Page 24

Jonah

Days passed in a kaleidoscope of gray.

It had been a week since Jonah’s derailed rebellion—a week since Liam had cradled his face between his hands like something precious, and kissed him—and he was sure there was a part of him that had never returned to the city, that stayed dead and buried somewhere in the walls of Liam’s childhood bedroom.

Before the break of daylight had stolen it from them, that night in Liam’s home had been one of the warmest moments of Jonah’s life. Touching Liam, being touched by him with hands just as gentle as the rest of him, had changed something in his chemistry.

He had torn himself open as he had done for no one else, ripped his chest right down the middle and exposed all his soft, vulnerable parts. Then, he had been taken away before he could stitch himself back together .

Jonah was forced back into cruel reality with his heart open and bleeding. It was harder to block out the feeling of strangers’ hands, harder to ignore the whispers of false affection, now that he knew what it felt like to be kissed by someone who cared.

If normalcy in Jonah’s world had been bleak before, now it was utterly void. The vivid color Liam had brought to his life over the course of a few months had been washed out in the course of a single night. Without the promise of reprieve at the end of the week, the days became unbearably long. Had time always dragged so slowly before? He wasn’t sure.

As far as he could tell, Marcus kept his word about not telling Shepard what happened on Saturday morning. He didn’t know why, though his darker instincts warned him that there had to be an ulterior motive. Marcus had turned down Jonah’s attempt to barter for silence that day in the car, but maybe he was only drawing it out, waiting for the right time to hold it over his head. The constant guesswork and anticipation wore on his nerves, which were already shredded thin.

Jonah was a bowstring, stretched taut and quivering, by the time the following Friday arrived; his first in months without Liam.

When Shepard came to him that evening with a client in the city, Jonah had to fight to smother the tiny spark of hope in his chest. He didn’t know how Marcus planned to enforce his ban, but letting his expectations get away from him would only set him up for a crash landing. And Jonah wasn’t sure how many more blows he could take.

Long, wispy strings of light blurred past the car window as they made their way into the city. Any residual hope Jonah had fostered of a chance of seeing Liam tonight waned the closer they got to the heart of it; the client had to be a wealthy one to secure a room on Michigan Avenue the week before Christmas.

Nicer hotels sometimes made for harder nights. The sideways glances from lobby attendants were bad enough, making Jonah want to shrink away inside his ratty t-shirt and jeans. But it was what happened behind closed doors that made Jonah dread nights like tonight.

The dynamic that came with the wider-than-usual wealth disparity was sometimes difficult to navigate. The guys with deep pockets saw Jonah as something they were entitled to. For some of them, there was no boundary they couldn’t throw money at and make it go away. Sometimes, they were men who knew Shepard personally, and Jonah had to wonder just how much they knew about Jonah’s choice in the matter at all.

Jonah made it all of four steps past the check-in counter before an older woman in a blazer and a nametag stopped him .

“Sir, the restroom is for guests only,” she said, already pointing back toward the door. “I’m afraid you’ll need to find somewhere else.”

Jonah avoided her eyes, wrapping his arms around himself. “I’m here to see a friend,” he said quietly. In his periphery, he could feel the curious stares of nearby patrons. He was too tired to be angry, so embarrassment won out instead.

“A friend,” she repeated. “What’s the room number?”

Jonah tried to be discreet as he glanced at the digits scribbled on his palm. “814.”

“You won’t mind if I ring up, then?” She was already picking up the phone, indifferent to Jonah’s answer. He stared at the wall over her shoulder as she waited for someone to pick up. “Hello, is this— Yes, I’m so sorry to bother you, but I have a young man here in the lobby claiming he’s here to see you. His name is. ..” She raised her eyebrows pointedly at him.

“Leo,” he whispered.

She repeated it into the phone, and Jonah watched as the expression on her face melted into a different sort of judgment. “Okay. Thank you,” she said, the cheer in her voice becoming a little more forced. “I’ll send him up.” The phone came down a little harder than necessary. “Elevators are in the second hall to the left.” Her smile was cold and sharp. “Across from the business center.”

Jonah ducked away from the desk, eager to escape the exposure of the crowded lobby .

The elevators were where she promised they would be, three sets of golden doors that were just smooth enough to reflect a fuzzy outline of himself. Even the featureless silhouette couldn’t quite pass for someone who belonged here. Jonah looked away and pressed the call button.

