Page 63 of On Your Knees

Levi is shaking. I am too, but I can’t just stand here, and I can’t talk to him yet either. So I start walking.

I carry him out of the woods. I carry him all the way out of the park. I’m limping by the end, but when Levi tries to get down I don’t let him. I carry him to the car.

There, I have to set him down so I can open the passenger door, but I clamp one hand on his arm because I can’t lose contact. His arm is wet and kind of sticky, but I don’t think much of it until I get the door open and the car’s interior light comes on.

Then I see what’s under my hand. I see what’s on his arm.

I see exactly what he did.

TWENTY-TWO

Ethan

Levi tries to pull out of my grip. I’m probably hurting him where I’m squeezing tight around the rough cuts on the inside of his forearm. I grab his other arm to look, and it’s the same.

My brain whites out. Levi says something. I hear his voice, but the words don’t register. For a second, I can’t even see him. I see nothing, but in the nothingness I see her, reclined in the reddened water, dark hair drifting, that one arm draped over the side as though, in the end, she reached for something.

When I can see Levi again, I push him against the side of the car. He’s shaking so hard that he would fall if I weren’t pinning him there to search his pockets.

I find it, the thing he hid from me when I found him. It’s hard and curved, but I can’t tell what it is until I rip it from his pocket. It’s a shard of broken white ceramic. It’s porcelain white. Bathtub white. But only in places, where it isn’t stained red.

My mind whites out again, but I’m angry now instead of scared. I’m absolutely fucking furious, so this time I hear him when he says my name. This time, I snap back into myself.

I hurl the bloody shard into the street.

“Ethan—”

“Get in the car.”

“Ethan, I didn’t…”

Whatever Levi sees in my eyes makes him trail off. It makes him shrink from me. He slinks toward the open door and crawls into the seat.

My anger burns so hot that it feels cold. I don’t even slam the door. I just close it and walk around to the driver’s side. I get in.

Levi is sitting in the passenger seat with slumped shoulders, staring down. His hands are pressed together and sandwiched between his clamped thighs.

I start the engine and drive.

At some point, Levi asks where we’re going, but I don’t reply. I just keep driving, leaving the city behind.

It’s 6 a.m. by the time I pull up to the property gate. The night is fading enough to reveal the sprawling brick wall on either side of the headlights, which illuminate the cast iron bars of the gate as it opens, triggered by the car.

The tires crunch over pea gravel as I drive the long, sweeping path to the huge house, which looms ghostly white in the dimness. I don’t look at Levi because I just fucking can’t, not yet, but I feel his tension on the other side of the console. I’ve never told him about this place. My real house.

The headlights sweep over the front with its columned porch and black shutters, but I pull around the side to the cellar entrance. I get out, but Levi doesn’t budge, so I walk around to his door and open it.

His voice is small and soft as he asks, “Where are we?”

“Home. Get out.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“Good.”

Levi draws a shaky breath and gets out. He follows me to the black cellar door. I get it open and hit the light switch, flooding the old stone steps with harsh light.

“Go on,” I tell him.