Read Hush for Free Online

in the hush of his room and tries to reason himself out of the recoiling internal horror he’d run from the library carrying.
    Despite Cam’s protests as Wren fled, Wren cannot help but believe he took advantage of Cam in an unacceptable way, with­out true consent. Wren breached a trust; it was incredibly fool­ish to assume that Cam knew what was going on and to allow him­self to be misled by the strength of the connection he felt. Cam’s ini­tial abandon and then his sudden confusion is one of those gut twisting memories Wren knows he’ll be actively avoid­ing for months. Cam had been so open , a flavor unlike any Wren’s tasted. Cam’s inside him now, bringing a deep, longing tug that radiates through Wren. His skin feels too alive and everything tingles and aches, aches from wanting but also because he can’t have him now. It is rending, wrangling the discipline to walk away not only from Cam, but, until he can trust himself again, the game.
    Wren has to forget this whole thing. Although he’s built for touch, Wren’s lived through enough wanting and needing and denying to know he can forget. Taking Cam, who apparently didn’t know or understand who Wren is, would be wrong. It’s a game for a reason: because no one gets hurt, not him or the person he’s with.
    Wren remembers what it was like to trust someone so much he let him in and in, opened himself with the faith that he’d never be mis­used. He remembers months when he waited for the right times to let Robert take him apart so sweetly. More acutely, he remem­bers what it felt like to have that trust broken. In the wake of broken promises, Wren refused to touch or let him­self be touched intimately, to relive that vul­nerability with no one to catch him in the fall.
    Wren is built for touch. Affection and simple love he has with Nora, with his family; they won’t break his heart.
    As for the rest, for pleasure beyond what he can provide him­self… the game is a safe way to feel physical release and inti­macy and fun, without having to let go or risk himself. Or, at least, it had been.
    “It’s over,” Wren greets her with in the morning, thumping a box of Fruit Loops onto the table between them.
    “What is?” Nora asks cautiously.
    “The game. The boy,” Wren says, waving his spoon. He hardly slept, he feels as if someone put his skin on inside out, and the last thing he wants is to have to talk about this.
    Scratch that. The last thing he wants is to have to talk about this ever again.
    “Wanna tell me wha—“
    “Nope,” Wren says, opening the box of cereal so vigorously it tears down the side. He sighs. “It won’t work out, it’s not gonna happen, it’s over, and we’re all moving on.”
    “We?” Nora asks.
    “Yes. You, me, the fucking cereal, all of us,” Wren over-pours the milk and then sighs again. Being defeated by breakfast cereal on top of all the rest is almost too much. If there wasn’t so much milk in the bowl, and if he didn’t care so much about his bedding, he would retreat into his cave with his cereal.
    “Okay,” Nora says quietly. She puts her hand on his, smiles and then hands him some napkins. “Eat your cereal so it can move on, then you and I are going shopping so that we can.”
    * * *
    The cheapest flight home takes him to an airport hours away from home. Nebraska unfolds as the highway ribbons its way closer to a house filled with an energy Cam once uncon­sciously freed himself from.
    His father is awkwardly silent on the drive—they both are. Luis Vargas has always been a quiet man, contained in all the ways Cam trained himself to be as a teenager.
    Cam’s leaving Nebraska for Chicago was an impulse that shook everyone. Cam wasn’t the impulsive one. He had always been steady, nearly unchanging in the constant roil around his family.
    When his plane home lifted into the air, Cam really knew in his bones that Chicago had been the real flight, the best escape.
    On the drive Luis talks about