He had no legitimate right to think that, but as he observed clumsy flirtation and excessive drinking and a bit of groping in dark corners, he wondered if any of these kids knew, had even the slightest perception of how their worlds could end so easily. The way his had. He figured that they all had their own stories—heartbreak, boyfriends and girlfriends back home that they pretended they weren’t cheating on, parents who maybe didn’t love them enough (but did, really), papers to write and promises to keep.

But he—his life had been destroyed by the person he had been taught to worship without question, his father, the criminal, violent and hated and feared and idolized, and it seemed like too much to bear. Were they raging against that kind of pain, too?

Had they been so deeply hurt for so much longer than they wanted to admit?

And how many of them knew, intimately, what it felt like to stare up at a stupid, poverty-stricken boy with slightly crooked teeth and a huge fucking prick, it turned out, and realize that—that they were never going to be who they were supposed to be?

All of those dreams broken.

He was sickened by his own self-pity. He couldn’t stop himself.

He looked at Annie’s sweet, round face, and imagined turning his adolescent cruelty on her, the genetic code of denigration and spite that he’d inherited, the weakness in him that was self-hatred turned outward.

In many ways, he had been a monster.

The grenadine grew sickly sweet in his mouth. He ordered a shot of Jameson and loved the burn, like punishment, like cauterization, like a flaming brand of his sins and the way to forget them.

He couldn’t stay here.

He wanted to sweat it all out, all the alcohol and all the pain, and then he wanted to drink it up again and vomit it up at sunrise.

Danny’s was busy for a Wednesday. He wasted no time getting to the center of the dance floor, and he let his body move, almost mindlessly, to the bass which seemed to echo in his chest. He felt eyes on him from every direction, and he let himself experience fear and rage against it, reveling in the danger of possibilities. A pain he could control. Another pain he inflicted on himself.

Some of the eyes were more intense than others. The closely cropped hair on the back of his neck prickled, and he licked his lips, and he knew without needing to look that Jack Gardner had come back.

But he did look.

And there he was, in another tight T-shirt—blue this time to match his eyes, Jesus fuck, so gorgeous like every secret fantasy Theo’d ever had—and a pair of dark wash jeans that did absolutely nothing to hide—