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“In a nutshell.”
He said it lightly, but I remembered how he’d dared Frankie to stab him in the heart at Chance’s party. Holden had laughed it off, but it hadn’t been a game. In that moment it had been real. A crazy desire washed over me to protect him from something that had already happened.
“What the fuck did they do to you in Alaska?”
Holden frowned as if my concern unnerved him. Or confused him. He reached for his flask and took a long pull before answering.
“You don’t want to hear it. Suffice to say, it didn’t work. My already fragile grasp of sanity took a hit, but the conversion therapy failed. Because of course it failed. It’s not possible to change the fundamental being-ness of a person. You can only try to beat it down with shame and guilt. Or try to drown it in cruelty. But I won. Who I am, stayed. Unfortunately, the cold did too.”
“Goddamn.”
Holden frowned again at my reaction and looked away. “But that’s all icy water under the bridge. I survived, schemed my way out of the sanitarium, and here I am.”
There he was. In my school, in my space, in my thoughts. An intruder in my perfectly ordered world of make-believe, sauntering through its imaginary walls to show how flimsy they could be…if I let him.
“How did you scheme your way out of the sanitarium?” I asked as we moved on down the hallway.
“The aforementioned blowjob with a married therapist. It’s funny how blackmailing an institution with a little sex scandal miraculously improves one’s prognosis.”
I laughed despite the crazy absurdity of it all.
“Cheers,” I said. “That’s probably the best—or worst—thing I’ve ever heard.”
We clinked bottle to flask and I drained my beer. We’d come to the master bedroom. Holden flopped onto the king-sized bed. Cage the Elephant asked if we were for real or just pretending. If we’d burn out by morning.
I stood, not knowing what to do with myself.
Holden grinned his sly grin. “I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you put that empty bottle under someone’s pillow.”
“No chance,” I said, venturing to sit at the edge of the bed while Holden lay sprawled out.
Christ, what am I doing?
But I was tired of asking that question. Tired of the answer being nothing.
“Let me try some of that vodka.”
He arched a brow. “Getting adventurous?”
“I feel like I’ve come this far, sitting in a stranger’s house, drinking their beer…”
“Spilling your guts to another, better looking, stranger?”
“You don’t feel like a stranger anymore.”
Holden’s knowing grin faltered. He offered me his flask. “Then don’t stop now.”
“Ah, shit. I have to drive.”
“I’ll call James to take you home. You can pick your truck up in the morning.”
My old walls and protections battled with the heated recklessness of the night. Of the secrets Holden and I had divulged and the private pain we shared.
It’s not real life. It’s a timeout. Tomorrow, I have to go back, but tonight…
I took the flask and tilted it back. The vodka burned a path down my throat, and I coughed, my eyes watering.
“Smooth,” I croaked, and Holden laughed.
