Page 124 of These Secret Years

“How does it end?”

“End?”

“How does this whole thing with them—when does it stop? You’re a grown man now. You’re strong, and you’re fast, and you could get your own scholarship at this point. When does it stop? Do you just say something?”

“It’s not that simple. If it was⁠—”

“What if it is?”

“It’s cute that you think that,” I say. “Like it’s really adorable that you think he’s just what? Some rich old violin teacher who saw me at a show and took me home to play with? That’s not who Adrian is.”

Knight takes a few deep breaths. I’ve stopped trying to leave because he’s my ride, and I can find my way back to the dorm and call an Uber, I guess, but something deep inside me is telling me not to leave like that. That I might never see him again if I leave like that.

“Don’t go,” he says.

“I’m standing right here.”

“I mean don’t go to Detroit.”

I shake my head. “You don’t get it. I don’t have a choice.” And right now, I’m thinking about that kid Adrian showed me the video of. The next in line. The kid who might be as lonely and touch-starved as I was when Adrian put his hand on my lower belly and told me to control my breathing while his finger traced a line behind my waistband and got me hard.

“You have choices,” he says. “You just don’t like the consequences, so what are they? Besides the money?”

“He’s just gonna do it to someone else,” I blurt.

Knight blinks rapidly. “Can you go to the police?”

“Just because he’s disgusting doesn’t mean he’s a criminal. Unfortunately.”

“I can’t believe that. None of this—what he did—was against any law?”

I huff. “I don’t think so. Not in Michigan.”

“That’s fucking unbelievable. Not even what his husband did?”

I shake my head. “I let it happen. Maybe I’m the person you want to be pissed off at.”

He exhales the entire tunnel’s worth of air. “No. No, I’m not mad at you. I’m fucking worried about you. You said they hurt you.”

“And I let them.”

“Well, what the fuck else were you supposed to do?” he cries out, and he sounds as helpless as I’ve felt for years.

The answer to his question, though? It was to not be so selfish. To be okay with getting a job in Sunrise Point. Help out with my sister. Send off homemade demos to music producers and cross my fingers they wouldn’t get lost in their email. Hope for better days like normal people do instead of taking advantage of a situation that I knew on every single level was wrong because of this dumb belief that Adrian put in my head that I deserved more. Better. Everything.

Only to be left feeling like nothing.

I start crying again as I sink down to the train tracks, my legs folded beneath me and my head in my hands. Knight is there with me in a heartbeat, and his arms are around me. I put mine around him and sob into his shirt, the wall of muscle utterly unforgiving against my nose. It’s an ugly cry and a long one.

When it’s finally tapering off, Knight presses a kiss against the side of my head. He says, “I need you to do something for me.”

I nod, waiting for it.

“I need you to ask him how he’d like to wrap this arrangement up. At least then you’ll know his end game.”

I don’t say anything, and he finally speaks again. “You don’t think I spent this whole semester training you to be strong and fit just to let you go get yourself hurt again, do you? I need you to look in the mirror, Sullivan. I need you to see what I see. And then go there and be the man they thought they could keep down.”

I clutch at his shirt. “Don’t let go,” I whisper.