Page 37 of A Series of Rooms
That was dangerous territory, and not something Jonah wanted to approach now, of all times.
“I wasn’t the one washing my shirt in the dirtiest sink in Chicago,” Jonah deflected weakly. It was enough to pull a small smile onto Liam’s face, but it fell again quickly.
“Maybe at one point, this could have been something I walked away from,” Liam said. “But it’s not anymore. Not for me.”
In Jonah’s periphery, Liam’s hand nudged slightly closer to his on the bed, landing inches away in an unspoken invitation. He watched it, remembering vividly the feeling of Liam’s fingers brushing against his in their blissfully drunken haze the week before; a burn on his skin he hadn’t stopped feeling since.
Suddenly the air in the room felt thicker, the silence weightier than before. Jonah’s own fingers twitched at the memory, or perhaps the anticipation, of the touch. Like some invisible, magnetic force pulling him, he wanted nothing more than to reach out and hold the thing that felt so forbidden to him. The person he couldn’t have without hindering him. The person he didn’t deserve, but who was here anyway, fighting to keep him around with a hand outstretched like an olive branch Jonah so desperately wanted to take.
He was close, so close, to breaking out of his own head and just going for it when the shrill ring of the hotel phone split the bubble of tension down the middle. Both of their hands jerked back at the same time.
“I’ll get it,” Liam said. Unnecessary, as he was already halfway across the room. “Hello?” he picked up. “Yeah. Oh. Right, yeah, that’s me. Okay, thanks. I’ll be down.”
He hung up and, with what looked to be a considerable conscious effort, brought his eyes up to meet Jonah’s.
“The pizza’s down in the lobby,” he said, his voice far more strained than such an announcement required. “I’ll go grab it, just... shit. Okay. We’re gonna talk some more when I get back, alright? We’ll talk about this.”
Jonah only nodded, his heart still hammering in his chest. Liam grabbed his shoes and his key card, then stopped halfway to the door, turning back to him as if something had just occurred to him.
“You’re not gonna run off on me, are you?”
The look on his face was so genuinely concerned, and once again, if the circumstances hadn’t been so heavy, Jonah might have laughed. Instead, he offered a weak smile and shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’ll be here.”
Liam nodded. Then he was gone.
Suffocated by the sudden silence of an empty room, Jonah let his face fall into his hands and sobbed, one broken, strangled sound that led to another until he was weeping openly without really knowing why. Perhaps it was the lingering guilt that remained despite Liam’s assurances. Maybe they were tears of relief, wrought with inexplicable gratitude that his attempts to push Liam away hadn’t worked. He had refused to take the easy out that Jonah had gifted him, and decided instead to push back. To fight for him in a way no one had ever bothered to do.
He sat up when he heard the faint beep of the key card at the door, greeting Liam with bloodshot eyes. Liam placed the pizza box on the dresser and paused there for a moment, his back turned to Jonah.
They were quiet. Jonah watched his shoulders move with each breath, waiting to hear what he had to say. Finally, Liam turned around, shifting his weight back against the wooden frame.
“I...” He swallowed, then started again. “I know how you feel about this, so don’t get mad, okay? But I’ve been doing some reading. Research, I guess. About resources, shelters, ways to get help for...For people who are stuck in situationslike yours.”
Situations like his.“Liam, please.”
“If you’re afraid of getting hurt, the police will protect you.”
He didn’t bother holding back his laugh, though he hated the bitterness in the sound. “The police,” he echoed. If only Liam knew.
“But if someone is...is coercing you or something, it’s not your fault.”
“What if it’s not that simple?” Jonah dug the heels of his palms against his eyes. Something was building and unraveling all at once, slipping further from his control with every soft plea, every kind word. It was rising to the surface, burning like lava through him, over him, enveloping him. He felt all of it, all at once; all the pain and the secrets and the lies he kept locked behind dull eyes and the lifeless smile of a boy called Leo. He wanted to tell somebody. He wanted to tellLiam.He wanted it out, out,out.
“Jonah?”
“I killed someone,” he heard the words tumble out in his own voice before he could stop them.
The answering silence rang through him like a bell. Jonah couldn’t pull his hands away from his face. He was sure that if he looked at Liam right now, the world would crumble around him.
“It was an accident,” he whispered. Would he ever be able to say those words without sounding like he was trying to convince himself? “I wasn’t trying to kill him, I was only trying to...” He pressed his knuckles into his eyelids until ithurt. “He had his hands around my throat. He was...hurting me. I thought he was going to kill me, so I pushed him.” The last two words broke off entirely. His voice was shaking too much to keep going.
Liam cleared his throat. Jonah tensed, bracing for whatever came next. He knew it would be what he deserved.
“So,” Liam said, slow and tentative. “It was self-defense?”
Jonah’s hands dropped from his eyes, disbelief momentarily surpassing his fear. He looked at Liam, who was looking back with undue equanimity. “Liam, I just told you that Ikilledsomeone.”
“And I’m not trying to diminish that,” he said, raising his palms. “But you also told me he was choking you. You had every right to defend yourself. Anyone could see that.”
