“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It is what it is.”
“I don’t have my mom around either.”
I look at him and find a mixture of melancholy and peace I don’t quite understand. “Can I ask what happened?”
Dax meets my eyes, and he smiles. “She got out.”
I stay quiet, wanting him to elaborate.
He kicks out a boot, scuffing the dirt below. He sighs at the view ahead and rests his arms behind him. “There was an opportunity for her to escape her crappy life, and she took it.”
I lean closer to him. “Did you know she was leaving?”
He nods, breathing heavier. “I was supposed to go with her.”
My heart crushes. “Oh, Dax. What happened?”
He lets out a weighted exhale and turns to me with a crooked smile. “It is what it is.”
I hold his gaze for a long moment. The moonlight reflects the silhouettes of trees in his dark gray eyes, and as my fear sheds, my grip releases on the blanket.
There’s nothing scary about the boy sitting next to me. He’s a guy who was dealt a really bad hand. There’s something so pure and dejected on his face.
I move my hand out from under the blanket and rest it on his. “It’s one thing for me to accept my future as a socialite with no career prospects. It’s another for you to accept abuse as normal. I can give you what you need to get out. You can find your...”
“No, I can’t,” he interrupts, pressing a hand over the pendant dangling in front of his t-shirt. “I don’t know where she is.”
My confidence plummets.
His thumb rubs against the side of my hand. “It’s better I don’t know where she is. I don’t want someone else finding her first.”
My blood runs cold. “Someone like who?”
Dax tilts his hand to glimpse his rose tattoo at a better angle. “You know, I got this one for her,” he murmurs. “She always liked roses.”
I swallow the saliva pooling in my mouth. “That’s cute.”
“And this chain is from her,” he says, letting the pendant swing. “She got my brother and me these St. Christopher pendants when we were old enough to ride. She gave them to us for protection.” His index finger rubs over the rose tattoo. “I got this after deciding to stay in order to protect her.”
The open space around us closes in. While he holds my hand, clamminess coats his palm.
I clear my throat, and whisper. “Doesn’t your brother want to help you look for her?”
His jawline flexes. “My brother is the reason I didn’t leave with her. If I hadn’t stayed behind and caused a diversion, he’d have found her. I knew he’d treat her worse than he would me.”
A mixture of terror and squeamishness swirls inside me. “Is your dad in the picture?”
Dax fidgets in his position. He removes his hand from mine and runs it around the collar of his t-shirt. “I don’t want to get into it.”
I swallow and exhale slowly. “Okay.”
My eyes fix on the surrounding nature cast in dark shadows. We sit in silence, and a nervous part of me waits for him to suggest we leave. Or worse, he’ll leave me here alone.
Dax stretches beside me and then hunches with a cough. He presses on his side and shivers.
I stand, cloaked in the blanket, and retrieve his jacket from beneath me. “Here.”