He stood alone in the elevator bay as he waited, swaying on his feet. Hotel patrons in sleek black suits and evening gowns passed by in the adjacent main hall, their voices low and bubbling with laughter. Their movement drew his eyes to the left, and when the small crowd dispersed, he was left staring at the room across the hall. The business center.

Most of the room appeared to extend behind a wall, but the entryway was encased in glass, revealing the edge of a desktop computer, a black leather office chair, a printer...

And a phone.

Ding.

Jonah blinked at the arrival of the elevator, stepping back to make way for the group of guests that spilled out around him. He was left standing there when the doors closed again.

There was an analog clock embedded in the marble wall, which told him he had six minutes until the arranged meeting time. His legs were already moving in the direction of the small glass room. He looked both ways as he crossed the wide hallway, wary of... what? He wasn’t sure. Paranoia clung to him like static, sure that every eye was watching him, that someone would come and rip the opportunity away .

No one even glanced in his direction. Emboldened by his invisibility, Jonah wrapped his palm around the door handle and pushed inside.

He swiped at his eyes one last time as the elevator opened onto his client’s floor.

The number on his palm was smudged into a shapeless blot by this point, but he remembered. He walked to the end of the hall—a corner suite, he thought absently—and stopped in front of the door, pressing a hand to the flat of his stomach. He closed his eyes.

He didn’t want to do this. He really didn’t want to do this. Still, he raised a fist to knock.

The door swung open before he could make contact, and Jonah took an involuntary step back. For a few seconds, all he could do was blink up at the man on the other side of the threshold.

“Get lost on the way up?” Nathan greeted him, leaning casually to one side with a hand braced against the door frame.

Jonah’s reaction, whatever it might have looked like from Nathan’s point of view, must have been the one he was hoping for, because Nathan’s smile quirked to one side. His appraisal made Jonah feel like he was wearing much less than the t-shirt and jeans he had on.

He had, of course, worn less in front of Nathan before.

“Come in,” Nathan said, stepping back .

Stunned, Jonah stepped through the narrow margin between Nathan’s body and the door frame. The proximity was just on the wrong side of subtle, giving Jonah no choice but to brush against him as he passed.

When the door clicked shut, Jonah realized he was shaking. He jumped at Nathan’s sudden presence behind him when he stopped at the mouth of the short entryway, but Nathan only lingered long enough to scoot around him.

“Jumpy,” he noted with a smirk.

Jonah was very aware that he had yet to utter a word. He backed himself against the wall as subtly as he could, watching Nathan’s every movement.

“Want a drink?” Nathan crossed to the dresser beside the window, picking up a glass of amber liquid. Beside it was a bottle with nearly a third of its contents already drained.

Jonah shook his head.

“Not very chatty tonight.” Nathan laughed. He took a long swig, barely making a face at the burn. “Cassidy probably does enough talking for both of you when you’re together. Do you charge extra for the ‘boyfriend experience?’ I should have guessed that dinner and hometown visits would be more his taste.”

Something in Jonah rose to the defensive at the way he talked about Liam, but he forced it down. “Did he ask you to come here?” he couldn’t help asking. “To talk to me?”

Nathan paused with the glass halfway to his mouth, eyes narrowed. “Why wouldn’t he come see you himself? ”

Jonah swallowed, suddenly feeling like he had revealed more than he should.

“I don’t know.” He blinked, trying to recover, but fear was filling in all the blank spaces in his mind like cold water flooding a sinking ship. “I just thought—”

His words were cut off by a swallow as Nathan took a step toward him. He laughed again, raising his palms in a placating gesture, even as he continued his saunter toward him.

“Relax, Leo. Or, sorry, is it Jonah ?” He took another step forward. “What have you told him about us?”

Jonah cringed at the word choice, biting back the impulse to tell Nathan that there was no us in their arrangement, and there never had been. Nathan had only ever been another forgettable face in a sea of plenty, notable only for a repeat string of visits over the summer while he was interning in the city.

Jonah hadn’t seen him for months after that. Not until the night in October when Jonah had been called to the bar for a particularly aggressive hookup in a bathroom stall. It had only made sense later, why Nathan had been so adamant about bolting the bathroom door. Liam would have only missed walking in on them by minutes.

