Aiden’s stomach knotted up.

Love.

That was one word he hadn’t allowed himself to apply to his feelings for Zain.

But the word didn’t feel wrong.

“I—I don’t know if I love him,” Aiden said.“But I need to talk to him, Mom. If you want to help me feel better, help me contact him.”

“You can’t be serious, Aiden!” She squeezed his hands.“We will go home and find you the best therapist in the city. You’ll get better and forget about that man.Everything is going to be all right. You’ll fall in love with a nice, sweet girl your age—or a nice boy, if that’s more your thing—and you’ll be happy.”

Aiden tried to imagine it. But try as he might, he couldn’t. That nice future only left him feeling cold and hollow.

“I don’t want to forget him,” he whispered.“I don’t think I can be happy without him, Mom.”

His mother was openly crying now.“Don’t be ridiculous, sweetheart,” she said, pulling him into her arms, against her chest, as if he were still her baby in need of protection.“Of course you will be happy without that man. I promise you.” She kissed the top of his head. “Just give it time.We’ll fix you. You’re home now.”

Aiden breathed in her familiar scent, trying and failing to believe that.

Chapter Twenty-One

Aiden left Italy with his family—bar Jordan, of course—a month after being rescued.

He would’ve liked to say that he was easily able to reclaim his old life in Boston, but that would’ve been a lie. He had missed two terms and returning to school was out of the question in the middle of the current term, so for the time being, he was pretty much confined to his parents’ house.

Considering that the house in question was guarded by a dozen security guards 24/7, Aiden soon started feeling like he really was confined. Locked up. Suffocated by his parents’ overprotectiveness.

“The bodyguards aren’t here for your sake, darling,” his mother had said when Aiden had brought it up.“They were assigned to us by Damiano in December, when Jordan started seeing him. Damiano doesn’t want us to be kidnapped and used against him by his enemies.”

Aiden wasn’t sure whether he believed her or not. Either way, he felt constantly watched even if he went for a walk. It didn’t help that the therapist his parents had found for him had strongly advised against giving him a phone.

“It’s not that we don’t trust you with a phone, Aiden,” his mother had said.“But Dr. Richardson said that limiting access to electronic devices would be beneficial for honest communication between us.”

Aiden had wanted to yell at her. He still did. He felt suffocated in his parents’ house in a way he hadn’t felt even in the first months in Zain’s house: at least he had been left to his own devices back then. Here he was watchedconstantly, and there was something wary in his parents’ eyes, as if he were a feral cat they had brought home and didn’t know what to expect from it.Aiden hated it, and he hated that he hated it.

He didn’t actually want to be resentful and miserable. He didn’t want to mope around and worry his parents. He wasn’t the moping kind. But his ability to feel joy seemed completely gone.

He just… he just…

He felt hollow on the inside, like he had swallowed a huge, cavernous nothing, and at the same time he felt like his insides were shrinking and curling around themselves, hungering for something that wasn’t there. The feeling was ever-present and ever-growing. Dr. Richardson had said that it was normal to feel post-traumatic depression and that it would get better once he reclaimed his old routine, but Aiden didn’t buy that. He didn’t feel traumatized.

“Then howdoyou feel, Aiden?” Dr. Richardson said.

Aiden gave a listless shrug.“Like a bird in a cage.”

She looked at him thoughtfully.“And you didn’t feel that way in the UAE?”

“The irony is,” Aiden said with a crooked smile, “he actually gave me more freedom than my parents do now.”

“He,” she repeated, a contemplative look in her eyes.“Is that how you think of him? He? Mr. Rahim? Or Zain?”

Aiden pursed his lips.“I already told you I don’t want to talk about him.”

“How do you expect to ever get better if you refuse to talk about the cause of your depression?”

“He isn’t the cause of my depression,” Aiden said, acutely aware of how unconvincing he sounded.

Sometimes he almost hated Zain. Hated him for turning him into this miserable, mopey person who craved him like he craved air. Zain had done this to him. It was as though Zain hadcontaminated him, infected him with a feverish sickness for which he was the only cure. He wanted—needed—Zain close. He wanted his body inside his. He wanted to feel his dark-brown eyes on him. He wanted his arms around him. He wanted to sleep against him, his ear pressed against the steady beat of his heart.