“Shouldn’t have come back, friend,” James said to me.
If I’d thought about it logically I’d know there was a weapon I couldn’t see from this angle. But all I saw was Ulli’s face, looking at the woman he loved. His whole reason for living extinguished, lost in a lake of blood.
All I heard was this murderer calling me friend, when he was doing this to mine.
I caught him off-guard, which was probably the reason why I didn’t die that day. I smashed into James, intending to hold him on the ground. To let Ulli do what he would with him. Because although I always erred on the side of pacifism, I wasn’t feeling generous at the moment.
But I wasn’t being rational either. I didn’t follow through on my training. I didn’t account for the gun in his other hand. The one that went off into my body, knocking me back like a punch.
CHAPTER 30
The Picture
ELLIE
Icouldn’t sleep, of course. But part of that was because I didn’t try. I camped outside Tommy’s room, in the darkened hallway. After he came out the first time, he’d stopped short, then slammed the door again.
The second time, he pulled the food inside.
The third he came out into the hallway and sat across from me. He was quiet for a good ten minutes, and so was I. I could hear, faintly, the movie Sam had put on upstairs, after I insisted he didn’t have to go to bed at nine like me. Part of me had wanted to sit up there with him, to feel his arm around me as we said nothing at all, watching a nonsense movie and the monitors and pretending this was what we did every Friday night until the end of time.
But now I was grateful I’d decided to sit out here, even though my butt was killing me.
“Do you want to talk?” I asked Tommy, after a few minutes of more silence.
He shook his head, then lowered it onto his arms, which were wrapped around his knees.
I took a risk and shifted over so I was sitting beside him. Amoment later he dipped his head onto my shoulder, I felt a bubbling fountain of relief washing over me. My sweet boy was still in there. He had a lot of work to do—including some apologies, particularly to Sam. But that could come later.
For now, he was here.
After several minutes, he lifted his head. “Is Sam okay?”
“Yeah. He really cares about you.”
“I… I tried to hurt him.”
“I know.”
“I never wanted to hurt him.”
“I know that too.” I hesitated, then said, “He’s upstairs, if you want to talk to him.”
“No.” The word was so quick out of his mouth I was worried I’d stepped too far. Then he rubbed his fist over his forehead. “I just want to go to sleep. Maybe tomorrow though.”
There was a moment of silence where I got the sense he wanted to say something.
“What is it, Tommy?”
A beat passed. “It’s okay,” he said. “If you want to like, be with him, or whatever.”
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. “With?—”
“With Sam.”
“That doesn’t matter now, Tommy.”
“I’m just saying. He’s nothing like that asshole.”
