Page 94 of Captivated
Nate had to think. “Belinda will be almost thirty. She could even have married Josh Lowell by now. They’d dated all through high school.” He huffed. “And you’re right. I could be an uncle. Naomi is almost thirty-four.”
Zeeb cackled. “Man, growin’ up with two sisters. I don’t envy you.” He set the frying pan on the stove. “Something you said yesterday. What the fuck is a shame-based group confession?”
“What it sounds like.” Nate’s stomach clenched. “They’d sit a group of us in a circle, facing each other. And then Mr. Thomas would begin.”
“Who was he?”
“A minister.” Nate shuddered. “He always began each session with the same phrase. ‘It’s time for confession, everyone. Let the light of truth burn away the sin that clings to you.’”
Even the memory of the words sent a shiver through him.
Zeeb scowled. “Yeah, that sounds like it was arealfun session. Confessing to what?”
“Lustful thoughts about someone from our past or at the camp, attraction toward a roommate… And once you confessed, no one would look at you, like you were unclean or something. Which is how they wanted you to feel, of course.”
Zeeb regarded him thoughtfully. “Did you ever confess to feelin’ something for a boy?”
Nate hesitated for a moment before replying. He nodded. “Mr. Thomas would go around the circle, staring at us.” He swallowed. “And when he looked at me, the weight of his eyes felt like a thousand pounds. I told him I hadn’t done anything wrong.”
“I’m guessing he didn’t buy that.”
“We’re all here to get rid of the sin that’s inside us, Nathaniel. We can’t hide. You’ve been here long enough to know what this is about. If you’ve got no confession to make, then you’re lying to yourself.”
“No sir, he did not.” His gaze had cut into Nate with all the precision of a chisel cutting through stone.
“If you refuse to confess, we’ll have to make you face the truth. You’re hiding something. You know what you’ve done. Confess it.”
Zeeb added the onions to the sizzling pan, moving them around it constantly. “So what did you tell him?”
The everyday sounds of cooking provided a grounding Nate needed in that moment, and he focused on them. “What he wanted to hear. I said I’d been thinking about boys.”
He could still hear the collective intake of breath from the group, and his chest had constricted, as though every person in the room had stepped on it. His face had burned with humiliation. His eyes had stung with the unshed tears he’d been holding back.
“I told him I didn’t want those thoughts, that I wanted it to stop.”
Mr. Thomas’s cool gaze chilling his skin. The eyes of everyone focused on him.
“There it is. And now you’ll make it right. You’ll do what’s necessary. You’ll repent, Nathaniel. And you’ll never think that way again. Understand?”
It had felt as though the room was swallowing him up. He couldn’t bear the stares of the other patients. The lie he’d confessed gnawed him to the bone.
“They made me feel so freaking guilty, and yet I’d done nothing to feel guilty about. I felt compelled to confess, like I had no control over my own emotions.” His stomach hardened. “That bastard forced me to take what were the innocent feelings of a fourteen-year-old boy, and internalize them as ‘sin’,” he air-quoted. “Hell, he made me question every thought and feeling that went through my head. I was confused, and there were times when self-doubt threatened to smother me. And therehewas, creating guilt where none existed, amplifying that guilt through peer pressure, through manipulation, and let’s not forget the biggie, with the threat of eternal damnation.”
“But once you’d confessed, they left you alone?”
Nate snorted. “If only.”
Zeeb tipped the ham into the pan. “How about we end this particular conversation? ’Cause the way we’re going, neither of us will have any appetite. We didn’t do Matt’s cooking justice last night, and if we repeat that, I might as well toss this straight into the trash.”
Nate took a deep breath. “Works for me.” He went over to the fridge. “There are still beers in here. Want one?”
Zeeb chuckled. “I’d say yes, but I still have to drive back to the bunkhouse. Not that Teague’s gonna write me up for bein’ drunk in charge of a truck.”
“One beer.” Nate’s heartbeat slipped into a higher gear. “And I was thinking… Would… would you stay here again tonight?”
Please say yes.
Zeeb cocked his head. “Your couch is comfy but it ain’tthatcomfy.”