“I haven’t told him anything,” Jonah said honestly.

“Nothing? Really?” The corners of his smile were dangerously sharp as he moved closer. “You didn’t mention me at all?”

“No. ”

“No?”

Jonah regretted backing himself into a wall, because there was no more room to shrink away when Nathan raised a hand, grazing the back of his knuckles down Jonah’s cheek.

“So, you’re not going to tell him about this? ”

Any lingering threads of hope that Nathan was here under nobler intentions were snapped the second he pressed forward, covering Jonah’s mouth with his own.

His faint noise of protest was swallowed up like it was nothing. Jonah’s hands curled into fists at his sides, survival instinct telling him not to raise them, not to push him away, not to fight back.

But this was different. This was Liam’s friend .

Keeping Nathan’s secret from Liam all these months out of some misguided ethical code had weighed on him enough, but the idea of going along with what Nathan wanted tonight felt like too big a betrayal. Jonah couldn’t do it.

“Stop.” He jerked his head back hard enough to smack into the wall. His hands came up to push against Nathan’s chest, but he quickly found himself flattened, pinned by a knee between his legs, fingers digging into his hips.

“What do you think you’re here for?” Nathan sounded angry now.

It was the anger that faltered Jonah’s resistance. He stared over Nathan’s shoulder, his vision beginning to slip in and out of focus. His instincts warred with each other, screaming at him to stay still, to endure, and simultaneously begging him to resist. He felt his hands come up again with the intent of pushing Nathan away, but instead, he ended up clutching the larger man’s shoulders in an attempt to steady himself.

He had direct experience with Nathan’s physical strength, and knew he didn’t have a good chance in a fight.

“Please,” he tried. “Liam wouldn’t... He won’t—”

“Liam doesn’t have to know.” Nathan ground his hips forward and Jonah felt himself start to slip. Into his head. Into Leo . Into the body of someone who had survived this before, could survive this again.

Fingers curled around the back of his neck and applied pressure. His body folded obediently, eyes going blank as his knees hit the carpet. He turned away at the sound of a zipper.

“I didn’t come all the way out here to talk ,” Nathan said.

A fog descended over Jonah, his body a disjointed composite of shallow breathing and closed eyes and tingling limbs. For an indeterminate amount of time, Jonah was rendered helpless, watching from a distance as his body was handled with no regard for the person trapped inside it.

At some point he became vaguely aware that Nathan was saying something to him. “Hey.” A palm tapped his cheek. “Hey.” Jonah flinched. “You’re not going to say a fucking word to him.”

Jonah’s mind went blank, a few seconds of blinding white-out, like staring directly into a camera flash. When it dissipated, it was white-hot rage that rushed to the surface.

His hands came up to push at Nathan’s thighs, sending him stumbling back. Nathan tripped on the jeans around his ankles and crashed to the ground. For a moment, Jonah was trapped between past and present: he saw Nathan hit the carpet, but it was Mr. Becker staring back at him, his head split open and bloodied.

The image froze him long enough for Nathan to get his bearings. Jonah scrambled away but only made it as far as the desk. Nathan snatched him by the shirt as he pulled himself to his feet, tearing the neckline. A sharp crack of knuckles across his face stunned Jonah to stillness long enough for Nathan to get the advantage.

Jonah cried out again as his arm was twisted painfully behind him, his body pinned across the surface of the desk. The tray of pre-packaged coffee grounds and cups clattered to the floor, two crystal glasses shattering.

Jonah kicked out behind him, trying to catch any part of Nathan’s body. “Get off me!” he shouted, hoping for someone, anyone to hear and intervene. Nathan plastered a hand over his mouth, muffling the sound.

With one of Nathan’s hands occupied, Jonah lashed out with the elbow that wasn’t pinned down, knocking Nathan back just long enough to worm out of his hold. He collapsed to the ground and started crawling toward the door, but Nathan’s weight was on him in an instant, crushing him against the carpet. For a horrifying moment, Jonah thought that was it. Then he opened his eyes.

Across from him, several feet away on the carpet, he caught a glint of light reflecting off a shard of glass. He had no time to hesitate, no time to think his plan through. When Nathan focused his attention on yanking down the waistband of Jonah’s jeans, Jonah threw his arm out and clamped down on the broken glass. The sting against his own palm didn’t even register. Praying for the best, he thrust his arm behind him with as much power as he could leverage.

