Chapter 5: Whispers in the Dark
The gun stayed on the hallway floor, a dark, discarded shape. Joel led KJ by the elbow, his touch feather-light, up the servants’ staircase at the back of the house. It was narrower, dimmer, and felt farther away from the main bedroom—from the rumpled silk and the memory of the doorframe. Joel flicked on the light in the first guest room, the one kept for family who never visited.
It was sterile. A museum of hospitality. Pristine white sheets were pulled tight over the king-sized bed, the pillows fluffed into oblivion. A single black candle, unlit, sat on the nightstand beside a generic art print of a stormy sea. The air smelled of lemony disinfectant and, faintly, of Joel’s own cologne from his last stay—cinnamon and clove, now gone sharp and dusty.
“Here, cariño. Sit,” Joel murmured, guiding KJ to sit on the edge of the bed. The mattress didn’t sigh; it was new, unused. KJ sat stiffly, his gaze fixed on the dark window, his hands limp in his lap.
Joel vanished into the adjoining bathroom. KJ heard the tap run, the rattle of ice in a plastic tray. He returned with two towels wrapped around lumpy, frozen packs. “Gotta get on that side, before it swells any more,” Joel said, his voice deliberately practical, a life raft of normalcy.
KJ didn’t protest. He let Joel help him lean back against the propped-up pillows, a small, pained sound escaping as his bruised ribs made contact with the mattress. Joel placed one ice pack gently against KJ’s left side, over the darkening bloom of the kick. The second he held, waiting. KJ gave a barely perceptible nod, and Joel carefully laid it against the swollen, tender hinge of his jaw where Alex’s fingers had dug in.
KJ winced, a sharp hiss sucking air through his teeth. The cold was a brutal, shocking agony. But after a few seconds, as the numbness spread, it began to blunt the sharper edges of the throbbing. A shaky breath left him. It felt good. The simple, physical relief was so profound it almost brought a new wave of tears.
Joel perched on the edge of the bed near his hip. He reached out and gently brushed KJ’s sweaty, disheveled black hair back from his forehead. His touch was unbearably tender. “Oh, sweet boy,” Joel whispered, his own voice thick. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
KJ’s eyes, which had drifted shut, opened. He looked away, staring at the blank wall. He took a deep, careful breath, avoiding the full expansion of his ribs. “I wanted to. I just—“
His eyes glistened, liquid in the low light. He clenched his jaw, the muscle ticking under the ice pack, and managed to hold the tears back. He took one more deep breath. “It wasn’t always bad,” he said at first, the words pushed out like a confession. “It eventually became a constant thing, but it wasn’t always like that…” He shook his head slightly, a movement of pure exhaustion.
“Baby, we could’ve helped you… somehow…” Joel said. He sounded so heartbroken it was its own kind of injury.
“I couldn’t…” KJ’s voice cracked. He swallowed hard. “I couldn’t drag anyone into my shit… It got so bad, I—“ He choked back a sob, pressing the heel of his free hand against his eye. “I thought he was going to…” He took another deep breath, this one so deep his whole body shook with the effort of it. “I thought he was going to kill me…”
The sentence hung in the sterile air. Joel didn’t move, didn’t speak. He just kept stroking KJ’s hair, a steady, rhythmic anchor.
KJ paused, gathering the fragments. “You know, in the beginning, although he truly was sweet, he had a short temper that scared me,” KJ chuckled dryly, a hollow, ugly sound. “Clearly not enough to leave… It started small, mainly yelling, or breaking things… I remember the first time he hit me, I got so pissed off. I always told myself, I wouldn’t do that again… Not after the last relationship… Not after how… how I grew up…”
He faltered. This was deeper, darker bedrock. Joel’s hand stilled for a second, then resumed its gentle motion.
“Abusive foster parents,” KJ forced out, the words flat. “In every which way. Yet somehow…” He smiled then, a twisted, heartbreaking thing that didn’t reach his eyes. “Somehow I always get the same shit over and over and over again. I get the mentally abusive shit. I get the physically abusive shit. I get the sexually abusive shit. Non. Fucking. Stop.”
