Page 71 of Three, Two, One [321]

“I know,” she says in a soft whisper.

But I don’t think she does and I need to hammer it home. “You were a prisoner.”

“I still am.”

“No,” I say, leaning down to kiss her neck. “No, you’re free now, Blue.”

“I’m not though. They have me with that video. No one will believe my story. Not after I lied about where I was.”

“Did they force you to make that YouTube video?”

“What do you think?” she snaps.

Right.

We lie there in silence for a long time. Her breathing slows and she begins to relax. But I’m so amped up I feel like my brain might shatter. It starts to rain outside, making the atmosphere in here even more gloomy. There’s a clock on the wall that ticks off the seconds, and my mind is spinning with options.

But none of them feel right. None of them feel like they will make a difference.

Finally, after hours of lying there, I find myself able to talk. “What do you want to do about this, Blue?” I ask. She’s been so still, I almost thought she was asleep. But no one sleeps with this conversation hanging over them.

“I want to forget it ever happened.”

“What about your parents? Don’t you want to go home?”

She tucks her head into my chest and sighs. “I am home.”

After Blue falls asleep, I sneak out to my office and chain-smoke as I watch the clock. JD has been gone for hours now. And there’s no telling what he’s up to or what he might do. Fuck, if he’ll even show up for work tonight.

Finally, at eight forty-seven, he comes through the loft door. I’m sitting on the couch, my hand poised over the ashtray, ready to flick, when he appears.

“Since when do you smoke in the house?” he asks, closing the doors behind him.

“You had me worried, dude.”

“Since when do I miss work?” he says, grabbing a smoke from my pack on the side table and lighting up.

“You know that’s not what I meant. Please don’t insult me by pretending I was worried about the fucking job. You wanna tell me what’s going through your head right now?”

He takes a seat in the chair off to my left, inhaling a long drag of nicotine, before blowing it out in rings. “I can’t do it, man. I just can’t do it. Looking for them will suck me down a black hole I might never crawl out of. If you hadn’t come along when you did, I’d be dead right now.”

He’s said it before, but tonight it seems real. More real than ever. Because we’re all standing at the edge of something. Something that will change us forever. “Well, she told me a lot, JD. And I think you need to know what her story is before you make any decisions.”

He rolls his cigarette back and forth between his finger and thumb. “I’m not sure it will matter.” And then he looks up at me and his eyes are red. His face is pale. And I know where he’s been.

The cemetery.

“She’s dead. The baby is gone. Maybe dead too. And you know what, Ark? I’m tired of thinking about it. I’m tired of feeling this way about something I can’t change. And all these years you’ve given me the same piece of advice. Let it go. So that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna let it go. Blue is here and maybe she’s not the love of my life, but she’s here. And I like her. I want to spend time with her. And you. We’ve got something good right now. We’re rich. We’re about to fulfill our deal with Ray and start our own site. We’ve got it all. Why fuck it up? Ya know? Why fuck it all up over something that can’t be changed?”

I do know. But I also know what he really wants to hear. That we’ll get those fuckers. That we’ll make them pay. That we will take every last one of them down. He wants to hear that because that’s what I’d want to hear if it was my girl who was killed and my baby who was missing.

“I hear ya,” I say instead. I’m not a hero. I’m the Prince of Porn. I sell come down a girl’s throat. I sell face fucks in public places. I sell filthy videos that degrade women and use my friend’s cock to make money.

I’m not the hero he’s looking for. I am scum.

“Still wanna work tonight?” I ask him after a few moments of silence, puffing out smoke rings.

“Why the fuck not,” he says, getting up to stub out his cigarette in the ashtray next to me. “Why the fuck not.”