Page 171 of Piece Us Together

He makes a noise, thoughtful. “I’ll text you the minute he says it’s okay. You can show that to Maison or have him call if he’d rather.”

It’s a strange sensation, what I feel as he says that. It’s relieving. So fucking relieving. It’s also terrifying. Witheveryone’s permission, there’s no reason for Maison to keep his secrets. No reason other than he’s not willing to let me in.

Travis seems to be having the same thoughts because he says, “He might not tell you, still.”

“I know.”

“Will that ruin it?” he asks.

The first of what will probably be a whole lot of tears tonight spills down my cheek. My chest burns with the effort it takes to breathe without making a wrecked sort of sound.

I hang up because I can’t give him an answer. I don’t have one. I’m afraid of it more than anything else.

I promised I’d never let Maison ruin this, but what if that means he ruins me instead?

We’re all seated at the table, Nolan hunched over his bowl of oatmeal, Maison adjusting his arm every few seconds, trying to get it to rest on the table in a way that doesn’t hurt. There’s coffee that none of us have touched. Nolan’s cushion is still in the corner where I keep it. He hadn’t so much as looked in its direction this morning. He hadn’t asked to make breakfast, either. He just slumped down at the table, blue eyes distant and unseeing.

I curl my hands around my warm mug just to feel something other than the empty, awful sensation building in my chest.

“I spoke with Travis last night,” I say, each word feeling taut and forced. Maison’s chin snaps up as his gaze zeroes in on me. “He and Carter are giving permission for their stories to be shared, alongside the two of yours. Everything, his text this morning said. Whatever you feel is necessary.”

Something flickers in Maison’s eyes before he closes them, his chin dipping down again.

There’s a long silence. I hate it. I don’t want them to make me beg for this. I don’t want to drag it out of them. I don’t want to be the man who gives the people he loves ultimatums.

I don’t want to break my promise and let this be ruined.

I don’t want to be ruined.

I don’t know how to do this. Any of this. I can’t control this. I can’t—

“I was taken from a college bar,” Nolan says. I look over at him, my heart stuttering. He’s still staring down at his bowl. His hands are on either side of it, trembling against the wooden table. “I think they drugged me, like my drink. I was never a big drinker. I don’t know. It’s not like they told me, you know? Not like they let me ask questions.” He curls his hands into fists. “I gave in. Fast. Faster than—probably faster than I should have. I don’t know. I—it hadn’t been that long since I discovered kink and they just—there was no getting out. Not then, at least. The metal bars and the chains and the shock collar.” Bile rises in my throat. I swallow it, holding perfectly still so as not to scare him off. “It was pointless, fighting. I just didn’t understand it. Everyone was tossing themselves at the captors like waves against a rock and I was sleeping and getting food and—and I just thought…God, I don’t know. It was easier, the way I was doing it. If we had any shot in hell of getting out, it wasn’t going to be starved and tired and beaten half to death.”

He closes his eyes. “Maybe I was lying to myself. Maybe even in the beginning, a sick part of me was okay with what they were going to do. I don’t know. It was foggy. I think—I think maybe they were still drugging me, for a while. And I told myself a lot of things. There was so much time. They don’t show that, in movies and shows, I mean. They don’t show the hours on end of just sitting there waiting for the next horror to hit. Gives you a lot of time to think yourself into circles.”

“Thinking clearly in that kind of situation is impossible, even without drugs,” Maison says so damn earnestly, reaching his hand out to touch one of Nolan’s fists. “The psychology of it is proven, baby.”

Nolan laughs, watery and sad, giving him a smile that matches. “We don’t have to do that again. Talk about me not deserving what happened. I—I know now. That kink is okay. That—that what I wanted before they took me didn’t make me deserve what they did. That’s not what this is about. I got off-topic. Sorry.”

He wipes his free hand across his cheeks. His chin starts to tilt toward me, but he stops, dropping it instead. I tell myself I’m not allowed to be hurt by him not wanting to look at me right now. This isn’t about me. It’s not fucking about me at all.

It’s killing me, though.

“Travis bought me.”

The world goes eerily quiet. Cold.

The air in my lungs is needle-sharp and toxic.

“He wasn’t Travis, though. He was undercover. Deep undercover.”

“As a cop?” I ask.

“Um. No. It’s like…” He trails off, looking at Maison with his brow furrowed.

Maison rubs at his stubbled chin, taking a moment. “We’re all former military. We were recruited with the unspokenassumption that the CIA was behind everything. I don’t think it was, though. Whatever—orwhoever—controlled and funded us, I think it was private.”

“You never met them?”

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