Chapter 30

“Elias, tell me what—” Thomas remained still, looking at him, without knowing what to say. Then Elias ran, and Thomas jumped when the entrance door slammed. He reached his hand out to the draining board to hold himself up. Elias had left him reeling.

* * * *

Elias

Thomas didn’t know it; he couldn’t imagine what kind of disgust Elias felt for himself. How many times he’d decided not to do what Liam asked of him. To leave him. He wasn’t a kid anymore, as he often liked to repeat. Even with that cutting attitude, that was his signature. But he didn’t get his ass out of that fetid, shitty house. He couldn’t leave Liam. Elias continued to let him use him as he wished, all in the name of a strange guilt.

He was drawing a nauseating layer of mud over his life, suffocating it.