“No… I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
I rested my head, propping it on my fist. I’d seen this kind of abuse before — when one partner felt like they were losing power, they’d punish the other one to get the upper hand. And they were very, very good at controlling their victims.
“Is he still out and about? Is he still walking free?”
Luke nodded, but then he looked away. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
I nodded once. “Sure thing. But if you ever want to pursue justice with that, just tell me his name and I’ll take care of it. You don’t have to worry about a single thing.”
A weak smile crossed his face. “Thanks, but I’d rather just try not to think about it anymore. If I start to think about it, I feel an anxiety attack start to happen. I mean, I used to get them before the incident, but ever since then I’ve gotten them ten times as often, over the smallest things.”
“Stress. It heightened your baseline of stress,” I said, repeating what my therapist had told me about my own incident that caused my PTSD. Then I was stricken by a thought. If Luke could tell me what happened to him, I could probably tell him what happened to me.
“Luke…” I began, looking into his eyes. “Would you… would you come with me somewhere? To the place where I had my own incident.”
I needed to show it to him. I needed to show it to someone.
He nodded wordlessly, then said, “I’m here for you, Adam.”
* * *
A quick ride in the cop car later, we were pulling up to the place: The bridge over the water. As if the weather had sensed me approaching and wanted to color me gray with sadness, the sky had turned overcast. The water beneath the bridge was gray and murky, flowing by as if nothing had ever happened to it.
I parked the car on the side of the bridge, and we got out. It took a few steps to get to the edge.
My body recognized this area; the sights, the sounds, the smells, and it threatened to bring me back to that place. But I had worked through it in therapy, so it couldn’t bring me all the way back down.
Maybe I was showing Luke this to bond with him. Maybe I was showing it to him to share my pain with someone else. Regardless of the reason, sharing this with him only felt right after what he’d shared with me.
“Three years ago, one of my previous subs — not Brian, stood on this bridge. He was grabbing onto the railing and leaning out over the water on the other side.” I tapped the railing and echoed a metal, hollow sound.
Luke’s eyes were wide as he realized what I was talking about.
“The police were called; I was on duty at that time. I was the first one on the scene.”
Luke wordlessly grabbed my hand as I stared down into the rushing gray water.
“I pulled up, right over there…” I said, pointing to the other side of the bridge, “thinking this was going to be some random person I could save. But when I got here, I saw that it was… it was the person I’d been seeing for a few months.”
Luke squeezed my hand and listened, tucking his words away for another time.
“I knew Peter had issues with depression in the past, and he was getting counseling for it, but I had no idea how bad it was.”
I squeezed my eyes tightly, trying to stop the tears that threatened to come out.
“I thought I could save him. I’d saved everyone in my career up until that point. But as much as I talked to him, ran through the script of what to say to people so they wouldn’t jump, reasoned with him, pleaded with him not to do it…”
I took a deep, shaky breath.
“He looked me straight in the eyes, mouthed ‘I’m sorry,’ and let go.”
A lump had formed in my throat.
Luke pulled me into a tight hug. It felt like I was bleeding into him; he was absorbing my pain like a sponge.
I composed myself quickly, then continued. “I went to therapy for it. Worked through it for years. It still hurts that I couldn’t save him. I asked myself thousands of times why he did it. Was it something I did? Was I not enough to save him? I felt like a huge failure for letting him down. If I was half the man I was supposed to be, maybe if I took care of him more, or tried to help fix his depression, then maybe he wouldn’t have done it. Maybe he’d still be here.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Luke said gently. “It wasn’t your fault at all; depression doesn’t work like that.”
“I know, I know…” I said, used to those very same words from my therapist. But somehow, they meant much more coming from Luke. I knew he dealt with that black monster in his own mind. He knew what it was like to lose that battle over and over and over again.
“I’m here for you, Adam,” he whispered.
We hugged there on that bridge for what felt like an eternity. And when we finally let go and pulled apart, I felt like something heavy had been lifted from my shoulders.
15
Luke
We held hands in Adam’s squad car as we continued with the ride-along.
I’d never felt so close to someone in my entire life. Not even with him when things were good… even then, it felt like the relationship was emotionally unbalanced.
But with Adam, I felt like we were partners. We were equals.
And this was just the beginning.
After I’d told him about what had happened to me with the incident, I felt lighter. Like I no longer had to carry around that secret alone. I’d found someone who understood.
Because it was kink-related, I’d never been able to share that memory with anyone around me — not my friends, not my therapist,
