Outside in the parking lot, Jay was trying everything he knew to keep his mind off Adam. All those hopes went down in flames when he spotted Adam sitting on the stone edge of a flowerbed, chucking pieces of mulch from it to the opposite side of the door.
"You're really gonna piss off some janitor if you keep doing that," Jay warned with a half-hearted grin. Adam, startled at having been noticed, dropped a wood chip and looked up sheepishly.
"Sorry. Got bored."
Jay shrugged and took a glance at his watch. Almost seven and the sun was doing its best to stay above the horizon. That meant he could go home and spend the night with Ash, a bag of cheap popcorn, and Mad About You reruns. Or he could confront Adam about everything Erin had just said.
"Hey, Adam?"
The only problem with that second option was trying to force the words out with those infuriatingly charming green eyes boring into his. It didn't help that Adam was waiting patiently for him to say something.
"Uh . . ." Adam's eyebrows lifted in something that might have been amusement, something that only frustrated Jay that much more. "I was wondering about something."
"Dangerous pasttime."
Jay silently cursed the taller boy for having interrupted his stream of thought and thus completely shattering what little nerve he'd been able to gather. Consequently, he stood gaping at Adam like the dummy he felt like before finally heaving a tiny sigh of defeat.
"What's it like living in a mansion?"
Taken aback by the question, Adam didn't answer for several moments. When he finally did, his voice was soft and more than a little indicative that he really didn't appreciate having to answer at all. "It's not a mansion."
"Shyeah. Whatever. It's three stories. That counts as a mansion in my view. Your room's prob'ly bigger than my entire apartment." Not given any kind of response, Jay snorted and followed Adam to the car. "Oh my God. It is, isn't it?"
Once he was in the driver's seat, Adam huffed and looked over to his right to see Jay still watching him expectantly. "Fine. No. It's . . . well, it's about half the size, but that's not the point."
"When do I get to see it?" Jay blurted suddenly. If the look on Adam's face was any indication, it was that he was just as surprised as Jay was.
"Uh . . . well, my father's having some sort of business dinner or something tonight, so you'd have to wait for the grand tour. If you really want to, though, you can hide out in my room with me."
"I take it you don't typically play a good host to the company, huh?"
"That's putting it lightly." Pulling out of the parking lot and into the street, Adam glanced over at Jay. "You'd probably be better off going home, to be perfectly honest."
Home. Jay sneered inwardly at the thought. Visions of throwing bits of popcorn across the room for Ash to chase popped up in his mind, making him shake his head.
"I let you see my place. I think it's fair I get to see yours."
Although Adam blanched faintly, he still shrugged in an attempt to appear careless. "Suit yourself."
Jay, meanwhile, looked like a wide-eyed child as the city and its familiar scenery melted away, giving way to things that had for the most part been foreign to him. Tall buildings and the bustle of city life faded into the peaceful landscape Jay rarely had the time to enjoy.
"We're in the middle of nowhere," Jay commented after ten solid minutes of silence.
"Uh, actually, we're just in the suburbs."
"Dude. I think I saw a cow about a mile back. We're in Green freaking Acres."
"Does the word 'paranoid cityboy' mean anything at all to you?" Adam asked with a hint of a grin. Jay, insulted that he was being mocked, folded his arms across his chest.
"Not a thing. Why'd'ya ask?"
Adam laughed, feeling his sour mood begin to fade. On the other side of the car, Jay was trying his best not to show how impressed he was with the sprawling estate. Even from a distance, the house was still grandiose with its three-tier structure and elaborate wrap-around veranda. The long, paved driveway leading to the dual door garage was lined with small lights in the ground, making it look more like a private jet landing than a driveway.
Jay whistled as the garage door opened and they drove inside. "Wow."
"What?"
Jay gave a tiny, almost embarrassed smile. "Nothing. I just figured the garage floor would be paved with gold or something."
