Shaw squirmed out of his shirt, dropped his pants and stepped out of them, peeled off his socks. He’d barely managed to stand before Jadon wrapped one hand around Shaw’s throat—not choking him, but tight enough that Shaw’s pulse accelerated, and he could feel it pushing against the pressure from Jadon’s fingers.

  “Look at you,” Jadon said in that same voice. “You’re so fucking hot. Did you get pretty for Daddy?”

  “Jay—”

  Jadon’s hand slid up, clamping down on Shaw’s mouth. Jadon gave a slight shake of his head. Crinkles marked the corners of his eyes, but his lips stayed serious as he said, “Baby, Daddy asked you a question. Did you get pretty for Daddy?”

  Shaw stood frozen. The whole game felt silly; Jadon was younger than Shaw, and anyway, Shaw knew that Jadon wouldn’t take anything too far. Although Jadon did look like a daddy—those muscles, the GQ good looks, the dominating pose—Shaw found himself softening, his heartbeat slowing, embarrassment oozing into him.

  This wasn’t working. North would hear the whole thing. He’d hear the fight when Jadon got mad that, once again, Shaw was leaving him blue-balled. North would hear, and he’d figure out what was going on, and then, just like that, this tiny, miraculous window where North was free of Tuck would evaporate, and Shaw would have lost him. Again.

  Breathing through his nose, Shaw scented Jadon’s skin, the light musk of his cologne. The heat of his touch was gentle and reassuring when the rest of Shaw was cold in the air-conditioned apartment. Jadon was already looking down, already noticing that Shaw was soft, already loosing his grip on Shaw’s jaw. So Shaw did something, and even as he did it, he promised himself he’d never do it again. He thought about North.

  It wasn’t Jadon’s hand, with an athlete’s calluses fading across the palm, that covered Shaw’s mouth. It was North’s: iron ridges left by hours and hours on job sites. It wasn’t Jadon’s body inches from Shaw’s, in a designer t-shirt and jeans. It was North’s: the mechanic’s shirt that said Mick, those hideous Red Wings. Those weren’t Jadon’s eyes, darkly sandy, quirking with concern. Those were North’s, a blue so pale it was like morning on fresh snowfall. And suddenly, Shaw’s whole body was pounding. Those thoughts drove a spike of arousal through his chest. He could barely breathe.

  “Yeah,” Shaw panted as Jadon peeled his hand away. “Yes. I got pretty for you.”

  For one long moment, it seemed Jadon was reconsidering. He had noticed, of course. And he must have been wondering.

  “Yes, Daddy,” Shaw corrected himself. “I got pretty for you, Daddy.”

  With a grin like smoke, Jadon’s hand wrapped around Shaw’s neck again, turning his head as though Jadon were inspecting him. Then he bent, suckling again at the hickey on Shaw’s neck, and it was Jadon’s mouth, but Shaw could imagine—every hair on his body bristling with desire—that it was North’s.

  “Good boy,” Jadon whispered. “Good boys get whatever they want. What do you want from Daddy?”

  He kissed Shaw before Shaw could answer, driving him back against the door, and the wood rattled in the frame. The thought of North—in part of Shaw’s brain, North was hearing the door rattle, and in part of Shaw’s brain, it was North driving him against the door—made Shaw moan. He thrust up against Jadon, rocking into a solidly muscled thigh, aroused beyond anything he had thought possible. He was suddenly so desperate for touch—for this touch, North’s touch—that he was almost crying.

  “Please,” Shaw heard himself saying between kisses, the word ragged. “Please, please, please.”

  Jadon’s hand found his dick, and Shaw threw his head back, cracking it against the wood so loud it sounded like a gunshot. That only made everything hotter. He turned his head and bit, hard, his own arm to keep from shooting in Jadon’s hand right then.

  “You like that?” Jadon was whispering. “You like Daddy’s hand on your cock?”

  “Yes,” Shaw wailed.

  “Tell Daddy what you want.”

