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I turned his face toward the morning light. There was a little scrape near his eyebrow too.

My stomach tightened.

“Does your eye hurt? Can you see properly?”

“I can see you being upset,” he told me. “Which is what I was trying to avoid.”

“By telling me you ran into a wall? You could have tried a little harder.”

“In my defense,” Clayton said, “the wall was being a real piece of shit.”

Sadie made a sound behind me.

I didn’t laugh.

Last night, after Micah brought me home from the library, I’d stayed downstairs with Sunshine. I had watched television. Eaten dinner. Spent an unreasonable amount of time wondering whether Chief’s text asking if I was home required a longer answer than yes.

Somewhere in that evening, someone had hit Clayton in the face.

“You’ve had this looked at?” I asked.

“Mom saw it last night. Dad too.” He softened his voice. “I’m okay, Piper.”

I ran my thumb along the unhurt side of his jaw.

He let me. For all his joking, he knew better than to try to laugh me out of caring about him.

The driver’s door opened.

I looked over.

Chief came around the front of the Suburban. He reached for my bag, and I let him take it.

Then I saw his mouth.

“Oh, no.”

His upper lip was swollen, a small split dark along one side. A bruise lay high on his right cheek, beneath the outer corner of his eye.

It made his face look wrong.

That was a stupid thought. People got bruised. Cuts healed. I knew all of that.

I also knew his face better than I knew my own, and somebody had hurt it.

I reached for him before I thought about whether I should.

He stopped.

My fingers touched the uninjured side of his jaw. He lowered his head slightly so I could look.

No flinch. No retreat.

I barely registered that at first.

“Your lip,” I said.

“I know.”