Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“So you try to fill in for that.”
“Try.” Vic lifted his glass in a mocking salute. “Not sure if I succeed.”
Now…now it made sense. Why Vic worked himself to the bone. Why he wouldn’t walk away from the company that was sucking his life away. Why he was Vic, and it was nothing to do with upholding his status as the heir and everything to do with the pressures that could mold carbon into diamond, or crush it into dust.
“And that’s why you try to do everything right,” Amani said. “Because you have to be the good brother. The perfect son. The one who doesn’t hurt people. The one who doesn’t fail.”
“…yeah.” Vic bowed his head, staring blankly at the floor. “Not that it helped. It’s like with Oliver gone, my parents got bored with the idea of being parents. So they never even noticed. Pathetic, isn’t it?”
“No.” Amani shook his head. “But you can’t live your life trying to atone for someone else.”
“Can’t I? Don’t we all just…spend our lives trying our best not to be horrid people?”
“You can’t define yourself by who you’re not, Vic. You can only define yourself by who you are.”
A wretched look turned on Amani. “But I don’t ever want to be like him.”
“So don’t be.” Amani started to reach for Vic, then stopped, recoiled, curling his fingers. “Be yourself. And make who you are into someone you’d respect.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to start.” Vic took a deep breath, shoulders squaring as he turned to face Amani fully. “I was at Siorse’s school play the other night. And I didn’t feel right telling you about them, and I was so angry at myself for forgetting her play and almost missing it that I was in a right shit of a mood, and ready to burst and just end up whingeing all over you. So I…” A helpless flick of his fingers. “I shut you out so you wouldn’t have to deal with me like that. I’m sorry.”
That…he just…all the shock and hurt of that night came bubbling up as if an old wound had been cut open to bleed fresh, and Amani stared at him. “It’s not dealing with you to listen if you need to talk.”
“Isn’t it?” Vic asked. “I don’t know how to talk to you if we’re not Master and pet, Amani. I don’t know if it’s allowed.”
“Of course it’s allowed, I—what do you think we’ve been doing this whole time? That night, at the gala…and even before…” And then Amani realized. He realized he’d been collecting moments. Capturing them inside himself as if they were real, and filling himself up with them, every little one as tiny and shining as the threads of seed pearls he wore in his hair. “Sessions are sessions, but outside of those we’re still people. We still have these…these complex and nuanced needs, and human contact, conversation, is one of them. You can just talk to me as Amani, and not as…as…”
“As what?”
“As the Dom you hired.” The words tasted bitter, so bitter. “That’s how you treated me. As someone you just pay, as if the money is the only thing that mattered and then you just dismissed me, writing me off with a check—”
“But I didn’t—”
“But you did!” Amani thumped a fist against the cold steel bars at his shoulder. “Money is just…just a vehicle here, Vic. When you take on this role with someone else, when you meet time and time again instead of just once or twice as impersonal strangers, it’s more than just paying for a service. It’s intimate. It’s letting someone inside you.” Every word was harder and harder to grind out, his voice fragmenting. “And you made that cheap.”
Vic stared at him, eyes stricken. “You were the one who said you would never want to date me, or anyone like me.”
And that’s my fault, and maybe I changed my mind, but I can’t tell you that now. Not after this.
“That doesn’t mean I wanted to be treated like the hired help.” Amani despised the fragile quaver in his voice, when right now he needed strength, his spine, his backbone more than anything. “Do you have any idea how much baggage there is in letting someone like you pay someone like me? How much I had to work through to even be with you? To remind myself that you were buying the valued services of a skilled professional and not buying the body of a disposable Black person you’d just use and throw away?” Maybe he’d been lying to himself, too. And he couldn’t look at Vic anymore, turning his face away, staring down at the street below. “I’d told myself it was all right. That it was different because I was in control. Because I set my own value. But it wasn’t different at all.” He pushed away from the glass, away from Vic. “You weren’t different at all.”