“Because I can’t stand you looking at me like that. I can’t stand that I—that I hurt you. And I can’t stand that you know.” Matty’s mouth opened and closed silently. “That you know who I really am.”

“Why did you come here? Why did you hire me?”

Matty broke into motion, his long legs carrying him across the room, and he turned his shoulder like a battering ram. Shaw shoved him back. Then he shoved him again. And a third time. He wanted to hit Matty, he wanted to bury Matty’s face under his fists. He wanted to kiss away the tears.

Matty wiped his eyes. He tried to charge past Shaw again, and again Shaw shoved him. This time, Matty landed on the couch.

“Answer the question. Why me? Why did you come here? Was he right? Was I just an easy mark for you to—” Shaw couldn’t finish. He didn’t even know if words went all the way to what he wanted to say.

“I told you the truth. I came here because Mark Sevcik was blackmailing me.”

“That’s not what you told me.”

Another silent sob shook Matty, and he wiped his face. “I told you—I told you the rest of it because I was afraid you wouldn’t help me.”

“It’s a business. All you had to do was pay and we would have helped you.”

“Would you have?” Matty’s head came up. His eyes glittered—hard, wary eyes now. Eyes that Shaw had never seen in the churchboy facade. “North didn’t want to take the case. It’s blackmail, and it’s messy, and it meant getting tangled in a police investigation. If I came to you, if I told you all of it—if I told you I used to hustle, if I told you I’d been in and out of prison, if I told you the truth, would you have taken the case? Or would you have thought what most people think: that I deserve this, that I deserve to be blackmailed because I was a whore, because I made bad decisions when I was a kid, because I didn’t have anybody to help me and I was hungry and it didn’t seem like a big deal to suck a few cocks if it meant I’d have dinner and a place to sleep.”

Shaw covered his eyes. He couldn’t breathe, and then, after air finally rushed into his lungs, he managed to say, “I guess we’ll never know.”

“I know. I already know. You wouldn’t have taken the case. And Mark would have kept me on a leash the way he had for the last three months. If I didn’t do the dishes. If I talked back. If I went for a walk without telling him where I was going. Anything he didn’t like, he’d wave that fucking recording in my face and ask me if I wanted to go back to prison. He’d ask me if I liked being passed around like a fucking cum rag.” Matty dashed both hands under his eyes. “You know what? I finally decided it didn’t matter. Another six months in prison, another year, I’d do it if I had to. Just to get away from him. But I thought maybe, maybe I wouldn’t have to do that. Maybe somebody would help me.”