"If my father had his way about it, it would be," Adam admitted maliciously, shutting the car off and stretching his legs once he stepped out of the car. No sooner had he stuck the keys in his jeans pocket than Sophie's salt-and-pepper-colored head poked through the open kitchen door, her face seeming as frantic and hurried as always.
"Oh. Hi," she greeted Jay before immediately turning her attention to Adam. "Where've you been? David's been throwing a fit. You're twenty minutes late."
"That's nice."
"What? Adam, he hasn't been in a good mood all day. Don't make him --"
"When is he *ever* in a good mood?" Adam shot back. Jay shuffled his feet.
"Maybe I-I should come back later."
"No, it's fine," Adam assured without so much as a glance over his shoulder. "I'll just tell him not to expect me, and if he doesn't like it, tough."
"Adam, don't," Sophie urged, a note of warning creeping into her voice. "Please, hon, just go along with him tonight and --"
By then having made his way into the kitchen, Adam grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and slammed the door shut, sending a magnet skittering across the floor. He paid no attention to it. "I am so fucking *tired* of going along with him! All I'm good for is to be some kinda new toy he shows off to other rich white guys I couldn't care less about!"
"Keep your voice down," Sophie hissed, eyes darting over his shoulder to look into the main room where several of David's business associates had stopped chatting amongst themselves to see what the problem was in the kitchen.
Adam, however, had reached his breaking point. "I'm nothing to him but a glorified whore, Sophie, and you know it."
Almost as soon as the words had left his throat he noticed Sophie turn her eyes to the floor, taking a sudden false interest in the blue and white tiled pattern. Turning, he nearly ran directly into his father. As an understatement, he did not look very happy.
"Nice of you to make an appearance."
"Nice of you to pretend you care," Adam replied venomously, eyes narrowing. "I told you last night I didn't want anything to do with whatever company you're trying to buy out now."
"We've already had this discussion, son," David went on, heavily emphasizing the last word, "and I thought I told you I didn't particularly give a damn what you wanted."
"You did, but when was the last time I listened to you?"
Anger and frustration flaring in his eyes, David gestured to Jay, standing by the kitchen island and pretending he was a chameleon. "I'm giving you the opportunity to meet the people who'll be ensuring you a fortune someday, Adam, and how do you repay me? By coming home and acting like a spoiled brat and bringing your latest fling with you just to throw it in everyone's face that I apparently raised a queer?"
Adam flinched but held his ground, despite the way every word twisted the knife in his back a little more each time.
"David, why don't you --"
"Back off," David growled without even looking up at Sophie and her pleading eyes. Instead, he reached out and grabbed Adam's face with his right hand, thumb and forefinger squeezing his cheeks painfully tight. "Fine. Have it your way. Go right on up to your room and screw your new boyfriend, I don't really give a damn anymore. But let me make one thing clear: if you *ever* embarrass me like this again, you'll regret it."
Turning sharply on his heel, he stalked back off into the main room, for all outward appearances a happy man. Adam, on the other hand, stood motionless for several seconds before finally meeting Jay's worried eyes.
"Welcome to my life," he half-whispered with a bitter, sideways mockery of a smile. Without another word he began the long walk up the staircase, stopping at the top when he heard his father begin talking to his companions as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
"Sorry for the interruption, gentlemen. Teenagers."
A low rumbling of chuckles echoed in the room. Had it not been for Jay's thoughtful intervention in pushing Adam down the hallway, Adam might very well have gone back in for round two.
Choosing to remain silent, Adam stopped at the first door on his right and pushed it open. Jay's appreciative choking noise at the size of it meant little to him.
"This is . . . whoa," Jay mumbled if for no other reason than to try to get Adam's mind off of everything that had just happened. "Your closet's the size of my kitchen!" Walking further into the room, Jay laughed and walked into the bathroom. "You have a freaking *bathroom* in your bedroom. This is insane! Has Robin Leech ever visited your house before?"
