Page 36 of Trust

“Are you all right?” I ask.

Micah nods, but he presses against my side. “Yes,” he says, though he looks pale and uncertain.

I’m not sure I can let him return home, not with the way he’s reacting to these small things, not when he keeps talking about it in ways that make me think it won’t even be safe. But I nod.

“Let’s get our drinks and sit down.” I glance at the stage, where a woman is playing the guitar. She’s passable. Not amazing, yet most people are nodding along to her song.

Micah stays pressed against me as we wait for our drinks, and even as we carry them to the lone empty table, he doesn’tpull away. Only once we’ve sat down, with him in the chair immediately next to mine, does he breathe a little easier.

“Here,” I say, pushing the glass of water closer to him. “Drink.”

He takes the water and sips from it, his hands clutching the glass tightly. “Why did you pick this place?” he asks quietly.

Because I wanted to keep him close to me.

Because taking him to my home would have scared him.

Because I don’t want to let him go back to that asshole.

“I didn’t want to take you anywhere unfamiliar,” I say. “We both know this place. If you don’t trust me, maybe one of your other friends is here tonight.”

Even though I don’t want him to leave with anyone else

Micah huffs out a laugh. “I don’t have any other friends. I only need Adam,” he says. “He’s…” He looks at me, his eyes pleading. “He’s not that bad, Ilya. He just… gets angry sometimes. But he takes care of me.”

He sounds exactly that bad. Micah’s excuses are familiar too, ones my mother always used about my father. My sister begged her to divorce him after a particularly bad night, but my mother said that hewasn’t that bad. It was simply a bad night; he was stressed.

Excuse after excuse after excuse.

“If you say so,” I say. “How did you two meet?”

“I do say so,” Micah insisted, his cheeks flushing red. “I was in a bad situation, and he was there to help me. He was a dream come true. Charming, and kind, and…” His shoulders slump. “I don’t know what happened. Me, I guess.”

The anger bubbles up inside me. Micah is so young, and already so beaten down. At his age, he should be enjoying life and taking chances, not looking like this.

I reach out to ruffle his blond hair. He leans into the touch, his eyelids fluttering.

“You did nothing wrong,” I say firmly. “His actions reflect on himself, not you.”

“Then why does it always happen?” he asks, his voice so quiet that I can barely hear it over the sounds of the bar’s chatter and music. He shakes his head. “I’m the only thing in common. If there wasn’t something wrong with me, it wouldn’t keephappening.” He takes a gulp of his water, and I see tears at the corners of his eyes.

“I have no good answers,” I say. I know how things ended formyfamily. My mother, beaten to death. My sister, married to a man almost as bad. And me, following in my father’s footsteps.

I look down at my hands, and it’s not just Artyom’s blood I see now.

I shake the thoughts away.

“Do you know how the scam call centers work?” I ask Micah. “The ones where they call and try to get access to your bank, or where they convince you to send money?”

Micah nods, looking confused at the change in topic. “Yeah?”

“When they find somebody who falls for their tricks, they share that information with others. So a person who has been duped once will be targeted again, and again, and again. It’s not the victim’s fault. They were trusting, and once the world knows that they’re trusting, the scammers will work to exploit them for every last drop. An investment scam leads to a recovery scam, and then a romance scam, and so on.” I stop to scratch my beard. “It’s the scammer’s fault. Not the victim’s.”

“I’m not a victim,” Micah snaps, the tone so unlike what I’ve heard from him that it momentarily takes me aback.

A scam victim would say the same. They deny they were scammed, because it’s too humiliating.

It’s what keeps people like me in business. I’ve never found the business palatable, but I know plenty of others who do it.