Page 17

Jonah

The first sensation Jonah registered, as darkness began to split at the edges, was coarse fabric under his cheek.

The next was pain. First in his head, sharp and heavy and pulsing, then trickling down his body as he came to awareness. He hurt everywhere.

His eyelids were as heavy as the rest of him, but they were the only parts he could even think about moving. It took considerable effort to hold them open, blinking slowly as he scanned his surroundings. He couldn’t see much. Somewhere above him, dim light painted a haze at the edge of his vision—sunlight breaking through a crack in the wood slats that covered a high-up window.

He was in a basement.

With that realization came the sudden awareness of the earthy, damp smell, like rotted wood and age. He tried to push himself up but flattened again at the sharp stab of pain through his core. The movement accompanied the familiar groan of bed springs. He dragged his fingers over the surface beneath him and realized it was a bare mattress.

Memory came in short, sporadic bursts.

Mr. Becker. His house. The blood.

Jonah held up his hand, trembling, to the faint stream of light: He had to blink once, twice, again to make sure they were real: the deep red stains on his skin.

Horror shuddered through him. He scrambled back into the darkness, wiping his hands against his shirt, the mattress, the wall, but he couldn’t escape the blood. It was all over him.

He remembered now.

A muffled, metallic clunk drew his attention upward just as the door at the top of the staircase swung open. Jonah squinted against the sudden burst of light, pulling his body into a defensive curl.

Two sets of footsteps thundered down the wooden planks. The light clicked on with the tug of a string, a single bulb flickering overhead. Jonah looked up to Shepard standing over him. Marcus, always his trusted shadow, stood back with his arms crossed.

“It’s taken care of,” Shepard said.

Jonah uncurled himself, forcing his body to sit upright despite the pain. A glance up the stairs told him he was in the basement of the halfway house.

“What’s taken care of?” His voice was just as broken as the rest of him. “Why am I down here?”

Shepard swiped the back of his arm across his forehead. There was an erratic tick to his movements that made him all the more volatile. “I couldn’t let the others see you like this, could I? ”

Jonah looked down at himself and felt bile rise in his throat. In the light, there was no mistaking the blood on him.

“I killed him,” Jonah whispered before he could stop himself.

It was a statement, not a question, but Shepard bent down, hands on his knees to meet him at eye level. “Yeah. You did,” he spat. “And you created a real fucking mess for me to clean up.”

He hadn’t meant to. He hadn’t, he hadn’t, he...

It was an accident.

Mr. Becker was—he was hurting him. He had both hands around his throat. He was going to kill him. All Jonah had meant to do was push him away, but the man was wasted, several shots in and high on whatever he had forced Jonah to snort off his coffee table, and then his head was cracking against the side of the nightstand. And then there was blood. So much blood.

He never meant to kill him. Jonah just wanted him to stop.

He couldn’t keep the vomit down. Shepard and his hired muscle watched silently as he lost his meager stomach contents on the basement floor.

“I didn’t mean to,” he pleaded, as if somehow hoping for absolution from the monster in front of him.

Shepard dropped into a crouch beside him, reaching out to trace a palm over his face. Jonah was too stunned to even recoil from the touch.

“Do you think anyone’s actually going to believe that?” he asked gently. “With your history?”

Jonah didn’t know when he had started crying. “No,” he whispered, an answer and a plea all at once .

“No,” Shepard echoed sympathetically. “You’re lucky I was there to clean up after you.”

“What did you do?” Jonah’s eyes flicked to Marcus, who stared back at him unchallenged.

Shepard turned his face back to him. “You don’t need to know the details,” he said. “But you owe me for this, kid. And I always get what I’m owed.”

He stood, leaving Jonah shivering on the mattress at his feet. He waved a vague gesture to Marcus, who followed like a dog called to heel.

“Get him a bucket of water and a change of clothes,” he ordered. “We need to burn these.”

The bathroom was hazy by the time Jonah turned the handle, cutting off the spray of water. His body tingled in the immediate absence of the heat, tiny pin pricks over the surface of his skin. It was proof that the temperature of the water was probably higher than what was healthy, but Jonah didn’t care. These showers were one of the parts of their Friday night routine he was most thankful for.

The rings on the curtain screeched along the rod as he pushed it aside, grabbing a towel from the shelf above the toilet. He pressed his face into it first, appreciating the softness, even at the lower end hotels. He dried himself off quickly, aware of the slight sting of friction across his irritated skin, and hung the towel on the hook on the back of the door .

