Page 43 of Delirium

“Then one night, he called me. It was late. Too late for a boss to be calling their errand boy.”

I wanted to give Nash a hug when his shoulders slumped, but I also needed to hear how his story.

“One of his bouncers for a club they owned was sick. There’d been an incident, and they needed someone to come and deal with a situation. I was the only one he trusted, or so he said. In reality, they needed someone large to scare off a college kid who’d been trying to sell drugs for another family in the club. I was big enough to be scary.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek, even Camp sucked in a quiet breath. I could already see how this story would end, how it spread out on a timeline. But that was the problem with hindsight. When you’re in the situation, by the time you realize what’s going on, you’re in too deep.

“I didn’t learn the truth until later. He wanted to make sure I was trustworthy and reliable before he let me into the business. He needed an enforcer. Someone big, scary looking from the outside. Someone who could intimidate people. He swore up and down I wouldn’t have to hurt anyone. Just scare them. We both knew he was lying. But the money was good, and I was broke. And for the first bit, he wasn’t lying. I didn’t have to lay a hand on anyone. Maybe get in their face a bit, but most of them backed off pretty quickly. James and I still hung out, but it was different by then. We both knew what happened behind closed doors, what really kept him in nice clothes and in university, and it wasn’t something either of us wanted to acknowledge out loud. But we had a part to play. Pretenses to keep up.”

It was hard for me to correlate the sweet man in front of me, the one who named crocodiles and always had a smile on his face, with someone who used to intimidate people for money. But we all had a past, and I knew that better than most.

“Nash, I…” I trailed off. “If you don’t want to tell us anymore, I get it. I’ve heard enough to know you.”

He shook his head, waves bouncing. “No, it feels good to get it off my chest. I haven’t told this story to anyone. I’m not even sure if James really knows the whole thing. Besides, I’m almost done. Because we all know how this goes—it didn’t stop at intimidation. Eventually, he had me rough people up. Teach them a lesson. People who weren’t paying their rent, the monthly dues, people who tried to get around him. And one night…one night it went too far. We were sent to collect rent money from an older dude, one who was constantly fucking around with the money he owed. He wasn’t a poor man, not by any means, but he didn’t have a wife or kids, and kind of just did whatever he wanted. Another guy, Tommy, and I went. We took turns slapping him around, making sure he knew who he was really fucking with.” The walls in Nash’s eyes broke, his face falling apart completely. “I don’t know what happened. I really don’t. I don’t know if I hit him too hard, or if he was trying to fight back, or if he tripped, and I never will. All I know is I was the one who hit him last. He stumbled and fell into the table beside him. The sound is something I will never forget. He landed on the floor, and when I saw his eyes, I knew. I fucking knew what I had done, and I knew there was no coming back from it.”

“Oh, Nash,” I whispered. I could feel his hurt, radiating off his body in waves, nowhere to go butout. That kind of pain never settled, never found a place to rest. It just expanded, larger and larger until it consumed everything in its path. “Nash, you weren’t more than a kid yourself. How could you have known?”

He looked up, a bitter smile on his face. “Because I should’ve knownbetter. I should’ve known the minute James offered me a job that it would change my life. And I guess I did know—that was why I accepted it. I just hadn’t expected it to be likethat. I don’t know what happened afterward. Tommy made some calls, and we left. I couldn’t go home. I just…I couldn’t. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. I spent the night wandering the streets, ignoring any calls that came in, and when the sun finally rose, I took as much cash out of my bank account as I could, and just never looked back. Eventually I ended up here, and I never left. Never stopped thinking about that man either, what I’d done. Never stopped atoning for it.”

Camp ran a hand over my knee, squeezing it lightly, a reminder to himself that I was still here. Funny how touch worked. “Nash, man, you’ve done everything you could. At some point, you have to accept it and move on. Try and live a better life. You know?”

“No.” Nash shook his head. “No, I don’t. I killed a man. Killed him with my bare hands. There’s no accepting that, no moving on. But what I can accept is thatyoumight not want to accept it. I’ll have to be okay either way. I will promise you both that you are completely safe with me. I will never hurt another person, ever again.”

I stood, closing the space between Nash and myself until I was able to press my palm on his chest, just above where his tender heart lay beating. “I don’t need more time to think. The strange thing about being in sociology for so long is being able to see through people. There are reasons we do things, even the terrible things, and the reasons are usually more telling than actions if someone is a good person or not. You’re a good person, Nash. I swear to you.”

Nash grabbed my hand, pressing it harder into his chest, as if he was trying to sear the imprint of my hand on his skin. “Do you…do you mean that?”

I smiled, a smile filled with sadness and hope, joy and pain, every human emotion mixed into one. “Of course I do. And I will happily get back on your boat with you. With all of you. You made a horrible, awful mistake, and you took things too far. No one is denying that. But the circumstances of it, and the way you’ve reacted since then…they tell a different story than a serial killer on a rampage.”

Nash grimaced. “Well, I mean, I did consider that as an option afterward. Decided it to be a little on the messy side, though.”

I dropped my hand, bending to get my backpack. “I think we have a lot more to talk about. All of us.” I gave Camp a pointed look, making sure he knew exactly what I was talking about. Nash’s bombshell might have shaken us up, but we really needed to talk about what had just happened between the three of us in the waterfall.

The walk back toCarpe Diemwas much quieter than it had been to get to the waterfall, each of us lost in thought. I couldn’t stop thinking about a young Nash, feeling trapped, and then feeling like he had to flee. Anger simmered below the hurt, thinking that James probably knew all of what had gone down, and instead of choosing to help his friend, had abandoned him to a life where he felt like a pariah, and eventually used it to blackmail him into getting what he wanted.

Even closer to the forefront of my mind were the memories of us in the pool, Camp’s hands on my body, Nash’s lips on mine. I had originally thought Camp would be too possessive to share, and maybe he still was. Some part of him might have thought he owned a special piece of me, and was reluctant to share it.

But maybe desire had outweighed possession. Maybe hunger won out over control.

Our relationship was far more tangled and twisted than the massive spiders that wove their webs trees apart, stretching out with nothing more than a dream. On the other hand, maybe it was just as beautiful, a perfect slice of nature only a few were lucky enough to witness.

Chapter

Sixteen

JAMES

Istormed through the mud, not caring how much dirt and grime spread across my pants. Stomping through the rainforest eased my anger, the red-hot fury demanding control, but only slightly. The worst part was I didn’t even know if I was angry at myself, or atthem.

I promised Nash I wouldn’t tell anyone. I wasn’t one to double cross an agreement, no matter who I’d made it with, so the guilt sat thick in my stomach, a bitter, acidic reminder of my failures.

My father liked to remind me of those, whenever he thought I was getting too full of myself. An A mark on a test wasn’t an A+. Making the football team was all well and good, but was I the starting quarterback? No. So maybe I should just sit down and stop talking until I had something truly worthwhile to say.

A failure. That’s all I was. I did my best to cover up the scuffs and scratches of my life in fine clothes, manners, and money, but they lingered there just the same. A constant reminder I was nothing but the name I had been born into, not even something I earned.

No wonder Scarlett looked at me with disgust and wanted nothing to do with me. And as much as I hated to admit it, the thought she did so absolutely killed me.

Because if I had thought listening to her moan and cry out Camp’s name was terrible, it was absolutelynothingcompared to watching her with both of them.

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