Scott unlocked the door but didn’t lift his gaze to Thomas’s face when it opened. Thomas took a step inside, then secured the lock once again. He crouched down, resting a hand on Scott’s knee.
“Talk to me.”
Scott chewed his lip. “I hate it.” He touched the top of his head. “I can only imagine what it looks like.”
Thomas sighed. “It’ll grow back.”
“I know.” Scott blinked to dry up his tears, but they were persistent, and Thomas cupped his cheek to catch them. “I know, but…I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t get him off of me, Thomas. He was going to –”
“He didn’t get to. He won’t get the chance to hurt you again.”
“It’s my fault.”
“No,” Thomas said firmly. “It’s not.”
“Itis, Thomas. I told him he could do those things to me.”
Thomas leaned back, eyeing him.
“I wanted to give Megan a real chance to get clean and didn’t care about what happened to me. The first time we met –”
Thomas’s hand tightened on his knee. Scott held it and nuzzled into the palm on his face. “He didn’t hurt me. He wasrough…but that wasn’t what scared me. It was the things he whispered into my ear, the sick things that he needed to say aloud to enjoy my body. He was stronger than me; he could’ve done them, but he didn’t, just paid me the next day and left the door open for a repeat. It was me who went after him, and when I got out, I went back to escorting. I wanted to pay him back as soon as I could, but…”
“But what?”
He lifted Scott’s chin so he had no choice but to look at him. Scott fixated on the blue of Thomas’s iris. He didn’t know when Thomas had taken the lens out but imagined it was in solidarity at Scott not being able to keep up his own mask.
“Scott?”
“That day I came to the auction with Anthony…”
Thomas stiffened. “He put that hideous necklace on you.”
Scott gasped, reaching for his throat. He slumped, pressing his forehead against Thomas’s when he stroked the pearls. Warren hadn’t ripped them from him.
“It’s still there,” Thomas confirmed.
“It wasn’t a necklace,” Scott whispered. “It was a shock collar. Warren had set a trap for me. I managed to get away, went straight to the police, but they weren’t much help, and later when I went home, Warren had left me something on my bedroom ceiling, an unhappy face in glow-in-the-dark ink.”
“He’d got inside?”
Scott lifted his head to nod. “So I went to you. I feel safe with you, and that’s not the mansion, or the gate, or the wall; it’s left over from when we were cellmates.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Warren?”
“I thought you might…”
“Might what?”
“Think I deserved it.”
Thomas’s blue eye widened.
“He scared off my clients, and I didn’t want him to set me another trap like he did with Anthony, but he’s been watching us. He knew when we went to the beauty salon and when we got our nails done.”
“That drawing on the car?”
Scott nodded. “He was at The Frog & Toad. He said he would make me bleed for you.”
