Page 38 of A Series of Rooms
“The circumstances didn’t exactly lean in my favor.”
“What circumstances would make the police look past someone trying to murder you?”
“He was paying me to be there,” Jonah pushed himself off the bed and paced away, crawling out of his skin with the memories. “And it wasn’t the first time.”
“That’s not an excuse,” Liam said, but Jonah was already shaking his head, because Liam didn’tunderstand. How could he?
Jonah scratched lines down his arms, trying to hold himself together. He was getting all mixed up. Everything was spilling out of order, when he hadn’t meant to spill anything at all. In one moment of weakness, he was going to shatter the fragile lens through which Liam viewed him as someoneworth defending. And still, the deeper he dug his grave, the more he felt the need to explain himself.
“He was a regular,” he said. “There were always drugs involved, and he was always...violent, but never as bad as it was that night.”
“Okay,” Liam said with a level of calm that had to be an affectation for Jonah’s benefit. “So at one point you were...you know, doing this of your own free will?” Jonah’s flush of shame must have been visible, because he quickly followed up with, “There’s nothing wrong with that, if you were! I promise, I’m just trying to understand.”
Jonah rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s complicated.”
“Try me?”
He dared a look at him over his shoulder and saw, in fact, that there was no judgment in Liam’s eyes. “There was a time when I did, yes,” he said. “It was quick money when I was desperate for it. But it wasn’t like that then. Not with him.”
“What was it like, then?”
It was like coercion.
It was like blackmail.
It was like Ross Shepard coming into Jonah’s room at the end of his first week and telling him he knew all about his history, and that he needed to earn his place in the house.
It was his signature on Jonah’s court papers, and Jonah’s desperation to keep himself afloat.
It was a series offavorsthat got out of control—first for Shepard, then his friends, and eventually for strangers—andJonah seeing less and less of the money each time. Until he stopped seeing any at all.
It was a growing well of debt that Jonah had no chance of climbing out of, and leverage he could never wriggle out from under. It was a slow spiral into freefall.
And then there was a body, and Jonah knew that he might as well have been the one to die. Because there was no slipping out from under Shepard with a secret like that hanging over him.“I can make sure they put you away for life. You don’t want to find out how a princess like you gets by in prison.”
Jonah turned to face him. Liam looked so innocent, so out of his depth, sitting there on the bed. But to his credit, he wasn’t flinching away, and he wasn’t backing down. Jonah couldn’t tell him everything. He wouldn’t dare put Liam at risk by bringing him into the fold. But he needed him to understand.
“The person who sent me there that night, when I killed that man,” he began. “The person who sends mehere...he could do a lot of damage.”
He already is,he could practically see the response burning in Liam’s eyes, but he kept quiet and let Jonah explain.
“I could go to prison,” he continued. “And sometimes I think, if it was only that, then...” He broke off, shaking his head. “But it’s not just that anymore. He knows things about my family, my siblings. He’s violent, and he’s unpredictable, and he hides it well from the people who matter. The police love him. They think he’s a local saint. If it ever came downto my word against his, I don’t stand a chance, and we both know it.”
Liam was quiet a moment, as if letting Jonah decide he was finished. “What am I supposed to do with that?” he said finally. “How am I supposed to know this is happening to you and just sit back andlet it?”
“Because you’ll only make it worse by doing anything else,” Jonah insisted, nearly a plea.
“Jonah.”
“It won’t—” Jonah bit down on his cheek. “It can’t last forever. At some point, he’ll lose interest, or he’ll get sloppy and get caught, and I’ll get out of there. I’m just doing what I need to do to survive in the meantime.”
“Do you really believe that?” Liam whispered.
“I have to.”
Suddenly the room felt like a battleground after the white flag was raised, and they were standing alone in the rubble as the dust settled around them. Liam ran a hand through his hair, curls fraying apart under his fingers and falling limply back against his forehead.
“I don’t know what to say,” Liam whispered.