Liam’s pajamas were folded in their usual stack on the counter. He brought the sweatshirt to his chest—the same as always, maroon and over-long and tattered from years of wear—and dropped his head to inhale the comforting scent. He had yet to put a name to this feeling, the one he was slowly losing himself in beyond all control, but it was getting harder to stave off.

Perhaps because there was a much larger part of him that desperately did not want to.

The distinct smell of Friday nights encompassed him as he pulled the shirt over his head. He paused, then wiped his palm over the mirror to clear away some of the heavy condensation.

Through the steam, the reflection that stared back at him looked like it could have belonged to someone else. He wished he could be someone else, too.

There were parts of him now that were nearly unrecognizable to the person he used to be. The legs that stretched out beneath the hem of the sweatshirt were pale and thin, all the tan, wiry muscle from years of track and soccer diminished from months of malnutrition. He’d lost some weight around his stomach, his arms, his face — places where he hadn’t really had much to lose to begin with. Now he just looked kind of sickly.

He forced his eyes away.

He was reaching for the pajama bottoms when Liam’s voice, muffled and pitched up in a way he didn’t often hear, pulled his attention from the other side of the door .

“...know it’s expensive. Yes, I know. It was just a...Mom, it was just an informational packet. I haven’t even applied yet.”

Jonah busied himself with redressing, folding his own dirty clothes into a neat pile, but it was impossible not to overhear his conversation through the thin walls.

“We don’t know that for sure. There’s always financial aid and scholarships and...Yeah, I know it seems like I’m working a lot, but it’s not that bad. My coworkers are nice, and it’s...it’s just a few double shifts.”

Oh, there were those seeds of guilt again. They seemed to have bloomed into full-grown weeds.

It wasn’t the first time he had heard Liam mention picking up hours at work, and certainly not the first time he had managed to work himself up over the idea that he was a direct cause of whatever financial distress Liam was facing. Somehow, though, it hadn’t really occurred to him until now that these weekly financial setbacks could be seriously hindering Liam’s future plans.

“I am still focusing on school. I can do both at once. I would have to do it in New York, too, you know. A lot of people my age work full time in school.”

Full time? Had Jonah known that? He knew he worked a lot, but...no wonder he was always so tired.

Guilt won out, or maybe he just selfishly couldn’t listen to any more of the problems he had inadvertently caused, and Jonah flipped the faucet on the sink, letting the running water drown out the rest of the conversation .

When silence fell outside the door, he cut the water and turned off the lights.

Liam was on the bed, his hair messy in the distinct way it got when he’d been running his fingers through it. Jonah was used to seeing that look after a particularly gruesome math problem, but the visual was much less appealing when he knew that the stress came from somewhere deeper.

“Hey,” Liam greeted him with a smile.

Jonah sank down on the edge of the opposite bed, his back turned to him. He fiddled with the socks in his lap, unfolding them to put on, mostly as a distraction from looking directly at his friend.

“Pizza should be here in ten,” Liam said.

“Okay.”

“Hey, you okay?” Liam asked.

“Fine,” Jonah tried.

He heard the familiar chime of the keychains on Liam’s backpack as he set it on the ground.

“What’s wrong?” Liam made no move to crowd his space, which Jonah appreciated as always, but he could practically feel the burn of his gaze searing through his back. The sting behind his eyes was building to an intensity he wouldn’t be able to contain much longer. He had several responses queued up and ready to fire back at him with perfect composure; a thousand different ways to say ‘I’m fine’ that he had mastered for the sake of survival. But none of them could get past the lump in his throat.

“Jonah? ”

None of them but the truth.

“I don’t think we should do this anymore.”

If perfect stillness had a sound, like water freezing into ice, it would have been the silence that followed his words.

“What do you mean?” Liam asked, carefully calm.

“I...appreciate what you’ve been trying to do,” Jonah spoke slowly and deliberately. “But we both knew this was never a permanent arrangement, right?”

He was still facing away from Liam, his eyes flat and detached in the direction of the wall, but he could hear him shifting uneasily behind him. He could practically feel him fighting the urge to come closer.

“Maybe not permanent, but...” Liam paused, something like genuine hurt in his voice. “Did I do something?”

