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Mr. X was breathing hard. He wiped a hand over his mouth and said, “You were right. I needed this. You’re a sage, my friend.”
Don said, “Shay, take off your clothes.”
I didn’t move.
He said it again: “Take off your clothes, Shay.” And I had a moment—just a second—where I thought of saying no.
JAMIE:Stop. I can’t listen anymore. I know it’s unprofessional, I know you want to tell me, but I can’t do it. I just can’t—
(Footsteps. Rustling.)
End of transcript.
Chapter Fifteen
No one had ever stopped when I’d begged them to, but I guess the rules were different for me. I followed as Jamie retreated, quick on his heels.
“I’m telling you this for a reason, Jamie. The party tonight at Fox Lane… It reminded me of Don. Yeah, I know, there were people in masks and chanting, and none of that was the same. But the man who held me by the neck said,Wait until the Philosopher gets you.”
Jamie stood in the corner of the room, shoulders hunched, hands in his hair. When he ended the recording, he’d thrown his phone on the couch like it disgusted him. It sat there now, dark-screened against the petal-pink cushion, looking up at me like it was watching.
“What about it?” Jamie asked.
“Mr. X and the men after him, they talked about seeking Don’s counsel. Mr. X called him a sage. What if Don is the Philosopher?” I could feel Don’s specter hovering over me, growing more corporeal with every passing day.
“Christ, Shay.” Jamie was on his last reserve. I’d pushed him too hard, offered too strong a dose of the past. “If that’s true—if there’s even achance—you can’t go back.”
“The thing is, I have to.” What I’d witnessed at Fox Lane had electrocuted me with panic, but once the adrenaline washed out and I was safe again, the realization had settled over me: This was it. The reason I’d come. “I have to figure out how Laurel was involved. I have to know what they’re doing.”
Jamie’s face was incredulous. “You just told me you were tortured at the hands of a man you think is part of this group—and even if he’s not, you say being there feels like being back in his house. And you want to go backin? Fuck no.” Jamie sprang forward. “Shay, what do you think is going to happen?”
The truth hit me when he stopped and folded his arms over his chest.
“You don’t trust me,” I said.
His expression became familiar: Jamie Knight, tight-lipped, trying not to show he disapproved, his eyes giving him away. No matter how he’d grown, he was still the same judgmental boy underneath.
“You said it yourself. The things you did with Don.” He sucked in a breath. “Youlikedit. There’s a part of you that responds to…the pain.”
For eight years, I’d feared telling anyone the truth. So I should have seen this coming. But it wasJamie, and I’d started to believe.… I swallowed the thought. “You think I’m sick in the head.”
“I don’t think that at all. But I saw you that day in the city, remember? I hope you remember, because I can’t forget. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew enough to be terrified by the way you were acting, the look on your face. You were lost, Shay.”
“You think I’ll lose control.”
Won’t you?that dark, charming voice whispered.Doesn’t a part of you long for it?
I’d stopped. At Fox Lane, when I turned the corner in the hallway and that stately living room came into view—that landscape of naked need—I’d been drawn like a moth to flame, like Sleeping Beauty to the spindle. Forgetting for a moment why I’d come, forgetting everything but that old urge, long snuffed, flaring back to life…
Jamie reached for my hand. I took an involuntary step back, and he froze. “You were in a cult. Do you even realize that? It’s not something you just shake off.”
“No, I wasn’t—”
“Yes, you were. And you might never have gotten out if Clem hadn’t died. Do you know when I heard she committed suicide, my first feeling was relief?Relief, Shay. Because your mom called and said you’d picked up the phone again, after a year of silence. She said Clem’s death made you reach out, and you were actually going to class, going to graduate. The last time, it took Clem dying to break through the brainwashing. You can’t go back.”
“Don’t you think that haunts me?” I stared at him, wishing he could somehow feel what I was feeling. “I’ll never forgive myself. I won’t let it happen again.”
I grabbed Jamie’s phone and thrust it at him.
