My mom was pregnant with Ireland then, and she and Vidal decided it was time to put me into therapy."
Tears slid down my face at the picture he painted of the child he'd once been - scared and hurting and feeling like an outsider in his mom's new life.
"They came out to the house - the shrink and a doctoral candidate she was supervising.
It started out all right.
They both were nice, attractive, patient.
But soon the shrink was spending most of the time counseling my mother, who was having a difficult pregnancy in addition to two young boys who were out of control.
I was left alone with him more and more frequently."
Gideon pulled over and put the car into park.
His hands gripped the wheel with white-knuckled force, his throat working.
The steady patter of rain softened, leaving us alone with our painful truths.
"You don't have to tell me any more," I whispered, unbuckling my seat belt and reaching out to him.
I touched his face with fingertips damp with my tears.
His nostrils flared on a sharply indrawn breath.
"He made me come.
Every goddamned time, he wouldn't stop until I came, so he could say I liked it."
I kicked off my shoes and pulled his hand away from the wheel so I could straddle his lap and hold him.
His grip on me was excruciatingly tight, but I didn't complain.
We were on an insanely busy street, with endless cars rumbling past on one side and a crush of pedestrians on the other, but neither of us cared.
He was shaking violently, as if he were sobbing uncontrollably, but he made no sound and shed no tears.
The sky cried for him, the rain coming down hard and angry, steaming off the ground.
Holding his head in my hands, I pressed my wet face to his.
"Hush, baby.
I understand.
I know how that feels, the way they gloat afterward.
And the shame and confusion and guilt you felt.
It's not your fault.
You didn't want it.
You didn't enjoy it."
"I let him touch me at first," he whispered.
"He said it was my age .