With his voice getting fainter and harder to hear, Adam presumed Jay had just discovered the opposite bathroom door led into an empty spare room. That was his first mistake. His second was assuming it was safe to change from the heavy black sweatshirt he was wearing into something lighter that wouldn't suffocate him. The shirt was halfway up over his head when he heard the bathroom door shut behind him. Too late he turned and hastily pulled the shirt back down.
"Were you raised in a barn?"
Too stunned to go along with the nervous joke, Jay never made an attempt to shut his mouth, having dropped open in unhidden shock. "What was that?"
"What was what?"
"Turn around."
"It's nothing, Jay, just --"
"Turn the fuck around!"
As overzealous as he sometimes tended to be, Adam wasn't about to argue when presented with a side of Jay he had never seen. He turned, hesitating a moment before sighing quietly and lifting his shirt the rest of the way up. He jumped a bit at the feeling of Jay's fingertips lightly brushing his skin, making delicate trails from his shoulder blades to the waistband of his jeans. Under any other circumstances it might have been a pleasant experience. It was the knowledge that Jay was not touching the skin itself but what was on it that denied him any amount of joy.
Jay stared in horror at the various scars crisscrossing Adam's back, some deeper and longer than others, some faded, some standing out in discolored boldness to show they had formed not so long ago. "W-What . . . your dad did this, didn't he?"
"He's my *father*," Adam snapped irritably. "He's never given me a reason to call him 'dad'. And yeah."
"But why?"
Adam snorted. "Hell if I know. I've been asking myself that for years now. Some of 'em are 'cause my grades weren't high enough, or 'cause he'd had a bad day and needed someone to take it out on . . . most of 'em, though, are 'cause he doesn't think very highly of my, uh, ambiguity." Adam sighed quietly, resting his forehead against the wall and letting his eyes drift shut. "A couple months ago I was . . . well, I was seeing a guy, and he was at my house once. My father's flight came in early and he showed up before he was scheduled to, and he ended up catching me an' this guy making out. He pretty much flipped out." Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, Adam closed his eyes tighter as if that would somehow ease the pain the memories brought. "Decided he was going to teach me not to do things like that because he wasn't going to have a 'disgusting fag' for a son, I think were his exact words."
"Are you gay?" Jay asked softly for lack of something better to say. Adam shrugged.
"There are some guys I like, yeah. You tell me if that makes me gay or not."
"Well, I, uh, guess it could." Jay paused, letting the shirt fall back down and meeting Adam's eyes once he turned back around. "You're bigger than him. Why don't you fight back?"
Adam didn't respond for several moments, and when he did Jay had to lean forward just to hear him. "You live in this house long enough, you learn your place."
Not offering any other explanation, Adam walked over to his bed and dropped down on the mattress and dug a small brown bottle from the night stand. He dry-swallowed the pill that spilled into his hand, then leaned back against the headboard, content to watch the ceiling fan spinning.
Jay had never been one to let his curiosity go too long without being followed, so he picked the bottle up and looked down to see the prescription on the label. He assumed it should have surprised him more than it did when he saw it was a month's worth of Zoloft.
"Two hundreds?" He asked, rattling the bottle before setting it back down on the table. "That's kinda high, isn't it?"
"S'what the shrink gave me. Supposedly it's to keep me from wanting to jump off the roof or run my car into a tree or do it the quick and easy way and put a gun in my mouth." Adam looked up, a sad, maniacal grin on his lips. "But hey. I'm lucky, right? I've got it all."
"Oh God, man. . ." Seeing the glassy, shimmering look in Adam's eyes, Jay sank into a chair beside the bed. It was just barely soon enough to pull Adam's trembling form closer when he broke into sobs.
"I-I wanna die, Jay," Adam murmured in a voice broken by choking tears.
"Hey . . . shh, no you don't." Jay tried to be reassuring even though he felt he was going to begin crying himself soon. "You just need out of this place."
