want to have to spell it out. Please just understand and move on. Don’t let me torture you like this. “What are you saying, Cory?” Kate’s breath was shallow now. I could practically hear her heart pounding hard and fast in her chest. Christ! Why did I have the be the one to break this to her. “Peter was in love with Bruce from the team.” There, I said it. And the words felt like acid on my tongue because I was hurting Kate with the truth. Not because Peter was really gay and in the closet but because Kate really thought that he’d wanted to be with her and only her. “Fuck! That’s one of the reason’s I was pissed that he took your virginity, Kate!” Kate was livid, she looked as if she was frozen in shock. She opened her mouth to say something but no words would come out. “Kate! Kate, speak to me. Say something.” Kate hugged herself, rocking back and forth nervously, a dazed expression on her face. She seemed paralysed with shock or something. She’d turned her head to look at me and her darkened eyes pierced mine. The dagger in her look stabbed me straight through the heart. It killed me to see Kate like this. But I had to let her know it wasn’t her fault. Peter was going to break off with her long before she’d thought of putting off their getting engaged. She hadn’t driven him to anything. He’d had a fight with his dad about being his own person. Being with the person he really wanted to spend his life with. The truth was, Peter was with us at the Frat house. We’d had a few drinks and Bruce came by. We all knew Peter was gay. It was pretty much cool with us. It was his life. His secret. Anyway, Peter and Bruce had a wild make out session. We all sort of laughed it off, drinking our beers, watching the game on the Flat Screen. Him and his guy were really going at it. Sucking on each other’s necks, french kissing. I finally told them to go get a room so the rest of us could get on with watching the game. Peter felt free around his guys. We’d all come from different backgrounds. We’d all known what it was like to be an outcast and to not have the acceptance of those close to us—our families. But it all ended when his dad was tipped off about what was going on at the Frat house. He came in with a friend and started harassing Peter. Threatening him. We’d all stepped in and tried to defend Peter but his dad threatened us, too. The dude had tons of connections in high places and low places. We all knew he could set us up any day with a kilo of coke and we’d be done with for the rest of our life. We backed off. Well most of us. “Peter, you need me?” I asked him. “No. I can handle my own.” Those were the last words Peter had spoken to me. He’d went reluctantly with his dad and, well…the next thing we knew, police were at our door during the middle of the night on some investigation. Peter had been killed in a car crash. Alcohol was suspected. They’d wanted to know who’d provided him with booze. We all knew his dad must have had something to do with it. Of course, we couldn’t prove it, could we? And we were forewarned about keeping his little secret or that old man would screw us all over. That was about the time I’d left town to find myself. Figure out what I was going to do with my life. Being caged wasn’t an option for me. But every day I’d thought about ways to get even with that bastard father of his. I knew he would get what was coming to him. Karma was a bitch with a badass memory. When he least expected it—when time provided him a false sense of security, he would get what was coming to him. But it hurt me when Kate turned against me. She wouldn’t even look at me during the funeral. I knew that creep father of Peter was behind it all, saying it was all somehow our fault. Yeah, like hell it was! “Kate, Peter was going through torture not being able to come out. It wasn’t easy when you lived around bigots who owned the keys to your