Page 93 of Cemetery Boys

“No, Luca.” Frustration edged his otherwise even voice. “He left. Probably for good, this time.” For a moment, his quiet stoicism slipped. Yadriel could see past it. Could spot the way his eyelids drooped, how he rubbed a spot on his neck.

Yadriel realized what he’d sensed coming from Rio when he first saw him. He wasn’t sick or injured, but his fatigue was so thick, Yadriel could actually feel it.

Luca frowned. “Jules wouldn’t just leave.”

Rio glanced over at Yadriel, like he didn’t want to have this conversation in front of him, but Luca was persistent.

“Really, Rio, he wouldn’t!”

“He’s been itching to get out of here for years,” Rio told him. “We got into a fight. He said he couldn’t stand living in this dump anymore. He said I—” He cut a glance at Yadriel again and stopped himself.

Yadriel didn’t like the way he was talking about Julian, especially when he couldn’t even defend himself. He felt himself bristling under Rio’s suspicious gaze.

“C’mon.” Luca tried to smile. “You know he just gets like that sometimes.”

“Not this time, Luca.” Rio was curt but far from yelling.

“He’d never actually take off on us!”

Yadriel wanted to agree with him, to tell Rio that Luca was right. He knew he needed to just keep his mouth shut, but it was becoming difficult to hold his tongue.

“This time he meant it. I saw it on his face.” Rio sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face, leaving a smudge of grease across his forehead. Worry and exhaustion made him look far older than his twenty-two years.

“Told you.”

Julian stood off to his brother’s side, a gray-and-black plaid shirt balled up in his hands. He watched his brother with dark, smoldering eyes. “I just make his life more difficult. He’s better off.”

Yadriel clenched his jaw. He wanted to knock some sense into both Julian and Rio.

“The cops haven’t come by at all?” Yadriel ventured, trying to steer the conversation toward something that would help them find not only Julian, but Miguel, too.

Luca’s hand froze, a heaping forkful of cake inches from his mouth.

“No.” Rio’s forehead wrinkled. “Why would the cops come by?”

“He’s missing, so shouldn’t we go to the police?” Luca jumped in, his cheeks burning red.

Rio sighed deeply and rubbed his temple. “He’s not missing, Luca, he ran away.” He let out a short, bitter laugh. “He didn’t even tell us he was leaving,” Rio added, expression stormy.

Julian turned away from his brother, wringing the plaid shirt in his hands. His ears were turning red. The hurt was written on every tense muscle in his face, shoulders, and arms.

Anger sparked in Yadriel, and he clenched his fists, his fingernails pressing into his palms. He’d only known Julian a couple of days, but even he knew there was no way Julian would run away from his friends—his family. He wanted to yell at Rio, to tell him he was so entirely wrong.

Luca put down his fork and shook his head, sending his shaggy hair sweeping back and forth. “No, he—”

“Luca.” Rio’s voice was firm. “He doesn’t care.”

Julian flinched, twisting away from Yadriel, but it was impossible to miss his pained expression, or the shine in his dark eyes.

The spark in Yadriel flared.

“If that’s what you think, then you really don’t know Julian at all,” Yadriel said, the words flying from his mouth before he could stop himself.

All three of them turned to stare at him.

Julian blinked at Yadriel, surprised.

Rio’s stare was stony and unforgiving. Luca looked between him and Yadriel anxiously.