Page 12 of The Club

I take a long time, hoping Noah will be gone by the time I emerge. No such luck. When I come back to the living room/kitchen area, clean and wearing sweats and a t-shirt, he’s got a glass of water and a bowl of granola waiting for me.

I glance at the living room. He cleaned my couch. Ugh. I wish he wouldn’t do that.

He’s scrolling through shit on his phone, probably checking the news for signs of my activity last night. He doesn’t look up. He knows that if he bothers me right now, I’ll get shitty and stubborn, and what he wants is for me to eat.

I don’t want to eat. I just want to go to bed.

I don’t, however, because I feel bad. Noah deserves better. Sometimes, I wish he’d stop caring about me. Other times, I’m terrified of that possibility.

But it’s not a possibility. Noah will never, ever abandon me.

Throat tight, ass sore, I sit on the stool beside him. I drink the water. I try to eat.

When I push the bowl away, Noah stows his phone. He says, “We’re going to work backwards. Who tied you up?”

“Dominic Capelli.”

Noah freezes. “Tell me you’re not serious. Jesus, you are serious. What the fuck, Rafael.”

I shrug. “You wanted to know.”

Noah studies me. I know what he’s trying to figure out, so I say, “I wanted it.”

“But you were high.”

“So?”

Noah shakes his head and mutters under his breath. Then he studies me again. “He’s dangerous, Rafael.”

A little light spears in through the gray fog of my mind. A smile tugs at my lips. “I know.”

“Jesus,” he mutters.

“He’s one of us, Noah.”

Noah sighs as the weight of the world settles on his shoulders. He’s silent for a long time then he says, “Yeah. I know.”

Noah threw away his career and his life to save a handful of boys, even though there were a lot of them that slipped through the cracks. But there would never have been any way to save Dominic. His father had already taken him back from the Island before Noah arrived.

“You shot his father,” Noah reminds me.

“Yep.”

“So why is he fucking you?”

“I don’t know. But I like it.”

“Do you even remember it?”

“Some of it.”

Noah scrubs at his forehead. “I’m pulling teeth here. Can you just tell me what happened?”

I try to put everything into sequence, but it’s fuzzy and I’m tired and I don’t really want to tell him about Dominic because I haven’t had a chance to think about it on my own.

Noah, however, fills in the blanks in my story pretty well.

“Goddamn it, Rafael.”

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