"I c-can't," Adam protested meekly. "I'll never get outta this place unless I die, don't you see it? That's the only way I'm ever gonna have any peace."
"Shut up, Adam. Stop talking like that," Jay scolded, running helpless hands through the mass of hair strewn across his shoulder. "Shh. It'll be okay, I promise. Everything'll be okay."
"I'm so sorry, Jay."
"For what?"
Adam pulled back, revealing a new batch of tears about to fall. "For dragging you into this. Y-you don't deserve this. It's just . . . I . . . I like you, and I guess I had some dumb idea that this time it might work out, but it won't. I'm sorry."
"You haven't done anything to apologize for." Jay looked up, cupping Adam's face in his hands and brushing his thumbs along his cheeks to clear them of tears. "Nothing."
"You don't understand," Adam whispered, desperately wishing Jay could just reach into his mind and know what he was talking about. There was no time to say anything else on the matter; the door opened to show David standing in the doorway, idly undoing the buttons that held his shirt sleeve tight against his wrist.
"If you two are finished, I'd like a word alone with you," he announced, staring directly at his son. Jay was reluctant to let go, feeling how his new friend still trembled violently beneath his hands, but Adam eventually forced him away. "I went ahead and rescheduled the dinner. Hopefully you'll be more cooperative next time." Turning his attention to Jay, he jerked a thumb behind him to indicate Mike standing behind him. "Mike will drive you home."
Jay turned questioning eyes to Adam, only to see his own gaze was fixed on the floor. "I'm off tomorrow." There was more than a subtle hint in his voice. Regardless, Adam didn't comment.
The next thing Jay knew, he was being led out the door, down the stairs, back through the kitchen and into the garage. He cringed when the shouting started and when the muffled scream tore through the house. Looking over the top of the black Lexus he'd first encountered what seemed like weeks ago, he saw Mike closing his eyes before getting into the driver's side.
"Whoa, hold on!" Jay demanded, pulling the passenger's side door open and peering inside. "You mean you know what's going on and you just let it fucking happen?" Mike didn't answer. "This whole place is twisted."
"You're really gonna piss off some janitor if you keep doing that," Jay warned with a half-hearted grin. Adam, startled at having been noticed, dropped a wood chip and looked up sheepishly.
"Sorry. Got bored."
Jay shrugged and took a glance at his watch. Almost seven and the sun was doing its best to stay above the horizon. That meant he could go home and spend the night with Ash, a bag of cheap popcorn, and Mad About You reruns. Or he could confront Adam about everything Erin had just said.
"Hey, Adam?"
The only problem with that second option was trying to force the words out with those infuriatingly charming green eyes boring into his. It didn't help that Adam was waiting patiently for him to say something.
"Uh . . ." Adam's eyebrows lifted in something that might have been amusement, something that only frustrated Jay that much more. "I was wondering about something."
"Dangerous pasttime."
Jay silently cursed the taller boy for having interrupted his stream of thought and thus completely shattering what little nerve he'd been able to gather. Consequently, he stood gaping at Adam like the dummy he felt like before finally heaving a tiny sigh of defeat.
"What's it like living in a mansion?"
Taken aback by the question, Adam didn't answer for several moments. When he finally did, his voice was soft and more than a little indicative that he really didn't appreciate having to answer at all. "It's not a mansion."
"Shyeah. Whatever. It's three stories. That counts as a mansion in my view. Your room's prob'ly bigger than my entire apartment." Not given any kind of response, Jay snorted and followed Adam to the car. "Oh my God. It is, isn't it?"
Once he was in the driver's seat, Adam huffed and looked over to his right to see Jay still watching him expectantly. "Fine. No. It's . . . well, it's about half the size, but that's not the point."
"When do I get to see it?" Jay blurted suddenly. If the look on Adam's face was any indication, it was that he was just as surprised as Jay was.
