But West seems more concerned with the arm Nate has tucked around his middle. “Listen, man, we should go to the ER. Have you checked out.”
“No way.” Nate’s voice is a hoarse rasp.
“You could have internal injuries.”
“I’m fine.”
West glances at me, and in his eyes I see fear. “So you say.”
“What. Happened?” I can’t take this evasiveness anymore. Not when it comes to the wellbeing of my boys. “West. Tell me where you were. Did you get into a fight?”
“Yeah.” He gives Nate a long look, one Nate doesn’t return. “We did, all right. With Nate’s dad and his buddies.”
Oh shit. “They attacked you?”
“They got Nate, and…” West grimaces.
“And what?” I try to piece this together—the way Nate keeps flinching, all those bruises, the darkness in West’s eyes. “Where is Kash?”
“On his way. You should’ve seen him, Syd. He laid into them like a fucking demon. They never stood a chance.”
“Good.” Yeah, that’s good. Kash has always been gentle with me, but I can easily imagine him causing mayhem while West hauled Nate away from that hell.
West looks worried, though. The glances he keeps stealing at Nate are tinged with fear. There’s more he won’t tell me, not now, and the possibilities are too awful to contemplate.
“Dude…” West tugs Nate’s T-shirt down and there it comes again, that terrible flinch. “We should let you rest.”
But Nate grabs West’s arm, his voice still hoarse, painful to hear. “Kash. Where is Kash?”
West’s brows draw together in a frown. He pulls out his phone, checks it. “You know what? That is a very good question…”
We end up taking Nate to the ER anyway. He doesn’t put up much of a fight, and that worries me even more. He lets us move him like a puppet, then lets the doctors poke at him and take blood and urine samples without a word.
West talks to the doctors while I sit with Nate outside the small office, holding his hand. West offered and Nate said nothing, so presumably he agreed.
Or doesn’t object.
Or doesn’t give a damn.
Whatever it is West tells them, the doctors and nurses look grim afterward and take Nate inside for more exams.
“What did you tell them?” I ask West when he’s taken Nate’s place beside me.
“Some extra tests.” He sighs. “For STDs.”
I close my eyes. “What happened today?”
And West tells me about Kash coming to talk to him as he tried to decide what he needed to take from the apartment, how they heard noise from upstairs and how they overheard the men talking about how they’d used Nate.
How his dad had whored him out. How he and Kash had fought the men and Nate’s dad to get Nate away, and how he has no idea if anything else happened before they managed to haul him away. If they got to him in time.
“No…” I put my face in my hands. I knew what Kash had told me, his suspicions, but this… this is all sorts of horrible.
“Come here,” West says gruffly and pulls me into his arms. “He’ll be all right.”
“You’ve said this before. But he’s not.”
He hugs me more tightly to his chest, buries his nose in my hair. “We’ll help him. We all have our fucking demons. If we share them, maybe the burden will become lighter.”