Randy

I knew that things were bad for Derrick at his house, but I guess I never really understood the depth of the problem. That night when Der's dad called and told us he had kicked out Dusty, I guess it finally hit me. I know understood in graphic terms why my lover had been killing himself with work and school.

I think I must have had it somewhat easy, I mean my folks were okay with me being gay, at least they were eventually. I just could not imagine what it must be like for Derrick and even more so for Dusty.

In the back of my mind, I guess I always knew that Dusty was gay, I mean he has always been somewhat on the shy and effeminate side, and I guess that just hit me as being gay, though it shouldn't have.

I knew that night that Derrick would have to go home. I also knew that if he did, I would be with him. Many things ran through my mind that night, while we were waiting for call to let us know if Dusty was alive and ok or not.

Der was a mess that night, I mean he paced and paced, he looked like hell. I was trying to remain calm for his sake, but I knew that if we did not hear something soon, I would be a mess too. I guess I am more calm than he is, but I knew that I would remain so, only for so long.

When that phone finally rang, and we found that Dusty was safe and would remain so, we were both so relieved that we didn't really think about stuff to deeply. I called and added a ticket for me, so that I could go with him and that is about as much thinking that either of us did that night.

The next morning though, I started to think and the more I thought about things, the more upset I became. I knew that this trip would forever change our lives. There was no way that Der's dad would not find out that he was there, and in so doing, would lose financing for school.

I was terrified that Der would have to leave school and leave me. My only hope was that while we were home, I could get in touch with Larry and Terry and see if they would loan me the money to allow him to finish school.

I was also infuriated at his dad, I mean we only had 3 more months to finish school and we would be Doctors. We both wanted to be family practitioners and we knew that we would have no trouble getting hired at the same practice. I guess that neither of us really thought about going back to Corydon to practice.

Once we got to Louisville, and Der gave the directions, I wondered if there was a mistake. The address was the same as Larry and Terry's! I was not sure if there had been a mistake or if they had moved. When we got there, the house was completely different. It was larger than it had been and the look was different as well.

A hot young guy answered the door and told us he was Billy. He told us that Dusty was fine and in time we also found that Larry and Terry had passed away. That devastated us. By the time we had gotten ourselves back together, we had another bombshell dropped on us. It seems as though Jason has a lil boy. Billy filled us in on the whole story and I was amazed by it. By the time he was done with the story, I could not wait to meet everyone.

Soon everyone was back and I got to watch as Der and Dusty held each other and cried. Soon though, Der introduced me as his partner. The look on Dusty's face was priceless! After a long talk about what the plans were to care for Dusty, we all turned in for the night. Dusty slept with us that night and I had no problem with it. He needed his bro and I was not about to stand in the way of that.

We spent the next couple of days, just lounging about the house, learning more about each other. The third day we were there, I was chatting with Chad and Jase, and mentioned my fears about school.

Later that evening, Chad and Jase pulled me off to the side to present me an offer. "We talked about it, and we would like to help. Chad and I will pay for anything either of you need to finish school, and pay off any student loans you may have." Jase told me.

"We also have some plans to build a shopping center-mall type thing, and we would be happy to build a large office for you and furnish you with whatever you may need to start a practice." Chad told me.

"There is also one other thing, we are planning to build a new home, and if you would like, we can include the two of you in those plans. That way Derrick and Dusty will be close to each other. You would have complete privacy, as we all will. Of course you can talk about it and decide, but we will need to know before you leave, so we can make changes in the plans." Jase said.

My mind was reeling, here was the chance of a lifetime, a way for both of us to finish med school debt free, a ready-made practice and a home! I stuttered an answer of sorts and told them I would speak to Der right away.

I pulled Der off to the side as soon as I could and explained the offer. I was so excited that I had to repeat myself a few times for him to understand me correctly. Once he did understand me, he too was very excited. After we talked about it for a bit, we both agreed that we would accept the offer.

That night, the four of us sat down to discuss things in more detail. After covering the financial aspects of school and loans, we moved to talk about the practice and what we would need and stuff.

"Would you all take junior partners, associates or would it just be you two?" Chad asked.

"Honestly I think we would want to hire staff and not have partners, but I do not think that there will be a need to do that for a while. I mean we will want to build up the practice first." Der told them.

"Well we are planning to build soon, and I wondered how much space to try to plan for. I guess that I can get the plans drawn up and then send them to you for you okay and input. I will send you some links to sites for furnishings and also some catalogs as well. You guys will have a while to pick your stuff out, but I would still try to do it as soon as you can." Chad said.

