“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me what they did to you at the initiation, then.”
I close my eyes against the anger in his. It’s all on my behalf, and he doesn’t know that I don’t deserve it. Images from that night hammer into my head with every heartbeat. I’m not going to be sick.
I’m not.
I open my eyes. Mason’s worried. I have his full attention.
“What I’m talking about is that we can’t—I can’t make it up to you. What you did for us. I can’t pay you back.” Some lingering charred air catches in my lungs, and I cough it out so hard that Mason puts a hand out like he’s afraid I’ll fall. “And I’m a bastard. Sometimes I resented you. I thought it would be easier to be in pain than feel guilty all the goddamn time.”
Mason puts his hand on my knee. “I never wanted you to feel guilty for what happened to me.”
“That’s not all of it.”
His eyebrows draw together. “Gabriel, what—”
“You almost died, Mase. You almost died when you fell and then you almost died afterward. And it was never easy. Even when you started Phoenix, it took everything you had.”
“I was glad to do it. You can’t think—Gabriel. You and Jameson and Remy were all that mattered to me.”
This is my only chance to tell him the truth. Theoretically, I could open my mouth any minute of any day. Practically, I need the hospital-grade painkillers to get the words out. The pressure in my head feels related to keeping this a secret, to never letting my family know, never telling Mason anything. It’s too much. I can’t stand it.
“You were dying.” I’m outside my body, and I’m trapped in it. It hurts like nothing I’ve ever felt, and every nerve is wrapped in cotton. I don’t have my balance. I’m sitting up anyway. “You couldn’t eat. You had to have painkillers, and we had to have rent.”
“I know. I remember.” Mason moves closer. I don’t know that I’m digging my nails into the discharge papers until he takes my hands in both of his. The last time I can remember his hands on mine was when I took him to those free clinics. “Gabriel—”
“There wasn’t enough money, Mason. Nobody would hire me because I wasn’t sixteen. And you were dying. So I found work in the alleys.”
His mouth makes the shape of the word without any sound.Alleys?
The lock that kept this story shut in a steel box disintegrates. I’ve asked too much of it, and it’s done. Nothing will keep it in anymore.
“I fucked men in the alleys for money. I started at the first apartment we had.”
Mason goes stark white. “When?”
“When the painkillers ran out. When you went to the custody hearing. Not long after that. The first night, I made enough to get your prescription filled. It was twenty-one pills. Enough for a week. The second night, one of them turned on me.”
Part of me is aware that I’m telling Mason the story, and part of me is back in the alley. Hot, dirty air. Dior Eau Sauvage. His hand on the back of my neck. The awful, sickening force of him inside me. My own blood, slippery under my palm.
“—emergency room for stitches. I came home, and Jameson was awake, and I lied to him about where I was. And I kept going back. I didn’t stop.”
“Gabriel.”
“Eventually, I started fucking rich people for information instead of money. That’s how I found the consortium. That’s how I got in. They must’ve been looking for my specific skill set, because the initiation involved fucking Elise—”
“Oh my fucking God.”
“In front of the rest of the members, so it would look like I committed a crime. They wanted it to look like I raped her.”
“Jesus.”
“And I did it. I did all of it. So if you think you’re here for some—some decent fucking person, you’re not. I’m disgusted by the things I learned in those alleys. I’m disgusted that I never stopped using them. I’m disgusted with myself. You should be disgusted. You shouldn’t want to touch me.”
The words run out.