“Rube’s not a nice guy,” he says as he leans back and brushes his hair from his face.
“I didn’t say anything about—”
“People assume a lot.” He points at me. “People like you.” He points at the bowl of mousse and opens his mouth for another serving.
I resist the urge to jam the spoon down his throat. “I’m sorry I’m so transparent. And you’re right. I do think Reuben is a good guy.”
He chuckles at me. “That’s because he’s been practicing being nice for years now.”
“Well he’s definitely got the hang of it,” I say, another heaped spoon accompanying the statement. My heart thumps a little harder. “How did he end up there anyway? Was he kidnapped too?”
“He didn’t exactly wander in off the street, now did he?”
I frown, but I don’t get a chance to speak.
“Listen, pretty thing. There’s something you have to understand about us. We’re not just a ‘bunch of friends.’” His air quotes are rife with condescension. “Something happened to us in that basement.” He quickly lifts a hand, as if expecting me to interrupt him. “Over and above a bunch of pedophiles repeatedly sticking their dicks in us.”
My skin grows cold at his callous words.
“They broke us, Trin.” His voice becomes thick and rough. “Broke us into a million fucking pieces. But we picked ourselves—each other—up.”
His sorrow cuts the nerves to my hand and my spoon tinkles when it hits the side of the bowl. Apollo takes the spoon without missing a beat.
“I reckon we got some of those pieces mixed up when we picked them up.” He scoops out a spoonful of mousse. I half-expect him to eat it, but instead he brings it to my lips.
We stay like that for a beat, him staring into my eyes as I get sucked right back into his.
Eyes as deep, dark, and dismal as the bottom of a well.
I eat the mousse. He keeps talking.
“So when we put the pieces together, we got a bit of each other too.” He frowns hard as the mousse starts to melt in my mouth. “Does that make sense?”
I nod, because it does.
It makes so much fucking sense it scares me.
It explains why they’re so close. The horrors they experienced, they shared, wove them together like a rug. Those strands, strong in their own right, became even stronger.
He scoops out more mousse and brings it close, but not close enough.
I lean in a little.
“We’re not friends. We’re brothers. A brotherhood. And the only way you’re weaseling your way in is if we let you.” Apollo smears mousse over my mouth with a flick of his hand.
His eyes drop to my lips.
I reach up instinctively to wipe it away but he snatches my wrist and draws it into his lap. Then he ducks forward and sucks the mousse from my lips.
Heat floods my body.
I try to lean into what I think is a kiss, but he drops his mouth to my chin, then the side of my jaw, then my ear.
“There’s something else you should know, pretty thing.”
I freeze at the sinister tone in his voice. He moves my hand deeper into his lap, until I brush against something long and hard.
He nips my ear. “We’ll never be jealous of each other, because we always share our toys.”
Chapter Thirteen
Trinity
I’m staring up at the ceiling later that night, toying with my curls as I try to make sense of the day, when Jasper slips into our room.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few weeks awake while everyone else was sleeping with thoughts swirling around my head like water going down a drain.
It never gets any less frustrating, especially when I know sleep could whisk me away to peaceful oblivion for a few hours.
“Hey,” I greet him, going onto my elbows.
Jasper walks stiffly over to his bed, kneels on the mattress, and lowers himself down with his back to me.
“Everything okay?” I ask. Pretending not to know what happened to him is as difficult as straight-up lying.
“Fucking peaches,” he mutters back.
I wince in sympathy, and then I’m glad it’s dark and he’s not facing me because I’d probably have given myself away.
My ointment is still in my top drawer. Should I leave it out and hope he notices it, or did Miriam give him his own bottle?
Twenty lashes.
Should have been thirty.
No one can survive thirty.
Fuck.
“I know you got lashes,” Jasper says.
I sit up straight. “What—why would you think that?”
“For the drawing,” he says without turning to face me.
My heart is suddenly beating too fast. “What drawing?”
Jasper maneuvers around until he’s facing me. If it wasn’t for the moonlight streaming through our tiny window, I wouldn’t have seen him rolling his eyes at me.
“The one of Rutherford banging you.”
I say nothing as my cheeks start to warm up.
I’d forgotten about Cass’s prank. “Yeah. So what?”
“He likes it, you know.”
“What, the drawing?”
“Beating people,” Jasper says through a world-weary sigh. “He gets off on it.”
He…what? I’ve heard some strange things before, but that? It doesn’t make any sense. And Zachary might be cold and calculating, but…a sadist?
“I don’t think he—”
“He loves beating people as much as he hates gays.” The whites of Jasper’s eyes shine in the moon’s silver glow. “If you don’t believe me, try telling him you’re a lesbian. You won’t be sitting for a week.”
Jasper turns around again.
Even if I could speak, what the fuck am I supposed to say to that?
I need air.
I’m already in my pajamas—yoga pants and a tank top—so I grab my threadbare dressing gown from the foot of the bed where it keeps my feet warm in this ice-box of a room, shove my feet into the fur-lined boots I use as slippers, and shuffle out of the door.
For a while after dinner there was quite a lot of traffic in the hallway. Boys coming and going, laughing and roughhousing. But now all the doors are closed, and the passage is quiet.
Cass came by about half an hour after I’d gotten into bed. It was the first time I’d heard him call ‘lights out’ since I’ve arrived. I’d almost peed myself at the thought that he would slip into my room, but I guess he wouldn’t risk it in case Jasper was there.
I use the restroom before heading back to my room.
I feel sorry for Jasper. It sucks that he and Perry ended up in a place like this, where their relationship is considered a cardinal sin. I wish I could tell him Zachary doesn’t feel that way.
Maybe Jasper and Perry can be open about who they are when they leave Saint Amos. I’ve never had an issue with other people’s sexuality. If you love someone, truly love someone, then things like gender shouldn’t matter.
That’s the one thing I’d admired about my parents. You could tell they were wholly devoted to each other. They weren’t passionate lovers or anything like that—I’ve only heard them making love once, and it only lasted a few minutes. But they spent every moment they could together. I guess my mother’s miscarriages brought them closer together. They happened way before I was born, but I’m sure they played havoc on the marriage. Luckily they tried one last time before she had a hysterectomy, else I wouldn’t be here.