It had been nine months since Asher left the farm. Since then, Rowan’s parents purchased a mobile home, as a place for he and Rowan to call their own. They made the women payments, but had a long way yet until the trailer was paid off. Asher appreciated being cared for. He’d gotten used to the freedom and independence that came with moving out on your own. Though he had many traumas to work through, it helped to have somebody around that felt safe.

Work had gotten very hard. When Asher wasn’t feeling anxious or dissociating in the arcade, he was thinking of Alma, and the possibility of becoming a victim himself. It was hard to remain calm, some days. It was hard to get through the day. Rowan, who taught him to drive, often picked him up from work late at night. It was cold in the mobile home. The air conditioning unit, which hadn’t come with the home, sat on the floor in front of a window, blowing cold air through the place. That morning, Asher had been woken by a bad dream, and it put him on edge all day.

They had adopted a puppy. Rowan, who had allergies, had opted for a Shih Tzu, which they adopted from a local shelter. It was nice to have a pet, though the puppy was hard to train, and needed a lot of attention. That day, Rowan’s parents were visiting, and made themselves at home on the small living room sofa. Asher didn’t know the women well. They asked many questions about his life, sharing stories about their childhoods and smoking weed.

Rowan had never had to come out. He could simply bring a boy home, and his parents would treat them as just another son. He had both arms around Asher, who felt anxious to display affection in front of others. His parents acted more as friends than parents: poking fun at Rowan for his life choices, offering him joints during get-togethers. Still, despite his lax and carefree upbringing, Rowan was a responsible adult.

Asher spent nearly two months in prison for Sebastian’s crimes. This didn’t seem like much, but it was frightening and uncertain. Without Jane, he wouldn’t have gotten out at all.

During his few visits at Rowan’s childhood home, Asher learned basic things about his mothers - they were married in the Netherlands, when same-sex marriage was still illegal in Canada. Both of their children were adopted, and neither had ever had interest in searching for their birth parents. Rowan and his older brother, Crue, were adopted as toddlers through public adoption. Rowan had known this most of his life, and had never been bothered by it. He’d mentioned once or twice in passing his desire to adopt his own child, someday far off in the future. Asher, who knew nothing of the adoption process, would have done anything for him.

Hannah was calling. He didn’t speak to her much these days.

Rowan was very pretty. His parents had said nothing about Asher sharing a room, and hadn’t cared at all about their son sleeping in a bed with another boy. It was as if Asher could have done absolutely anything he wanted, and nobody would have said a thing. It was scary and strange - Asher missed having rules, and he missed having structure. It was difficult not to feel angry sometimes. Some people were blessed with caring, open parents. Some people were given parents who didn’t seem to care about them at all.

Alma was twenty-three when she died, and Joseph had been the last person she’d seen. This, likely, was only because they lived in the same apartment building. The place was supposed to be safe. If a person wanted something bad enough, they could accomplish the unthinkable to get it done. Asher had spoken to Mary a couple of days prior, and she’d had a lot to say. There were benefits and downfalls to being a Zoan. One such thing was that news always spread quickly.

“How could someone do that?” Asher asked his boyfriend, after getting off the phone with Mary. He wasn’t a person who spoke often on the phone. “How could someone kill someone else and not feel guilty about it? Especially someone they knew so well and spent time with.” He would never have expected Sebastian to be a killer. He was only eighteen years old, even younger than Asher. Maybe it was true what Hannah used to say. The people you think you know best turn out to be the ones you should fear the most.

The arcade where he worked was always filled with teenagers, who were noisy. Asher wasn’t afraid of crowds, but he was intimidated by them, and he often struggled to make it through a shift without an anxiety attack. He wondered why this was. All of his brothers and sisters had been raised in the same environment, with the same types of neglect. They had all seemed to grow up to function better than he had.

At work, Asher was required to wear a polo shirt and a name-tag. He hated attention being drawn to him in this way. When disgruntled patrons complained to him, they often called him by his name.

When Asher turned nineteen, Jane and Brynn took him out for dinner at the restaurant of his choice. This had been bittersweet for him - he’d never had a birthday all to himself before, but he missed Hannah in a strange way. That night, they’d had their first phone conversation since leaving the farm, and it left him feeling satisfied.

It was raining. Asher stood by the window, watching the water drip down the windowpane. He hadn’t left home in days.

“Ash.” There were hands on his shoulders. Though he knew it was Rowan, the sudden touch startled him. It was hard to be communicative with all that had happened over the past months. Asher hadn’t been very good company, and he felt guilty for this. “What’s wrong?”

He supposed it would have been pointless to lie to Rowan. The boy knew him too well. Sometimes, when Asher opened his mouth and tried to speak, nothing came out. Turning away from the window, he looked at Rowan for a long time. “Today is Alma’s twenty-fourth birthday.” He hadn’t been particularly close with his sister. Sebastian was on the run, and could target anyone he wanted next. He could target Asher, and no one would ever see him coming. “I don’t know how anybody could do that. He almost got away with it. She didn’t do anything to deserve it.”

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Asher’s parents’ deaths hadn’t been accidental. Sebastian had planned them for months: visiting with the family, sitting at church with them, even eating at their kitchen table while knowing he planned to murder them. There were no spare keys hidden outside the farm.

“Hey,” Rowan said, laying his head on Asher’s lap. Being near him every day felt so surreal, as if it weren’t quite real. At times, Asher didn’t believe it was. “Let’s talk about something else. I know what we can do today, if you want.”

