Page 102 of The Club

Oh, fuck. I should’ve known better than to introduce this topic. Heat blooms in my face as I admit, “I … might.”

I can’t believe I’m having this conversation in this house. Jesus Christ.

He’s surprised by it. He’s pleased.

“We’ll try some things maybe?” he says. “Sometime.”

I can’t quite make a verbal response to that. I just relax against him and hope he understands. The way he settles against me says that he does.

How did I get so fucking lucky to have someone like him? Someone I can be myself with, someone I can try things with. What a strange freedom I’ve stumbled into. I can’t imagine it with anyone but Rafael.

Some of that freedom vanishes as he and I are forced to separate while we plate the food. The walls close in again.

Rafael looks around. There’s no table in the kitchen. He peers out into the dining room.

My stomach twists. I don’t want to sit out there. It reminds me of all those dinners after my father brought me back here, how he’d make me sit there and eat with him, how I’d be shaking the whole time. I once threw up on the floor out there. He beat the shit out of me for it.

Rafael sits on the kitchen floor with the plate of crackers.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Eating,” he says and picks up a cracker. “Put the shrimp down.”

“We could go upstairs.”

“I don’t want to walk back upstairs. I’m hungry.”

I look at him sitting there in a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, eating crackers. He didn’t say anything about the dining room, but he remembered our conversation.

God, he fucks me up sometimes. I don’t know if that shows on my face or not as I join him on the floor. Even if it does, he just lets it be. With him, unlike with me father, I don’t have police myself every fucking second. I’m allowed to feel things.

As we eat, we discuss what needs to be done before we head back to the city. There are quite a few bodies to dispose of. Noah went back to get some equipment, but he’s returning to help Rocco. We also have Rafael’s wrecked bike to deal with.

There’s the possibility, too, of someone connected to the Collector looking for him. We have a name now, though Rafael said he didn’t want to know it. He asked me to take care of it for him, monitoring, watching for fallout. Jesus, I think that fucked me up more than anything else.

He seems like he’s doing okay. He seems, in fact, calmer than I’ve ever seen him. Notcalmmaybe—I doubt he’ll ever be that, and that’s fine, I like him like he is—but some of the edge is off. I’ll kill anyone, anytime, if it helps him find a moment of peace.

I don’t feel peace though. Not in this house.

After we finish eating and clean up the kitchen, we go to my father’s office. I’ve been going through cash pretty fast getting rid of bodies and motivating people to look the other way.

Rafael hangs back while I open the wall safe. At first, I think he’s giving me privacy to put in the combination, but then something crashes to the ground. I nearly jump out of my skin.

Furious at being startled, I whip around to see Rafael standing by the leather couch. A crystal lamp is shattered on the ground at his feet.

“Oops,” he says dryly.

“What the fuck, Rafael. And get your bare feet away from that glass.”

My heart is hammering. I’m still pissed off that he startled me, here of all places. This room is one of the worst in the house. Despite the bullet holes from the showdown in here a few months again, everything in this room still shouts with my father’s voice.

Faggot.

Pussy.

Disgrace.

I’ll cut off your cock if I ever catch you acting gay again.