. He wanted me to put my mouth on him, and vice versa.”

I bite my lip, trying to fight back the tears burning my eyes. “I was ten the first time I tasted cum.”

“Rain—” River starts, but I shake my head, dislodging his fingers from my hair. It distracts him enough to let me continue.

“He was satisfied enough with that for about another year or so. But as time went on, his fingers began wandering while he blew me. Together, we learned I loved having my prostate milked well before I hit puberty. Something I shouldn’t have discovered for another four or five years at the very least.”

I pause to inhale River’s masculine scent of citrus and salt as he begins drawing patterns with the pads of his index and middle fingers across my forehead, smoothing out the frown lines I’m sure are present. I can’t help but relish how it sets me at ease, even in this moment.

If only for a moment.

My throat seizes, knowing the words that’ll come next. Words I can never take back once they are spoken.

“For my twelfth birthday, my gift was a cock in my ass for the first time. I tried to get him to stop, of course. It was in vain, though, since I was still really small at that age and couldn’t do much about it. Only beg and plead. I never really stood a chance. He bent me over, handcuffed to the footboard of his and my mother’s bed, and fucked me raw.”

My jaw ticks and I keep pushing the words out, focusing on the sound of River’s deep breaths beside me. “God, did it fucking hurt. Sure, he worked up to it with his fingers. But I was twelve, for fuck’s sake. And it wasn’t long after, maybe a week or two, when he made me fuck him, too.” I let out a humorless laugh. “I liked that a lot more than taking it. At least I could fuck him hard and fast, attempt to make him feel a fraction of the pain he caused me. And what do you know? As if I couldn’t possibly loathe myself anymore, I actually got off on it.” My voice cracks without permission on the last couple words.

There it is, all my shame and resentment, bared for him to see.

At least, all the pieces I’m willing to share.

He doesn’t need to know about the string of girls I fucked once I turned fourteen to numb the pain. He doesn’t need to know I drowned the demons caused by that fucking bastard in pills and blow and booze, almost losing my scholarship to Clemson. He doesn’t need to know the real reason why I switched schools in the middle of my college career was to escape once again. He doesn’t need to know a few weeks before I was offered this transfer, I was ready to end it and finally escape once and for all.

He doesn’t need to know I looked down the barrel of a gun…and fucking flinched.