AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Joshua looks...diminished.
I remember the way he took up so much space in my father’s office. It seems like several lifetimes ago that I was complaining so bitterly about having to marry him. I could never have imagined him ending up like this. Not ever. His prison uniform hangs on his once muscular frame, and he has two black eyes, each in a similar state of swelling. Joshua, chained at the wrists and ankles, shuffles in like a man who’s been broken down.
In some strange way, he reminds me of myself.
I don’t get up from my seat. One of the conditions of any visit to this place isno touching allowed. I’m not about to contest that rule.
I watch as the guard shackles Joshua’s chains to a solid metal ring on his side of the table. He’s now trapped here with me. The chains make a loud noise as he gathers them, lowering his manacled wrists to the table and looking at me with a resigned expression.
“Who did that to you?” It’s not the most courteous greeting, but fuck it. We’re well past that.
Joshua sits down heavily in the chair opposite me and studies me. All the heat has gone out of his eyes and most of the life, too. He looks as bad as I feel, and that’s saying something.
“Rome Montague. I believe you’re acquainted.”
I huff a laugh because that is literally the most hilarious thing I have heard all day. Yeah, I’m acquainted. Joshua has enormous balls to make that joke. Some of the tension knotted in my chest eases. Not all of it.
“What the fuck is going on, Joshua? You had videos of me on your computer?” A sick anger grips me. “Tell me what the hell you’ve done, and tell me right now.”
There’s no sign of the smarmy, overconfident asshole he used to be. He looks me straight in the eye. “There’s nothing I can tell you about the videos. I don’t know how they got there.” He pushes a hand through his hair, an old habit, but winces halfway through. Rome must have got him in the head, too.
“You’re hiding something from me,” I accuse him. “I know it. I can feel it. And I’ll do whatever I have to do to make you tell me what it is.”
Joshua buries his face in his hands, momentarily, before looking at me once more.
“Here’s what I will tell you.” He leans forward, glancing at the door, and for a heartbeat, I can see a glimpse of the way he used to be. It crumbles in the weak light coming through the prison windows. “I should have told you this a long time ago. Weallshould have been honest. Here’s the truth. I’m in love with somebody. I have been for a very long time. But it was someone I could never be with, you understand? Not out in the open.”
He seems genuine. “What’s her name?” I press.
Joshua looks down. “Hisname is Patrick.”
My mouth falls open. I can’t help it. I don’t believe it.
And then I do.
“I never lied to you,” Joshua says. “I just didn’t tell you the whole truth. I’m gay, Avery. And despite it being the twenty-first century, despite what you might think... most people in our circles aren’t so accepting of it.”
He finally looks up at me tentatively, and for a second, he looks like a scared little boy. If he’s lying, he deserves a damn Academy Award, because I’ve bought every word.
“You should have told me,” is all I can manage.
“I was going to tell you as soon as we were married. As soon as I knew I could trust you not to tell anyone. It hardly matters anymore.”
I nod, letting that sink in. A gay fiancé is not something I was expecting when I walked in here. It’s something that makes a ton of sense, now that I think about it. What kind of man would throw away a chance at true love for an arranged marriage that has been years in the making? An arranged marriage the bride-to-be has been fighting at every turn? All along, I’d believed it was greed propelling Joshua toward the altar. Turns out, it was love.
“Look.” Joshua sits up as straight as he can. “I was always going to be a show husband. I knew that from the moment your father approached me with the idea of marrying your sister. I never intended to sleep with her, or with you.” Something like pain crosses his face. “I was telling you the absolute truth about letting you have lovers if we were married. This, us? It’s a business arrangement, or it was. It would only have been fair. That’s all I know, Avery. I can’t tell you about the videos or anything else because I don’t know anything.”
He grits his teeth, and I realize that what I saw before wasn’t just pain—it was anger. “I’m so sorry that happened to you. When they told me—” He looks away, then looks back. “I went fucking ballistic.” He lets out a long breath. “I swear, I could never hurt you, Avery. However those videos came to be on my computer, it wasn’t me.”
“What about the newspaper? The first edition of The Verona Times?”
Joshua nods. “Yeah, that one I can explain. We had ten thousand copies of the first edition circulated that night before a major news story broke. It was the actor who died suddenly, you remember?”
I nod. I’ve been caught up on all the pertinent news since my escape, mostly by my aunt, who loves to gossip about anything and everything Hollywood. “Yeah. I heard.”
“We had to run a second edition at four in the morning. We reclaimed and scrapped as many copies of the first edition as we could, but we couldn’t keep tabs on them all. Mostly, we asked the stores to dispose of them on their own. I’ve given the police a list of every news outlet that was supplied with the first edition, but it’s so many. Ten thousand copies, Avery. A needle in a haystack. How do you even start to look?”
He looks anguished. I have to say, his explanation is pretty damn solid.