  Shaw had to bite his arm again. It had been so long. Just those few times with Matty, when everything had been brand new, when Shaw had been in love, when each touch had thrown off sparks. And since then, since the night Matty tied up Shaw and tortured him for information, since the night Shaw had killed the first boy he had slept with, everything had been different. Twice with Jadon they had actually managed to get both of them through the full experience, and both times had been drawn out, exhausting, and both times Shaw had sat under the hot spray of the shower and cried afterward. For himself. For Matty. For having lost, it seemed, a future where desire had a normal, healthy place in his life.

  Only now it was all different. Now, like this, inside the secret story that Shaw was telling himself, he was safe. Nobody could hurt him—not even North, because North was just part of the story, and because North would never hurt him. And the surge of need inside Shaw was so violent that he choked and bit down harder on his arm, wailing as Jadon’s expert touch ran the length of his dick, teased the tip, and then Shaw couldn’t hold it in anymore: he pulled back from his arm, watching the white impressions of his teeth flood with color, the whole world moving slowly under the weight of his desire. He threw his head back, cracked it against the door again, and shouted wordlessly.

  “Yeah, baby. That’s right. Now tell me: tell Daddy what you want.”

  For a moment, in the silence behind Shaw’s scream, Shaw thought he heard something on the other side of the door. But it didn’t matter. That wasn’t part of his world anymore. His world was here: the hands that should have been North’s hands, the desire that was exclusively for North, the concentrated need that had been building in the months since Matty for someone to touch Shaw and for him to be able to feel like this. His heart spat and hissed like a sparkler, spinning off burning flecks of aluminum. “Fuck me.”

  Jadon chuckled, the sound low and dark. His hand skated along Shaw’s dick, and Shaw grunted, the sound desperate and animal, thrusting into Jadon’s touch. Jadon just laughed and eased away so that only the pads of his fingers grazed Shaw.

  “Ask nicely.”

  Shaw wasn’t even sure what to call the next sound he made. It was desperate. It was demanding. It was full of high-pitched need. It was totally, utterly thoughtless, and he rutted—tried to rut—against Jadon, while Jadon skillfully kept him from getting what he wanted.

  “Nicely,” Jadon repeated, more firmly this time.

  “Please, Daddy. Please fuck me. Please, please, I need you to fuck me.”

  “But you’ve got such a nice cock, baby. Maybe you need to fuck me.”

  “No,” Shaw said, hearing the complete helplessness in his wail and being turned on it by it because this was North, this was what he had always wanted from North and now he could say it. “Please, Daddy. Fuck me.”

  Grinning, Jadon caught Shaw by the arms, spun him away from the door, and marched him to the bed. He threw Shaw down—hard enough that Shaw remembered, like a flashbulb going off, North throwing him down just like this, months ago, the night North had learned about Matty’s past. Shaw bounced on the mattress. His hands flew down to touch himself, and Jadon just shook his head, once, violently, and Shaw whined and gathered fistfuls of bedding.

  Jadon rucked up his shirt, displaying a hard set of abs, a perfectly groomed diamond of dark hair between his pecs, a set of shoulders you could have set the world on. As he tossed the garment across the room with one hand, he unbuckled his belt and slid it out of the loops. He curled it around his fist once, studying Shaw, and said, “Have you been good for Daddy?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was that?”

  “Yes, Daddy. I’ve been good for you.”

  “Maybe. This time. But if you’re not good, next time.” He displayed the belt before letting it fall, and Shaw thought briefly, another flashbulb, of being turned over North’s knee, of a hand or a belt or a paddle coming down, and that image hammered the spike of arousal deeper into his chest, flattening him against the mattress. He could come, he thought dizzily. Just like this, he could come with North talking to him, North undressing for him, North teasing him with all the dirty things he might do to him—all the things Shaw had never gotten to try, all the things that, for so much of his life, he had allowed only to exist at the edge of consciousness, like ghosts from another reality that, if Shaw had been lucky, he might have lived.

