TOM stood in the middle of the café wondering what to do next. Should he go after Joe? He wanted to, but he didn’t want to impose on Joe’s privacy. If he could, he’d go after that bastard and teach him a thing or two about manners. Whoever he was—aside from being a complete and utter asshole—he’d really upset Joe. He heard them arguing, but only walked in to see Joe throw the guy’s money back at him and tell him to leave. Tom had never seen Joe so angry. He’d seen Joe frustrated or annoyed, but he had an amazing way of picking himself up, of looking at the bright side of things.
“You should go to him,” Bea said quietly. The pain in her kind eyes squeezed at Tom’s heart.
“Who was that guy?”
“It’s not my place to say. Only Joe can tell you that.” She patted his arm and headed for the kitchen. “We’ll clean up and close the shop. He needs you, Tom, more than he’s willing to admit.”
Tom took Bea’s advice and walked out into the garden, finding Joe sitting on the stone bench, his face turned up to the sky and his eyes glassy. When Joe spotted him, he quickly wiped at his eyes. Tom sat beside him and took Joe’s hand in his, stroking Joe’s skin with his thumb.
“Talk to me, Joe. Who was that?”
“That was my ex.”
Tom’s eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. Ex? Never in a million years would he have imagined Joe with a jerk like that. The guy clearly had a lot of money, but Tom didn’t think for a moment that Joe had been with the man because of that. If Joe had been with him, it meant he cared about the guy at some point.
“We were together years ago. He was still in college, and I’d finally saved up enough to buy my first shop. It was a great little place down in the Village, a couple of blocks away from my apartment. Blake wasn’t out. He couldn’t be. His family’s extremely wealthy. When we met, he was such a nice guy, or at least that’s what I thought. It was tough having to hide, but I understood. I didn’t have anyone, but he had a family, and his father was a court judge, high up the food chain.” Joe let out a shuddered sigh, and it nearly broke Tom’s heart.
“Blake invited me to spend the night. His father was down at the Hamptons and wouldn’t be back until the end of the weekend. One night, we were together in bed and his father walked in on us.”
Tom kept himself from cursing. He had the sneaking suspicion it didn’t go well.
“Blake panicked. His father would cut him off without a penny and throw him out into the streets if he thought Blake was gay, so Blake did what he does best. He protected himself and threw me under the bus. He told his father he invited me over to study, that I drugged him and tried to force him to have sex. He made me sound like… like some kind of monster.”
Tom clenched his jaw to keep himself from saying anything, namely cursing the bastards to high heaven, especially Blake the weasel.
“I left as quickly as I could. The next night I was walking home from the shop and I got jumped by a group of men. They beat the hell out of me. That’s how I met Bea. It was in front of her house. She heard the commotion and called the cops. Lucky for me, an officer was on patrol nearby, and he rushed to my aid. If it wasn’t for him, I probably wouldn’t be here now. I was in an induced coma for days.”
Tom was having trouble believing what he just heard. “Jesus, Joe.” He wanted to go back out there and find that son of a bitch Blake and see how well he liked getting the life beat out of him. His anger rose, a familiar sickness unsettling his stomach when he thought about Joe bloodied and broken on the street. If there was a monster in this story, it wasn’t Joe. Sweet, kind Joe, who always had a smile and a kind word for everyone. Tom took several deep breaths to calm himself.
“When I woke up, the nurses told me the name of the officer who saved me, and how he came to visit me every day after his shift. He found out I didn’t have anybody, so he stayed with me every night. He’d talk to me and play soft music. He was gone by the time I was conscious enough to remember more than someone placing ice chips to my lips. I tried to find him, to thank him, but he transferred out of state,” Joe said with a sigh.