He finally turned his head to look at Joel, the ice pack shifting. The tears were flowing freely now, cutting clean tracks through the pallor of his shock. “I don’t know anything outside of it, Joel,” he said, his gaze desperate, searching his friend’s face for an answer Joel couldn’t possibly have. “I can’t break the fucking cycle. Every time I think I do, I end up back in it. It’s so fucking draining…”
He was silent for a long moment, the only sound his hitching, uneven breaths. “Hayden,” he whispered, the name a fresh wound. “Last night… it felt like maybe… like a different kind of door. And today, Alex just… he just nailed it shut. He reminded me what room I actually live in.”
Joel carefully removed the melting ice pack from KJ’s jaw. He set it on the nightstand with a soft thunk. He used the edge of the towel to blot gently at the tears on KJ’s face. “You don’t live in that room anymore, KJ,” Joel said, his voice low but fierce. “He broke into your house. That’s a fucking crime. What he did today…” He trailed off, the violence too fresh to name. “That room is gone. We’re burning it down.”
KJ closed his eyes, more tears leaking out. He was too tired to argue, too empty to hope.
“You’re staying right here tonight,” Joel stated. “I’m going downstairs to get your phone. And that hoodie. And I’m going to make some tea that tastes like dirt but will help you sleep. ¿Entiendes?”
KJ gave a weak, single nod.
“And tomorrow,” Joel continued, standing up, his demeanor shifting into something brisk, a general marshaling his forces. “Tomorrow, we make a plan. Not a feeling. A plan. With lawyers, and police reports, and changing codes, and maybe a very large, very mean dog. A plan, KJ. We are making a fucking plan.”
Joel’s words hung in the antiseptic air, a promise meant to armor them both. He turned, intending to head downstairs for the tea, for the phone, for the sodden hoodie—to do something.
“No.” The word was flat, final, a stone dropped in still water.
Joel paused at the doorframe, looking back. KJ had pushed himself up on his elbows, wincing at the strain in his side. The raw pain on his face had hardened into something else. Fear, but a familiar, entrenched fear.
“No. Joel. No police. Please.”
The ‘please’ cracked open at the end, betraying the desperation beneath the command.
Joel walked slowly back to the bed. He sat on the edge again, his weight making the mattress dip. “KJ,” he said, his voice careful, measured. “He broke in. He assaulted you. In your own home. This isn’t a relationship thing anymore. This is a crime scene down the hall.”
KJ shook his head, a tight, frantic motion. “You don’t get it.”
“Then make me get it.” Joel’s hands were open on his knees. “Help me understand.”
“They won’t believe me,” KJ said, the words tumbling out in a hushed rush. “Or they’ll believe me, and it’ll be a whole thing. Reports. Questions. My name in some system. ‘KJ Atlas, noted for domestic disputes.’” He spat the last part like a curse. “It’ll follow me. He’ll make it follow me.”
Joel leaned forward. “He’s the one who’ll have a record. He’s the one who—”
“He’s charming!” KJ’s voice rose, then broke. He clutched at the ice pack on his ribs. “He’s a thirty-year-old white guy with a clean haircut and a nice smile. He’ll cry. He’ll say I provoked him. He’ll say we had a passionate, volatile relationship and I’m just jealous he’s moved on.” KJ’s breath hitched. “He’ll say I’m confused. He’ll look at me, Joel. A trans guy covered in tattoos who plays screamo music for a living. Who do you think they’ll side with?”
“That’s not how it works,” Joel insisted, but the conviction in his voice had a hairline fracture.
“It is!” KJ’s fist clenched in the white duvet. “It’s exactly how it works. I’ve lived it. In foster care, every time someone was called, I was the problem. The troubled kid. The drama.” He looked away, his throat working. “A police report is just a piece of paper. It doesn’t stop him. It just paints a target on my back and gives him a script to play the victim.”
Joel was silent for a long moment. The black candle on the nightstand seemed to absorb the light. “So what’s the plan, then?” he asked quietly. “We change the locks and hope he loses the key?”
KJ didn’t answer. He just stared at the wall, at the generic painting of a wave about to crash. Joel watched him, seeing the calculations flicker behind his eyes—the cost-benefit analysis of survival he’d been running for years.
“A restraining order,” Joel tried again, a last volley. “At least that. It’s a paper trail.”
“A piece of paper,” KJ repeated, his voice hollow. “That tells him where I’ll be for the court date. That he can violate just to prove he can.” He finally looked at Joel, his eyes glittering with unshed tears and a terrible, weary knowledge. “You think a piece of paper on his windshield would have stopped him today?”
