Chapter 66 #3
God, the way he said it - like he’d done something wrong, like breaking in front of me was some kind of failure - it hit me straight in the chest.
I shook my head immediately, tightening my arms around him just a little. “You have nothing to apologise for,” I breathed. “I’m glad I’ve seen you, because you wouldn’t have told me. You wouldn’t have let me help.”
“You can’t help me, Kai.” He said it quietly, but not like a plea - like a conclusion he’d already reached. “No one can.”
The way he said it - like it was a fact, like he’d already accepted it - made something cold settle in my chest. Not fear. Not shock. Something heavier. Something that felt like grief.
“That’s not true.” I shook my head, stepping in before the thought could root itself any deeper. “If we told someone, if they knew what he was doing to you-”
“I can never tell,” he breathed, voice cracking. “And neither can you.”
The fear in his eyes wasn’t just fear of the past. It was fear of what would happen if the truth ever escaped.
“I can’t do nothing,” I said, shaking my head. My voice came out low, steady, even though my blood pressure was dangerously high. “Alex, I can’t just sit here and pretend this is normal.”
“You don’t understand,” he whispered. “If anyone finds out… if he finds out…” His voice cracked, the fear spilling through the cracks he’d tried so hard to hold shut.
“I’ll be here. I’ll keep you safe,” I said to him - but the words didn’t calm him. They did the opposite.
His whole body jolted, panic flaring in his eyes. He shook his head hard, too hard, and I saw the wince he tried to hide ripple through his stomach. He pressed a hand there instinctively, like he was tending to it silently.
“Please,” he whispered, his fingers curling into the fabric of his jumper as he tried to straighten. His breath caught, shoulders trembling with the effort. “Please don’t say that.”
“Alex-”
“He’ll hurt you,” he said, voice trembling, still clutching his stomach with one hand. His eyes were wide, frantic, darting over my face like he was searching for a way to make me understand. “He will, Kai. You don’t know him.”
His breath hitched, panic rising again.
“He’ll hurt you, and I don’t want that.”
The fear in his voice wasn’t for himself. It was for me.
That realisation hit me like a punch - sharp, unexpected, devastating.
“Alex,” I said quietly, leaning in just enough that he couldn’t look away. “I’m not trying to make this worse.”
He blinked hard, tears gathering again.
“But I can’t pretend this is okay,” I continued, my thumb brushing the back of his shoulder in slow, grounding circles. “I can’t pretend you’re safe when you’re not.”
He wasn’t just scared. He was exhausted. He was hurting. He was at his limit.
And he still thought he had to protect someone else.
“You need help,” I said quietly. “We need to tell someone.”
“No.” He shook his head violently, his fingers twisting in the hem of his jumper. “I’m fine. I’m okay.”
“Would you please stop saying that?” I sighed, dragging a hand down my face. “You’re not fine, Alex.”
“You promised you wouldn’t say anything,” he whispered, his shoulders rounding inward as if bracing for a blow.
“Well, it was a stupid promise to make,” I said, and I hated how firm my voice sounded. Too sharp. Too sure. Like I wasn’t talking to someone who was already hanging on by a thread.
“If you do anything… tell anyone… I will never talk to you again.” His voice cracked, the words trembling as they left him. His eyes shimmered with tears, and he turned away from me, like even looking at me hurt. Like saying it out loud was a betrayal of something he’d been forced to believe.
He wasn’t threatening me. He was scared. Repeating something that had been drilled into him so deeply it came out like instinct.
“I can’t just do nothing, knowing that he’s hurting you,” I said, my voice cracking.
“He’s not. It was just one time…” He tugged on my sleeve, desperate, his fingers shaking so badly he could barely hold on. “It’s just what brothers do. We fight.”
“Alex, I’m not stupid.” I shook my head, but gently - not wanting to make him flinch.
“I’m not lying. Please, Kai.” His voice cracked on my name, but I could hear it - the rehearsed line, the one he’d been forced to repeat until he believed it. The panic in his eyes didn’t match the words coming out of his mouth.
