“Is there someone I can call for you?”
The kid shook his head and then pushed past Roman. But when he swayed and nearly fell, Roman grabbed him by the arm and made a decision that he knew he was going to regret come morning. “What’s your name?”
“Hunter,” came the disinterested response.
“You have two choices, Hunter. Either you tell me who to call to come get you or you’re walking out of here with me right now.”
Hunter’s mossy green eyes looked around the room as if he was finally seeing it and then his gaze went to the pool table. “You,” he finally said but he didn’t take his eyes off the pool table until Roman pulled him from the room.
***
“Sit,” Roman ordered softly as he locked the hotel room door behind him and switched on the lights. Hunter shuffled past him but instead of sitting on the bed, he stood nervously.
“Um, I should shower before you…before we…”
Agitation went through Roman as it dawned on him what was going through the quiet young man’s head. Roman had just assumed Hunter hadn’t said a word on the short ride to the hotel because he was still in shock from the episode in the club, but now he was beginning to wonder if it was something else that had had him preoccupied.
“Sit,” Roman said again, his eyes pinning Hunter’s until he finally shuffled to the bed and sat. He flinched when his ass made contact with the mattress.
Roman shrugged off his suit jacket and used the time it took to hang it up in the small closet to try and get control of his fury. Regret burned liked acid in his belly that he hadn’t stepped in the moment he’d walked through that curtain and understood what he was seeing. Since the act of putting his jacket away wasn’t cutting it, Roman rolled up his shirt sleeves and then went to the sink that was just outside the bathroom. He could see Hunter’s back in the mirror so he didn’t need to worry about the young man taking off on him. Not that it looked like that was even on Hunter’s mind because he just sat quietly on the bed, his head hung. Roman washed his hands and then splashed some cold water on his face. On the way back towards the bed, he grabbed one of the two chairs sitting by the small table and plopped it down in front of Hunter and sat.
“How old are you?” Roman asked.
Hunter’s focus was on Roman’s hands and it wasn’t until Roman relaxed them and placed them on his thighs that Hunter seemed to jerk out of his daze.
“I’ll be twenty in a couple of months.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
Roman managed to school his reaction and keep his tone in check when he said, “You were bleeding. I can take you to a hospital to get checked out.”
Hunter shook his head. “I’m fine. I just want to get cleaned up.”
“If you take a shower, there won’t be any evidence if you decide to pursue charges.”
Hunter swallowed hard before saying, “It wasn’t rape.” His voice was so soft that Roman barely heard him.
Roman leaned back in the chair and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Hunter, what I saw in that room…fuck, I don’t know what that was but I’m really struggling to accept that it was consensual.”
With Hunter’s head still hung, Roman didn’t see the sheen in his eyes until he dashed at his face with the back of his hand and it came away wet. “It wasn’t rape,” Hunter repeated. “I…I didn’t know there would be that many of them when I said yes.”
“Yes to what?”
“The big guy…the one with the long beard.”
Cooter. The guy Roman hoped wouldn’t be able to take a pain-free breath for a good long while.
“He propositioned you?” Roman suggested.
“Asked if I wanted to play pool. I knew what he meant. His friends were already back there when we got there.”
“Did you want it? Did you say no-”
“Look, can we just do this?” Hunter interjected. He finally lifted his eyes and Roman was both surprised and relieved to see that they no longer looked empty. Unfortunately, they were so alive with pain that Roman actually found himself reaching out to touch Hunter before he could think better of it. He managed to catch himself at the last moment and he had to fist his hands on his thighs to keep them from moving. No way in hell could he get more wrapped up in this kid’s problems than he already was.
“I’m not going to fuck you, Hunter,” he finally said.
More tears filled Hunter’s eyes and he shook his head before dropping his gaze once more. “Then can I go?”
“You’re not a prisoner,” Roman muttered but when Hunter instantly stood to leave, Roman grabbed him gently by the wrist.