Page 30 of Captivated
Zeeb took a deep breath, and drew a horizontal line across the white sheet.
I didn’t seethiscomin’.
Nate was right about one thing—it took Zeeb a while to get his focus back. He did his best to draw what he saw, and little by little, the pencil went where it was supposed to go.
What surprised him most was how good it made him feel.
I used to fuckin’lovethis when I was a kid.
Surrounded by pencils, paint… it had been Zeeb’s idea of heaven.
Until heaven was stolen from him.
“I always preferred being outdoors, which I guess is no surprise, seein’ where I grew up,” he murmured as he filled in more details. “But I loved sitting up in my room, drawing, painting…. You couldn’t see the walls for all my artwork.”
“How old were you?”
He did a quick assessment. “Ten or eleven, I think.” He smiled. “I had notions of bein’ an artist or a writer.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
And there went Zeeb’s stomach again.
“Let’s just say my creativity didn’t fit in with the world I lived in. That was a traditional, hardworking, masculine world that had no place for dreams of writin’ or paintin’.”
“So you became a cowboy instead?”
Zeeb snorted. “I did so many jobs before I became that.”
Silence fell between them, and Zeeb wondered what was going on in Nate’s head. He wasn’t about to fill the quiet with inane chatter, however.
Peace was a healer.
“I was like you when I was a kid,” Nate said in a low voice.
The admission came from out of nowhere, and Zeeb didn’t want to stem the tide of conversation.
Zeeb smiled. “You couldn’t play football, you forgot to do your chores, and your mom despaired about how dirt seemed to follow you around like a shadow too?”
Nate laughed, but then his face fell. “My mom said I was sensitive. Gentle. Artistic. Unfortunately that didn’t make me the son my dad had dreamed of.” His face tightened. “He saw gentleness as a sign of weakness, so he tried to make me into a man. At least, howhethought a man should be. And when his efforts didn’t work, he got frustrated. Angry.”
Zeeb had to resist the urge to hug Nate. There was an undercurrent of pain to his words. And while Zeeb’s dad had expected him to follow in his footsteps—work hard, be tough, and marry a woman to continue the family line—he hadn’t gotten angry, not even when he found out about?—
Nope. Not gonna go there.
Then Nate’s words sank in.
“Wait a sec. I’m a bit confused here. I’ve met your dad. The man you’ve just described sounds nothing like him.”
“Remember I said Derek hasn’t been my dad all that long?” Nate put his pencil down. “He sort of adopted me when I was eighteen. I started calling him Dad about two years ago. And you’re right. He’s nothing like my real dad, thank God.”
Eighteen? What happened before then?
Zeeb wasn’t about to ask. The moment felt as fragile as glass, and one wrong move, one wrong question, could shatter it into a million fragments.
He expelled a breath. “We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”
Nate studied him for a moment. “It isn’t something I talk about. In fact, I’m not really sure why I said all that just now.” He took a breath. “I think I’ve talked more the past two days than in the previous two months.”