His eyes slipped shut. Of course Liam’s first instinct was to put his own head on the chopping block.

Jonah raged with the urge to retaliate against the absurd suggestion. He wanted so desperately to take it all back, to pretend he’d never said anything at all, because he knew, he knew, he was setting himself up for one hell of a fall.

But he could deal with it, he would, if it meant shielding Liam from all of this; from himself and the money problems and the constant periphery of danger that followed everywhere Jonah went.

“This isn’t good for us.” Jonah set his jaw.

There was another gap of silence, and then—

“No. ”

The firmness in Liam’s voice was enough to shock Jonah into turning to face him.

Liam stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his feet set apart in defiance. “I’m not going to just cut you off, Jonah. After all this time? How could you expect me to do that?”

The muscles in Jonah’s face twitched as he struggled to uphold his resolve. The perfect response, the one he knew would hit right where he needed it to, was coiled and poised on his tongue, ready to strike.

“Liam,” he began. Beneath his borrowed sweatshirt, his heartbeat pounded against his ribcage.

“No,” Liam cut in. “I’m not going to drop you like you’re nothing.”

“I guess I don’t get a say in it, do I?” He forced himself to look up into Liam’s eyes as he spoke, watching the horrified flash of recognition land on him. “It’s really your choice,” he pushed forward, hating himself with every syllable. “You make the arrangement, and I show up. That’s how this works.”

It was low, and he knew it, and maybe he was low for going there with Liam and knowing it would work. For a moment, he really thought it had, until Liam surprised him for a second time.

“What is this really about?” He took a step closer to the bed where Jonah sat, sinking down onto the corner across from him without making contact. “You know I wouldn't do that. You know I wouldn’t... force you to be here if you didn’t want to be. You do know that, right?”

Jonah turned his head back toward the wall. He closed his eyes. “I know.”

“So, tell me what you’re trying to do here.”

“I’m trying to do the right thing,” Jonah said.

“For who? ”

He was grateful to have chosen then to turn away, because there was no stopping the tears that spilled over. He could have kept up the fight, and probably should have, for Liam’s sake, but Jonah was so tired.

“I heard you,” he confessed. “On the phone, just now.”

Liam blew out a puff of air. “Okay,” he breathed. “Well, that makes more sense. What exactly did you hear?”

“Enough,” Jonah answered, wiping his eyes with the back of his—well, Liam’s —sleeve. “Enough to know that you’re struggling because of what we’re doing here.”

“Jonah, what you heard was...” He shook his head. “It was one of many battles in a years-long war. One that I was fighting long before I met you.”

“You’re throwing away hundreds of dollars every week, and for what?” Jonah argued, unsure of how to fight a battle he desperately didn’t want to win. “Money that could be going toward New York and college and everything you want. You could actually have it, and instead you’re here with me.”

“I’m not throwing anything away, Jonah. Not my dreams, and not you either. You’re not disposable. After all this time?” There was a genuine twinge of hurt in his voice. “You really think that’s how I feel about you?”

“I just...” Jonah pinched his eyes shut. “I don’t want you sticking around out of some misplaced guilt. You don’t owe me anything, Liam, and you’ve given me so much already. We met by chance, and you were kind to me. That could be the end of it.”

“You were kind to me first,” Liam said, surprising him.

“Soliciting you for sex you didn’t want wasn’t kindness.”

Liam shook his head. “Before that. The night of my birthday, in the bathroom at the bar. You could have told me to fuck off, but you asked if I was okay. You let me talk your ear off about my problems even though you were clearly the one having a worse night.”

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 situations like 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 tell Liam. 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 it hurt. “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 I killed someone.”

“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.”

“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’t understand . 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 someone worth 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 of favors that got out of control—first for Shepard, then his friends, and eventually for strangers—and Jonah 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 me here ...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 down to 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 and let 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.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “But I need you to understand why I shut you down when you suggest trying to get me out of this.”

No matter how badly I want it, too.

Liam looked from the box of pizza on the dresser back to Jonah. There was a second in which it looked like Liam wanted desperately to find a loophole, to push just a little bit further, but he stayed quiet. Finally, he nodded.

“You should eat something,” he suggested.

Jonah let out a long breath. He was starving, but every nerve in his body felt like they’d just been scrubbed raw. He could only imagine the food would taste like sawdust in his mouth. Regardless, he didn’t have it in him to argue. He easily accepted a slice of pizza when Liam held the box out to him.

