Page 145 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

Troy sighs, visibly frustrated. ‘What you have,’ he goes on, determined, ‘is a bit of both and I need to prep you in case the girl bit is active, all right? Believe me, this isn’t what I wanna do on my Monday night. If you start bleeding—’

‘If I start bleeding, I’m gonna kill myself.’

‘Don’t be dramatic.’

‘Get out.’

‘Let me explain.’

‘Get out.’ Riley puts his hands over his ears, eyes shut. It cannot be real if he can’t see or hear it. ‘Get out, get out!’

When he opens his eyes, Troy is gone.

But he left a box of pads on the bed.

✴

Riley destroys them.

He rips them apart and flushes them away, hands trembling, heart and head messy like an open wound. He tells himself Troy is not only wrong but deluded and sick and evil. It takes nothing to convince himself of the latter. There’s no one he hates more on earth than Troy Harker and that, for better or worse, will never change.

Troy still brings him food.

He takes him up onto the roof.

Riley dreams of the blurry boy who is his brother. He dreams of Céliane and another girl with black hair dying together, trapped in a burning room, clinging, crying, I won’t let you go, and that love becomes a cord between them, living and breathing, a rope bridge, a shield, a promise.

Beneath the moonlight, he can feel himself becoming stronger, but so are the cramps. A sickly fever that doesn’t break through his skin settles into his bones instead, like steam trapped behind glass. It’s in his hormones, in his head. Riley is feeling new things. He starts imagining things he never has because sex is the very least of his interests or concerns in life, but it’s intrusively on his mind more and more.

He’d sooner die than talk to Troy about this and spends a lot of time taking cold baths, even sleeps in there sometimes. It only helps at first.

‘You smell different,’ Troy tells Riley one day, arms crossed.

‘Fuck you,’ Riley intones, wanting the backhander that’s no doubt coming because pain might provide some clarity.

But Troy stays exactly where he is, contrary motherfucker.

Ignoring Riley’s confused frown, Troy says, ‘Everyone’s noticed it. All the men. I need to ask if this is something you’re doing or—’

‘Doing?!’ Riley echoes incredulously, anger gnawing at what crumbs of patience he has left. ‘What the fuck would I be doing? I don’t even know what this is because you won’t tell me!’

‘I told you what I think, you didn’t want to hear it.’

Seething inside, Riley spits, ‘There’s no door.’

‘What?’

Riley nods towards the stairs. ‘N-not my fault. No door.’

‘I’ll put one at the bottom of the stairs.’

‘Do whatever the fuck you want.’

‘You’re begging for a black eye.’

‘So give me one then!’ Riley all but screams. ‘Drag me onto the roof and beat me unconscious, throw me off the side, shoot me, stab me, fucking drown me! Do whatever the fuck you want but don’t stand there and expect to have a polite conversation with me! You’re my jailor. I’m your prisoner. That’s how it is. I’m not your fucking son,’ he hisses, tears streaming down his cheeks, skin red, heart a wild and broken thing. ‘I am nobody’s son!’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN