Chapter 7

Seven

Ezra

I ’m too doped up to crutch my way up the stairs to Luke and Vance’s private plane, so Miller and Luke end up carrying me.

“Like a damn sultan,” Vance murmurs, shaking his head as they haul me past the row of leather seats where he and Eden are set up in the cabin.

That makes me laugh, which makes Josh’s eyes pop wide in alarm—as if my small laugh might make him lose his grip on me. He’s got my shins tucked carefully over his shoulders, and he’s holding me behind my lower back. Luke’s got me under the arms. It’s fucking awkward.

I’m watching Josh’s face as they move through the doorway between the cabin and the bedroom. Mills sees the bedroom space before I do, and his eyes widen again.

“A bed in an airplane,” he says, doing something with his mouth that’s somehow both a gape and a grin.

Luke says, “All yours.”

Then they’re lowering me onto the bed, and I’m seeing why Mills went all bug-eyed. The bedroom’s small, maybe half the size of my dorm room, but it’s sleek and pretty, with high-gloss fixtures and this smell like fresh-cut flowers.

Luke scoops up some pillows, and he and Miller gently lift my leg and prop it up. I notice as they’re doing that that it smells like flowers because there are flowers—roses, in a vase that looks like it’s stuck to the desk in the corner.

“We grabbed you some flowers,” Luke says, smiling as he comes to stand in front of me. He lifts a brow and looks at Miller. “Break your leg, and you should get some ‘get well’ flowers, don’t you think so, Miller?”

Mills nods. “Ezzie deserves all the flowers.”

“Nah…”

Luke nods. “I agree with Miller.” He waves toward something I can’t see, and the two of them turn away from me. My eyes sag shut as I hear him say, “The fridge has got what you wanted.” Something about a courier, and then that pain pill Josh forced on me in the car is hitting. They turn back around and look at me, and that makes me laugh. I don’t even know what’s funny.

Josh is sitting on the bed beside me. “Look at you.” His hand strokes my hair off my forehead. “Somebody’s gonna sleep the whole flight home.”

“The skies are clear, so…” I frown up at Luke, not sure what he’s talking about. The skies?

I have the thought that I should be embarrassed by how hard these pain pills hit me. Then I feel Josh climbing into bed beside me. He’s tucking blankets around me, and I hear myself murmur, “Hold me.”

“Oh yeah, angel. I’ve gotchu.”

Sometime later, I hear something on the intercom and sense us taking off. I lift an eye open, figuring I should be concerned, but then I realize Miller’s in the bed with me, his arm over my chest and his forehead nuzzled against my neck .

Next time I open my eyes, he’s waking me to take some Advil.

“How long till Tuscaloosa?” I ask.

“Still more than two hours.”

He strokes my hair until I fall back asleep. Then I’m awake because my ankle’s throbbing—and I find Josh is asleep.

God, I love it when he’s wrapped around me. I lean my cheek against the top of his head, overwhelmed for a moment at how much I don’t deserve all his goodness. But I’ve got it. He doesn’t seem to want to ditch me yet.

And he won’t , I tell myself.

Maybe you do deserve it.

Greeley says they don’t think I acted wrong at Alton. I’m working on letting go of the idea that what Paul did to me was my fault—for having too much wrath or too much disrespect or whatever.

I know from what my mom said before I moved to Fairplay that Paul’s stroke hit him hard. Afterward, he couldn’t walk or talk like normal, and he wasn’t working at Alton last I heard. I told Greeley that it’s hard for me not to feel awful that he got messed up like that for life. And Greeley asked, “What about what he did to you?”

I said, “Well, it’s not for life.” And they said that’s a turning point for me. Me thinking that it’s not for life…that I’m not head-fucked for the rest of my life. They thought that was a big deal.

“And you’re right,” they said. “You’re not. Healing from those things is possible. You’re doing it now.”

I think about that as I look down at my bandaged leg, then at the flowers.

“Ez deserves all the flowers.”

I look at Miller, at his arm wrapped snug around me and his legs stretched out the other way, so they won’t get near my hurt ankle .

Josh thinks I deserve flowers. Even after everything I put him through, he loves me. It’s so weird. It’s almost unbelievable, but so much time has passed, and so much shit has happened, I believe him.

I’m taking deep breaths for the ankle pain and dreaming up a plan for filling Miller’s new apartment with flowers on Valentine’s Day when Vance steps into the room.

He smiles at us. Then he turns away from the bed and crouches down, and when he rises up, he’s holding a blue Icee. I can’t help a shocked laugh. “What the fuck?”

He grins. “Your boy, the OG Miller, told us you can’t fly without your Icee.”

I can’t help laughing my ass off.

“Miller’s crazy,” I whisper.

“About you.” Vance waggles his brows as he hands it to me. “Miller texted as he fell asleep and asked if I could check on you at this time, offer you a pain pill?”

I don’t want to take it, but I nod, and he says, “Don’t worry about it, man. I took them too, after my accident, and I came off them just fine. You’ve just gotta taper off.”

I swallow the pill, and Vance smiles down at Miller again. “You two need anything? You want me to take the Icee, or—check out this cool thing…”

He pulls a small tray-like thing out of the wall. He does something to lock it into place, and he says, “Cupholder. If you need.”

“Thanks, V.”

He smiles. “Any time.” He ruffles my hair, and it doesn’t bother me to be touched unexpectedly by someone who’s not Josh. I trust him, so it actually feels a little good.

“Just text me if you need us, okay?” he says.

When Vance leaves, I check my phone, finding that there’s been some speculation about the identity of the person who ran out on the field to be with me, and that the Fairplay newspaper is reporting him as my stepbrother. Hmm, okay, so I’m not outed. But when I come out, I’ll have to out myself as being in love with my stepbrother. I guess I can handle that.

I’ve got both arms locked around my sleeping Miller when Luke walks into the room. He comes to stand down at the foot of the plane bed, sliding his hands into his pockets. “You feeling okay?”

I nod. “Ankle’s sore, but V gave me some stuff for it.”

“That’s good.”

I’m a little surprised when he sits down on the edge of the mattress. “You tired?” He glances at his watch. “We’ve still got an hour till we land, if you want to catch some more Zs. If it gets bumpy, we’ll check on you.”

“I’m not that tired. Not till that pill hits.” I laugh. “Then I’ll be out.”

“Ezra.” His eyes find mine, and my heart misses a beat. “I came back here because I want to talk to you about something. If you’re up for it.”

I try to keep my face neutral as I nod. “I’m up for it.”

His lips press together. “It’s…about Alton.”

My pulse fucking soars —so much I feel the blood whoosh in my head—and I glance down at Miller. I think of telling Luke that we should wait, but then I reconsider. If Mills wakes up, so what? It’s not like I’m going to keep this shit a secret from him anyway.

I nod at Luke. “You can tell me.”

He blows out a long breath. “I’m sorry for the timing. Just, things are moving faster than I realized with this. I wanted to let you know as soon as I could.”

My stomach does a roller coaster flip, which makes me feel a little pukey. “What do you mean?”

“To be honest, I’m a little nervous about sharing this. When we first started, it didn’t occur to me that you might have objections, but…” He gives a shake of his head. “Ezra, we’ve been wo rking behind the scenes to get the so-called Alton ‘Academy’ shut down. Evermore has been. Now we’re…getting close to success.” He blinks at me, his brow furrowing. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” I nod so he’ll continue.

“We have someone on staff—a younger guy. I didn’t know his history until we started bullet pointing things we wanted the Rainbow Initiative to cover…but it turns out, this guy had been somewhere…not dissimilar. When he found out about Alton in particular, he wanted to go. You know, infiltrate. Naturally, we said no way. He didn’t look the part” —Luke waves his hand— “but anyway. As it happens, this guy is on our IT staff. Tech savvy. So what he did instead was access Alton’s camera network.”

The bottom drops out of my stomach.

Luke lets out a long breath. “We’ve been watching since early September. It took time for our guy to access all the cameras, but we’ve had what we think is all the different cams, from all of the cameras, since October. What’s there is…pretty incriminating,” he says softly. “It’s been hard for us to watch.”

My throat aches, and he gives me a sympathetic look that makes tears prickle my eyes.

