AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The women get up to follow him, and after a few beats, I do the same. No idea why, but I feel like I should show them around, keep them from touching Ross’s stuff, somehow... protect him.
From what, I don’t know. They seem to like him well enough, care enough to sit down and try to think how to set him free.
But as they wander around the empty house, commenting how dirty and rundown it is, how his bedroom could use a good sweeping, maybe burn the sheets and curtains and start from scratch, it bothers me.
And when Gigi says, “You’d think an animal lives here”, well...
“He doesn’t live here, and he’s not an animal,” I inform her. “He hates this house.”
“It’s his home.”
“No, it’s not. It’s the place where his dad hurt him, where he waited for his mom to come back and she’d been buried in the woods nearby. You can’t expect him to care for it.”
“I know his dad beat him,” Gigi says quietly. “That’s no excuse to live in this filth.”
She doesn’t get it. I didn’t at first, either. “He doesn’t live here. He sleeps mostly at the garage, or on the street. This place gives him nightmares.”
“Why?”
“You haven’t seen what that man did to him growing up,” I say, my voice cracking. “You don’t know the things he’d say to him. And the scars...”
“What scars?”
“On his back. From his dad’s belt.”
Three pale faces turn toward me.
“How bad is it?” Octavia asks after a while, a new emotion entering her eyes. Anger, I realize. Cold and terrible. “For how long was that going on?”
“Since he was a kid, from what I understood. And it’s bad. Bad enough he refused to take off his T-shirt in front of me until recently. The scars are old, raised. The wounds must’ve been pretty deep.”
Octavia produces a small sound of distress, and Merc throws an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.
“Something happened to him,” I whisper. “In prison. He won’t tell me what, but... sometimes I’m afraid for him.”
“What do you mean, Luna?”
“Afraid he’s given up. He fell of the garage roof once—”
“What?” Gigi this time. “What happened?”
“He says he slipped, but he’s been going there a lot, standing on the edge like he wants to fall.”
“Goddammit,” Merc breathes, and the word contains a great deal of shock and frustration.
“And now he’s going back to prison, and I’m...”
I’m lost. I don’t know how to help him. I don’t know what to do.
“We’ll get him out of there,” Gigi says. “Justice will be served. We need to talk to Jon Elba. Where’s Matt?”
“He was out, trying to call the facility,” Octavia says, and her voice trembles but she’s obviously getting it under control. “Let’s grab the box Ross wanted us to see and go. I can’t wait around sitting on my hands any longer.”
Me neither. I nod at the box on the bed. “Finding your lost brother may have to wait a little, until we get your falsely accused brother out of jail.”
Merc grins at me, and I grin back, relieved that we’re done talking and will start acting to help Ross. His face holds echoes of Ross’s features—something in the eyes, in the high cheekbones, the hue of his hair—but the mouth is different, the smile wide and free of clouds and shadows.
I find I miss Ross’s bitter, faint smiles all the more by looking at his brother.
