Chapter 12
Holt
I swing.
Don't remember deciding to—fist's already moving, connecting with Finn's jaw. The impact travels up my arm, sharp and satisfying and wrong. His head snaps to the side, and the sound echoes off the shop wall.
He straightens, works his jaw. Doesn't step back.
"Feel better?"
I don't. I swing again.
This time he blocks and shoves me back hard. The prosthetic doesn't catch right on the gravel, and I have to grab the truck bed to stay upright. Doesn't matter. I come at him again.
We collide. His shoulder hits my ribs, my elbow catches his temple. The blast. The hospital. All of it coming out now.
He could end this. Finn's always been faster. But he lets me swing, lets me connect, lets me be angry.
My knuckles split on his cheekbone and blood smears between us.
"Holt—"
I hit him again. Not hard. Just need to feel something land. His lip splits, and he spits copper to the side.
"You done?"
I'm breathing too hard, chest heaving. The prosthetic's screaming. I lean back against his truck and slide down to the gravel, hands shaking.
Finn drops next to me and wipes his mouth, studies the blood on his hand.
"Feel better now?"
"No."
Scout's out there driving, thinking she asked for too much. Thinking she's broken. Thinking Evan was right about her.
That one destroys me.
"I wanted it."
"Then why the fuck did you run?"
The bruise on her hip. The way it looked against her skin. My stomach turning.
He stands, and I hear his knees crack. He spits again, and when I look up, he's staring down at me.
"You gonna regret this," he says. "Not the fight. This. Letting her think it was her fault when it was yours."
He gets in his truck and drives away. The taillights disappear down the highway, and then it's just me and the gravel and the stairs.
Those goddamn stairs.
I force myself to stand. The prosthetic protests—socket's definitely rubbed a blister, maybe worse..
My feet move. Gravel's too loud under my boots. The first step creaks.
The second one.
The third.
I get halfway up, and my hand locks on the stair rails.
The door's right there. Yellow light bleeding out from underneath. She will be right there—less than twenty feet. I could stay around until she gets back from her drive.
I could say—what? What the fuck do I say?
My throat closes.
Can't breathe right.
My hands are shaking on the rail, blood from my knuckles smearing the metal.
Five minutes pass. Maybe ten. I'm just standing here halfway up.
Every time I try to move, I know I have to tell her why I saw a bruise I put on her skin and couldn't breathe.
What if she won't forgive me?
What if she realizes I'm just as damaged as she thinks she is?
My hand won't let go of the rail.
I step back down.
Then another.
Then I'm on the gravel, walking to my truck, and I hate myself so completely I can't see straight.
The engine turns over. I sit there with my hands bloody on the steering wheel, staring up at her window.
I drive away.
Finn's trailer's dark when I pull up. The couch is already made up—has been for three nights now. Three nights of running.
I don't bother with the lights. Just sit on the couch and stare at the ceiling, trying not to think about Scout's face Saturday night. The way she'd smiled at me. Asked is this okay and I'd said yes because it was—it was more than okay, it was—
Then the bruise.
Twelve years old. My mother's arms. Purple-yellow marks shaped like fingers.
I fell, she'd say. I'm so clumsy.
The sound she made when he shoved her into the wall. Not a scream. A gasp. Small. Expected.
I swore I'd never—
But Scout. The bruise on Scout.
I close my eyes, but it won't help. Finn's words keep looping through my head: She's upstairs thinking she's broken, and you're down here too scared to face her.
She thinks Evan was right about her.
Evan, who convinced her she was too much, too needy, too broken to love. And I've spent three days proving him right.
I didn't hurt her. I know that. She asked for it, wanted it rough, wanted me to hold her down because that's how she feels safe with me.
But I saw that bruise and I couldn't separate it. Couldn't separate her from my mother, me from my father.
Mother's gasp. The dent in the drywall. Her flinching when he'd reach for the salt.
So I ran. Took away Scout's choice.
Different methods. Same damage.
Sleep won't come. I just lie there watching the sky through Finn's dirty window, waiting for dawn.
The sun comes up slow, orange spreading through the sky.
Finn emerges from his bedroom around six. He takes one look at my face, at his couch where I've clearly been awake all night, and doesn't say anything. Just goes to make coffee.
His lip's swollen. Cheek bruised. I did that.
"You talk to her?" he asks, setting a mug in front of me.
"No."
"You gonna?"
"Today." The word comes out hollow.
He touches his split lip gently and winces.
"Sorry."
"I've taken worse." He takes a long drink of coffee and watches me over the rim. "She deserves to know why you lost your shit."
"I know."
We finish our coffee in silence.