Page 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 a jarring 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’s world had been this way for so long. And now he was back to facing it alone.

Eventually, Liam managed to make it from his car to the front door. The house was quiet when he walked in, save for the soft melody of worship music playing from the radio in the kitchen. He hoped it would be enough to keep him undetected on the way to his bedroom.

“Liam?” He was almost in the clear when the music turned down .

His eyes fell shut. “Hi, Mom,” he said. He spared a glance in the hallway mirror before he turned the corner, deciding there was little he could do about his disheveled appearance.

“Long night?” his mother said, looking up at him from the bowl of eggs she was whisking on the countertop.

Liam tried to crack a smile and quickly realized the attempt was probably more harrowing than his flat expression and gave it up. “Yeah,” he said.

“I used to hate working third shift.” She shook her head in commiseration. “Are you sure picking up all these extra nights is worth it, honey?”

Worth every second, he didn’t say. “It’s only temporary.”

“Well, I’ll have breakfast ready soon, if you’re hungry.”

The idea of eating curdled his stomach.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll probably try to catch a couple hours of sleep, actually.”

“Okay.” She smiled, laying down her whisk to step around the counter. Liam half-leaned into her embrace, ducking down to accept a kiss on his temple. “You sure you’re alright, kiddo?”

I’m not.

I’m so out of my depth.

Help me. I don’t know what to do.

“Just tired,” he said.

He didn’t make it past the bedroom doorway before he broke. The moment he laid eyes on his bed, memories from the night before rushed to the surface: The first kiss. The second. The third and fourth and fifth melting into a liquid pool of desire and affection and longing and something else that Liam feared putting a name to. Jonah’s cheeks flushed red, his body soft and warm and eager under Liam’s unsteady hands.

And then the ice-cold plunge of the morning.

Liam knew if he took a step closer, he would catch the scent of Jonah still lingering on the sheets, proof that he had been here only hours ago, before the world collapsed out from under them.

As soon as the lock clicked into place, Liam’s legs gave out from under him. He fell back against the door and slid to the carpet, burying his face in his hands.

“ It’s over. ” The man’s words rang over and over in his head.

Liam had checked the moment he got back to his car; sure enough, Jonah’s profile had been erased from his inbox. The only link between them, severed.

He didn’t know where Jonah lived, or the name of the man who controlled him, or where he went outside of his endless string of hotel rooms across the city. Liam’s IP had been blocked from setting up another meeting, but even if he were to find a workaround—a faceless profile, a borrowed phone, anything—what risk would he pose to Jonah by trying? What risk would he pose to himself?

For weeks, they had been climbing higher and higher, every accidental brush of skin, every smile, every laugh, every secret bolstering the wind beneath their wax wings until they had flown too close to the sun. The view from the ground was unforgiving.

Liam had gotten so swept up in the comfort and familiarity of their arrangement that he had blinded himself to the framework that had always been there at the edges, and now Jonah, surely, would pay for his mistake.

The thought that haunted him to sleep that night was the likelihood that Jonah might mistake Liam’s fear for abandonment. That, in Jonah’s history, Liam would become nothing more than one more person who left him behind.