“Now we’re working with attorneys and some other consultants. We’re preparing to sue Alton and its administration on behalf of some of the victims. There’s another team from the church in charge of reaching out to them, but we’ve already been in touch with some. And one of them is your…is Riley.”

That name hits me like a kick to the chest. I guess I flinch, because Miller stirs and Luke’s eyes widen slightly.

“Fuck,” I murmur. And then, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. How do you feel? The major reason I’m mentioning it, other than an obligation I feel to keep you informed, is that when we file suit, we’ll be turning what evidence we have over to law enforcement. We’re already laying that groundwork. There’s a good chance the place will be shut down, or the ones in charge will shut it down and try to go underground. At the same time, we have two people in Congress who are working with us on initiatives to outlaw these practices entirely.”

He blows another breath out, and I realize he looks unhappy. I don’t know why, but seeing Luke McDowell look defeated makes me feel a wave of sadness.

“Sorry,” I say, awkward and soft. “If it’s making you feel triggered or something.”

“I don’t feel triggered,” he says. “I feel disappointed. Powerless—although we’re not. And I feel—” He exhales, ruffling a hand back through his blond hair. “For the people who have been to these places. At its root, this is the church’s failing. And I’m part of the church.”

So he’s saying he feels guilty?

“It’s not your fault.”

“You don’t have to reassure me, Ezra. I’m okay. How do you feel?”

Tears fill my eyes. I try not to blink so they don’t fall. I’m fucking tired of crying.

“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I…don’t know. I’m glad you’re doing it. I want to add my name to the suit.”

Hesitation flickers over his face. “You don’t have to decide today.”

“No. I want to. Have to. I should have done more sooner. I—”

He’s shaking his head. He gives a soft laugh. “You did. You came and you told me —someone who could do something about it. Our new program needed an agenda. You helped give us one. Because you were brave enough to seek me out, you’re gonna be what gets them shut down.”

I take a deep breath, and then another one. That can’t be true. But he’s smiling at me like he’s proud. I feel my ears tingle with heat .

“Okay. Well…I’m in,” I say. “I’m sure I want to do it.”

“You should take some time to think about it. You pushed over the first domino. That can be enough.”

I shake my head. “Not for me.”

“We can talk about it more. Whatever you want,” he adds.

My stomach does a slow roll as I think of everybody finding out I went to Alton. But at the same time, there’s a part of me that doesn’t care. What could be worse than… Alton .

“One more thing,” Luke tells me. “I did some digging on the guy you mentioned—Paul. I have an update on him, if you want it.”

“I want it.” I clench my jaw, and Luke says, “He’s not working there now. And I don’t think he has since you attended. The program was founded by his father. He was one of the first participants. After what happened when you were there—”

“The stroke?” I rasp.

He nods. “After the stroke, he had some issues. In any event, he hasn’t worked since. Still collects pay, but doesn’t work. It’s being run by a man named Richard Derby right now. Kids are still…going through the events that you told us about. But no one’s being locked up like you were. We haven’t seen employees…infringing on the kids.”

“So they’re just doing all the porn stuff, still, and making the kids get with one another?”

He nods once, his mouth tight. His face gentles. “We’ll run a support group for survivors of Alton and a few other places we’re doing the same thing with—trying to get them shut down. We’ll offer services and a few retreats at Evermore. All free of cost, of course.”

“I want to help. I could…I don’t know. Give input or something. Talk to others…like me. You know.”

“Other survivors?” he says.

I nod, feeling weird about that word. “Yeah, if you want me to. ”

“Just think about it,” he says. He holds my eyes, and mine well up.

“I’m proud of you,” Luke tells me. “If you decide you don’t want to be on the suit, I’ll still be the same proud.”

“Like a dad?” I joke.

He gives me a look of warning. “Like a much older brother.”

Josh stirs against me, and Luke gives me a winky smile. “I’ll keep you as updated as you want. We’ll talk more. V and I will be in Tuscaloosa for a little while. And Eden.”

“What are you doing there?” I ask, tracing a seam of the blanket with my fingertip.

Luke grins. “We thought we’d get a condo down there. Maybe get some season tickets. There’s this guy who plays there, Ezra Masters…” He shrugs. “Heard he’s something to see.”