"Uh . . . well, my father's having some sort of business dinner or something tonight, so you'd have to wait for the grand tour. If you really want to, though, you can hide out in my room with me."
"I take it you don't typically play a good host to the company, huh?"
"That's putting it lightly." Pulling out of the parking lot and into the street, Adam glanced over at Jay. "You'd probably be better off going home, to be perfectly honest."
Home. Jay sneered inwardly at the thought. Visions of throwing bits of popcorn across the room for Ash to chase popped up in his mind, making him shake his head.
"I let you see my place. I think it's fair I get to see yours."
Although Adam blanched faintly, he still shrugged in an attempt to appear careless. "Suit yourself."
Jay, meanwhile, looked like a wide-eyed child as the city and its familiar scenery melted away, giving way to things that had for the most part been foreign to him. Tall buildings and the bustle of city life faded into the peaceful landscape Jay rarely had the time to enjoy.
"We're in the middle of nowhere," Jay commented after ten solid minutes of silence.
"Uh, actually, we're just in the suburbs."
"Dude. I think I saw a cow about a mile back. We're in Green freaking Acres."
"Does the word 'paranoid cityboy' mean anything at all to you?" Adam asked with a hint of a grin. Jay, insulted that he was being mocked, folded his arms across his chest.
"Not a thing. Why'd'ya ask?"
Adam laughed, feeling his sour mood begin to fade. On the other side of the car, Jay was trying his best not to show how impressed he was with the sprawling estate. Even from a distance, the house was still grandiose with its three-tier structure and elaborate wrap-around veranda. The long, paved driveway leading to the dual door garage was lined with small lights in the ground, making it look more like a private jet landing than a driveway.
Jay whistled as the garage door opened and they drove inside. "Wow."
"What?"
Jay gave a tiny, almost embarrassed smile. "Nothing. I just figured the garage floor would be paved with gold or something."
"If my father had his way about it, it would be," Adam admitted maliciously, shutting the car off and stretching his legs once he stepped out of the car. No sooner had he stuck the keys in his jeans pocket than Sophie's salt-and-pepper-colored head poked through the open kitchen door, her face seeming as frantic and hurried as always.
"Oh. Hi," she greeted Jay before immediately turning her attention to Adam. "Where've you been? David's been throwing a fit. You're twenty minutes late."
"That's nice."
"What? Adam, he hasn't been in a good mood all day. Don't make him --"
"When is he *ever* in a good mood?" Adam shot back. Jay shuffled his feet.
"Maybe I-I should come back later."
"No, it's fine," Adam assured without so much as a glance over his shoulder. "I'll just tell him not to expect me, and if he doesn't like it, tough."
"Adam, don't," Sophie urged, a note of warning creeping into her voice. "Please, hon, just go along with him tonight and --"
By then having made his way into the kitchen, Adam grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and slammed the door shut, sending a magnet skittering across the floor. He paid no attention to it. "I am so fucking *tired* of going along with him! All I'm good for is to be some kinda new toy he shows off to other rich white guys I couldn't care less about!"
"Keep your voice down," Sophie hissed, eyes darting over his shoulder to look into the main room where several of David's business associates had stopped chatting amongst themselves to see what the problem was in the kitchen.
Adam, however, had reached his breaking point. "I'm nothing to him but a glorified whore, Sophie, and you know it."
Almost as soon as the words had left his throat he noticed Sophie turn her eyes to the floor, taking a sudden false interest in the blue and white tiled pattern. Turning, he nearly ran directly into his father. As an understatement, he did not look very happy.
"Nice of you to make an appearance."
"Nice of you to pretend you care," Adam replied venomously, eyes narrowing. "I told you last night I didn't want anything to do with whatever company you're trying to buy out now."
"We've already had this discussion, son," David went on, heavily emphasizing the last word, "and I thought I told you I didn't particularly give a damn what you wanted."
"You did, but when was the last time I listened to you?"
