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“Prison?” Ethan took a step forward. “What the hell does he have on both of you?”
Jay scratched his beard and looked at the floor.
“You don’t have to tell them,” Chris said quietly.
“Yeah, I do.” Jay looked up and sat straighter. “Ever since that night at the cabin, I’ve been pimping out Chris from an apartment we’ve been renting. I made the mistake of inviting Mickey without knowing who he was, and although I didn’t show Chris’s face in the photos I posted, he still recognized him. Now he’s threatening to snitch to Melissa and my parole officer about that.”
“You…” Ethan cleared his throat, fire igniting in his eyes. “Youpimpedhim? You made him sleep with strangers for money?”
“I did, and I’m not sugarcoating it. We spoke last night and decided to—”
Jay didn’t get to finish his sentence. Rage took over Ethan, the kind that makes a man jump on another man and smash his fist into his face.
Paralyzed with shock, Anthony watched as Jay tried to protect his face from Ethan’s blows, while Chris tried to separate them.
I should do something,Anthony thought, too numb to move.
Chris finally managed to pull Ethan back to the side of the room.
“You’re never gonna touch him again, you hear me?You’re fucking sick!” Ethan stopped shouting when Chris wrapped his arms around him in a tight hug. The sound of Ethan weeping on Chris’s shoulder finally broke through Anthony’s numbness.
“It’s okay,” Chris said in a soothing voice. “He doesn’t make me do that anymore. Please stop crying.”
Anthony’s instincts urged him to check on Ethan, but he wasn’t the one bleeding on the couch. A steady flow of blood drops trickled between Jay’s fingers as he covered his face.
Anthony hurried to soak a towel with water before coming back to crouch in front of Jay. “Let me see.” Jay lowered his hands. Nothing seemed to be broken, but his nose had already started to swell. Anthony carefully wiped the blood, then told Jay to hold the towel so he could grab a Band-Aid for the cut on his chin.
On his way to the bathroom, he saw that Ethan had calmed down, but Chris still hugged him tight. He took a Band-Aid with a smiling sunshine doodle and went back to put it on Jay’s chin. Drying blood was smeared around his nose. “Go wash your face.”
“Ant—”
“We’ll talk when you’re back.”
Jay got up, grimacing in pain as he made his way to the bathroom. He kept as much distance from Ethan as possible.
With Jay in the bathroom, Ethan raised his head from Chris’s shoulder, his face ashy and his eyes red and puffy.
“I need you to calm down so we can talk,” Chris told Ethan. “I could lose my family, E, and Jay could go to prison.”
“He should rot in there.”
“Stop. I got him in there in the first place.”
“This time, it’s not your fault.”
“True, but I still need you to listen. For me.”
Ethan nodded and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt.
Chris sat back on the couch and looked at Anthony. “Are you also willing to listen?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yes. You can tell me to leave.”
Anthony could see that he meant it. “I’ll listen.”
Ethan sat on the couch as well, not willing to give Jay his old spot back.