Joel had no answer for that. The image of the Glock on the hallway floor flashed in his mind. He’d been aiming it at a shadow. He understood, with a cold, sinking clarity, that KJ had been aiming it at a future he saw barreling toward him, one the police couldn’t divert.
“Okay,” Joel said, the word a surrender. He sagged a little. “No police. ¿Está bien?” He waited for KJ’s slight nod. “But we are not doing nothing. You cannot stay here alone tonight. You’re not staying here alone tomorrow. We are making a different kind of plan.”
KJ’s shoulders relaxed, a fraction of an inch. The immediate threat of the outside world was deferred. “What kind?”
Joel stood up, pacing the small space between the bed and the door. “First, I’m texting the guys. Tour’s postponed for a week. Family emergency.”
“Joel, you can’t—”
“I already did.” Joel waved his phone. “They’re cool. Marco sends you a hug, which you would hate, so I accepted on your behalf.” He stopped pacing and pointed a finger at KJ. “Second, you are coming to my place. Today. As soon as you can stand without wanting to puke.”
KJ started to protest, but Joel cut him off.
“My building has a doorman, papi. A big one named Igor who likes me and hates everyone else. You’ll sleep on my stupidly comfortable couch. Third…” He chewed his lip, thinking. “We find you a lawyer. Not to file a report. To send a cease-and-desist letter from a scary legal letterhead. A ‘do not contact, do not approach, all further communication will be considered harassment’ thing. It’s still paper, but it’s paper from a shark, not a beat cop.”
KJ watched him, a fragile hope tentatively unfurling in his chest. It wasn’t a guarantee. But it was a structure, a series of steps that didn’t end in a courtroom or a headline.
“And Hayden?” KJ asked, the name a soft ache.
Joel’s expression softened. “You text him back. You tell him you had a family thing come up and you’ll be in touch soon. You keep it light. You buy yourself time to breathe.” He sat down again, his energy spent. “One thing at a time, KJ. Right now, the thing is getting you safe. Not fixing everything. Just safe.”
KJ leaned his head back against the pillows, closing his eyes. The ice packs had melted, leaving damp, cold circles on his shirt and the duvet. The pain was a dull, full-body throb. But the paralyzing terror had receded, replaced by a deep, exhausting relief. He wasn’t alone in the room anymore.
“Okay,” KJ whispered. It wasn’t agreement to everything, but it was a start.
“Okay,” Joel echoed. He reached over and squeezed KJ’s forearm, just once, a firm and solid pressure. “Now, I’m going to get you some ibuprofen and that terrible tea. And then we’re getting you out of this museum and onto my couch where you belong.”
He stood and left the room, his footsteps purposeful on the stairs. KJ listened to them fade. He looked at his hands, resting on the white linen. They were still trembling. But they were his hands. And for now, that felt like a kind of victory.
The victory was small and quiet, a fluttering thing in his chest that felt dangerously fragile. He clung to it as Joel helped him stand, as he shuffled down the back stairs avoiding the main hallway entirely, as he slid into the passenger seat of Joel’s beat-up Mini Cooper with a gasp of pain. The Gothic mansion receded in the side mirror, its turrets black against the gray sky, looking less like a sanctuary and more like a crime scene he was fleeing.
Joel’s apartment was on the third floor of a pre-war brick building, all creaking floors and the smell of other people’s cooking. The doorman, a mountainous man with a thick Eastern European accent, nodded solemnly at Joel and gave KJ a look that was neither pity nor curiosity, just a flat, professional assessment. “You need help, you tell Igor,” Joel muttered as the elevator groaned upward. “He once made a guy cry just by staring. It was beautiful.”
The couch was, as promised, stupidly comfortable. A vast, worn-in sectional draped in soft, navy blankets. Joel dumped an armload of pillows and produced a fresh ice pack from his freezer. “Okay. Command center is established. I’m going to get changed and then we’re ordering the greasiest pizza known to man. Do not move.”
KJ didn’t plan to. The couch seemed to absorb him, the soft fabric a balm against the lingering ache in his back from being dragged across the floor. He heard Joel puttering in his bedroom, the familiar sounds of domesticity. A drawer closing. The soft thump of discarded boots. The distant flush of a toilet. Normal sounds. Safe sounds. They wrapped around him like a spell.
