Can’t they see what I’m seeing? Wide, gray eyes, so confused and unseeing. That face so gaunt, with cheekbones jutting out like blades. His pale hair long, strands hanging past his chin. Those wide shoulders bony, the filthy, torn clothes hanging off his frame.
I reach for him.
But Nate puts an arm in front of me, holding me back. “Careful.”
“He looks feverish.” I gently push Nate’s arm away. “Stop fighting him. You’ll hurt him worse.”
West sighs and releases Kash who presses back against the wall, panting harshly. He lifts his hands. “Sorry, man.”
That blond head tilts to the side, the gray eyes jumping from West, to Nate, to me. He licks his chapped lips, and something sparks in his empty gaze. “…Red?”
The sound of my pet name on his lips threatens to shatter me to pieces.
“Yes. Yes, it’s me.” Nate steps out of the way as I open my arms for Kash. “You came back home.”
“Home,” he whispers, and lets me slide my hands around his back where I feel every rib and every knob of his spine. He sounds lost.
Maybe he is lost.
This is surreal. Unreal. In a second, I’ll wake up from this dream where we found Kash around the corner from our apartment, and he’ll be gone from my arms again.
“Kash…” I don’t realize I’m crying until I feel the coolness of tears on my cheeks. I press my body to his, holding more tightly, and another of those pained moans escapes him.
Concerned, I pull back. Is he hurt? I don’t see any blood, but his clothes are huge on his thin frame, and I can’t tell.
I swallow back all the other questions crowding my mind—where have you been, what happened, when did you get back, why didn’t you come to us, what are you doing here on the street?—and focus on the most pressing one.
“Are you coming with us?” I ask, and I quiver inside. What if he says no? What if he never meant to come back?
Adults often come back, the police said. We won’t know why they walked away until they return. If they return.
Is this what happened? He walked away, then came back? I just… it doesn’t compute. Doesn’t make sense.
Kash is blinking those long pale lashes at something behind me, and it takes me a long moment to realize it’s the guys he’s staring at.
“Nate,” he whispers, voice broken, confusion clouding his gaze. “West. What… what happened?”
That’s it, he’s breaking my heart all over again, right now, making the pieces smaller and smaller until there’ll be nothing left but dust.
“That’s us,” West says, voice rough, and has to clear his throat. “Here.” He puts a hand on Kash’s shoulder. “I’m here.”
“We’re here, man.” Nate takes a tentative step forward, then slips his arm around Kash just when his legs seem to go out from under him, startling me, scaring me half to death. “We’re taking you home.”
They lift him back to his feet between them, and I’m horrified at the pallor of his face, the feverish gleam of his eyes when his lashes lift, the way he hangs off West and Nate.
Horror, disbelief, mind-numbing worry, fear.
Joy. Above pure, unadulterated joy, because he’s not dead, he’s not gone forever.
He’s back.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Nate
We half-carry Kash up to the apartment while Sydney hurries ahead, unlocking and opening doors, holding them open for us to pass.
I’m concerned, and not only because he weighs almost nothing, a bag of skin and bones, but above all because dude didn’t even recognize us. Tried to fight us off. He was hanging out near home and never called, never came up? What is this new fuckery?