Anger and frustration flaring in his eyes, David gestured to Jay, standing by the kitchen island and pretending he was a chameleon. "I'm giving you the opportunity to meet the people who'll be ensuring you a fortune someday, Adam, and how do you repay me? By coming home and acting like a spoiled brat and bringing your latest fling with you just to throw it in everyone's face that I apparently raised a queer?"
Adam flinched but held his ground, despite the way every word twisted the knife in his back a little more each time.
"David, why don't you --"
"Back off," David growled without even looking up at Sophie and her pleading eyes. Instead, he reached out and grabbed Adam's face with his right hand, thumb and forefinger squeezing his cheeks painfully tight. "Fine. Have it your way. Go right on up to your room and screw your new boyfriend, I don't really give a damn anymore. But let me make one thing clear: if you *ever* embarrass me like this again, you'll regret it."
Turning sharply on his heel, he stalked back off into the main room, for all outward appearances a happy man. Adam, on the other hand, stood motionless for several seconds before finally meeting Jay's worried eyes.
"Welcome to my life," he half-whispered with a bitter, sideways mockery of a smile. Without another word he began the long walk up the staircase, stopping at the top when he heard his father begin talking to his companions as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
"Sorry for the interruption, gentlemen. Teenagers."
A low rumbling of chuckles echoed in the room. Had it not been for Jay's thoughtful intervention in pushing Adam down the hallway, Adam might very well have gone back in for round two.
Choosing to remain silent, Adam stopped at the first door on his right and pushed it open. Jay's appreciative choking noise at the size of it meant little to him.
"This is . . . whoa," Jay mumbled if for no other reason than to try to get Adam's mind off of everything that had just happened. "Your closet's the size of my kitchen!" Walking further into the room, Jay laughed and walked into the bathroom. "You have a freaking *bathroom* in your bedroom. This is insane! Has Robin Leech ever visited your house before?"
With his voice getting fainter and harder to hear, Adam presumed Jay had just discovered the opposite bathroom door led into an empty spare room. That was his first mistake. His second was assuming it was safe to change from the heavy black sweatshirt he was wearing into something lighter that wouldn't suffocate him. The shirt was halfway up over his head when he heard the bathroom door shut behind him. Too late he turned and hastily pulled the shirt back down.
"Were you raised in a barn?"
Too stunned to go along with the nervous joke, Jay never made an attempt to shut his mouth, having dropped open in unhidden shock. "What was that?"
"What was what?"
"Turn around."
"It's nothing, Jay, just --"
"Turn the fuck around!"
As overzealous as he sometimes tended to be, Adam wasn't about to argue when presented with a side of Jay he had never seen. He turned, hesitating a moment before sighing quietly and lifting his shirt the rest of the way up. He jumped a bit at the feeling of Jay's fingertips lightly brushing his skin, making delicate trails from his shoulder blades to the waistband of his jeans. Under any other circumstances it might have been a pleasant experience. It was the knowledge that Jay was not touching the skin itself but what was on it that denied him any amount of joy.
Jay stared in horror at the various scars crisscrossing Adam's back, some deeper and longer than others, some faded, some standing out in discolored boldness to show they had formed not so long ago. "W-What . . . your dad did this, didn't he?"
"He's my *father*," Adam snapped irritably. "He's never given me a reason to call him 'dad'. And yeah."
"But why?"
Adam snorted. "Hell if I know. I've been asking myself that for years now. Some of 'em are 'cause my grades weren't high enough, or 'cause he'd had a bad day and needed someone to take it out on . . . most of 'em, though, are 'cause he doesn't think very highly of my, uh, ambiguity." Adam sighed quietly, resting his forehead against the wall and letting his eyes drift shut. "A couple months ago I was . . . well, I was seeing a guy, and he was at my house once. My father's flight came in early and he showed up before he was scheduled to, and he ended up catching me an' this guy making out. He pretty much flipped out." Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, Adam closed his eyes tighter as if that would somehow ease the pain the memories brought. "Decided he was going to teach me not to do things like that because he wasn't going to have a 'disgusting fag' for a son, I think were his exact words."
