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“Which this? ’Cause we have a lot of thises going on.”
He chuckled. The soft vibration of it shook me, and the corners of my mouth began to twitch. “We do have a whole lot of thises going on.”
I snickered, then his laughter deepened and he squeezed my shoulder. “Inthiscase,” he said as he tried to get his laughter under control. “I meant talking to you.”
“Oh, so you used to be good at talking to me?”
“Yeah.” He hesitated a beat. “Why? Do you think I wasn’t that good at it?”
I leaned my head back against his shoulder so I could look up at him, eyebrows raised.
“Okay, Angel, that’s just mean.” Then he winced, but neither of us commented on the slip. “I was good at talking to you.”
“You still are,” I said in the effort to make some peace. “When you aren’t deciding what I need to hear.” That sobered us. “Speaking of which, you said what hurts me…?”
Not looking away from me, he nodded. “I care about you. That hasn’t changed. What hurts you, hurts me. I don’t want you hurting. You’ve been hurting for days, and I can’t make it just go away. You’re not sleeping well. You’re putting on a brave face. But…”
“But?”
His mouth twisted, and he glanced from me to the hall. The rain outside was coming down loud against the windows, and the rumbles of thunder came more frequently. He shot a glance toward the window, then back at me.
“But you’re not okay.” He clenched his jaw like he needed to brace for my response.
“No,” I agreed with him. “I’m not.”
Silence greeted my statement, and he frowned.
“Surprised I’m agreeing with you?”
“A little,” he admitted. “Yeah. You…”
I shrugged, then shifted a little so I was leaning a little more comfortably against him with my head pillowed on his shoulder. I wasn’t so much looking at him as the wall over the television. It was still muted, though there was some game on. I didn’t even know who was playing.
To be honest, I didn’t care.
“I don’t usually talk about stuff that goes wrong.”
“No,” Ian said. “You don’t. You generally tell us everything is fine, and we have to pull teeth to find out what’s happening.”
“Kind of hard to pretend when you guys know more about it than I do.”
“Frankie…” He sighed.
“You do. You remember it. I don’t. A part of me is glad. But most of me hates that blank spot. I hate not knowing what happened. I got the wrist and the face and the bruises on my back—I know what hetriedto do, and I know I hurt him back. But there’s still a blank spot.”
He didn’t respond to that, not at first. Not that there was much he could say, not really. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I can’t imagine what that has to be like for you. A part of me is glad you can’t remember it.”
I frowned.
“Hear me out?”
Still not caring for the idea he might be glad about it, I nodded. Thunder cracked overhead so loud, I jumped and Tiddles fled from the back of the sofa to race down the hallway toward my bedroom. He and the others were probably under my bed.
Ian squeezed me gently. “It’s just thunder.”
“No shit. It was just really loud thunder, Captain Obvious.”
He paused.
