Chapter Thirty-One
He moved across the floor, candlelight flickering along damp walls, and studied the boy bound to the X-shaped cross—naked, trembling, eyes wide with terror.
Beautiful. A sharp thrill washed over him, a hunger not sexual but reverent.
The boy’s breath came in ragged sobs that shivered against the stone.
Hands came into view, gloved in sterile blue, only they weren’t his.
He unwrapped a checkered scarf from his throat, stark black and white, and laid it on the table among a spread of gleaming scalpels and other surgical instruments before picking one up.
Its weight was familiar, intimate, the touch of an old lover.
The blade met flesh with a tender resistance before giving way.
Blood welled hot and slick over his fingers.
The boy’s scream broke, strangled into a gurgle, and he leaned closer, drinking in the sound like a sacrament.
The face peeled away in his fingers, a mask coming loose, the boy’s features dissolving into raw, glistening meat.
He felt the texture, the heat, the awful closeness of it—and beneath it all, satisfaction. Completion. Rightness.
Ash tore out of the dream with a gasp, bile rising in his throat. Sweat slicked him, cold enough to raise gooseflesh. The loft swayed around him, pale morning light leaking through the blinds in long white stripes.
He stumbled to the bathroom and retched into the sink, dry heaving until his chest ached.
The nightmare clung to him like a wet cloth.
He gripped the porcelain, staring at his reflection in the mirror—his hands, his face—but the separation seemed paper-thin, as if he could slip back into that other body with the wrong blink.
He turned on the tap and splashed cold water over his face, scrubbing as if to scour the memory off his skin.
But the images pressed in: the knife’s weight, the warmth of blood, the boy’s final gasp.
And worst of all, that flicker of pleasure, that dark, hungry satisfaction too vivid to be a mirage.
He staggered back to the bed, legs unsteady, lungs tight, and reached for his phone on the nightstand, desperate for something real, something to anchor him.
The screen lit him in ghost-blue light. No new messages.
No missed calls. The empty space where a name should have been hit harder than the nightmare.
He tossed the phone aside, jaw tightening.
Fury and fear tangled until he couldn’t tell them apart.
He didn’t want to stay here, boxed in with the dream’s oily residue crawling under his skin.
The walls seemed too close, the air too stale, as if the silence had teeth and was ready to bite.
He needed movement, something to scrape this feeling off, to shake the vision loose before it burrowed deeper and made itself a home.
(10:36 a.m.)
The air outside was raw, the kind of cold that clawed its way down his throat and settled in his chest. Ash kept his head low, hoodie drawn tight, walking the short stretch down the block to the gym.
The dream replayed in splintered flashes with every step—the stone chamber, the bloodied scalpel, that wet scream—a scene caught in the teeth of his mind.
He pushed past the gym’s swinging door, the familiar smell closing around him: sweat ground into rubber mats, the tang of disinfectant fighting a losing war.
At this hour, the place was quiet, the emptiness amplifying every sound, making it more personal—the scuff of his sneakers, the metallic clank of plates, the faint groan of a bench under strain.
He dropped his bag in the locker room, shed his street clothes, and tugged on his workout gear, tension thrumming under his skin.
He eased into the workout without ceremony.
Bench press until his shoulders burned and the fire spread in his arms. Hanging leg raises, every lift tightening the core, leaving him trembling under strain.
Squats, slow and practiced, each rise tugging at the knots in his hamstrings, each drop sending a dull shock up his spine.
Muscle-ups until his grip faltered, sweat stinging the raw places.
Then the punching bag.
He wrapped his fists, slid into a stance, and began.
Jab. Cross. Hook. High kick. Again. Harder.
Faster. The chain groaned above with each blow, the bag lurching under the force.
Sweat poured down his back, pooling in the waistband of his shorts, soaking through the thin nylon.
He drove his shin into the leather until it shuddered, until his breath came ragged and wet in his throat.
It still wasn’t enough. Just a futile attempt to pound the dream out of his skull, to burn away the gnawing pull toward a man who hadn’t called, hadn’t come.
When he finally let the bag swing on its chain, vision swimming in the heat of exertion, he caught a flicker of movement at the edge of his sight.
Across the room, a guy was watching him.
Tall, built like a swimmer, jaw dusted with stubble, his muscle tank clinging damp to his chest. Their gazes met, and the man’s mouth curved into a slow, knowing smile.
Ash felt the answering tug at his lips before he could stop it.
(11:29 a.m.)
When the door to the steam room sighed open, Ash didn’t need to look. He knew who it was. The change in pressure told him first, the faint draft of cooler air slipping in before the heat reclaimed it, sealing the space in its damp, fragrant hush.
He sat leaning against the cedar wall, eyes closed, towel loose around his hips, the warmth a heavy, wet blanket clinging to his body.
Across the room, wood creaked under a new weight.
He squinted just enough to see the man from before settle in—chest gleaming, towel slung low so that every shift of muscle drew the fabric apart.
They were alone.
The man spread his knees, easy, unhurried, the fold of terrycloth slipping wider, the reveal subtle but deliberate.
Steam swirled between them in languid currents, beading along the man’s chest before sliding lower.
A hand drifted under the towel, slow enough to be unmistakable. His gaze never wavered from Ash’s.
Ash smirked, lids heavy, reading the signs as plainly as streetlit neon. He knew the look. The quiet dare. The unspoken promise of heat made physical.
Another time, he’d have pounced; no names, no questions, just skin, sweat, and the raw collision of bodies until the air ran thin.
The guy across from him was all invitation: heat and muscle and the promise of an easy, anonymous release.
But the impulse didn’t come. Desire, once a sharp, insistent pull, sounded strangely muffled, a voice calling from far away.
He sat there, waiting for the spark, and found only an echo.
He didn’t understand it. Was it the ghost of a touch still stamped into his muscles, the memory of a grip that had left him claimed, unwilling to be filled by anyone else?
Was it devotion born of nothing spoken? The thought annoyed him, sitting like grit between his teeth.
He didn’t owe anyone this pause, this restraint.
And yet he rose and left without a word, steam curling from his flesh as if reluctant to let him go.
The shower after was quick and scalding, more penance than cleansing.
The walk home was even quicker, the cold of the morning biting hard, eating away the last of the warmth.
Yet the sensation remained, rooted under his ribs, a quiet, persistent ache he could neither shake nor satiate, no matter how fast he walked.