“Show me,” I said quietly, my voice dropping as I looked him straight in the eye. “If it was just one time, take your top off. Show me you’re not covered in bruises like I think you are. Show me your arm. Show me what you were hiding from me last week.”
He didn’t move. Not even a breath.
“Please,” he whispered, his voice breaking as he wrapped his arms around himself.
“Please. You don’t know what will happen if you talk.
If Connor goes away… me and Mum, we’ll have nothing.
No money. We’ll lose the house.” His voice wavered as he looked at the floor.
“She’ll end up bringing some other abusive asshole in.
Exactly like last time. I-I can’t go through that again. ”
“Last time?” I said, shaking my head as confusion tightened in my chest.
He sighed heavily, like the weight of the memory pushed him down.
“Connor went to juvie for nine months. He was sixteen. I was seven, and Mum met this guy called Darius. She barely knew him, but she moved him in anyway.” His voice thinned. “And he made our lives hell .”
I swallowed, my stomach twisting.
“It got so bad Mum ended up in the hospital,” he continued, staring at the floor. “It wasn’t until Connor got back that he sorted him out.”
“Did he hurt you?” I asked, stepping closer without realising it.
Alex nodded once - small, tight - and my heart cracked open. He was just a kid. Seven. Seven.
He sniffed, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “With Connor, I know what I’m getting. I know how to keep my head down. I know Mum won’t get hurt.”
“But what about you getting hurt?” My voice rose despite myself. This was wrong. This was so far from right it made something in me curdle. “Does your mum know… that he hits you?” That word. Even saying it felt bitter on my tongue.
He swallowed, eyes dropping. “She thinks we’re just being boys,” he breathed. “Calls us boisterous when he’s laying into me. Tells us to keep it down.”
“Alex-” I sighed, my breath catching as I ran my hand through my hair.
“She’s not well.” He said the words like they were supposed to excuse everything. He was defending her. He was explaining her absence. Explaining why he’d learned to survive without help.
“Alex-”
“She’s not, Kai.” He cut me off, blinking hard, trying to force the tears back even as they gathered again. “She cares about me… she does. It’s the drink… it messes with her head.”
He said it too quickly. Too defensively.
Like he was repeating something he’d had to tell himself a thousand times just to survive the silence in that house.
His voice wavered on cares , like he wasn’t sure he believed it but needed me to.
Like he was trying to make sense of a world where the person who should protect him didn’t.
I stared at him, my breath catching.
How had he been going through all of this?
I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it.
He was so small. So innocent. So defenceless. And he’d been carrying this alone.
I wrapped my arms around him again. Tighter this time.
At first he froze - his whole body going rigid, like he wasn’t used to being held, like he didn’t know what to do with gentleness. Like touch meant danger, not comfort.
Then, slowly - painfully slowly - he leaned into me, his weight settling against my chest, hesitant at first, then with a kind of exhausted surrender, like he’d finally run out of strength to hold himself upright.
His fingers curled into the fabric of my hoodie, barely there, but enough to tell me he didn’t want me to let go.
And I didn’t. Not for anything.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered into his hair, my hand sliding up and down his back in slow, steady strokes. “I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head against me, small and frantic, like he didn’t deserve the apology, like he didn’t deserve comfort at all. His fingers curled weakly into my hoodie, not holding on - more like bracing, as if even being touched felt like something he had to survive.
Then his breath caught.
A tiny, broken sound escaped him, and he sobbed - quiet, strangled sobs he tried to swallow down but couldn’t. Each one shuddered through him, his whole body trembling against mine, like he was fighting himself, fighting the instinct to fall apart.
He wasn’t loud. He wasn’t dramatic. He was just… breaking. Softly. Helplessly. Like someone who’d run out of places to hide.
And I held him tighter, one hand at the back of his neck, the other around his shoulders, grounding him, keeping him here, keeping him safe.
Because for the first time, I understood just how long he’d been trying to survive in a house that never protected him.
And how desperately he needed someone to choose him.