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“In what way?” Bronson asked, knowing exactly what he meant. He stepped over a pile of clothes on the creaking staircase and continued up it slowly, taking everything in. The dull browns. The musty scent. The echoing walls. It was definitely a blast from the past. One he never thought he’d be reliving in such vivid technicolor.
Shane followed him. “You know what I mean. I heard you were like this billionaire recluse everyone is afraid of.”
“You’ve been keeping tabs on me?” Bronson tried to ignore the pleasure that brought him. He failed.
“Here and there. No pictures to speak of, you being a scary recluse and all. I expected long, dirty hair and broken fingernails.”
“Which explains why you didn’t recognize me.”
“No, that would be the twenty-plus years since I’ve seen you. Why buy this place? Why now? Just let me tear it down and be done with it. I’ll be out of your hair by the end of the day.”
“Why would I want it torn down?”
“Bronson,” Shane said, his voice razor sharp. When Bronson turned back to him, Shane gestured toward the dorms with a nod.
Bronson followed his line of sight to the door at the end of the landing. “Surely you don’t think it’s still there?”
“Who the fuck knows, but why risk it?”
Bronson turned back to him and studied his T-shirt. The one with his company’s logo on it. The one stretched tight across pecs that had seen more than their fair share of resistance. “You’ve done well for yourself.”
He glanced down at the logo and shrugged. “It’s not all mine. I have a silent partner.”
“I meant the pecs,” Bronson said with a chuckle. “You used to be scrawny as fuck.”
When Shane gaped at him, Bronson laughed again then turned and finished his ascent. Stepping onto the landing sent an electrical current pulsing through his body. Every strange thing that had ever happened to him started in this house. The bullying. The beating. The beast.
He felt a set of long fingers wrap around his forearm. “Don’t go in there.” When Bronson looked at Shane’s hand then up at him as though astonished, Shane let go and showed his palms in surrender. “I know, I know. Mind the suit. But there’s no need to go in there. We can’t change what happened that night.”
Bronson studied the man’s sculpted mouth, his lips pulled into a grim expression of sympathy. But Shane didn’t understand. Bronson had no desire to change what happened that night. Quite the opposite, in fact. He relished the memory of it. The pranks they would play together on the guard. The subsequent beatings they’d take for it.
But that night, they’d gone too far and Shane had barely managed to escape the guard’s initial attempt to capture him, slipping out of his bloodied, calloused hands and running back to the dorm. Unfortunately, his freedom was short-lived. He heard the man’s shoes stomp across the landing, closer and closer until he had to make a decision. Face the drunkard again or hide.
Bronson remembered the boy’s wide eyes. The fear on his face when his gaze landed on the bed. When it drifted to the dark space beneath it. When he had to make a decision: fists or claws.
When Bronson opened the door to the north dorm, it emitted a moan of protest in response. He could hardly blame it. The school had been awash in anguish and misery. Nobody wanted it reopened, not even the doors themselves, apparently. It hadn’t been all bad, though. He’d experienced many firsts here, including his first crush. His first kiss. His first orgasm.
Shane walked up behind him to peer into the room from over his shoulder, his nearness causing a warmth to pool in Bronson’s abdomen. But the room itself took front and center once his eyes adjusted to the brightness.
All the beds were gone save one. One solitary cot, little more than a metal frame with springs, sat askew near the far wall. The mattress had been dragged half off the springs and pilfered by mice. Dirty stuffing littered the floor around the bed, but not enough to hide the claw marks completely.
Bronson’s gaze locked onto them like a guided missile, the deep grooves just as disturbing now as they had been two decades ago. Was that why they’d left the cot? To obscure the truth? To hide the evidence?
He started when Shane’s voice broke into his thoughts. “You died,” he said softly, and Bronson knew the memories of that time were washing over Shane as much as they were himself.
Bronson blinked back to the present and turned to him.
He was studying the marks just as intently as Bronson had. Without looking at him, he said deep in thought, “That night. You died.” Shane’s sapphire irises met Bronson’s gray ones at last and held them for a long moment before adding, “I saw you. Drummond killed you before he came after me.”
Ah, this would explain a lot. He didn’t realize Shane had seen the body.
He stepped past him and into the room, refocusing again on the markings. “You asked if I’ve been keeping tabs on you.” He turned back to him, his steady expression one of absolute calm. Absolute focus. “Of course I have, Montgomery. I’ve always found people who come back from the dead fascinating.”
Bronson didn’t know if he should be worried or flattered. Shane wasn’t wrong, but to have him say it so blatantly, so accusingly, threw him.
He lifted an impressed brow before making his way to the cot to get a closer look, his designer Oxfords echoing against the walls with each step. “Is that why you’ve never tried to get in touch?” he asked, exuding nonchalance. On the outside, anyway. His insides were a roiling sea of turmoil.
Shane followed, his work boots muffled in the large space.
