Chapter 23

Arliss looked around the “L” car, as if he wasn’t sure where he was. The train was stopped, and he looked out at the sign, knowing his stop was coming up next.

Had it been rape? That first time…and all the others? Arliss didn’t know; he never knew. There was always pleasure mixed in with the nausea, and it confused him. He was only sure that what he did with Red when Helena wasn’t around was wrong, no matter how much he hated himself for it.

So he had told his mother, thinking she would be grateful to know what kind of lout she had thrown her lot in with. A man who would go after a woman’s teenage son? Arliss was far from sophisticated, but even at sixteen, he knew it was wrong. He had thought Helena would want to know, that she’d be grateful.

And that it would quickly go back to being just the two of them again, just like Arliss had always longed for.