Page 133 of These Secret Years

“No. You’re a great friend. Maybe a little too good.”

A half smile. “I know what you mean.”

Does he? I wonder. “Do you ever want…more?”

He and I look at each other for a long time before he says exactly what I knew he’d say. “Do you?”

“I always did,” I say in barely more than a whisper.

His nod is subtle, but his hand squeezes mine. “We can’t have that though, right?”

“Can’t we?”

For a decent amount of time, I think he’s thinking about it, but then he glances away from me and says, “I think the coffee’s ready.”

“Let me get it, okay?”

“I can do it.” He starts to let go of my hand, but I grip it more firmly.

“Please,” I say.

“Okay.”

We let each other go. I pour us each a mug, ask him what he wants in his, and he tells me a splash of cream and one of the pink sweeteners. I make mine with more than a splash, and no sweetener. With both mugs in hand, I ask, “Is there a couch somewhere?”

He stands and leads the way into the living room. The house is shaped like a lodge with a lofted living room and a set of stairs that run along a visible hallway to all the bedrooms up there. There’s a very large brick fireplace beneath the staircase and a long couch opposite it.

After I set the mugs down on the coffee table, he gestures for me to sit on the couch first. I do, in the dead middle of the cushions, which is exactly how I sit on the couch at my house whenever he’s over playing video games. It always meant I got to be a little closer, that we could speak a little quieter, but to everyone else it only looks like I’m trying to take up more space than is polite.

He sits on my left, which leaves his own left arm able to reach for the coffee on the table. What surprises me is how close he sits, tucked neatly into himself with his knees on my thigh.

Close-up, his face, which has always hurt somewhat to look at, makes my own cheekbones throb at the sight of the bruises. The cut on his lip is ragged, though it is healing. I can’t imagine how much it must have bled. The rage is back, and I’m twitchy with it. I let him take a few sips of his coffee while I examine the rest of him. His uncasted arm has some dark yellowish-brown spots all up and down it—more bruises. His left hand looks good though. No cuts, no cracked knuckles. No sign that he fought back, and that fucking breaks something inside me that I’m not sure I can live without.

Quietly, I say, “Adrian and Quinn Frazier. Now tell me who did this to you.”

His throat jerks with a rough swallow, and he sets his mug down. “Quinn. He was drunk.”

“When?”

“Monday night. It was late. I was going to sleep. He hurt Adrian, too, but just…not this bad.”

“Meaning what? He didn’t break any bones, or…?”

“Yeah, that, and…” Sullivan sighs heavily. Not looking at me, but rather toward the staircase, he says, “He had sex with me, too.”

I nod carefully while the rage crests, cracking through my stiff muscles and putting a toxin into my bloodstream. I try to work through the feeling by focusing on my breathing. Inhale two, three, four, exhale, two, three, four, five, six, inhale…

“Here’s the thing,” Sullivan says. “It was a bad night, but it was also the last time I ever have to be in a house with either of them. Adrian and I worked it out before Quinn even got home. School is paid for. I get to keep the car. Hopefully he won’t go on to molest any other promising young men, but it won’t ever be me again. I’m free. That’s what matters.”

“What about pressing charges?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t need to. Adrian—he apologized. He texted me after I left. He’s gonna keep everything financially the same as it was before, so long as I don’t… And that’s the way I want it, too. It’s over—I just need for it to be—it’s done. It wasn’t anything different than what’s happened before, it just—it’s over.”

“He’s hurt you like this before?” I ask, horrified. That wasn’t the impression I’d gotten. I know they’d used him, exploited him, even, but I didn’t get the feeling they’d been brutal.

“I mean, I never said no before, and apparently that wasn’t what he wanted to hear, so…”

It’s so very, very disconcerting how casually he’s talking about this—this thing that makes me literally want to commit a crime, but as I’m reading the field—reading him, I’m trying my best to match his energy. I cannot, however, match his seeming indifference.