  Then the mattress flexed under Jadon’s weight, and he straddled Shaw, his dick hard and wet and gleaming in the lamplight. Shaw was staring past him. Through him. At that other world: the world where Shaw had never been mutilated, Carl had never been killed, where Tuck had never existed. He was looking up at North; the high shadows of the lamps made the face almost indistinguishable. Then hands clamped down on Shaw’s thighs, rubbing the sensitive skin, spreading Shaw’s legs.

  “Now,” rumbled a voice that might have been North’s. “Let’s see how good a boy you can be for Daddy.”

  Chapter 19

  NORTH STOOD IN THE BATHROOM, frozen, listening to Shaw call Jadon daddy, listening to the thunk of Shaw’s head against the wood, the wobble of his voice, the shrill, desperate sounds of need. Less than three feet separated them. Three feet, and an unlocked door. But North stood there, unmoving, as Jadon Reck worked on Shaw, eliciting sounds that North had imagined himself drawing out of Shaw. There was so much need in Shaw’s voice. And so much fear, even masked by the throaty grunts and groans of desire Shaw was letting out. Fear that went beyond the physical act of sex—that went to Matty, went to Carl, went to places even North wasn’t sure he understood.

  Did Jadon understand that? Of course not. How could he? North understood, though. North was probably the only person in the whole world who understood, and he imagined himself rushing in there. North would throw open the door. Jadon would vanish like smoke, and Shaw would stand there, splayed against the door, pupils blown open by desire, his lips swollen with the need for more kisses. And North would step forward, and for the first time in his life, he would get to do what he really wanted: he would get to touch Shaw like he owned him, like Shaw was entirely, completely his. The way Shaw was meant to be.

  Then something cracked against the bedroom door, and North started, taking a single, reflexive step. The floor creaked under him. North froze; a lull interrupted the sounds of passion on the other side of the door, and North’s face burned. If they opened the door, if they saw him here, listening—would Jadon evaporate the way North imagined? Would it just be North and Shaw, finally, the way they were supposed to be?

  Shaw was begging now, his voice ragged and keening, and the sound of it made North hard. He was embarrassed by how hard he was, as though he were fifteen again and just figuring out what he liked, courtesy of the internet. But North couldn’t move. He knew he was trespassing; he knew he was breaking personal and professional boundaries. But he had wanted to hear those sounds for so long, and to hear them now, drawn out by other hands and another mouth and another man, corkscrewed through North’s gut and left him hurting so bad he thought he might actually pass out. He had loved Shaw for so long—

  Jesus Christ.

  He’d never really heard the words that way before in his head. Not so clearly. Not with their full meaning.

  He loved Shaw.

  From the other side of the door came the sound of fucking. North refused to think of it as sex or making love, because either term would layer emotion into it. The only person who was allowed to love Shaw was North. Then Shaw called out, “Yes, Daddy, yes!” That corkscrew went through North’s gut again like he’d swallowed a piece of glass with his last meal. He stumbled back to the couch and the living room full of the orange haze from the sodium lamps.

  Lying on his back, North jerked off viciously. He couldn’t hear Shaw anymore, but he could imagine him. When he came, a spasm ran through his body, locking muscles and joints. The room was suddenly too bright; the sodium haze turned everything inside out, and North covered his eyes with his arm.

  Even in the darkness, with his nose buried in the crook of his arm, North couldn’t escape Shaw. His mind rewound like an old videocassette, and then he was eight years in the past, on the first day at Chouteau, moving his single bag of belongings into the dorm room he was going to share with Pete Schroeder—later part of the inseparable Peter and Paul duo. North remembered glancing down the hall and seeing him for the first time: Kingsley Shaw Wilder Aldrich, dressed in a t-shirt featuring the album art for Queen’s A Night at the Opera that came to his knees. He wore bobby socks and Chucks with long, floppy laces. North remembered wanting to punch him on sight.

