Chapter 16: Luke's Night

Luke woke at dusk on a bare mattress with a coat over his face.

For a moment he did not know the room.

Then he knew the smell of the radiator and the laundromat below.

He knew the window with the mattress pushed against it, and the sill where Lucas had told him to come in.

The key turned in the lock.

Lucas stood in the doorway with a paper bag in one hand and a flat dark look on his face.

"Noah and Thomas are at the house, asleep," he said. "I told them one night each before Saturday. Yours is first."

Luke sat up.

"Here?"

"Here. Nobody comes to this door but me."

He set the bag on the floor and shut the door behind him and turned the bolt.

The click went through Luke's whole body.

"Stand up," Lucas said.

Luke stood.

His shirt was wrinkled from a day on the floor, and his hands hung at his sides with nothing to do.

Lucas crossed the room and put two fingers on the scar through his left eyebrow.

"You never told me how you got this."

"You never asked."

"I'm asking."

Luke breathed in.

"A man hit me with a bottle in a bar, the year I turned twenty-five," he said.

"I was lying in an alley when someone from the court found me and made me one of them. I was grateful until the first night."

"What happened the first night?"

"They put a cup in front of me. A boy from the cellar had been made to give it. He was watching me."

Luke's voice was flat.

"I wouldn't drink. They starved me for a week to make me, and I still wouldn't. That's why Abysis hated me."

He looked at the floor.

"It's why Noah sat down next to me in the cold and talked until morning."

Lucas's thumb moved over the white line.

"You told me you stay because of Noah."

"I stay because of him. I stay because you went into the court and told him to stand up."

Luke's throat worked.

"I'd stay if you told me to go."

"Don't."

"I mean it. Whatever you decide. I want it to be you."

Lucas took his chin and kissed him.

It was a slow kiss, deep and warm, and Luke felt his knees go.

Lucas pushed the coat off his shoulders and let it fall.

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