Page 22

Jonah

The absence of Liam’s sweatshirt was a cool burn over his skin as the car carried him toward the outskirts of the city. Jonah dug his fingers into his sides as he tried to focus on breathing.

The crash from the whirlwind of a morning was landing hard. The fear of whatever repercussions awaited him almost paled in comparison to the guilt of how he’d left things with Liam. The image of him standing there on the sidewalk with desperate, pleading eyes was seared into Jonah’s memory. Even after an hour of Jonah at his worst—impatient and snappy and scared out of his mind—Liam still looked at him like he was someone worth saving. And Jonah had left him there, alone.

It stung to realize that this was the natural consequence of his actions. Jonah had been playing with fire for too long, inching closer and closer to the warmth of the flame he had been kindling with Liam, and he had finally been burned. He only wished he could have spared Liam the trauma of the fallout.

They were minutes away from the house, the dilapidated landmarks of the neighborhood coming into view, when Marcus spoke up from the front seat.

“You want to tell me what that was about?”

Jonah winced. What could he say? Telling him anything about Liam was out of the question, but Marcus had seen too much to buy him playing dumb.

“You were late.” Marcus met his eyes in the rearview mirror, impatient for an answer.

“I overslept.” Jonah’s voice cracked. “It was an accident.”

“That wasn’t the direction of the hotel you were coming from.”

His ribs were going to bruise from how hard he was digging his fingertips in.

“He called you Jonah,” Marcus accused.

He squeezed his eyes shut. There was nothing he could say to that. Nothing he said would ever dig him out of the hole he had dug for himself.

“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 any Leo .”

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. Was he 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.