Asher played with the boy’s hair. Being in love wasn’t so scary anymore. It helped to surround yourself with people who loved you. “What?”

Rowan grinned. “We could get married.”

Escaping a cult was hard, but it was nothing compared to coming to terms with the idea of being in a cult to begin with. Since leaving the farm, Asher had spent hours staring at a computer screen, comparing his life experiences to those of other people who had escaped cults. You could easily imagine other people in difficult scenarios, and shut down completely when trying to imagine yourself the same way. There was a thunderstorm, shaking the trees that stood outside the house, beating the sides of the walls and the fence. Asher longed to be held: to curl up underneath the blankets and feel safe and warm. If he was with Rowan, anywhere would feel safe.

His hands stopped fidgeting. There was an ache in his chest, and a ringing in his ears. “What?”

It was hard to imagine a future that didn’t involve Rowan. He was chipper, rash, cocky in all the right ways. People were funny. Somebody completely unexpected could come along, and suddenly you’d never feel afraid again. Rowan stood, kissing Asher deeply before sitting on the bed in front of him. “I want to marry you, Ash. I want to live with you and be with you for the rest of our lives.”

Forever was a long time. It seemed unlikely that anybody could spend forever with Asher and not grow tired of him. His father had always told him not to marry unless he was absolutely certain he was in love - though it was ironic coming from Orion. Asher doubted he had loved his wife a day in her life. There was a breath caught in Asher’s throat. It all should have felt wrong, but it didn’t. It never had. Truthfully, being with Rowan was the only thing that had ever felt right. Maybe it was a sin. Maybe he was too young, too inexperienced, too stupid. Maybe he’d be punished, somehow, somewhere off in the afterlife. So many maybes, and none of them mattered.

Rowan wasn’t one to second guess his words - but he looked at Asher now with uncertainty, mulling over what he’d blurted out. Asher longed to be brave and confident like Rowan: living the life he wanted, and not giving a second thought to what others wanted. Taking Rowan’s face in his hands, he kissed the boy once, and then again, calmed by the smell of his skin. “I want to marry you, too.”

“I should get home. I’m not supposed to leave after bedtime. My father will yell at me.”

It had been nearly two years since Asher snuck out for the first time. He’d met Rowan in person for the first time in the winter, about a month after they’d begun talking online. Leaving the house without permission, on its own, was terrifying to Asher. Leaving the house to meet a boy made him feel nauseated. Their first date was in Charlottetown, inside an ice cream shop Rowan claimed was the best in town. At the time, he’d just learned to drive, and still had a curfew. Asher had felt very guilty, and very dirty, to know of his attraction to another boy. At the time, he’d have done anything to keep it a secret.

Rowan had a lock on his childhood bedroom door. Asher was in awe of him.

I’ve never kissed a boy before,” he’d said, after Rowan dropped him off following their first date. He was so different: so warm, so grown-up, so self-assured. When they kissed for the first time, Asher shook so badly that he could hardly sit still.

There was something about assaulting touch that made even the gentlest touch seem painful. Rowan stroked Asher’s hair, and his face - and though it was gentle, every stroke felt like an electric current. Kissing was intimate and comforting; it felt nice to be loved. If it weren’t for his boyfriend, Asher didn’t think he’d ever feel loved again. He kissed softly and knew what he was doing, cradling Asher’s face in his hands, nibbling on his lips. It was moments like this that made Asher wonder how many boys Rowan had kissed before him.

Love shouldn’t have been wrong. Even if a boy loved a boy or a girl loved a girl, it shouldn’t have mattered - but to so many people, it did. For a long time, Asher didn’t know there was a word for what he was: and he’d been too afraid to voice his questions to somebody else. Salem had been the one to tell him, via text one day, the meaning of the word bisexual. Not everything needed to be labelled. Sometimes, it was just comforting to have words that described you. Asher wasn’t the first of the Zoan children to use this label, and he probably wouldn’t be the last.

With his hands on Asher’s thighs, Rowan pushed the boy backwards onto the bed. He was stronger and slightly taller, and his hands were soft. When his fingers ran over the zipper of Asher’s jeans, a jolt of thunder roared.

To a teenager, it seemed pathetic: to be nineteen years old and a virgin. Anxiety attacked the body in peculiar ways: a bead of sweat on the back, a pain in the chest, a restless night’s sleep. Lifting his head from a grey pillow, Asher glanced at the boy sitting at his feet: whose hand rubbed against his jeans, playing with him through their fabric. Even fully dressed, with the slightest of pressure between his legs, Asher felt excited.

“I don’t feel ashamed of myself anymore, and it’s all because of you.”

“You can’t kiss a boy. You’ll die alone.”

In the past, this was a real fear. But it had been a while since the thought of dying alone had reared its head. It wasn’t scary. “Do it.”

It was difficult not to be self-conscious. Asher had never touched himself, or gotten off. When Rowan went down on him, it was easy to give in. He’d never had an orgasm before, and Rowan was determined. Asher knew, before him, the boy dated other boys. This didn’t make him feel intimidated.

“I love you.”

It was hard to breathe. It was hard to explain the feeling that tugged at Asher’s abdomen and legs. Though he knew it was alright, to participate in these sorts of activities behind the boys’ shut bedroom door, it left a tight knot in his chest.