We spent the next several days, talking, having fun and getting to know each other. We went shopping, and otherwise had a blast. All was going well, until the Tuesday before we left to go back to Boston. We had all decided to go out to dinner, and since there are not a lot of choices, we went to Ryan's Steakhouse.

Most of us go the buffet, so we could really pig out! :-) We were about half-way through our meal, when Der's dad walked up to the table. He pulled Der up and tried to pull him along after him, all the while, cussin and a fussin.

The staff came back to see what all the fuss was about, and heard every word the old man said. Der would not allow himself to be pulled along and that seemed to make the old man even madder. He finally pulled back and hit Der in the face three times. Der's nose was bleeding as was his lip. He pulled himself away and almost smiled. "You have done it now dad, I hope you enjoy being in prison, cause I am going to press charges against you and I have all these witnesses to help me put you away for a long time."

His old man lunged for him and started to hit him again, knocking Der to the floor in the process and then kicked him a couple of times, while screaming threats to kill Der. By that point I was so mad I nailed the old bastard. I hit him and he hit the floor. Other people came to hold him down, while the police were called.

The police arrested him and called for an ambulance for Der. They did not think he was seriously injured, but they wanted to have a medical report for court records. Once they found out that he had done the same to his other Dusty, they asked Chad and Jase if they would allow them to use the pictures they had taken of his wounds. Of course they agreed to do so, but wanted to make sure that the documents assigning custody to them would not be affected. The police assured them that they did not believe there would be any changes involved.

After all the questions were answered, and the mess cleaned up, Chad and Jase apologized to the staff and left a large tip as well as phone numbers, if any damages needed to be repaired. We them left and the police officer who was to pick up the photos followed us all back to the house. Once he had the photos, he left and told us that the prosecutor would be in contact with us the next day.

We all then headed to the hospital to make sure that Der was okay, and he was. He was being kept overnight to insure that there were no problems, but the docs were pretty sure there would be none.

We all took showers and came back to the family room for beers and relaxation. While I was in the shower, I finally was able to let loose all my anger and fear. I cried for a good ten minutes or more, letting go of all the tension.

We all gathered in the family room, and I had to laugh, we had all worn just boxers and we all sat there drinking our beer. Dusty came to me right away and just hugged me hard as he started to cry. I held him and told him it was over and that Der was going to be fine. He cried for a few minutes, then started to shake. I thought he was sobbing, but once I looked at him, I saw that he was shaking with rage. I knew that he had to let that out, or he would cause himself to get sick.

I told him to let it out, yell, scream, holler or punch a pillow; just let all that hurt and anger out. He did just that, in an awesome display of language and assault of a pillow. In fact we were all a bit stunned at the force of his verbal and physical attack. He was one very angry and hurt young man. I looked at Jase and he looked at me, and then said, "Dusty, I think that you could use some help to deal with all this. I think you should see Billy's therapist. Would you do that for me?"

"Of course I will, if you think I need to see him, I will go and see him. I'll do whatever I can to get over this. I really do not like to hate my dad, but I do." Dusty said quietly.

The conversation continued for another couple of hours, before we all headed to bed. The events of the evening, had wore us all out. Even so, it took me quite a while to fall asleep.

The next morning, Jase called his attorney and asked him to come over after we had picked up Der. Once that was set up, Jase set about feeding Joey, and I worked to fix us breakfast. Once everyone had eaten and gotten dressed, we all set out for the hospital.

Der smiled as we walked in. I went directly to him and gave him a kiss. I filled that kiss with as much love as I could given his split lip. Once we had broken the kiss, he looked at me and smiled, and grabbed my hand and told me he loved me. As I was about to reply, the doctor walked in. He told us that all was well and we could take Der home, however he would have to take it easy for a couple of days, as his ribs were bruised.

We checked Der out and headed back to the house to meet with the attorney, and noticed that the prosecutor had left a message asking to meet with us. Chad called him right away and asked if he could meet with us at the same time we were meeting with out attorney. He agreed to come right over.

We had a few minutes to chat with the attorney before the prosecutor arrived, and we laid the whole situation out to him. He advised that we try to push for the harshest charges and sentence we could. We all agreed to that, with no problem.

