Page 92 of The Associate
Samuel flinched, a full-body recoil. He tried to pull away, to keep his head down, to hide in the safety of his own panic.
The grip tightened.
“Look at me.”
The command was low, iron-clad. It brooked no argument.
Samuel refused. His eyes were screwed shut, his entire being a clenched fist of no. He shook his head, a tiny, frantic denial.
“Samuel.” The voice was closer now, a quiet thunder. “Look at me.”
It was a losing battle. He knew it even as he fought it. His will was sand against the tide of Gael. A sob caught in his throat. Then, slowly, with the agony of a rusted hinge forcing itself open, his eyelids lifted.
Gael stood before him, gazing down at him.
“Breathe,” he said, his thumb stroking once, firmly, along the line of his jaw.
Samuel sucked in a ragged, shuddering breath. Let it out in a rush.
“Again. Slowly.”
He did.In. Out.The world narrowed to the dark eyes holding his, to the anchor-point of that hand on his face.
After a few cycles, when the worst of the hyperventilating had passed, Gael spoke again, his voice a low murmur. “What do you feel right now?”
Samuel shook his head, his lips pressed into a bloodless line. He couldn’t. Giving voice to it would make it real. It would give it power.
“Remember,” Gael prompted, his gaze never wavering. “Truth. Honesty. Even a small one.”
“Afraid… I am scared.”
Gael absorbed the words. His eyes searched Samuel’s face, reading the tremor in his lip, the dilated pupils, the sheen of terrified sweat at his temples. “Of what?”
The question was simple. It should have had a simple answer.
Of you. Of this. Of what we’re doing.
But as Samuel opened his mouth, he found only a void. The fear was a vast, formless ocean inside him, with no nameable source, no single monster he could point to. His body began to shake in earnest, great, wracking shivers that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature.
“I don’t know,” he whispered, and the truth of it was the most terrifying thing of all.
He didn’t know. He didn’t know why the fear was his constant companion. Why it lived in his marrow. Why a look, a question, a touch could send him spiraling into a fifteen-year-old’s nightmare. He knew, intellectually, the origin; the bus, the sermons, the cube, the Director’s disappointed eyes, the searingshame. But it had been so long. Years. Years of pretending to be healed, years of building a careful, empty life on top of the rubble.
And yet, sitting here under Gael’s gaze, feeling more exposed than he ever had under any counselor’s fluorescent lights, he didn’t feel a day older than that shattered boy in the dark. The time between then and now was just… filler. A performance. The fear was the only thing that had never aged, never faded. It was the truest part of him.
“I… I can’t… I need…”
The words tumbled from Samuel’s lips, broken and useless. He didn’t know what he was trying to say. He didn’t know what he needed. He only knew the hollow, aching terror of the void inside him, the fear with no name.
Gael, as ever, seemed to know. His hand slid from Samuel’s face. The warm palm traveled over the taut line of Samuel’s throat, feeling the frantic rabbit-pulse there, and then further back, to cradle the base of his skull. Long fingers wove into his hair.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, his voice dropping into a lower register, a vibration Samuel felt in his own bones. “I got you.”
Then the fingers tightened in his hair. The pull was firm, insistent, guiding. Samuel’s body, ever the quicker student than his mind, obeyed the silent directive. He rose from the sofa, his legs unsteady, his gaze locked on the dark fabric of Gael’s sweater.
They stood face to face, so close the heat from Gael’s body was a palpable force against Samuel’s chest. Gael was taller, and Samuel had to tilt his head back slightly to meet his eyes. His body trembled, a fine, constant earthquake of fear andsomething else, something that quickened his blood even as it chilled it.
Gael’s eyes held his, dark and fathomless. “I’ll take care of you, Samuel,” he whispered, the words breathed into the scant inch of air between their mouths. “I’ll give you what you need.”
