Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Ford jerked his eyes up. “Theo,” he said softly as he stiffened in his chair, likely because he was expecting some kind of explosion of anger.
“You gotta come up here ’cause I’m too tired to move,” Theo said wearily right before he held his arms out as best he could. Ford began to cry even harder and then he carefully wrapped his arms around Theo’s body. Theo closed his eyes for a moment as he savored the embrace. I knew there was no sexual attraction between the men anymore. Ford was far too in love with Cam to even look at another man, and I hadn’t seen even an ounce of heat in Theo’s eyes anytime he’d looked at Ford.
Theo opened his eyes and sought me out once again.
“I guess I really did it this time, huh?” he said. I was shocked when he eased one arm from around Ford and held it out to me. I immediately took it and pressed a kiss to the backs of his fingers.
“The only thing you did, baby, was stop running.”
It’d been three days since Theo’s meltdown and while he seemed more relaxed in the way he carried himself, he hadn’t spoken much. The few times he had, it had been him speaking. The masks, for now, seemed to have disappeared. He’d also stopped wearing my Henley or his hoodie unless he actually was cold. The scars on his arms were on full display for everyone in the house to see. I could only assume Cam had explained what the scars were to Riley, Lenny, and Walter because the trio had never stared at them or asked Theo about them as far as I knew. They treated him as they always had.
Like he was family.
Because that was what he was.
He just didn’t believe it yet.
After he’d woken up from the sedative and hugged Ford, I’d left the room to give them some privacy. Ford had knocked on my open bedroom door fifteen minutes later to let me know that Theo had fallen back asleep. Since that hadn’t been enough time for them to have the real talk they needed to have about the event that had changed both their lives when they’d been caught in that shed, I knew it was something that would probably happen at some point when both men were emotionally strong enough.
That was assuming Theo hung around long enough to even have that conversation. Since he hadn’t said much of anything, I had no idea if he was still planning on leaving Pelican Bay at some point. I was always on edge when I didn’t know where he was because my mind automatically told me he’d quietly disappeared, and I knew I’d never be able to find him.
In terms of my relationship with him, I had no clue where I stood. Since the night he’d told me that he and I couldn’t be together because he was incapable of any kind of physical intimacy, I hadn’t brought the issue up.
Not because I agreed with him.
Because I most definitely did not agree with him on that reasoning.
But I also knew the abuse Theo had suffered at the hands of the fucking zealot who’d used a warped view of religion as a way to rake in a shit-ton of cash wasn’t something he could just put behind him. As a nurse, I’d seen plenty of individuals who’d suffered from all different kinds of abuse, but I’d never encountered any patient who’d been through anything that even came close to what Theo had survived.
While Cam had quietly been researching what he could find out about the so-called camp Theo had been held prisoner in, I’d been doing my own homework. I’d searched the internet for stories of survivors of conversion therapy so I could learn more about the emotional and mental toll that they’d lived with both then and now. During my research, I’d found several articles about electroshock therapy that had been widely used in the decades before Theo had even been born. I’d seen an actual picture of the device Theo had described to me. It was just as he'd said—there’d been a slide projector attached to a box with several dials that I could only assume controlled the level of shock delivered to the patient. I’d become violently ill as my mind had formed a more realistic picture of the man I loved being strapped to a chair and literally electrocuted if his body reacted the way it had been naturally designed to react. Even after he’d told them what they’d wanted to hear, the torture had continued.
Many of the survivors of the so-called treatment—that had been rejected as a therapeutic technique by mental health professionals when the American Psychiatric Association had officially announced that homosexuality was not a mental disorder in 1987—had continued to struggle with what had been done to them for the rest of their lives. Some had even committed suicide.