“Fuck!” Nathan cried out as he made contact, and Jonah didn’t waste the narrow window of opportunity to wriggle himself onto his back.

Face to face, he saw that the glass had struck Nathan’s arm, a long gash of red bleeding down to the crease of his elbow. Jonah threw another slash, this time toward Nathan’s face.

Nathan made a sound like a wounded animal. Both hands left Jonah’s body to cover the weeping gash on his cheek. Jonah bucked his hips as hard as he could, brought both knees up, and kicked. The second he dislodged the weight on top of him enough to move, he pushed himself up and stumbled into a run. This time, Nathan didn’t pursue him.

He couldn’t risk stopping to look back at the person he’d left bleeding on the hotel floor. It wasn’t until he reached the door that he realized he was still clutching his makeshift weapon. He stopped just long enough to uncurl his fist, cringing at the deep line of blood that cut across his palm.

He couldn’t think about that now. Every thought, every nerve ending and instinct in his body was screaming the same thing at him, all at once: run.

He dropped the glass shard, and he did.

Rubber soles smacked against the thin carpet of the hallway, then even louder down the concrete stairwell—all eight flights. The cold wind smacked him in the face the moment he was out the door, but he didn’t stop running.

Marcus was parked two blocks down, as arranged, waiting for the two hours to be up. Jonah slowed as he approached, his stomach churning as realization set in: he was coming back empty-handed.

Maybe at some point in his fight, he had made the decision that getting out of that room was more important than avoiding the consequences, but now he wasn’t so sure. Either way, his bed was made.

Jonah tapped his knuckles twice against the back window and heard the lock click open. Wordlessly, he slid inside, tucking himself against the far door. A beat of silence passed, undercut with the soft rumble of the idling engine. Jonah kept his eyes unfocused in the direction of the tinted window, waiting to feel the car move. Instead, he felt Marcus’s eyes narrow in on him in the rearview mirror.

“That was barely fifteen minutes,” he said, words laced with warning.

Jonah swallowed, gagging around the taste of blood. “He didn’t waste any time.”

Another beat of silence followed, and Jonah really hoped he would drop it. The burn of his injuries was starting to seep past the wall of adrenaline. He cradled his hand in his lap, squeezing around his wrist to slow the blood flow.

“Where is the money?”

“I don’t have it. ”

There was a nearly tangible shift in the air inside the car. He heard the creak of leather on leather as Marcus turned back to look at him.

“I don’t have it,” Jonah repeated, louder, before he could ask again. When he opened his eyes, Marcus was staring at him with that same indiscernible expression Jonah knew so well.

Jonah braced for shouting, for violence, but Marcus just sighed and turned back around. He heard him rummaging for something in the glove compartment, and there was a wild, unmoored moment of thinking Marcus might be reaching for his gun. Instead, he grabbed something and extended it behind him for Jonah to take. In the dark, it took a moment to see it was a handful of fast-food napkins.

Jonah blinked at the offering, then up at the mirror where Marcus was pointedly avoiding his eyes.

“Take them.” He shook the napkins in Jonah’s direction. “Try not to bleed out on the seats.”

Unwilling to provoke him, Jonah reached out with his uninjured hand and took the offering, pressing one softly to his bottom lip and the other to his bloody palm.

As the car rolled out from the lot and onto the main streets, Jonah watched the lights from the city slowly taper off into darkness, the high-rises giving way to short brick buildings until those turned to withering houses along old back streets. Every mile, every inch that brought him closer to the house pulled Jonah further and further away from the certainty, the clarity, he’d had back at the hotel. Under the threat of what was to come when he walked through the door, he started to question whether he had made the right choice after all.

He could have kept his head down like he’d planned, could have gone through the motions he’d done a hundred times before. Maybe it would have been over by now. Maybe Nathan was right, and Liam never would have needed to find out. Maybe Jonah could have found a way to live with that secret the same way he learned to live with everything else—tucked away in the corner of his memory where the light didn’t reach.

The thing about regret, though, was that it didn’t do a thing to erase the past. Whether he stood by his decision now or he didn’t, the damage was already done, left in a pile of bloody glass on the other side of the city.

Anxiety thrummed in his veins as they turned onto the street he knew too well. His pockets were empty of the money he was owed, but Jonah, undoubtedly, would pay.