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Colin's cry gets louder, and I pull his arms away from his head to inspect his face. His nose is crooked and there's blood everywhere.
“The hospital,” I say quickly, “We need to go!”
Lake nods, pulling his keys from his pocket as I hand Colin the towel hanging on the fridge door before we scurry out of the apartment.
Colinistalkingwiththe doctor nearby on one of the rolling beds, a thin sheet of material separating us, while another nurse tends to my forehead wound.
“Not deep enough for stitches,” she says, placing a bandage over my wound. “You're lucky, though. Could've been much worse.”
It could've been much worse. I put myself in a dangerous situation tonight, thinking I could overpower Colin. Seconds away from passing out, I could've been seriously injured. I would have been, if not for Lake.
He's never going to let this go.
Lake is pacing in the waiting room as I approach, bandaged up. He stops when he sees me, his hands resting on his head, a look of pure defeat in his reddened eyes.
“It's broken,” I say, “but they already reset it and he's going to be f—”
“I hurt him, Dylan,” he interrupts with a broken tone. A look of complete disgust is etched into his features. “I fucking hurt him.”
His pain is killing me. Literally breaking me. I know where this goes.
“You did what you had to do. I couldn't control him.”
“No. I'm no good for you,” he says suddenly, hitting me where it hurts most. “I'm worse than Eric. I laid hands on him, Dylan. He’ll never look at me the same again. He'll never feel safe around me.”
I look down at the floor as something like a sob leaves my throat.
“With time, he'll—”
“I can't keep dragging you both down, making life worse for you. I won't. I won’t do it.”
“Lake,” I say, wishing he wouldn't do exactly what he's doing right now. Beating himself up over this, using it as further proof to distance us.
But he was there when I needed him. He came back.
“But you came back. Why did you come back?”
There was a reason he was there. He couldn't have heard what happened. He came back for something, and I need to know why. “It doesn't matter,” he says, pacing in place as if being in his own shoes has never felt more uncomfortable. “Tell him I'm so sorry,” he chokes out, an obvious break in his voice. “I can't be here when he gets out. I have to go.”
And just like in the stairwell, he walks away from me again.
This time, his reasons are set in stone.
55
Lake
“SothenIsaid,you lyin’ out your ass, ho. My mama makes the best greens this side of the Mississippi. You out your goddamn mind.”
I nod, lacing up my shoes.
“And he hit me with the ‘your mama can’t cook’. And I swear to God, Lake, I almost stuck the line marker up his punk ass.”
I nod again, pulling out my phone and scrolling through the old text messages, touching her words as if I could touch her through them.
“And then I told him I couldn’t wait to wife up Dylan now that she’s single again.”
My head snaps over to where he’s casually leaning with one leg perched on the bench. He removes his helmet from his head, his eyebrows raised and a smirk in place.
