Noah did look at him then. He nodded. “Sometimes, being fucked up is the only way to keep him from crawling back inside me. I don’t like being high, I just hate remembering. Things were easier when I didn’t remember.”
Adam could only nod. He knew what it was like to have the horrors of your past seep through the cracks in your foundation like some kind of toxic gas, poisoning your thoughts. “I’m sorry,” he said, surprised to find it wasn’t just a meaningless platitude given because society dictated it as the proper response. He meant it. He didn’t want to be the cause of Noah’s misery.
“I forced your hand. You could have just killed me. You gave me the chance to go. I refused. It’s nobody's fault but mine.”
“I’m still sorry. But why is your father in the center of the board? I promise you, he’s definitely dead. It wasn’t as bloody as I’d hoped, but he’s dead.”
Noah shook his head. “I know. I’m the one who found him. Remember?”
Pain spiked through Adam’s chest. He’d done that. He’d traumatized Noah when he was barely ten years old. “Yeah.”
“He wasn’t the only one.”
Adam cut his gaze to Noah. “What?”
Noah set his mouth in a grim line. “My father wasn’t the only one to…do things to me. There were others. Friends. Strangers. Five whose faces I can remember. Others who just watched in the shadows.”
Adam’s rage was instantaneous, a match to gasoline. His vision was a deep throbbing red. He released Noah’s hand to slam his fist into the pillow. “I should have killed that piece of shit slowly. I should have looked deeper.” He could feel his body trembling, his blood pulsing in his veins. He needed to hit something. Kill it. Rip it apart. He was a bomb ticking down, and if he didn’t get out of there, he was going to explode all over Noah, and he didn’t need Noah seeing him like that.
Before he could think to stop him, Noah threw a leg over his hips, settling in his lap and taking his face in his hands. “Stop.”
It was said with such gentleness that Adam’s brain ground to a halt, the dog throwing itself against its cage inside him as confused by Noah’s serene expression as Adam.
“Stop,” he said again. “You couldn’t have saved me. By the time you came along, I’d aged out of my father’s preferential victim pool. I’d already locked all those memories up.”
“I want to dig him up just so I can kill him again. I hate that he hurt you.”
Noah gave him a humorless smile. “I know. But, as a result, I now crave being hurt. The brain sure is a fucked up thing, huh?”
Adam blinked at him. “What?”
“Bite me, spank me, pull my hair? Tell me I’m bad, tell me all the things you’re gonna do to me. Make me take it. Pin me down by my wrists and trap me against a mattress. Dry hump me until I come?” Adam swallowed audibly, his cock desperately trying to rally at the words falling from Noah’s lips. He leaned forward and nipped his bottom lip, drawing blood, before sucking on it. “Lucky for you, Daddy issues aren’t just for girls.” He held up his wrists, where the blood was starting to pool in the shape of Adam’s hands.
“Sorry,” Adam said, not really sorry at all but wishing he was for Noah’s sake. He liked marking Noah, wanted everybody to know he was his to protect.
“I just told you, I’m fucked up. I like the pain. The rougher the better. A shrink would have a field day with me.”
“You’re not fucked up,” Adam said fiercely. “You’re perfect.”
“Said the killer,” Noah said with a smirk. His smile faded as he examined Adam. “You good?”
Shock reverberated through Adam as he realized he was. Noah had somehow disarmed him with just one word. “Yeah. Please, finish telling me your story. I’ll try not to lose my shit again.”
Noah slid off him and back onto his back, gazing up at the ceiling and his father’s face. “He looks so evil now. I never thought that before my memories came flooding back. That’s weird, right?”
“Our brains are tricky. They employ all kinds of tactics to keep us functioning. My parents abused me until I simply shut off my emotions. Your brain took all the bad things that happened to you and it locked them away so you could function. Once you started to remember, your perceptions of your father changed.”
Adam watched as Noah swallowed hard, nodding. “I’m sure I could remember more details if I tried. But I don’t want to dig any deeper. What I remember is bad enough. But I need to know their names. I need to make sure they get put down the way my father was.”
“Let me do that for you.”
Noah was already shaking his head. “No.”
Adam’s heart rate shot up at Noah’s refusal. “It’s what I do.”
“Not for me it isn’t. I need to do this myself. Maybe not the killing, but at least the naming. I’m the only one who remembers enough to feel my way to the light switch. I’ve already gotten one name. My father’s best friend, Gary, the owner of the club. He was definitely there. I feel like cracking him might be the key to cracking all the others.”
Adam would happily crack this Gary like a fucking glow stick if that was what Noah needed. “At least let me help. I’m excellent at extracting information from unwilling targets.”
“Fine. But I call the shots.”
This time, it was Adam who smirked. “I thought you liked being told what to do.” He rolled on top of Noah again, pinning him beneath him. “‘Bite me, spank me, pull my hair’? That’s what you said, right?” There was no heat to his words, just a teasing tone that had Noah smiling up at him. Fuck, he liked making him smile.
“Only in the bedroom. You can do whatever you want to me in here. But out there”—he jabbed his thumb towards the window—“I’m in charge. That’s my offer. Take it or leave it.”
Adam pushed Noah’s hair off his face, grinning. “Whatever I want, huh?”
“Within reason,” Noah qualified.
“What’s within reason?” Adam asked, sliding his tongue between Noah’s lips in a kiss that lingered long enough to distract.
“No circus animals. No permanent damage. You can’t pee on me.”
Adam barked out a laugh. “What?”