Page 51 of A Series of Rooms
“I went up to the room number,” Marcus continued, “after thirty minutes with no word. Imagine my surprise when a woman came to the door, looking nothing like the guy from the profile. Said she didn’t know anyLeo.”
A lash of anger whipped out of Jonah before he could stop it. “Why does it matter where I go as long as I’m getting the money?”
“You’re sneaking around, careless with your curfew, and giving out your name to clients,” Marcus fired back. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m not hurting anyone.”
“He’ll kill you, you know.” The words came bluntly, as casually as if they were discussing the weather. “If Shepard thinks you’re running your mouth to people? He’ll put a needle in your arm and make it look like an accident. Is that what you want? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
Hot, prickly fear crackled under his skin. The threat was nothing new, one of the many Shepard wielded over him. It wasn’t the first time he’d pondered that question, either.Washe trying to get himself killed? Not actively, he didn’t think, but there were traces of evidence—the dark, empty wall ahead of him when he tried to picture a future outside of his current circumstances, the rare moments of resistance when he wondered just how far he could push Shepard to provoke him to the kind of violence from which he could never come back.
Marcus seemed to know better than to expect an answer. “You’re done seeing him,” he said flatly. “Whoever that was, whatever it was... it’s over.”
Jonah watched the past few months slip away from him like a dying light. He’d always known this was temporary, but it was evident by the crash landing just how far he’d let himself get caught up in the hope.
“I go where I’m told,” Jonah said. “I don’t really get much say in that.”
“It’s taken care of.”
His stomach bottomed out. “Leave him out of this,” Jonah begged. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He always gives me the money.”
Their eyes met, just briefly, in the rearview mirror. “I’m not going to hurt him, if that’s what you’re implying. You think Shepard would extend the same courtesy, if he found out about your little boyfriend?”
“Please don’t tell him.”
There was a long, terrifying pause.
“He’s still asleep, as far as I know,” Marcus said. “I haven’t heard from him all morning. He doesn’t need to know you were late.”
Nausea rolled thick in the pit of Jonah’s stomach. He closed his eyes. “What do you want?” He hated how it came out as little more than a broken whisper.
Marcus had never tried anything with him before. Somehow, Jonah felt like it would be worse with him, the quiet, brooding man who toted him from bed to bed and watched him in the rearview with a scrutiny that made him squirm. He could live with it, though, if that was what he needed to do to protect Liam from Shepard’s attentions. He could already feel his nerves steeling, his mind closing him off from whatever awaited him.
The eyes in the mirror narrowed in what could have been mistaken for a wince. “That’s not what I’m after,” he said firmly.
“Then what?”
Marcus sighed. “You keep your mouth shut and your head down, you stay out of trouble from now on, and you save us both a headache. Can you do that?”
He kept his eyes on Jonah long enough to catch his nod of agreement, then looked back toward the road, putting a stop to the conversation.
Jonah leaned his head against the window for the remaining few minutes of the drive, grieving for the boy he lost, the boy he had been inside the safety of their bubble, and the goodbye he’d never get to say.
CHAPTER 23
Liam
At some point, Liam found himself parked in front of his house. He blinked up at it, trying to remember at what point he had decided to walk back to his car, climb into the driver’s seat, and drive home.
His arms shook from his iron grip on the steering wheel. He forced himself to let go, watching his hands unclasp as if they belonged to someone else, blood rushing back into his fingers. He glanced at the clock. What was normally an hour trip out of the city had taken him nearly two. The spells he’d spent pulled over on the shoulder, gasping for air through fits of panic, had slowed him down and left him wrung out, exhausted, and numb. Not numb enough, however, to dull the knife-twist in his chest.
His parents would be up by now. Never before had he resented living at home so deeply. The idea of having to force himself through human interaction, having to pretend it was just another Saturday morning, felt insurmountable. It was ajarring step into a reality so separate, so sheltered, from the one he lived in now. All these Friday nights tucked away with Jonah had slowly drawn Liam out of the mundane life he was so desperate to escape, but in an instant, the castle they had built above the rest of the world had crumbled.
All his life, Liam had been sheltered from the monsters that only existed in stories and headlines—the parents who put their children out on the street for the crime of existing, and the people who exploited that vulnerability for their own gain. The world was different now that he could put a face to the darkness he had only ever known about in the abstract.
Liam, in his suburban home, in his wealthy neighborhood, with his perfectly upper-middle-class parents, could have gone his whole life without ever knowing about the things that happened right under his nose. But then he’d met Jonah, and everything had changed.
Except nothing had. These things hadn’t just popped into existence once Liam had deigned to see them. The world had always been this way.Jonah’sworld had been this way for so long. And now he was back to facing it alone.
