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“All night.”
Horrified, my gaze flies to his. I think Art was in there for an hour and I shake every time I think of those sixty minutes.
Right now, I’m frozen. Can’t even breathe. Can’t even think.
All I can do is look up at him in a dull sort of panic.
“B-but they came for you? Right? They pulled you out.”
“Nora found me. But no, they never came.”
They.
His parents. They never came.
“I was jealous of the kid, can you believe it?” He chuckles humorlessly. “I was jealous that everyone came for him. When…”
No one came for him.
“How could they not come?”
His lips stretch into a cold but also self-deprecating smile. “Because I’ve been expendable. An afterthought.”
I feel a blast of heat in my chest. It takes me a second to realize that it’s anger. On his behalf. It has a different flavor than the anger I’ve felt at him.
It’s a little more potent, more explosive than any other kind of anger.
How can he be an afterthought for anyone?
He’s been my very first thought, my last thought, my only thought, for years. For years, all I’ve done is revolve around him.
Round and round and round.
“You’re a lot of things, Zach, but you’re not an afterthought. You can never be an afterthought,” I tell him fiercely, honestly.
He’s always been my nucleus of everything.
I look at him, his face, the sky at his back.
Yeah, he’s a lot of things but he’s not an afterthought.
A second later, he grips my wrist in an unflinching hold. With a clenched jaw and brutal eyes that bore into mine, he takes my hand off his face.
I’m confused as to what happened when he stands up. It was all so sudden that I crash back down to earth and my mind is reeling.
Zach takes a stumbling step away from me and I manage to sit up. “What are you doing?”
“Getting out of here,” he says in a brusque tone, stumbling again.
I come to my feet and catch his arm to steady him. He shakes off my hold and begins walking again.
“Zach,” I call out, following him. “What the fuck are you doing? You can’t even walk. Let me help you.”
“Leave me alone.”
Two steps before he stumbles once more and I have to grab hold of him again.
“Jesus, what?” he snaps.
