Matty was still shaking, his eyes turned down.

“I promised you I’d keep you safe. And I will.”

“What’s so messed up about me?”

“What?”

Matty ran his hands under his eyes and then clasped his elbows again. “I mean, I didn’t want to be gay. I didn’t ask for it. I’m a good person. Or, I mean, I thought I was. I tried to be. I thought I could be a good enough person that it would go away, that I could be happy.”

“Matty—”

Matty shook his head so fiercely that Shaw stopped, and Matty drew his fingers under his eyes again. “But I was wrong. I couldn’t be happy. I just kept getting worse and worse. And I’d think terrible things. I’d want people to do terrible things to me so that . . . so that I wouldn’t have to make a choice. I would walk around and all of the sudden I’d wish somebody would just rape me.” He let out a single sob and then choked the rest back. “I would think how much better it would be to be raped, to be held down and fucked—” The word sounded awkward and grotesque in his mouth. “—because then I wouldn’t be responsible, then I could at least have someone touch me and I wouldn’t have to feel guilty. And I know that’s messed up. I know it’s wrong. I know it isn’t even true, because people who are raped, it’s the worst thing in the world; nobody deserves that. But in my mind, because I was so desperate, it made sense.”

He looked up at Shaw as though waiting for an answer, and Shaw knew any word would be the wrong one, so he just nodded once.

“And then when I finally got brave enough, when I finally decided to make that decision and not let someone else make it for me, when I finally decided to be honest about who I am, I met—I met that guy. And he videotaped it. And he . . . and he didn’t even care about me.” Another sob broke from Matty’s throat, and he pressed the heels of his hands to his face, bending slightly at the waist like the weight of it all was going to snap him. “So what’s wrong with me? What the fuck is wrong with me that he could look at me and do that to me? What the fuck is wrong with me that I can’t—I can’t even—”

Whatever he couldn’t do, Shaw never learned because Matty burst into tears, and he fell forward into Shaw’s chest. Shaw cradled him, stroking Matty’s hair, holding up the boy while tremors threatened to rip him apart. And after a while, Matty’s sobbing slowed, and he turned his head so that his breath hit Shaw’s neck like air from a furnace, and he hooked the fingers of one hand under the collar of Shaw’s shirt, the backs of his nails smooth and sharp as they glided across Shaw’s chest.