“Please don’t hurt yourself,” Ryker says in a pained whine.
I shake my head. “I’m pathetic.”
“You’re not,” Liam says. “It’s him. It’s that arsehole dad of yours.”
“He didn’t do anything.”
“Yes he did,” Ryker says. “We know he did.”
“He . . . he didn’t hit me, or abuse me—”
“We saw the bruises on you,” Liam says.
I bite my lip. “Those were from—”
“Playing catch,” Ryker says. “We know. Except it wasn’t really catch, was it? It was a way for him to hurt you; it was a way he could put bruises on your skin without anyone accusing him of any wrongdoing.”
“That man is a grade A arsehole.” Liam says.
“I . . . I never told you we played catch.”
“Do you remember that day in PE when Eric Granger launched that tennis ball at you?” Ryker asks.
My cheeks heat with embarrassment. “Yeah, I remember . . .”
I had a full-blown panic attack in front of everyone and had to be carried by a teacher into the school.
Ryker continues. “Your mum came to pick you up, and we were with you in reception.”
I remember them sitting beside me, refusing to attend their lessons. I couldn’t look either of them in the eye.
“We heard her talking to the receptionist about what happened, and your mum says it was strange because you loved playing catch in the garden with your dad, and that’s when Liam and I both knew what those bruises we sometimes saw on your body were from.”
“It’s pathetic—”
“It’s not pathetic,” Liam growls.
“Two months later he broke your eye socket.” There’s a tremor to Ryker’s voice. “Even your mum said it was an accident, but we knew, and I’m sorry we didn’t do more, Freddie. We wanted to keep you at ours, keep you safe, and our parents tried, they contacted social services, but they said nothing was wrong.”
I remember when two women came round to the house and sat with my parents drinking sweet tea. My dad told them he had nothing to hide, that the injury to my face was only an accident, and my mum sat beside him, nodding like a dutiful puppet.
“It wasn’t just the bruises from playingcatch,” I say tentatively. “As soon as he came back, he’d change things, little things that don’t seem like a big deal, but my home wasn’t mine anymore. It became his, an expansion of him, and I’d feel like I wasn’t welcome. Mum would look at me like a stranger, or even worse, a hinderance, and I’d come to yours and you’d make mefeel like a real person again. Your parents were always good to me.”
“They love you Freddie, just like we do.” Ryker clears his throat. “Well, not exactly like we do,” he amends. “That would be fuckingweird.”
“Ryker . . .” Liam growls.
I laugh, and the tension I’d been holding seeps out of my muscles. Talking about my dad, brief as it had been, lifts something from my shoulders. But he, my job, Keegan, they’re all things that happened that I should’ve been able to talk to them aboutbefore. It’s not the root ofourissue, and that’s the reason we need to talk.
“Do you know what I realised when I walked in on Keegan?”
“Freddie . . .” Ryker murmurs. “You don’t have to—”
“I realised as hurt and as humiliated as I was, as Iam, it was worse losing you.”
And it’s true. My unanswered calls and messages, the weak excuses from Ryker and the blunt refusal from Liam . . . even now while I’m talking to them, the pure hurt resurfaces, and it’s stronger than any emotion I’ve felt before.
“You’ve not lost us,” Liam says.