"Are you gay?" Jay asked softly for lack of something better to say. Adam shrugged.
"There are some guys I like, yeah. You tell me if that makes me gay or not."
"Well, I, uh, guess it could." Jay paused, letting the shirt fall back down and meeting Adam's eyes once he turned back around. "You're bigger than him. Why don't you fight back?"
Adam didn't respond for several moments, and when he did Jay had to lean forward just to hear him. "You live in this house long enough, you learn your place."
Not offering any other explanation, Adam walked over to his bed and dropped down on the mattress and dug a small brown bottle from the night stand. He dry-swallowed the pill that spilled into his hand, then leaned back against the headboard, content to watch the ceiling fan spinning.
Jay had never been one to let his curiosity go too long without being followed, so he picked the bottle up and looked down to see the prescription on the label. He assumed it should have surprised him more than it did when he saw it was a month's worth of Zoloft.
"Two hundreds?" He asked, rattling the bottle before setting it back down on the table. "That's kinda high, isn't it?"
"S'what the shrink gave me. Supposedly it's to keep me from wanting to jump off the roof or run my car into a tree or do it the quick and easy way and put a gun in my mouth." Adam looked up, a sad, maniacal grin on his lips. "But hey. I'm lucky, right? I've got it all."
"Oh God, man. . ." Seeing the glassy, shimmering look in Adam's eyes, Jay sank into a chair beside the bed. It was just barely soon enough to pull Adam's trembling form closer when he broke into sobs.
"I-I wanna die, Jay," Adam murmured in a voice broken by choking tears.
"Hey . . . shh, no you don't." Jay tried to be reassuring even though he felt he was going to begin crying himself soon. "You just need out of this place."
"I c-can't," Adam protested meekly. "I'll never get outta this place unless I die, don't you see it? That's the only way I'm ever gonna have any peace."
"Shut up, Adam. Stop talking like that," Jay scolded, running helpless hands through the mass of hair strewn across his shoulder. "Shh. It'll be okay, I promise. Everything'll be okay."
"I'm so sorry, Jay."
"For what?"
Adam pulled back, revealing a new batch of tears about to fall. "For dragging you into this. Y-you don't deserve this. It's just . . . I . . . I like you, and I guess I had some dumb idea that this time it might work out, but it won't. I'm sorry."
"You haven't done anything to apologize for." Jay looked up, cupping Adam's face in his hands and brushing his thumbs along his cheeks to clear them of tears. "Nothing."
"You don't understand," Adam whispered, desperately wishing Jay could just reach into his mind and know what he was talking about. There was no time to say anything else on the matter; the door opened to show David standing in the doorway, idly undoing the buttons that held his shirt sleeve tight against his wrist.
"If you two are finished, I'd like a word alone with you," he announced, staring directly at his son. Jay was reluctant to let go, feeling how his new friend still trembled violently beneath his hands, but Adam eventually forced him away. "I went ahead and rescheduled the dinner. Hopefully you'll be more cooperative next time." Turning his attention to Jay, he jerked a thumb behind him to indicate Mike standing behind him. "Mike will drive you home."
Jay turned questioning eyes to Adam, only to see his own gaze was fixed on the floor. "I'm off tomorrow." There was more than a subtle hint in his voice. Regardless, Adam didn't comment.
The next thing Jay knew, he was being led out the door, down the stairs, back through the kitchen and into the garage. He cringed when the shouting started and when the muffled scream tore through the house. Looking over the top of the black Lexus he'd first encountered what seemed like weeks ago, he saw Mike closing his eyes before getting into the driver's side.
"Whoa, hold on!" Jay demanded, pulling the passenger's side door open and peering inside. "You mean you know what's going on and you just let it fucking happen?" Mike didn't answer. "This whole place is twisted."