Once the prosecutor arrived, he introduced himself as Ron Simpson, and we introduced ourselves to him. "Well it appears that Mr. Rhodes bonded out of jail last night. His wife put up the bond and hired an attorney. I talked with the attorney this morning, and went over the charges, and gave him a brief rundown of the evidence. I had hoped he would want to plea the case out, since I know you have to go back to Boston Derrick, but it didn't do any good. I am pretty sure that they intend to use your sexual orientation in the trial and they think that will swing a jury their way. I have filed every charge I can in this case, and I am pretty sure that we will convict him." he told us.

"What charges did you file Ron?" Jase asked.

"First Degree Assault, Battery, Attempted Murder, Felony Child Abuse, Felony Child Abandonment, Destruction of Property, and Disturbing the Peace. There are several counts for each charge, except the last three." Ron told us.

"What kind of sentence would he get if they find him guilty?" Dusty asked.

"Well it depends, he could get as little as probation, depending on the charges he is found guilty of, all the way to 60 years in prison. Much depends on the judge and how he sees the case."

"I hope that he doesn't get my uncle as his judge then. He is a homophobic old jerk." I said.

"Who is your uncle?" Ron asked.

"Dennis Byrd" I replied.

"Damn, well I would bet he will be the judge in this case, but we can try to get Judge Miller. I just don't think we can expect to do so. Maybe we can ask him to recuse himself since you will be on the stand." Ron said with little hope that it would actually happen.

Jase's attorney spoke up then, "Well if he will not recuse himself, and he gives a light sentence, we can always appeal the sentence, and given the refusal to recuse himself, I will be willing to bet that the sentence is overturned."

"Your right on that, I would be willing to bet money on it. The thing is, Mr. Rhodes has not record and that will lighten the sentence quite a bit. Guys, when do you think you could come back for a trial?" Ron asked.

"Well we only have about 3 months of school left, so if you could get the trial date set after the end of March, we will be living here then." Der answered.

"I think we can do that. I would be willing to bet the defense will not be ready until May or later, so we should be ok there." Ron said with relief.

"Do you have to pursue a plea bargain? I mean I would rather this go to trial so that we can be sure he gets the harshest sentence." Dusty asked.

"Well I don't think they want to do that anyway, but if you all feel that way, I will not offer or accept any plea agreements." Ron told us seriously.

"Oh I went ahead and filed an Order of Protection against Mr. Rhodes. He is not allowed to be within 5000 feet of you or your property. I want to make sure that we can add more charges to him, if he violates it, plus that will allow us to revoke his bond."

We talked a bit more, and then the guests left. Once we all calmed down a bit, I took Der to our room and undressed him and told him to lay down. I wanted him to rest a bit, then we could get him something to eat. I knew I was going overboard, I knew he would have been fine on the sofa, but I wanted to just hold him for a while.

The next few days went by way to fast and soon we were heading to the airport to catch out flight back to Boston and back to school. Der was going to quit his job and that eased my mind a lot. I knew that he needed more sleep and more time to study. Finals were coming and we would need to devote all our time to study.

Jase

Once Derrick and Randy had left, things settled down a bit. Chad, Danny and I had several long talks about the bookstore and the kids idea for a music store. Danny wondered why we could not just build a combo bookstore, music store and video store. The kids could be joint owners and manage the music and video areas and I could manage the book area. Chad suggested that we include a huge coffeehouse type area, and set up both listening areas and reading areas in it.

The more we talked about that idea, the better it sounded. We called the boys in one evening, and presented the idea. Not only did they like the idea, they were ready to go back to work on the plans and include all the ideas. I told them to plan it out as much as they could, and sent them off to start.

I called the attorney and our accountant, and told them what we were doing and asked them to incorporate us. I gave them the information and asked them to get it done as quickly as they could.

We started to look for land to build on, and had some planning meetings to decide what to build and how big it needed to be. We decided to build professional offices at one end, including the medical offices for Derrick and Randy, a law office for Danny, and the Real Estate office for Tracy. We decided to also build 5 more offices for other areas, like a dentist or CPA or whatever. There would be 5 small store areas, 5 medium store areas, and 2 larger store areas, 2 restaurant areas, then there would be our 2 story retail area.

Once we decided what we wanted, we had our company start putting the blueprints together. We 15 acres of land west side of town, an area that is pretty undeveloped, and put in a bid on the land. Our attorney and CPA arranged the financing, through small loans and our trusts to buy the land, build the place and get into business. We set up million dollar line of credit with out bank and were ready to start as soon as the land and buildings were ready.

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