3

He stumbled to the shower, letting the molten water blast along his back and shoulders, thinking of big, brown eyes and freckles sprinkled over pale skin. He felt weirdly responsible for the boy. He didn’t know why he kept thinking of him as a boy. They couldn’t be more than six years apart, but Adam felt like he’d been born an old man—had lived a hundred lives in the twenty-seven years he’d been alive. Noah’s life had clearly not been easy, but there’d been a vulnerability, a quiet desperation that had tugged at something buried so deep down inside Adam. Something he didn’t know even existed inside him. His conscience.

Would it bring Noah any comfort knowing he had, in fact, kept Adam up all night?

 

He was watching him again. It was an almost nightly occurrence now. At first, Noah thought he was going crazy, imagining phantoms in the shadows. But no, it was him. Adam Mulvaney. The man who killed his father. His father…the child predator. Noah’s stomach lurched at the thought, the images from that video trying to claw their way back into his brain. But he wouldn’t let them in and had found a million creative ways to keep them out.

Noah could feel his eyes on him even now. Despite the throbbing bass of the dance music, the dizzying display of neon beams shooting across darkened walls, and the sea of bodies moving in one cohesive wave, Noah could feel Adam’s eyes on him. He had no idea what Adam wanted.

At first, he thought maybe he was coming for his revenge or maybe just taking out a witness, but Noah had given him a million chances to end his misery, and the bastard never took them. Instead, he just watched him. Maybe he got some kind of sick thrill seeing Noah suffer. The joke was on him, though, because Noah was too high to feel anything but good.

He fell out the side door of the club into the brisk night air. He didn’t bundle up. The synthetic happiness coursing through him made him hot all over. The alley smelled like rotting garbage and piss, but Noah twirled along the alley like a ballet dancer, stumbling when he heard the alley door open and slam shut behind him. He didn’t look, didn’t acknowledge his stalker in any way. Just stumbled out of the alley and into the parking lot.

It was early enough that others still lingered on corners, in parking lots, outside the bodega. But Noah had never felt so alone. He was always alone, even when people were packed around him. No matter what he tried, nothing filled the hollowness inside him. Not drugs, not alcohol, not meaningless hookups. His lip curled at that last one.

He’d left his friend, Bailey, and her girlfriend at the bar to follow a random stranger into the bathrooms, but the guy was too wasted to get it up. Noah had left him passed out in the stall.

He couldn’t help the laugh that escaped, the sound startling in the still of the night. He was destined to be alone. He wished Adam would just do it already. Shoot him in the head, slit his throat, shove him in front of a moving car. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than living with what he’d seen.

Maybe he needed to help him along. Maybe Adam didn’t want to take him out with a crowd around. The thought of death was a balm that soothed Noah’s frayed psyche. It didn’t make him sad or scared; it just gave him a sense of peace, a peace he’d never experienced before. He giggled once more, blinking back tears. He retraced his steps, hopscotching over puddles and cracks in the sidewalk. Two blocks over. Three blocks down. The screech of protesting metal as he pushed open the heavy door.

Did he follow? Was he curious? Noah had come to the building a lot after their first encounter, but he never found anything. Whatever Adam had hidden there that kept him coming back again and again had been moved after that night. Not that Noah blamed him. Just because he hadn’t killed Adam didn’t mean he wouldn’t turn him in to the cops. But he hadn’t. After the video—after he’d seen what his father had done—it all came back to him in a rush. All of it. A shiver ran through him as he tried to drive the thoughts away. What would he do when the drugs stopped working?

Once inside the abandoned building, he sat on the metal steps that led to the second floor, waiting. Now that he was still, the drugs finally took hold, doing their job. Perspiration gathered at his hairline and beads of sweat slid down his back. Time ticked by, fast then slow, then fast again, like he was in a spaceship, warping through space and time.

He tilted his head back until he was gazing up at the metal rafters. There was a hole in the ceiling framing the night sky above, a singular beam of moonlight spearing through the darkness. How had Noah not noticed it before? He smiled as the stars and moon blurred and sharpened, then danced, chasing each other in and out of the opening on the roof to wind around the supports. He held up his hand and the stars poured through his fingers like sparks, the embers popping against his skin like tiny rubber bands.

“Noah?”

He inhaled sharply at his name on Adam’s lips. He jerked upright into a sitting position, hanging onto the rusted metal banister so he didn’t tumble forward. Adam glowed. His skin shimmered like he was a vampire in a bad teen movie, like his skin was made of light. His aura throbbed a deep red that made Noah want to touch it. He wished Adam wasn’t so beautiful. It would have been better that way.

But he was. Adam was so pretty. His hair was so black it appeared blue in the moonlight, and his eyes were the palest blue. Maybe he was a vampire. No human should look that good. He narrowed his gaze as his eyes fell to the deep vee of his t-shirt. The top of a moth or butterfly wings peeked out from the center of his chest, and his neck was adorned with a large wraparound snake tattoo and a necklace with a bullet hanging from it.

“Are you real?” Noah heard himself ask, then snorted at the wonder in his own voice. What the hell had Bailey given him anyway? It was clearly the good shit.

“Are you high?”

Noah lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “Are you a cop?” His heart caught as Adam grinned, revealing perfect teeth. “Probably veneers,” he muttered.

“What?”

Noah could have said nothing, but, instead, he said, “Your teeth. They probably aren’t even yours.”

Noah knew he wasn’t making any sense but he was unable to stop himself from saying whatever popped into his head. He wanted to touch him, to pet him, to comb his fingers through his hair and taste his skin that still glittered like spun sugar. Did he taste sweet?

“They’re mine,” Adam assured him. “But if it makes you feel any better, my dad paid a lot of money for them. They were pretty jenky when I was little. My birth mom wasn’t real big on dentists. Or hygiene. Or kids for that matter.”

Noah processed that bit of information. Adam had a birth mom. Had Noah known that? Maybe. He knew Adam had been adopted. All of Mulvaney’s children had been. He was the Gen X Daddy Warbucks.

Noah fell back onto his forearms. “Are you here to kill me?”

Adam moved closer, head cocked like a German Shepherd. “No.”

Disappointment settled inside Noah. “Are you following me?”

Another step. “Yes.”

“Why?”

That seemed to stop him in his tracks. “I…don’t know.”

Noah sighed. “You should kill me. I know too much.”

“You probably shouldn’t say that to somebody you suspect is a murderer.”

“If I was going to tell anybody I would have by now,” Noah admitted. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

“It’s not. I’m…not.”

“That’s good,” Noah managed before his eyes unfocused and his head lolled on his shoulders.

Adam’s palms suddenly cupped his face. “Hey. What are you on?”