Page 42 of Psycho
“You like being the object of August’s attention.” Lucas started to protest, but Noah shrugged. “You don’t have to explain yourself. I get it. Believe me, nobody understands where you’re coming from better than me. Adam is intense in his own way, but he looks at passing as a normal person as a game. He slides in and out of being the bored socialite and the relentless vigilante seamlessly. August…not so much.”
This time, it was Lucas who leaned in. “Why do you think that is?”
Noah thought about it. “I think, when you have a brain as big as August’s, it’s hard to remember the little things and, to him, it’s all little things. That’s why he smiles when he’s not supposed to and then it slips away. That’s when he’s recalling his training from Thomas. So, it makes him seem off.”
The thought of August trying so hard tugged at something inside Lucas. Was he really feeling sorry for a murderer? “He told me he likes it. Likes torturing people.”
Noah’s tongue darted out to lick over his lower lip. “Does that freak you out?”
“It should, right? I should be horrified by it. I used to hunt guys like him, ruthless killers who enjoyed what they did. August isn’t a good guy, not by any standard. Any normal person would run screaming in the opposite direction.”
Noah shrugged. “You can’t be normal and be with a Mulvaney. It’s just not possible. They live equally extreme yet polar opposite lives. They have to be the over-achieving sons of a billionaire one minute and calculating, cold-blooded killers the next. There’s no room for screw-ups because the consequences would be a domino effect, ruining everything Thomas has tried to accomplish and landing all of them in prison. Maybe me, too.”
“You kill people, too?” Lucas asked point-blank.
Noah’s chin jutted forward, his expression guarded, almost antagonistic. “I killed a person, yeah. A man who raped me repeatedly before I was old enough to write my own name. I made it hurt, too. Made him suffer. And no, I didn’t lose a second’s sleep over it. Maybe that makes me a psychopath, too.”
Lucas had struck a nerve. Noah was telling the truth. He didn’t feel bad about killing the man, that much was clear, but he was guarded, ready to attack anybody who told him he should feel bad about what he did. Lucas wasn’t going to be that person. He’d had a crappy childhood, but the kind that made him feel sorry for his grandfather, not traumatized. He had no idea what it would be like to experience trauma at that level, no matter how long he’d studied it from an academic standpoint.
“You’re not a psychopath. Maybe we’re not supposed to say this out loud but not every death leaves a mark, not every person deserves to be mourned. I’ve interviewed hundreds of killers in my day. I’ve sat across from every type of murderer you can imagine. People who murdered strangers, family members, co-workers, friends. By and large, the people who are most at peace with their decisions are the ones who killed their abusers. They knew the only way out was through. They do their time with smiles on their faces.”
Noah’s shoulders slumped, and Lucas felt like he’d passed a test he hadn’t known he was taking. Noah studied him closely before asking, “Why haven’t you turned August in? You’re a Fed. He’s a killer. His brothers are convinced you’re just gathering evidence on all of us, but I don’t believe that. Like, I know August. He’s so into you, he’d tell you anything. You could have had this case wrapped up in a bow in a day and a half. You obviously like him, even if he’s super weird. But why turn your back on everything you worked so hard for? Didn’t it take a lot to become an agent?”
Lucas almost didn’t answer. He’d kept his thoughts and feelings about his past to himself. “They turned their back on me. I had a spotless reputation, had a dangerously high level of accuracy with my profiles, and when I finally came clean about how I did it, they not only didn’t believe me, they threw me in an institution and threatened to keep me there while leaving a serial killer free to torture women. I guess I learned that good versus evil isn’t really black and white. Not every life is sacred. Some people have forfeited their right to keep breathing.”
Noah propped his arm up on the back of the couch. “If you’re part of this family, you have to know how to think on your feet, be prepared to move a body, provide an alibi, shoot a gun, wield a knife, remind your psychotic boyfriend why he can’t murder a man because he winked at you in a Starbucks. Being the significant other of a Mulvaney is a full-time job in and of itself.”
Lucas’s gaze dropped to the ring on Noah’s left hand. “One you’ve agreed to take on permanently.”
Noah smiled, cheeks pinking, as he looked at the brushed nickel band on his finger. “Yeah, but the decision was easy for me. Adam and I just…get each other. Like, we see each other, flaws and all, and it just works. Our crazy fits. Adam is my family. The Mulvaneys are my family. Being one of them was the easiest decision I ever made.”
“I don’t have any family either,” Lucas heard himself offer. “And the ones I did have weren’t exactly going to win any awards.”
Noah nodded. “I can’t even imagine what my life would have been like if I had the ability to see things or feel things each time I was touched. With my background…I’d be locked in a padded cell for life or not alive at all. How do you do it—keep yourself from losing it?”
It was strange to not have to convince somebody he could do what he did. “I call it shielding, like a partition in my brain I can put up and down at will. But, sometimes, I slip. It’s exhausting trying to force my brain to actively not observe something.”
“Is that why you like August? Because he’s like you?”
Lucas frowned. “How do you mean?”
Noah tilted his head. “You haven’t noticed that August has headphones in practically around the clock?”
Lucas racked his brain, trying to remember a time when he’d seen August with anything even remotely resembling headphones. The day they collided. “I never noticed. How does that make him like me?”
“Did you know he has an eidetic memory? He can recall every word he’s ever heard or seen without even trying. But he hates it. He said it makes his head too noisy. He plays music almost all the time so he doesn’t carry around stranger’s voices in his head for the rest of his life.”
Lucas shrugged. “He never wears them around me.”
Noah once more studied Lucas before saying, “Then he must really like you. Because August values silence over almost anything.”
Lucas did his best to ignore the warmth that pooled in his belly at Noah’s words. He couldn’t let himself get sucked into this twisted fairytale.
Except, he already was.
* * *
It was after eleven when Noah rose, telling Lucas that Adam waited for him downstairs and August was on his way up. Lucas suddenly didn’t know what to do with himself. Did he sit on the couch? Wait for August to come up? Would he knock? Were they past knocking? He’d never been so struck with indecision before.
