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I was abrading my skin with such gusto that he quietly begged me to stop, and somehow something in the tone of his voice was convincing enough to actually get me to.
Otherwise I swear I'd have just kept rubbing until my skin was gone.
It was cowardly and weak, but after he'd washed me, and dressed me, he took me out of the trailer and carried me up the hill. And I let him.
"Aren't we going to . . . ?" I asked him.
"I'm going to get you settled in your room at Gram's. You need to rest and not worry about any other thing than that, do you understand?"
I nodded weakly. We were on his mother's property by then. It was closer than Gram's, and we always cut across it when we made the walk.
"Will you stay with me tonight?" I asked him. I didn't want to sleep alone.
"Of course. I won't leave your side after I . . . take care of things."
I went a little numb, and somehow it was easy to just not think about it, the things he'd have to do, the things I'd already done.
We'd barely crossed the property line between his mother's and his grandma's when it all hit me again and I started sobbing into his chest.
He sat down on the ground and sobbed with me, chanting, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry."
"It's not your fault," I finally managed to get out.
"I can't believe this happened to you. I can't believe I didn't save you in time." His voice broke on the words, and I'd never heard him sound more lost.
He brought me straight to my room, left me briefly, and came back with sleeping pills he'd gotten from Gram.
I stared at him.
"Please. For me. Take them. I can't leave you until you're sleeping. I can't."
I took them.
*****
When I came to, it was dark out, but my bedside lamp was on.
Dante had pulled a chair up and was sitting at my side. He was staring straight ahead.
I shivered at the look in his eyes.
That caught his attention and his gaze cleared—black nightmares turning to concern as he studied my face.
"What can I do?" he asked me.
Again, he didn't ask me if I was okay.
"Hold me," I said, and started crying again, the worst kind of tears, because they were only for me, purest self-pity.
He crawled into bed with me fully clothed and wrapped himself around me.
"Did you . . .?" I finally asked him.
"Everything is handled. If the police ever ask you about it, and they likely will at some point, you need to plead complete ignorance. They'll catch on that you might have been the last one to see him, because he took you out of school, but you tell them that he asked you a few questions and dropped you off at Gram's, okay? He dropped you off at Gram's at around eleven a.m. Gram will corroborate your story. He left you here at eleven and you know nothing else about it."
"Okay. Does Gram know . . . ?"
"Gram knows everything. I needed her help, and she's your alibi. Also, we needed a very discreet doctor to examine you, and I didn't know any myself."