  That urge to punch had escalated over the first few weeks of the semester. Shaw seemed to be everywhere that North went: the dorm lounge, the dorm kitchen, the green expanse of quad where North played pick-up games of soccer and football. North remembered walking into the dining hall the second day of school and hearing Shaw ask if the kitchen staff could run out and buy some flax milk because his stomach was upset and he really didn’t think it equitable that the dining hall didn’t offer a plant-based milk that didn’t have nut allergens. North had wanted to say something, but then Shaw had pulled out a wallet—bedazzled across every square inch with rhinestones—and passed cash to the worker. For his flax milk. And North had decided, right there, that he hated Shaw Aldrich and would probably knock his teeth down his throat if they ever spent any time together.

  Except they were both enrolled in a philosophy course: Introduction to Law and Justice. Total student population, 12. And no matter how many times North changed seats, Shaw followed him. And talked. And talked. And talked. The professor ran the class as a seminar, so every day was more talking. Shaw never seemed to run out of words or ideas or comments or analysis—and North would sit there, seething on the inside because he didn’t even know what to say, let alone how to say it. North knew he was too young—still seventeen, when most of the guys were already eighteen and moving towards nineteen. Too stupid. Too poor, if he were being honest with himself. He knew that his clothes made him stand out, his vocabulary made him stand out, his job working construction made him stand out, his education—or lack thereof—made him stand out. And while standing out had some advantages—North didn’t even have to try; the gay boys at Chouteau College basically fell over for him whenever he wanted—it still didn’t feel good. North didn’t want to stand out. He wanted to fit in.

  But he also wasn’t a quitter. So in the second week, North made himself read the assignment twice, and he wrote out four pages in script of comments he might use and questions he might pose. He went to the library and pulled reference books and encyclopedias. He even bought a dictionary. And at the next class, North made a comment.

  The professor blinked, said something—North didn’t even hear the response because his blood was pounding in his ears so hard—and then the professor moved on, asking something else. But on the way out of the classroom, Shaw tagged along, as always, and said, “That was a really great comment. I thought your point about the fundamental psycholegal error was brilliant, and I don’t know why nobody else said anything about it.”

  Somehow that comment had led to coffee. And coffee had led to more conversations—in the lounge, in the kitchen, on the quad when the pick-up games grew less and less interesting and North found himself jogging over to talk to Shaw, who would be reading Camus or Sartre or something else only tangentially related to his coursework. Those conversations had led to that first Labor Day weekend at Shaw’s lakehouse, where their group of friends had coalesced. And then one day, without knowing it, North had been in love with his best friend, and he had sent Tucker to find out if Shaw felt anything remotely similar, and Tucker had come back and lied.

  Groaning, North rolled onto his side, pressing his face into the couch’s old cushions. If he’d just been a grown-up about the whole thing and asked Shaw out himself, things might have been different.

  Maybe, a small voice whispered in the back of North’s head. But maybe not. Because North was single now, wasn’t he? And Shaw was still with Jadon—getting his brains fucked out in the other room, in fact. So maybe Shaw had never felt the same way. Maybe—thank God, maybe it was better that North had never said anything. Because if he couldn’t have Shaw all to himself, completely, then something was better than nothing. Even if they were only ever friends.

  The creak of hinges at the end of the hallway made North’s breathing quicken. Then the soft sound of a step, and then Jadon’s voice pitched low. The bathroom light flicked on, water ran, and then the light went off again, and footsteps padded back to the bedroom. But the bedroom door hung open, and North could hear the two men talking. At first, the voices were too low, and then Jadon’s rose in anger.

  “I am listening, Shaw. No, don’t shush me. I’m listening. That’s why I’m mad. I know we couldn’t find Mrs. Parrish. I know the address was a bust. But you didn’t tell me you were going to be so completely idiotic—”

  “Don’t call me names, please.”

  “I’m not trying to call you names. I’m saying that was a stupid thing to do, babe. Going to Potosi? Walking into a prison to see a killer? Why? Because you can’t find that cop’s widow, and you think somehow, after all this time, you’re going to get some new information out of the Slasher.”

  “I wanted—”

  “You know that was dangerous, right? He doesn’t know you, Shaw. I mean, he didn’t know you. And now he does. Now you’re on his radar. Jesus, he might have had a weapon hidden on him, and he could have killed you right there.”