Page 37 of Possession

I had already spotted the ragged paperback when O’Neil brought the tray. When I gestured to O’Neil last night before I had to put my focus entirely on the fight, I wasn’t sure whether he understood me. Apparently he did. He gave me what I asked for.

Maybe that’s part of the reason I didn’t want to collect the tray earlier. I wasn’t ready for Lucas’s attention to shift.

But I can’t stay annoyed when he’s so happy. A smile tries to form on my face. It feels weird.

Sitting up, I hold open the blanket. Lucas sets the tray on the floor and dives in with me. He half crawls into my lap to get warm. I like that, so I pull him in to sit between my legs with his back to me. I’m sore from getting hit in the ribs a lot last night, but it’s worth it to have him close. I like how his body feels against mine. I like how he smells.

He grabs the book off the tray. It’sThe Shining. Fucking horror, great. I take it from him and put it aside.

“Hey!” he protests.

“Food,” I say quietly against the top of his head.

He stills slightly, clearly surprised, but it’s only for a second. He leans back against me, touches my knee, and says, “Okay.”

A let out the breath that’s gotten stuck in my lungs. I relax.

Part of me knows that this is very bad. The more I speak with him, the more I let myself be comfortable with him, the more impossible it makes it for me to go back. But another part of me knows it’s already too late. Because if I lost him? I would die. I would make it happen, one way or another.

The other problem is that I still have to be what I’ve been for so long. In the ring. With the guards. Everywhere except in this carved away space with Lucas.

I have to think, too, about the future. It hasn’t existed for me for a long time. Animals don’t think about the future, not like humans.

I gave up hope of escape a long time ago. I had to. It was an invitation to despair every time that hope was disappointed. I saw men crumble because of it. You can’t live for the future in a hopeless place. You can only live for the fight.

That’s what I’ve learned to do. That acceptance in me became so deep that even when I was purchased by Oscar Crowley and brought back to the States, nothing stirred in me.

Not until Lucas.

The problem is, he can’t be here. This isn’t okay. I have to figure out how to get him—us—out of here. I have to make a plan.

It scares the shit out of me because I’m doing exactly what I’ve so long forbidden myself to do: hope.

The only way I can handle that fear is with a promise to myself that if anything happens to Lucas, I will not crumble. I will erupt. I will take as many people out with me as I possibly can.

It’s a cruel irony that the moment I actually begin to enjoy the present, I can’t settle in it. And it’s not just the future that’s tugging at me. The past is too. It has been ever since I spoke my name.

I thought that name was buried too deep to return to me, but the instant I accepted it again, everything attached to that name has been trying to come back with it.

What I was before the prison.

WhoI was.

Roman Constantine.

Number three in the Constantine crime family, after my uncle and my brother.

My early life is both the reason I ended up in the arena in the first place and the reason I survived it. Ordinary people don’t get drugged in Boston and wake up in a remote, illegal prison in Eastern Europe where the inmates fight to the death in a sort of gladiatorial arena. Or if they do, they certainly don’t live very long.

I lived because I wasn’t an ordinary person to begin with. I was already brutal.

So it’s strange to have become more and more and more brutal … only to be sitting here with this sweet fucking boy handing me a bowl of scrambled eggs.

I eat some of the cold eggs before handing the bowl back to him. There’s beef too and a protein shake, plus some fruit. At least we’re getting more food now. I think they realized that if they don’t give us enough, I’ll short myself to feed Lucas. They don’t want that. They like me lean but big. I have to be strong to fight.

When we finish the food, Lucas reaches for the book. I sigh.

“What?” he asks.

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