Page 58 of The Club

We might only sort of be friends, but we are forever bound. By the Island. By Noah. By the the things we’ve done for each other over the years.

But even before we complicated our relationship by almost having sex, there were other problems. I’ve always been jealous of him. He’s everything Noah wanted me to be that I couldn’t be.

“Yes, Dante called me,” Noah acknowledges. “He seems to believe I have some control over you. But he ought to realize that no one has control over you.”

He’s joking, trying to lighten things, but my brain skips back to last night. How easily I obeyed Dominic. How much better I felt when I did.

Noah seems to read the thought on my face, something of it at least. He gets serious.

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea, Rafael. With Dominic. He’s dangerous.”

“You already told me that, and I already told you that I know.”

“I don’t mean just in the sense that he kills people.”

“I should hope not, because I kill people too.”

“Rafael, there’s a mark around your neck that looks like somebody choked you with a belt.”

That makes my lips quirk. “That’s a shockingly accurate guess.”

Noah rocks forward in his chair. “This isn’t a joke! He’s hurting you!”

“Which isexactlywhat I need.” My mood switches so fast it feels like a whip cracking inside me. I know it shows on my face because I read it in Noah’s.

“Rafael—”

“No, Noah. You don’t fucking get it. You never have, and I’m not going to try to explain it to you.”

Noah thrusts himself up from his chair and stalks across the small living room.

“Rafael, he’s not …”

When Noah trails off, I fill in the blanks. “Normal? Stable? No, he’s fucking not. He’s one of us.”

“That’s why I think it’s a bad idea, Rafael! You both need—”

“Each other. He understands me in a way that you never will. For as much as you know about me, for as much as you know about what happened on the Island, you willneverunderstand.”

Noah goes to the window and plants his hands on the sill, leaning into it. His head is hanging. I don’t know if he’s thinking about me or about his son, but I’m sure he’s thinking about the past.

Working for the FBI, he was leading an investigation into the Society, tracking the international crime syndicate’s American members. He got too close. He caused too much trouble. So they took his son to the Island, where the members would come to discuss business and indulge in all the boys kept there. Me. Dante. Dominic. Noah’s son, Chance. So many others.

Chance died there. Plenty of boys did before Noah, working off the books and determined to destroy the Society’s island retreat, arrived with a team of mercenaries.

Noah has seen things that no one should ever have to see. He knows things that no one should have to know. But knowledge is not experience. He’ll always be on the outside of it, not the inside.

He sighs wearily and pushes away from the window. He’s not looking at me as he comes to sit on the beat-up coffee table in front of me. He’s not looking at me even when his hand reaches out.

I know why. He needs moments when he can pretend that I’m his son. I don’t mind, not much. Because I need moments like this too, when I can pretend he’s really my father.

So I lean forward and let Noah put his hand on my shoulder. I let him say, as he’s said a hundred times, “I’m sorry.”

Jesus, we’re so fucking broken.

“I’m okay,” I say, as I’ve said a hundred times, and he lets me say it even though we both know it’s a lie.

“I love you,” he says, and I wish I knew if he was really saying that to me—or to his dead son.

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