He lay there in the dim living room, lit only by the amber glow of a salt lamp on a bookshelf. The quiet hum of the city filtered through the old windows. His phone, which Joel had retrieved and placed on the coffee table, glowed with a notification. It was a weather alert. Not Hayden. Not Alex. Just the sky. He stared at the ceiling, tracing a hairline crack in the plaster.
Joel emerged in flannel pajama pants and a faded band t-shirt. “Pizza’s on the way. Extra cheese, extra guilt.” He flopped into a large armchair across from KJ, pulling a blanket over his lap. “You surviving?”
“Yeah,” KJ said. It wasn’t a lie. Surviving was exactly what he was doing.
They ate in silence mostly, the grease and salt a grounding ritual. Joel put on a stupid reality baking show, the melodrama a harmless white noise. KJ felt the adrenaline crash finally hit, a tidal wave of fatigue that made his bones feel like lead. His eyelids grew heavy, each blink longer than the last. He watched a woman sob over a collapsed soufflé as if the world was ending, and the profound normalcy of her fake tragedy was somehow comforting.
“Go to sleep, idiota,” Joel said softly, his eyes on the TV. “I’ll be right here.”
KJ didn’t need telling twice. He let his eyes close, the murmur of the television pulling him under. He drifted for a while, floating in the safe, dark space between wakefulness and dreams, where the pain was muffled and the memory of Alex’s hands was just a shape in distant fog.
He woke with a jolt sometime later. The TV was off. The apartment was dark. Joel’s soft snores came from the direction of the armchair. A streetlight cast a long, rectangular glow across the floor. The digital clock on the cable box read 2:17 AM.
The deep sleep had cleared a narrow channel in the noise of his mind. Joel’s instructions from earlier floated to the surface, clear and specific. You text him back. You tell him you had a family thing come up and you’ll be in touch soon.
KJ reached for his phone, the movement slow and stiff. The screen lit up his face in the dark. He opened his messages. Hayden’s text still sat there, unread, a tiny monument to a different timeline.
Unknown Number: Hey, it’s Hayden. Still thinking about that date. Coffee sometime this week? No velvet required.
KJ took a shaky breath. His thumbs hovered over the screen. He typed, deleted, typed again.
KJ: Hey. Sorry for the radio silence. Had a family thing come up suddenly. All good, but it’s been a day. I’ll be in touch soon.
He hit send before he could overthink it. The whoosh sound seemed deafening in the quiet room. He held the phone, staring at the screen. A part of him, a wounded, cynical part, expected nothing. Or expected a demand for details.
The three dots appeared almost immediately. Hayden was awake.
Hayden: No worries at all. Hope everything’s okay. If you need anything, even just to vent, don’t hesitate to ask. Seriously.
KJ read the words twice. The kindness in them felt like a warm palm on his cold cheek. It was straightforward. No pressure. Just an open door.
KJ: Thanks. I appreciate that. It’s just… complicated family stuff. The usual drama.
Hayden: Say no more. Family is a beautifully complicated nightmare. My mom still asks if I’ve met a nice girl. Every. Single. Call.
A weak smile touched KJ’s lips. He could imagine it.
KJ: Oof. I’m lucky mine doesn’t ask anything at all.
Hayden: Silver linings. So, when the dust settles… still up for that date? No rush.
KJ’s heart did a small, hopeful skip. It felt illicit, texting this normal, flirty thing while lying bruised on his best friend’s couch. It felt like reclaiming something.
KJ: Yeah. I am. Where are we going to go?
The dots danced.
Hayden: Dinner? Somewhere low-key. Good food, no pressure.
KJ considered. The idea of being in a loud, crowded restaurant made his skin prickle. But a quiet dinner, somewhere dark and calm… that felt possible. A goal.
KJ: You pick the place. Surprise me. Later next week?
Hayden: You got it. I’ll scout locations. Get some rest, KJ.
KJ: I will. Night, Hayden.
Hayden: Night.
KJ put the phone down on his chest, screen facing down. The glow faded, leaving the room dark again. He listened to Joel’s snores, the occasional car passing outside. The plan was in motion. The scary legal letter. The safe house. The doorman.
And a date. A simple dinner, sometime next week. It was a pinprick of light on a far-off shore, but for the first time since he’d heard Alex's voice in his bathroom, it felt like something to swim toward, not just something to flee from. He curled tighter into the blankets, holding the phone against his chest, and let the deep, exhausted sleep pull him under for good.