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For Mom, Phoebe…
For me…
I’ll be better.
And then hopefully I can be better for Jeremy too.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
“Let me see.”
Will doesn’t seem to even hear me. Clearing my throat, I slowly, gently nudge his face back, turning him so the overhead light hits his neck.
We’re at his apartment, in his bathroom.
I barely even remember driving us over here.
His breath hitches sharply with his inhale, and my eyes flash to his, before dropping back to the blood-smeared fingerprints blooming around his neck. A couple are starting to yellow with bruises.
Fuck.
I still don’t quite know what happened. One second I was picking myself up from the kitchen floor, desperately trying to compose myself before someone saw me losing my shit, and the next, Waylon was bursting through the door, blood dripping from his hand all over the floor, with Will fast on his heels.
I hung back, of course. I had no idea what was happening.
But then Ivy joined me, her eyes wide with worry as she looked between me and the direction of Waylon’s room. Before she could tell me what was going on, we heard a muffled shout—a sob. Followed quickly by a thud.
And faster than I can blink, Ivy was down the hall. A door opened, and then Shawn was there too, rushing up behind Ivy, with me right behind him—all of us crowding into the bathroom to find Waylon literally choking Will out in his bathroom.
“It wasn’t him,” Will says now. Our gazes meet, and something sinks in my chest at the tears reddening his glassy blue eyes. He pulls away, and with trembling fingers, feels around his neck—glancing off the bruises left by Waylon.
“Will…”
Head hanging, he whispers, “It wasn’t me.”
I frown.
“Wasn’t me.”
Eyes burning, I force a hard swallow. “I know.” And I do. I saw the look on Waylon’s face—the stark cold terror, veiled thinly behind his rage. The way he crumpled when he realized what he’d done…
He’d hurt Will.
If I had any doubts before tonight that there was something going on between them, I don’t anymore. Not after that. God, the look in Waylon’s eyes…
The pain in Will’s voice as he told him over and over again that he loved him, and that it was okay…
Now, Will’s breaths quicken, growing sharper.
“Come on,” I say, encouraging him to follow me out into the living room. But he just shakes his head.
And then he crouches on the tile.
And he buries his face in his hands and just…
He just cries.
I don’t know what to do, what to say, to make any of this better.
