“He kissed me.” I lift a hand to stop them from yelling at me, but they’re only staring at me. Right. “He. Kissed. Me. Not the other way round.” I wipe my hands on my thighs. “Well, I kissed him back, of course.”
“Back up. Just a fucking sec.” Seth rubs his forehead as if fighting a headache. “I thought you and Shane were friends. I didn’t know there was more.”
“So what if there is?”
“Fuck, I don’t know. I don’t fucking know what to say.”
I’m barely listening to him. “Anyway, the kiss… That was days ago. But then…” I wipe my hands again. My heart is going a thousand miles an hour. “Then he freaked out. Shut himself up in his bedroom. I heard something crash, so I went looking for him. He had some sort of flashback. He was on the floor, clearly in pain, and he couldn’t see me. He was begging someone…” I swallow, my eyes hot. “Begging someone to stop. Stop hurting him. Who was it, Seth?”
His face has gone ashen. “You don’t wanna know,” he whispers.
“I do. I do want to know.” Tears slip from my eyes down my cheeks, and I get up, take a step toward the two of them. “Tell me who hurt him, and I’ll hurt them back, I swear. I don’t know how yet, but I will.”
Now they’re both looking at me wide-eyed. Stunned silence spreads.
“You…” Seth glances at Manon, then back at me. “You serious?”
I sit down on the coffee table, lean forward, our knees almost touching. “I kissed him back because I really, really like him, Seth. You got to believe me. I’m here, talking to you, because I want to help him. Without knowing what happened to him, it’s difficult not to touch any triggers.”
Seth makes a small, distressed sound in the back of his throat, hunching over, and Manon puts her arms around him.
“How much do you know?” he whispers.
“Not much.” I look down on my hands, curled up on my legs, my red nail polish chipped in places. “I saw the scars.”
Felt them under my fingertips, raised and terrible.
“Scars?” Manon whispers, a gray cast to her face. She tugs on Seth’s hands. “What scars?”
He bows his head, lets out a ragged breath. “My fault. I let him down. Didn’t protect him as I promised. I couldn’t. Bad things happened to him in the prison. To both of us, but in his case… Damn.”
From the way Manon is going paler and paler, her eyes round like coins, it occurs to me this is all news to her as well.
“What scars?” she asks again, her voice trembling.
“On his wrists,” Seth bites out. “I could hear him, you know? Hear him scream as they used him. He called for me, and I couldn’t go, locked up in my cell. Couldn’t save him.”
He’s shaking, and Manon puts her arms around him. His eyes are glassy, but no tears fall.
My own heart is tripping. The truth is as bad as I imagined.
No, worse.
“Just…” He gives me a defeated look. “Just be careful with him. My cuz likes you, more than he’s ever liked a chick before.”
His words sink in slowly. Shane likes me. More than other girls. Warmth spreads in my chest, up my neck.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” Seth goes on. “He hasn’t had flashbacks in a while. First the accident at the construction site, now this.”
“Has he seen a therapist? Does he have coping mechanisms
?”
He gapes at me.
“Objects that make him calmer, techniques to help him center himself,” I explain. “A first-aid kit of sorts. Also, do you know his triggers?”
Seth shakes his head. “He met with a therapist in prison a few times. I don’t know what they talked about. He never wanted to tell me what was on his mind, and I never pushed, but I think it did more damage than good.” Red steals over his cheekbones. “Christ. All this time on the streets, the depression he was in… I failed him again, didn’t I?”