“Are you alright?” Liam asked after Jonah managed to keep down a few bites.

Jonah swallowed. “I’m okay.”

“Okay,” Liam replied, not sounding all that convinced. “Can I just...can I say one more thing about it, then I’ll let it go?”

Jonah eyed him warily.

“I’m not going to pressure you, okay? Never again. But I want you to know,” Liam said, “If the time ever does come when you change your mind, or if circumstances change enough so that you can do something, I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, so he took another bite of pizza, hoping that at least would appease him. Liam watched him for another moment before he was struck by some idea, leaping to his feet to retrieve the hotel-branded notepad and pen from the nightstand drawer.

“What are you doing?” Jonah asked as Liam scribbled something just out of his line of sight .

The perforated edge of the stationery tore seamlessly as Liam pulled it away and handed it across the bed. Jonah took it, and when he looked down, he saw a familiar, loopy handwriting across the page:

Dear Jonah,

Call me.

Your friend,

Liam

Below was his phone number.

Jonah looked up at him.

“I know you don’t have access to a phone, so maybe this is stupid.” Liam shrugged, setting the pad and pen off to the side. “But maybe, somehow...I don’t know. It’ll just make me feel better, knowing you might be able to reach me somehow. If you ever need to. If you ever can.”

Jonah set his napkin-plate on the bed beside him and took extra care to fold the paper neatly into fourths. Wordlessly, he crossed the room to where his jeans were folded on a chair and stuffed the note inside the front pocket.

When he sat back down, Liam turned to him.

“Please, don’t do that again,” he said.

Jonah froze. “What?”

“That selfless-martyr-thing you tried to pull before,” Liam clarified. “Trying to end things like that.” Jonah resisted the urge to correct him, to say that if there was any hero to be named in this story, it certainly wasn’t him. “Next time, just...talk to me first, before you go mapping out your exit strategy, okay?”

Liam’s voice was light and accented by the tug of a kind smile at his lips, but Jonah’s brain was stuck on the ‘next time.’ The implication that Liam still wanted this thing between them—whatever it was—to continue, even after everything he’d just learned.

“None of that changes my concern for how this is affecting you,” Jonah pointed out.

“I told you, I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think it was feasible.”

“Feasible, maybe,” Jonah allowed. “But for how long? At what cost to you?”

Liam fell quiet. It lasted long enough for Jonah’s stomach to drop, regret clouding the clarity that had made him fight so hard to prove his point. What if Liam listened to him? What if this was the end?

“What if we cut out the hotel cost for a little while?” Liam said suddenly.

Jonah turned to him, blinking. “Where would we go?”

“Anywhere.” There was a gleam of something adventurous in Liam’s eyes. “Even if we have to hang out in my car for a night. I can’t promise it would be the most exciting night of your life, but at least I would know you’re safe. Is that allowed?”

“I need an address to stay overnight,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “A pickup and drop-off point. ”

Liam got that look that he did when he wanted to ask more than he should. Jonah watched him bite his tongue, grateful when he didn’t push. “Well,” Liam began slowly, “we should be able to fake that. It’s not like he— whoever —walks you to the door, right?”

Jonah shifted uneasily. “Not typically, no.”

“So, we could just meet at a hotel, hide out in the lobby or something until the coast is clear, and then sneak out to my car. We can go wherever we want and get you back by morning. That could work, right?”

The immediate response, the conditioned one, was no. Because Jonah’s life didn’t work like that. Luck didn’t sway in his favor. He was the one who always got caught, and he was the one who had to pay the consequences, no matter what anyone else seemed to get away with.

As he sat with the idea, though, a thread of hope began to form, sprouting from some place inside himself he didn’t know still existed. From the last scraps of Jonah Prince that lay behind the broken mask of Leo.

He looked at Liam, who was watching him back, and saw the same hope reflected there. Jonah’s heartbeat was thick and heavy in his throat, rivaling the voice in his head that told him he could never keep someone like Liam for himself. The reality was almost as cold and unforgiving as the indulgent fantasy was warm and inviting; fire and ice under his skin that flared whenever he was close enough to touch.

“Whatever we have to do,” Liam said. “Anything, if it means getting another week. ”

Fire. Ice. A heartbeat in his throat. A voice that tried to drown it all out.

And a single spark of rebellion that hadn’t yet been extinguished.