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I dash the back of my hand against my face. I don’t want to be crying. “He followed the rules. We both did, all the way through high school. Really bad things happened to us—Mom died, and Dad married Candace, and she moved in with her daughters so Leo had to sleep in the basement on that horrible creaky futon…”
“It was a long time ago,” Trap says.
He’s right. But he’s wrong, too, because it feels like yesterday. The wounds of childhood and adolescence are deep, the heart-blood way too bright. “We stood up to them together. I watched Leo inTwelve Angry Menwhen Dad was too busy to go to a school play. Leo went to my choir concert. He brought me daisies! My favorite!”
Trap sighs. But he doesn’t try to stop me. Not anymore.
“Leo and I got drunk together, the night of high school graduation. We stole a bottle of bourbon from the liquor cabinet and went to the park at the end of the street. Neither of us even liked bourbon, but Candace did, and we wanted to take something from her.”
We drank until the world spun around us. Until I puked. Leo held my hair back and told me I would be okay, and I believed him.
“It wasn’t until college that he started using. Adderall first, because his roommate said it would help. Then meth. And ecstasy. And Crash.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Trap tries again.
“I was supposed to be there for him. He was mytwin.” I don’t realize I shouted the last word until the echoes push against my eardrums. “He was my twin,” I repeat, whispering this time. “And when everyone walked away—Dad and all our family, all our friends… I was the only one who could help him. The only one who could save him.”
“Leo could have saved himself.” I know Trap’s tone. It’s the calm reasoning of a group leader at Al-Anon. It’s the detached truth of a therapist. I’ve heard variations on those words dozens and dozens of times.
“He needed help,” I say. I don’t need to be defensive. Trap loves me, no matter what mistakes I’ve made. But I hear the knife edge in my words. I feel the shame. The frustration. The helpless, heartless anger when Leo slipped again and again and again.
Eight trips to rehab. A week here. Two weeks there. Once, the last time, for two solid months.
I thought I could help him. I thought I could heal him.
I was wrong.
“I lost my family for Leo. I lost my friends. I lost my fiancé.”
Trap snorts at that, like he just can’t help himself. I know he thinks Jason Carter wasn’t much of a loss.
Jason wasn’t the man I thought he was. Our relationship wasn’t the dream I believed. If Leo hadn’t driven Jason off, I would have gotten married, would have followed my husband to some small university town in the Midwest, would have sacrificed my career for his.
I never would have had an orgasm. Not once. Not with Jason. Not even when I pleasured myself. I never would haveimaginedthe toys stored in the bottom drawer of Trap’s dresser, just across the room.
My cheeks heat, but that just gives me fuel to name Leo’s worst sin. “I lost you.”
Three years, I could have been with Trap.
Three years, I could have explored the knife-edge of pleasure and pain.
Three years, I could have learned the inner workings of Diamond Freeport, Trap’s billionaire tax haven.
Three years, I could have become me. Become us.
“You didn’t lose me,” Trap says. “I’m still here.”
“But all that time we could have had together…” My voice quivers because I’m nearly overwhelmed by the thought of everything I lived through during those long years. “Instead, I was a slave. I was raped over and over and over again. I killed Klaus Herzog, right here, in this house.”
I can see Trap wants to stop me. He wants to interrupt. But I hold up a hand, because this is my best chance to make him understand. My best chance to make clear exactly what I need and why I need it. “Because of me, because of Leo, we’re waiting to see if the police will charge us with murder. Because of me, because of Leo, the tax authorities may shut down the freeport. Because of me, because of Leo, every member of the Diamond Ring, your best and richest clients, might be blackmailed by Klaus’s brothers.”
He’s shaking his head. He doesn’t want to accept that any of this is my fault. He doesn’t want to agree.
But I know the truth. And I’m almost there. I’ve almost finished telling him what I need. “Bring him here.”
“What?” He’s confused. This isn’t what he expected.
“Bring Leo to the freeport.” I nod toward the computer on top of the dresser. “His address is in there. It’s just in Philadelphia.”
