“In my pocket?”
“On your side, whatever. I always know when he’s hiding stuff because he goes off sex.”
Liam cringed. “Seriously? I didn’t need to know that.”
“Then you shouldn’t keep things from me. I’ll tell you how my last period was if you don’t cough up.”
“Rosa!”
Rosa shrugged. “I’m beyond giving a shit. Moving Dad has been hard, but I know there’s something else going on. Are you upset because you’ve got a boyfriend?”
“A what?”
“That cutie from the other week. It’s okay, you know. Cory wouldn’t mind; he’d want you to be happy.”
“Zac’s not my boyfriend.”
“No? Then why are you blushing?”
“I’m not.” Liam subconsciously rubbed the back of his neck. “Why do you have to be such a pain in my arse?”
“Because Mum’s not here to do it. Now cut the crap and spill.”
“No.”
“Liam.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
“And who gives you the right to decide—”
“Because he’s a fucking rentboy. Not Prince Charming the Second come to sweep me off my goddamned feet.”
Rosa absorbed Liam’s explosion with little more than a blink, and it took seconds for Liam to realise that she’d intended to provoke him all along. She was well-versed enough in Liam’s personality to irk him into revealing everything he’d tried so hard to keep from her. “You’ve been sleeping with hookers?”
“Hooker, singular. Just Zac.”
“I see. Did you know he was a hooker?”
“Yes.”
“Did you pay him to sleep with you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Now there was a question, and one he’d yet to find an answer for, despite the eleven long days since the fateful morning he’d slammed the door on the tentative new world he’d found with Zac. “He didn’t feel like a hooker . . . never did.”
Rosa pointed at the kitchen table. “Sit.”
Liam sat.
“Tell me from the beginning. How long has this been going on?”
Dear God, did the torture never end? But now he’d started, Liam felt unable to stop, because despite Rosa’s suspicions that Mike knew all about it, he hadn’t mentioned Zac to Mike since his drunken confession in the pub, and suddenly, the weight in his heart was too much to bear.
He took a deep breath and returned to the start, back to that heady night outside the club, and told Rosa everything, right up to when he’d picked up that damn fucking syringe and the bubble he’d imagined around him and Zac had burst into a thousand pieces.
