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“I’m sorry it’s so late,” he says after we spend several long moments just staring at each other. “I needed to see you.”
“Okay,” I answer cautiously, not sure what he wants from me at this point or what I’m supposed to do in this situation. I step back to let him in, then ask, “How are you? How’s Garrett?”
“He’s fine. He’s—” His voice breaks then and he looks away. Clenches his jaw. Shoves his hands deep in his pockets.
And fuck it. Just fuck it, because there’s no way my newfound sense of self-preservation can stand up against his pain.
Reaching out, I take his hand and tug him toward the bar I just finished cleaning. “Come on,” I tell him softly. “I’ll get you a drink.”
He lets me pull him along without a word and when he collapses on a barstool and slumps over the bar, my already bruised and battered heart shatters completely.
I’m aware of Lucas and the others checking the bar out and then settling in a booth toward the back, but I don’t pay any attention to them as I squeeze past his long legs and settle on the barstool next to him.
And then I just wait as I gently stroke a hand up and down his spine.
Minutes pass in silence—or near silence, as Kian is taking deep, shuddering breaths that hurt my chest…and everywhere else. I don’t know what to say to him, don’t even know where to begin since all I know is what the news shows and papers have said—that Garrett was rescued and is in stable condition back at the Palais des Fleurs.
Finally, finally, he speaks, in a voice so low I have to strain to hear it. “They tortured him. For three months, they fucking tortured him.”
My stomach drops. I was afraid of that—I think we all were afraid of it—but to hear Kian say it so bluntly makes every part of me hurt. Garrett and I didn’t end well, but I loved him once and the idea of anyone hurting him like that makes me ill.
“Is he—” I stop, not willing to ask if he’s all right, because obviously he isn’t. “How is he?” I finally say.
“I don’t know.” Kian lifts his head then, looks at me with green eyes so dark and shadowed they break my heart all over again. “I mean, he’s healing, physically. He had two small surgeries two days ago, and then there will be a series of procedures to help reset bones that healed badly and do away with some scars—” His voice breaks on the word “scars,” and I take his hand and squeeze tightly as I bring it to my lips.
“But when I talk to him…when I try to talk to him, it’s all surface, you know. All jokes and sarcasm and big brother bullshit. Every once in a while he’ll lash out—which is the only time I get to see what’s really going on inside him. The rest of the time, it’s like he’s wearing a mask, pretending to be who he used to be to keep from dealing with what’s happened to him.”
I wait for him to say more, and when he doesn’t, I turn a bunch of words over in my head, trying to come up with the right ones in the right order. “I think that’s actually pretty normal, don’t you? I mean, I’m not a psychologist, but I feel like after three months of hell, Garrett would want some normal. Even if it’s not really normal, even if it’s just some weird charade of normal, maybe it’s what he needs to feel secure. What he needs to prove to himself that he’s free from that hellhole and he’s never going back.”
“Do you think that’s what it is?”
“I don’t know, baby. I just know that if I was Garrett, I’d be holding on to whatever bits of normal I could get. After my parents died in that car crash—which, I know isn’t the same thing at all—”
“I didn’t know that’s what happened to them.” It’s Kian’s turn to squeeze my hand. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. We weren’t really that close.” I give him the answer I give everyone, partly because it’s easy and partly because now isn’t the time to be talking about my
shit.
“But afterward, when the funeral was done and the house was packed up and on the market…I’d gotten through all the hard stuff, you know. All the unspeakably painful stuff and I found myself trying to go back to life as usual. I just wanted to find normal again, no matter how abnormal things were. No matter that nothing would be life as usual—or at least not, that same kind of life as usual—ever again.
“Maybe that’s what Garrett’s doing. For three months he was living in the most horrible, painful circumstances imaginable. And now that he’s free, now that he’s back home he’s probably struggling to find normalcy again, trying to find the person he used to be—or at least the parts of that person that are still there. Until he does, until he gets those parts of himself back, I don’t think he’ll be able to deal with what happened to him and who it turned him into.”
“I don’t know how to help him do that?” It’s a question as much as it is a statement.
“I think you just follow his lead. Make things as normal for him as they can be while his body heals. Show him that he’s still your big brother and that you don’t see him as any less just because he went through this terrible thing—”
“Of course I don’t! The fact that he’s still alive and sane proves how strong he is.” His voice breaks. “If you could see him, Savvy. If you could see what they did to him. It kills me.”
“I know, baby. But that’s exactly what he’s afraid of, I would imagine. That when you look at him, you don’t see him anymore. All you see is what was done to him. I would think, for a guy like Garrett, knowing that would be almost as hard as getting through three months of torture.”
He doesn’t say anything then, just kind of stares at me. But I can practically see his mind working on what I’ve said. I lean over the bar, grab a bottle of Powers whiskey and pour him a glass, neat.
“You don’t have to figure it all out at once, you know,” I say as I slide the drink over to him.
He wraps his hands around the glass, but doesn’t take a sip. “I just…I don’t want him to be hurt any more.”
“I know that. And he probably does, too. More, he probably doesn’t want you to be hurt by what happened to him, either. The Garrett I used to know was a pretty overprotective guy. I can’t see that changing just because someone hurt him.”
