Wicked Restless (Harper Boys #2)(65)

“This isn’t from fighting, Emma. These scars…they’re from surviving,” he says. His body shakes under my touch.

He never looks up. Several seconds pass in silence, and the tiny room begins to stink of the opened alcohol bottle. I look over his face, his arms and hands and body—so much of him covered in bruises. It’s like he was stolen—taken by someone, tortured, and returned half the boy he was—only to grow into a man with holes and broken pieces.

“What happened to you?” My voice cracks when I ask, my eyes still on the look of his hand on mine.

His hand. On mine.

“You have no idea, do you?”

I feel my brow pull in tight, my stomach binding as my mind begins to run through the thousand of possible things that means. I shake my head, my eyes moving up his body, gazing along his long torso, his golden skin, his curved muscles and neck and chin—his face so much older, but still the same. His eyes the ones I waited for, the only ones that ever looked at me that way before a kiss. Even if I didn’t realize it, I was waiting for him. I was in love with Andrew Harper the first time he held my hand. I’ve just been waiting to see him again to fully fall. I can’t fall now. Not when he’s…like this. But I fear I may not have control over any of that—over…feeling.

“I’m afraid, Andrew,” I tell him. When his chest fills with a deep breath and his head drops to the side, I know he understands.

“You have no idea…” he says, this time not asking a question.

His hand lets go of its hold on me, but I leave my hold on him a little longer, noticing his eyes close again as I do. When he opens them, he keeps his gaze down and away, his thoughts lost somewhere else entirely.

I let my hand slip away carefully, like a child trying to balance two cards in a pyramid. I watch him for a sign, waiting for him to say something more. I don’t know what to ask. I don’t know what I don’t know. But I’m starting to think it’s a lot—and it might mean the difference between the man standing here in front of me, and the boy I once thought I loved.

“I should stitch you up,” I say quietly, my lip pinned between my teeth to keep me from saying more. A shift happened just now—I hold the power. I can feel it. I’m not sure I want it, or am ready for it. Andrew only nods, his movement small, his eyes still at the corner of the room.

I slide the small drawer at the edge of the counter open and pull out the medic box from our hours at the clinic. Tech believes in teaching the basics early, so all pre-med students are trained medics before they begin their four years of med school. I’ve stitched maybe a dozen lacerations. I’m a better sewer than Lindsey. But I wish…oh how I wish it were her hands doing this now.

I flex my fingers, rubbing the tips against my palms, working the nerves through them. I pull the thread and needle out, readying it before preparing the alcohol and tape and gauze.

“I’ll need you to sit,” I say, expecting Andrew to use this, to take my request and turn it into a challenge, to defy me just for the sake of watching me suffer. Instead, he nods with the same lethargy he’s had since I touched him, his legs moving to the edge of the bathtub where he sits, holding on to the side, his eyes still lost.

I’m careful with every movement at first. And when I finally puncture his skin, I move my hands swiftly, repeating to myself that this is only a patient, that this is just like the other times, and that I can move smoothly. My hands work fast, closing the wound on his brow before the shaking settles in. I don’t feel it until I bring the scissors up to cut, and I have to pause before finally slicing the ends of the thread away.

“The place was called Lake Crest,” he says. I wait for more, but his silence indicates that he wants a response from me. I don’t know what Lake Crest is, where it is, what it means, but I want more—I think I need more. Even if it terrifies me.

“Okay,” I say, my voice quiet, unthreatening. I cut a small square of padding and two strips of tape to cover Andrew’s stitches. He remains on the tub, his hands still clutching—holding on. I’m delicate with my touch, but the tape doesn’t stick, so I run my finger softly along each strip against his face. When I look to his eyes again, they capture mine.

“Lake Crest is a place they send boys who need to be broken…when they f*ck up and do something wrong. It’s run by the state, and a guy named Nick Meyers. The first time Nick choked me, it was because I refused to kiss his feet…actually kiss his feet. He held my windpipe in his hands while security stood behind me with a Taser, just in case I decided to fight back.”

Oh my god!

“The second time, I decided to try. The volts sent me to my knees.”

My eyes close involuntarily.

“Some of the boys did him favors. That’s how it worked there. You were either on top, on the bottom, or invisible. Favors put you on top. I tried real hard to be invisible, but they wouldn’t let me. The ones who did him favors would leave the campus late at night, coming back with large envelopes—sometimes coming back with stab wounds and beaten faces.”

“Nick kept after me. He didn’t like that I said no, that I wouldn’t bend to his needs. I was a threat to his secrets, because I saw more than the others. I paid attention. Money passed through his hands like water, and I saw it all. I didn’t want any part of it. I only wanted to survive. And there were so many things to endure. So many factions, gangs within gangs, groups you needed to be in with and out with. I only wanted to be left alone.”