Page 151 of Forgotten Prejudice

He was referring to Camilo.

“Shay-Lee, I know you’re scared, but I promise that if you trust me, I can help you both.”

His eyes darted to mine, letting me see the disbelief in them. “You know nothing of me, yet you think you can save me. Well, you can’t. No one can.” He looked down at his hands. “Camilo tried to do that… to help me…and now he’s going to die because of me.”

“Listen—”

“I think you should go,” he announced, clenching the bedsheets in his fist and biting his lip.

“Shay-Lee, please. If I go now, you know Camilo’s fate is sealed.”

“He doesn’t like it when people use his name,” he suddenly said, eyes softer as he gazed outside. “Only me.” His voice broke, and his lips quivered before he closed his eyes.

I swallowed hard, trying to ignore the soft sob that came from him. I didn’t want to make him feel worse, but what other way did I have to convince him? I was running out of time, and guilt was usually the best method to convince people to do things they didn’t want to.

“How would you live with yourself, knowing you could have done something different?” It was a thought I often had about myself. Maybe if I had acted differently during the time I was with Ashton, we wouldn’t have gotten to this point. Of course, that was a whole other situation.

“I don’t plan to live much longer, anyway.”

His words startled me and left me without an answer because how could you convince one who had already given up? This kid had been through so much suffering, so who was I, a complete stranger, to ask him for the little power he had left?

Positive that I’d screwed this up, I knew we would lose the case. What was I even thinking of coming here? I wasn’t one to know how to reach someone’s soul. I wasn’t like Ashton, who knew how to speak from the heart and make you feel welcome. I was a cold man with a cold heart that sometimes felt like a shadow of himself. But then, a thought occurred to me. I wasn’t Ashton, but I might as well try to do what he would have done. After all, for months, he’d been telling me to see the other person. To see who Camilo was and to speak at eye level with him.

Assuming this rule also applied to Shay-Lee, I sat back down, rubbed my sweaty palms together, and took a deep breath.

“I know what it’s like to be afraid to open your mouth,” I said, my voice already shivering with those horrid memories. “Because I…” Suddenly, I couldn’t form my next words. It was as if they got stuck in my throat like a lump of mud. But then, I noticed Shay-Lee was looking at me with those broken eyes, and it gave me the courage to go on. “When I was a child, I was molested by a friend of my father for many years.” It was the first time I had ever said this to another living soul. “And for years, I kept my lips sealed out of shame and fear because that person is still alive.” And friends with my family. “But my silence only cost me my own sanity.” I shook my head, remembering all the things that could have been if I were brave enough to speak. Above all, my relationship with the most amazing man I’d ever known. “I know what years of being told to keep quiet will do to you. I’m living proof of that. In fact—” I paused for a second, giving Shay-Lee a kind smile. “—I stayed silent for so long that I almost believed it never happened. But it did. And those things come back whether you want them to or not.” Like that one day, seven years ago, when the monster from my past came to the office I’d been working at. He smiled and shook my hand as if he had never stripped me naked and bent me over his lap. The same lips that once told me what a pretty boy I was were now smiling at me, letting me know he was trusting me with his lawsuit. “But Shay-Lee, when good people stay silent, it’s the bad ones who get away.” My throat burned with the tears I tried to hold over things I never thought I’d cry over. This secret had been with me for so many years, scaring me to death. I thought that living life the way I did and controlling everything would help me forget, but the only thing it did was to help me repress.

Repress. Repress. Repress.

Until it was too much to hold, and my mind couldn’t take it anymore, and no number of photos on a wall was enough to help me ease my soul.

“I may not know you personally, but from what Diesel has told me, you are a brave young man, Shay-Lee, who’s been suffering way too much. You deserve to be happy, and your father deserves to be punished for the crimes he has committed.”

Shay-Lee’s face twisted with pain before he choked on a low sob. “I want to help,” he confessed, holding his breath. “B-But I’m scared.” His voice was nearly a whisper, but his call for help was loud and clear.

I leaned forward, face serious.

“I know, but I promise you that you’re not alone.”

There was a time I wasn’t alone either, but being who I was back then, I was too stupid to acknowledge that. Too scared of what Ashton might think once he found out what had turned me into the man that I was, I kept quiet and allowed fear to control me. The fear of him being repulsed by what I was. The fear of realizing our whole relationship was built on something dirty. The fear of being rejected for never standing up and allowing this thing to go on for years until I grew older and that predator no longer had an interest in a man’s body.

Now, I knew Ashton would have never done that, and the fact I doubted him proved what a coward I truly was. But there would be time for that later because, currently, my job was to help these boys, who were still just boys, locked in a hell made by men.

Ash

“Just take it easy today, Ashy. I’m sure it will all be fine,” Kai said while squeezing my neck.

“How?” I turned to look at him.

We’d just parked outside the courthouse but were still inside the car, where Kai had been trying to calm me down for the past ten minutes. Today was the last day before the closing arguments, and I was freaking out with nerves. Too damn anxious to go through today alone, I asked Kai to join me. He agreed without hesitation, quickly finding someone to fill in for him at the restaurant.

“If finding the gun wasn’t bad enough, Jordan’s testimony pretty much sealed the deal,” I went on, my hair standing on end just by thinking of yesterday’s hearing. It went awful.

Kai’s brows pulled close. “Who’s Jordan?” He then snapped his fingers. “Oh, that kid who couldn’t stop crying on the stand?”

Unlike him, I took the matter very seriously. “Don’t joke about it, Kai. It’s a serious matter. Jordan spoke for over an hour about how violent and abusive Diesel was toward Shay-Lee, and the jury listened.”

“What did you expect to happen?” Kai asked, turning off the engine and unbuckling himself. “That kid dated Shay-Lee before Diesel and is clearly still in love with him.”