Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 83586 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83586 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
“So we’re just supposed to let people say shit to us? Let ’em get away with it? Act like we can’t defend ourselves?”
“I ain’t sayin’ he didn’t deserve what he got, but I saw it, Jasp. I saw the look on your face when he said what he did, and…I need to wrap my head around it, is all, figure out what it means for us. Does bein’ with me make you feel like less of a man?”
He didn’t answer, which was all the answer I needed.
“I’m gonna go. I’ll be at Uncle Brian’s.” I turned for the door.
“Are you breakin’ up with me?” he asked, his heart in every syllable he spoke. I didn’t doubt he loved me. I never would, but his insecurities ran deeper than I’d thought.
“No, baby. It’s just a fight, and I need to figure out how we deal with this. What it means for us, for you. Bein’ with me… I don’t wanna be somethin’ you’re ashamed of.”
I kept walking, got to the door and put my hand on the knob.
“I love you, Sutton.”
“I know you do. I love you too.”
And I always would.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Jasper
I couldn’t sleep all night.
I just lay there, thinking about looking at the house, at the property. How good it felt that Ms. Kemper had known about us. Being with Sutton was the best kinda high, and knowing we were moving on together, planning our lives and our future had made me feel invincible.
Wasn’t he satisfied with how much better I’d gotten? Sammy and Emerson knew. Aunt Carrie knew. Kendra, Mama, Dad, Ms. Dana, Molly, Brian. Hell, I’d been the one to tell everyone at the bar too. He’d said he’d wait, that he wouldn’t push me, that he wasn’t in a rush, but then he’d acted like I was ashamed of being with him? He got angry when I defended us?
“You weren’t stickin’ up for us. You were ashamed.”
“It bothers you that you like me to fuck you…that you like me inside you.”
“Does bein’ with me make you feel like less of a man?”
I shook my head, tried to get his voice and his words out of there. I hadn’t done what I had because I was ashamed of being with him. Being with Sutton made me feel alive. He was, and had always been, the best part of my life. Just looking at him made me realize how lucky I was that he chose me, that I got to call him mine, but…
But…
“You’re that limp-wristed Northerner…”
“Can’t he stick up for himself? Man enough to kill someone and take advantage of you, but not man enough to talk to me like one?”
“It’s because his daddy wasn’t around. We shoulda taken him in ourselves.”
All those things my dad had said about Sammy when we found out about him, all the names he’d called him… And when I let myself think about it, those weren’t the only times. How often had he said shit like that my whole life?
When I was a kid and he’d tell me to toughen up, not to cry; that men didn’t cry and I’d look soft and people would think I was gay.
When he’d make fun of someone else for the same.
When we were in Charlotte once and we saw a man who walked too feminine for Dad’s liking, how he’d called him a name and said the same thing Clyde had, that he had a man at home and he was the woman…how sick it made him.
When someone gay was on TV…more names, more curses about what happened to men being real men.
“This ain’t how I raised ya. I raised ya to be a man.”
When he found out about me and Sutt, how loving him immediately stripped away my masculinity in his eyes.
That wasn’t how it worked, but even if it were, what was so wrong about a man being more feminine? Why was that a bad thing? Why did who I loved automatically mean I wasn’t the right kind of man no more? To him, to so many people, being gay or bisexual made a guy less than. Meant he wasn’t as manly, as if that was the most important thing to be. Like being with Sutton didn’t make me me anymore. None of those things were true.
When I let myself acknowledge it, though, I hadn’t been much better, had I? I’d called Sammy a name when I’d found out.
When Sutton and I first started this, I liked him on top of me, but I hadn’t felt comfortable liking it.
When I started watching porn, watching men have their asses touched, my first instinct was to wonder why I thought about Sutton doing it to me and not me doing it to him…because in my head, I wasn’t supposed to want that.
When Sutton first started penetrating me, I’d fucking loved it, the closeness it gave me to him, how I craved to feel full, how much pleasure it gave me, but in my mind back then, it should’ve made Sutton see me as weaker. What made me think that? What made anyone?