The Reclamation (The Club Trilogy Book 2) by Lauren Rowe Page B

Dad?”
    Josh’s face flushes.
    “It’s okay. Neither did I. I’d become quite the expert at distracting myself from the truth.”
    Josh nods. “Turn and burn,” he says quietly.
    “Turn and burn,” I agree. A series of images from the past year flashes through my mind. Turn and burn, indeed. “But then Sarah came along and kicked my ass, man. Holy shit, did she ever kick my ass. That woman can spot bullshit a mile a way—and she totally called me on mine.”
    “Sounds like she was exactly what you needed.”
    “She was—she is .”
    “But next time, if you’re having a rough time, talk to me, okay? I never want you to... you know... feel like . . .”
    “There won’t be a next time.”
    “Just don’t do something stupid.”
    “I won’t. Never again. I promise.”
    “I’ve always got your back. You know that, right? I never want you to—”
    “I won’t.”
    Josh exhales. “I can’t believe you spent a quarter million bucks on The Club—on anything, actually. It’s so un-Jonas-like of you.”
    He’s right. I don’t spend money frivolously. Clearly, I was out of my mind.
    “And Sarah knows you joined for a whole year?”
    “Yeah, she’s the one who processed my application.” I sigh, suddenly wistful. My Beautiful Intake Agent. She had me the minute her email landed in my inbox.
    “Wow. She knows all the ways you’re a total pervert and she still wants you?”
    I nod.
    “You’re a lucky bastard.”
    “I know.”
    “Does she know everything else, too? You know, about . . .” He pauses, suddenly unsure how to proceed.
    I tilt my head and wait. But Josh doesn’t have the heart to finish that sentence.
    He swallows hard.
    I finish his sentence for him. “Does she know about The Lunacy?”
    Josh nods.
    It suddenly occurs to me Josh is the only living person (besides doctors and therapists, of course) who knows everything about The Lunacy—the euphemism we use to refer to “the time when Jonas lost his fucking mind.” There was nothing remotely funny about that period of my life, of course, nothing at all, but I’ve since learned that scoffing about it, calling it something as irreverent and light-hearted and dismissive as “The Lunacy,” effectively minimizes the pain and relegates it to a distant and containable memory.
    I’ve gotten quite adept at compartmentalizing that stuff into a lidded box inside me, in fact, and now that I’m sane and in control of my mind and body and soul, now that I’ve come to realize that my father was fallible—that he wasn’t God, for fuck’s sake, or the supreme arbiter of my worth as a human being, that his suicide note was just fucking malicious and not reflective of the objective truth—now that I’ve figured out how to choose serenity and enlightenment and sanity through visualizing the divine originals and striving for excellence, I’m reborn—a totally different person. I’m a man now, a fucking beast, just like Josh always says—not a mute and frozen boy in a closet or some kind of pathetic pussy-ass seeking his father’s forgiveness that will never come. I’m strong now. Especially now that I’ve found my Sarah.
    I put down the muffin I was holding. “Well, I told her about... what happened... you know, on that day when we were kids,” I say quietly. The levity of our conversation has instantly vanished. He knows what day I’m talking about, of course—the day that changed both our lives forever, the day that fucked us up irreversibly, especially me. The day we’ve both tried, in vain, to overcome our whole lives.
    Josh looks surprised. And it’s no wonder—I never, ever talk about what I witnessed from the cowardly safety of my mother’s closet. I’ve certainly never told any of my other girlfriends about it.
    “I also told her about Dad—what he did. You know, just the basics, no details.”
    Josh nods, clenching his jaw. His eyes flash with sudden hardness.
    “But I didn’t tell her about... everything that