A terrible sound tore out of Dara’s lips. “You can’t possibly—you can’t believe that, Noam! Do you really think you’re that fucking special? Do you think you’re so very different from me?”
“I ... no, but—”
“You think I deserved it, then?”
“No—god, Dara—”
“Then what?What, Noam? Do you even hear yourself?”
Noam wet his lips; it just stretched Lehrer’s cut open wider. He grimaced. “That’s ... here’s the thing, Dara. I consented from the beginning.”
“You’reseventeen, he’s—you can’t, you told me yourself you can’t—when he—”
“You know what I mean,” Noam snapped. It came out angrier than he meant it to, and he flinched, fingers curling up toward his wrists. “Sorry. But ... I wanted it, Dara. You have no idea. I—”
“So did I,” Dara snarled. “Or he told me I did, anyway, and he never fucking let me forget it either. But when you stop wanting it, you don’t get that option. Youwon’t. You don’t get tochange your mindwith him.” Dara was crying freely now, the tears slipping down his cheeks; his eyelashes had already gone to frost. “You told me that the first time it happened, you were drunk—so drunk you don’t even remember it. Don’t you hear yourself, Noam? Don’t you get it? If it were anyone else ... if it wereme, you would be telling me that was rape.”
Every breath Noam took felt labored, like it cost immeasurable effort to keep himself alive.
No. Dara was wrong, it wasn’t—Noam hadn’t—
Calix wouldn’t do something like that.
Noam hated himself the moment he thought it. Because ... because Lehrerhad, to Dara. Only Noam couldn’t help the voice that whispered back:But he’d never do that toyou.
He shouldn’t think like that. Dara would kill him if he could overhear it. But ...
But it was true. There was something special about what Noam and Lehrer had—or used to have, maybe, and yes, Calix—Lehrer—hit him, but did that erase everything else?
“Two weeks,” Noam said again. “I only have to make it a little while longer. And he—that’s all he wants, isn’t it? He’s afraid he’s lost me. So. I’ll just. I’ll prove he hasn’t.”
Dara had been midway through wiping his face; his hand fell away at that, his gaze flicking back to seize on Noam’s. “What the hell are you—what are you saying?”
God. God. Noam wanted to vomit. Didn’t have anything in his stomach to throw up.
“I’m saying I ... I’ll give him what he wants. I’ll sleep with him.”
In the silence that responded, Noam thought Dara was crying again. His shoulders were shaking, his lips quivering. Noam realized too late that wasn’t grief.
It was rage.
“That’s your solution?” Dara said. “That’s what you’d rather do than stay with me? Even after this—after hehurtyou—you’d rather be with him.”
“No. Of course not. But I—”
“Then go.” Dara spat the words out like acid. “Do it. Go back to him, and—and fuck him, and whatever else you want. But if you do that, you don’t come back.”
Those words ricocheted through Noam, leaving electricity in their wake.
He didn’t mean it.
He couldn’t—hewouldn’tmean it, not something like that. Only Dara had his chin tilted high, and although Dara’s eyes shimmered with tears, they were cold in a way that had nothing to do with the ice in his hair.
Noam drew his hands out from his coat pockets and reached for him; Dara took a step back, keeping Noam at a distance. Shook his head.
“Dara. Please. I—you know I don’t want this, but I have to. We don’t have any other—”
“Choice?” Dara’s mouth twisted in a sardonic knot. “But you do have a choice, Álvaro. You’ve always had a choice. And if you walk away from me right now, you’re choosing him.”
