I don't want to tell him, but I know I should. After all, he doesn't need to know the entire story, just parts of it.
"He was a reporter..."
"I know that much, Button," Jared says, impatiently. "What did he want from you?"
Our eyes meet, locking onto each other in a silent stare, me nervously biting at my lips while he awaits an explanation.
"I didn't tell him anything," I assure him. "I swear! You have to trust me, I-"
"Button," he says, reaching for my hand. "Please, what did he want from you?"
"He said he's working on an expose on you, trying to dig up dirt," I begin, watching as his eyes flicker in warning. "And he wanted me to contribute by telling him... I don't know, about your... dark secrets?"
Jared looks at me with a tense expression, processing what I just said while beckoning me to continue. "What else?"
"He said that he's been digging into your past and..."
I hesitate. It's hard to give voice to that man's allegations. I know they're not true, nothing but a huge misunderstanding. Hardly anyone can know that as well as I do.
But still.
"And?" Jared urges me to continue speaking.
"He said there were rumors about you... about you… hitting women," I blurt out, praying to God that the driver can't hear us behind the glass screen at the front. "He said that you were known to be a 'bad man', violent, capricious, and cunning. He said that there were women who showed up with bruises and said that you raped and beat them up and that it was a huge scandal a few years back. Something that could really hurt you now if it gets brought up again."
Jared sighs and diverts his eyes from me, staring to the front with an apathetic expression for a few moments before he rubs his temples as if he's being tortured by a strong headache.
"You know that I don't believe it, right?"
My voice is trembling, delivering a tone of insecurity and doubt that feels out of place. "I mean, I have bruises all over my body, so even if there's a woman who..."
My voice breaks, as I can't bring myself to say the words. The thought that he has done these things with other women before me, that he has been just as intimate with them as we are together… it simply hurts too much to give voice to it.
"It's okay," Jared says, squeezing my hand in his.
"I didn't tell him anything or even acknowledge his ridiculous accusations or anything, you have to believe me."
He smiles at me, and it’s a somber smile.
"I believe you, Button," he says. "I truly do. I trust you."
My heart stings at the impact of his words.
He trusts me.
"Why did he say those things?" I want to know. "Is it true? I mean, the part about there being rumors about you?"
He takes a deep breath and evades my eyes, nervously playing with his fingers before he continues speaking.
"There's something you don't know about me," he says. "And I guess it is time to tell you, if only to have you better prepared for the next time this happens."
I hold my breath.
"When we're home," Jared adds in a whisper. "I'll tell you everything once we get home. I may need a drink for this."
I nod. "Sure."
It felt good to tell him. Paper may be the most patient listener, but it fails to provide the comfort that honest communication can provide.
But my heart is still heavy with guilt. I'm torn between feeling relieved and feeling like the biggest traitor on Earth.
Because I haven't told him everything. There's one particular detail about my encounter with that guy Stewart that I kept to myself. No, two things, actually.
First, I didn't tell Jared about the offer I received. I didn't tell him that Stewart has a lot of power and money behind him. If what he said is true, he's way more than just an average freelance reporter. He offered me money to sell my inside story about the most private aspects of Jared's life, a lot of money, an amount bigger than what I'm promised for my current contract.
An amount that was hard to say decline.
I know I have the kind of private details that Stewart is after. Beginning with the fact that Jared bought me to be his personal call girl, to the things he did with me, to the things he tried to do with me but failed to go through with. I could lie. I could turn all of this into a fucking gold mine for myself and never have to worry about money ever again. If I played my cards right, I could make a fortune that trumps Jared's offer by far.
I have the words for it, pages and pages full of notes and anecdotes of what has happened between us since I moved in with Jared. I could sell all of it.
But I can't tell Jared about this offer.
And I also can't tell him that Stewart gave me his business card, and that I not only took it, but kept it.
I just don't understand why I did it.
Am I actually considering this?
Could I really be that evil?
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jared
It all started when I was young. Very young.
My parents died when I was still a toddler, too young to remember either of their faces. I was sent away to be raised by my only remaining family - an aunt who already had three children of her own, all of them girls. She and her husband thought that I could be the son they never had, the missing boy in the family, and despite not being their own, I was at least blood-related.
But I wasn't the boy they were hoping for.
I was a troubled kid, always angry, always testing limits, mine and theirs. They were highly religious people and thought that God could be the answer to my plagued nature, if only I was willing to listen to Him. When I didn't comply with their approach and my temper only worsened by the month, they were convinced there was something inherently wrong with me. My aunt swore that she saw the devil in my eyes, a curse left on me due to the early and tragic death of my parents.
In the end, it was nothing else but her excuse to give up on me. If the devil was involved, there was nothing she could do for the kid her sister left behind. Raising me was beyond her abilities. She couldn't give me what I needed. Yadda, yadda...
Thus began my journey from foster family to foster family. A new home every few years, sometimes every few weeks or months.
I wasn't a bad kid, I really wasn't. I never got into serious trouble, hardly ever got into fights, never sank to drugs or theft or any other kind of crime.
But I wasn’t exactly a good kid, either. I was a challenge, always questioning everything, struggling with authority, and defying rules that everybody else just took for granted. I wasn't the kind of kid you could just tell that things had to be done a certain way because that is just the way they had to be done. I always needed to know why they couldn't be done a different way, and I hated to go along with rules that I couldn't understand or agree with, something that was mistaken as disobedience.
I never wanted trouble. I wanted truth.
But my aunt wasn't the only one who swore she saw the devil in my eyes. She was the first to say it, but not the last who swore it was true.
I'm not going to lie: it was tough. Growing up was tough for me, but it wasn't all bad. In between, I had foster families who genuinely cared for me, who taught me well, who didn't grow tired of my thirst for knowledge and truth and my constant questioning. With them, the hardest part was being taken away and shoved into a new home.