Bad Crowd by Chloe B. Young

Author:Chloe B. Young
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: contemporary, gay, romance, BDSM, clubs, new submissive/experienced Dom, age difference, sex toys, bondage, pain tolerance, family issues
Publisher: NineStar Press, LLC
Published: 2023-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

“ARE YOU HAPPY?”

“Happy?” Gideon echoed.

The question came out of nowhere. Before that, Esther had struggled through a few perfunctory questions about where he was living and what he was doing with himself since the implosion of their family.

He’d been surprised to learn that Esther hadn’t gone back home after their mother had gotten out of prison, and Esther had aged out of the foster system. She’d been only sixteen when Mother had been charged with assault, and Father had been deemed an unfit parent after Gideon’s testimony of how he’d stood by and watched many of Gideon’s punishments, including the last and worst one.

She lived in Chicago, she’d told him. Worked as a waitress to save money for school.

Was he happy?

“I guess so,” he answered.

He’d thought he knew what happiness was, with his little apartment, a job that didn’t demand anything of him, an internet connection to tell him everything he could ever want to know. Books, food, a vibrator. Simple.

Was he happy still, knowing what it was to connect with another person, knowing he had to decide between that connection and a clear conscience?

“You don’t sound sure,” Esther said.

“I am,” he told her, his voice more certain than he felt. “Life is good here. I never get too cold.”

“Lucky. I feel like I’m still thawing out from last winter.” She laughed, her voice suddenly sounding less cautious. “Gideon, do you remember that time we stole the top of the water barrel and used it as a sled? And Ben ran into a fence and Mother…”

“Yes, I remember,” he said quietly, even though she’d gone silent and the awkwardness was back. She’d suddenly remembered he wasn’t there. He’d been at home, listening to their shrieks of laughter, being punished for something he couldn’t even recall. He did remember feeling guilty for how grateful he was that Ben had gotten in trouble because it had meant Gideon was forgotten.

“Do you speak to Ben? The others?” Gideon asked.

She was the closest to him in age, and he’d always thought that should mean they were closer as brother and sister, but he wasn’t particularly close with any of his siblings. He knew how to feed and clothe and care for them, but Mother had kept him separate from the rest as often as possible, an extension of her groundless fear that his difference would infect the rest of them or cause them harm somehow.

His brothers and sisters were a unit. They’d sat together, clutching one another’s hands when Gideon had pinned his gaze on the courthouse wall, telling the judge why he believed his parents to be unable to care for them.

Gideon’s distant orbit of that unit was one of the many reasons it was so easy for them to hate him for what he’d done to their family. The ones they should have hated were the ones who’d abused them all, though to a much lesser extent than Gideon.

No child should be whipped with a metal ruler for forgetting to say amen before taking their first bite of dinner, and that had happened to all of them more than once.

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