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Blair opens his eyes and turns one of his palms up, offering it to me. I take it in my free hand, seeing the nick from this morning and the array of faded scars on the surrounding skin. Looking closely, the marks go further up his arm too, disappearing beneath the dark lines of ink.
“I have a system,” he says, and we both look up in that moment, catching each other’s eyes. “I save up. And when the urge gets strong… I book a tattoo appointment. Socially acceptable self mutilation. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to afford it.”
“B.” I grip his wrist and his eyes crinkle in confusion before smoothing out.
“It’s complicated, Atlas.”
“Uncomplicate it for me.”
He sighs and runs his fingers over the scars.
“Do you ever feel like you’re shouting at a brick wall? Or stuck behind a two-way mirror in a soundproof room and no one hears a thing you say? That’s what it felt like every day living in that house. I’m out. Shiloh’s out. But I’m still there. When I close my eyes. When I stop to think. For years, the only times I was touched was when Dad was feeling violent.”
“He hit you?”
His smile is sad, and he drops his arm into the water and out of my hold.
“He’d come into my room at night drunk and throw me around. It was worse on the nights Shiloh was with you. Because I told Dad I wouldn’t fight him as long as he never touched Shiloh, as long as Shiloh never knew I let him hit me. There was at least one thing in life I could protect my baby brother from.”
“Blair.” I don’t know what I could say to express the absolute horror forming ice in my veins, but I can sift my fingers through his hair, pressing them into his scalp and watch his eyes flutter.
“I couldn’t save Momma. But I could save Shiloh.”
I didn’t meet the brothers until after, but I’d heard about the car crash that killed their mother. A drunken driver, Shiloh told me in middle school after he coaxed the answer out of Blair.
I drop my hand to his back, following the colorful swirls near the base of his neck. He tips his head to the side and puffs out a soft breath, eyes shut.
“Who’s going to save you?”
His lips curl up in a disbelieving smile, but it falls when I push my thumb against his spine and drag it down until I reach the water just below his ribs.
He shudders, breaths turning shallow.
I’m not supposed to be touching him, but I can’t help myself. If he’s going to give this much of himself so that there’s hardly a piece of him left, then I’m going to be the one to safeguard it. The one who won’t let him lose any more of himself.
“What do they mean?” I ask, tracing the stars and tree roots that sit above the water.
“Which one?”
I spread my fingers out across his back. “All of them?”
The smile is back, and when he looks at me, it fills my chest with warmth.
“The galaxy is my favorite,” I add.
“I know. Shiloh used to tell me about all the stories you two would come up with about the people living in the stars.”
Blair skims a hand over the surface of the water, dipping his thumb in to make a ripple.
“What does it mean?” I press my finger to the moon at the top of his shoulder.
“That I’m bigger than this,” he says, eyes going hazy as he gazes off. “I’m more than what’s been done to me. I take my pain and turn it into something bigger and brighter. Whenever the pain and heartache gets to be too much… I etch it into my skin and it makes me stronger.”
There’s a sharp tug in my chest, tears springing to my eyes, but I blink them away.
How could neither Shiloh or I have noticed? The amount of pain Blair’s been through? He’s basically been raising Shiloh his entire life and apparently dealing with an abusively drunk father on top of it all.
I want to distract him away from it, take the pain away at least for a little while.
