Lance Sweets was a Keeper.
What he kept were secrets.
His profession allowed him to gather them and lock them away. People came to him and told him everything. He knew who loved who, who hated who and what they really wanted.
In a way, he was powerful. In his mind, locked up tight, were things that would shock and amaze. If he unlocked the mental door, lives could be ruined.
Or saved.
Zack's secret, at least the one that really mattered, weighed the most. For a while, Sweets had needed to tell. But he never did. The law bound him. So he kept it, cursing the legal silence with every other breath.
For a Keeper, Sweets had very few secrets of his own. Most of them were left over from adolescence, things that didn't matter in this life.
But he had only one, one that made his palms sweat and his heart beat just thinking of it.
Stolen kisses in the lab.
Squeezing hands under the table.
Hands in his lap, in his pants, gasping with need.
Fevered whispers during the shift change.
And every now and then, a stolen kiss. The guard always looked away. He understood their situation.
Sweets shared his only secret with Zack