Page 146

It’s bad. Like, “maybe I should take him to the hospital” bad. Most of the right side of Toren’s torso is scratched raw, road burn deep enough in some areas that he’s still bleeding. It looks like he’s gotten most of the bits of concrete and dirt out in my bathroom, but I don’t trust it.

“I’m gonna have to clean it again,” I say absentmindedly as I look over the injury. “It looks bad, Tor. What happened?”

“I fell,” he says, eyes flickering to my ceiling and ignoring me.

Irritated enough to scream, I stomp into my bathroom for the antiseptic and a soft cloth that I quickly run under warm water.

“You never fall, Tor,” I say, setting a towel underneath him on the bed, before pouring the antiseptic over his wounds. He winces, hand grasping my wrist tightly, but he doesn’t complain. “Did someone hit you?”

“I was distracted,” he says, eyes glazed as he blinks up at the ceiling. I wonder if the stars make him feel warmer. Does he see comfort? Or a reminder of what we once were?

I refocus on cleaning him up. Distracted—meaning he was upset. My heart softens to him.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He sighs, settling in. “It’s just been a bad fucking day, Lil.”

“Could always be worse,” I mumble, and he smiles and shakes his head.

“Don’t use my own words against me.”

That remark makes me smile, because he remembered. And why shouldn’t he? He was the one who used that like a fix-all any time I tried to press him on the mysterious cuts and bruises he’d sometimes be sporting when he showed up in my room at night. Or to pick me up the next morning. “Could always be worse,” he’d say, with a little shrug, tongue running over his lip ring as he smirked down at me.

“Worse than usual,” he confesses now quietly. I look at him for a long moment.

“The worst day you’ve had?”

He shakes his head. I stand up, pulling the now-dirty cloth away from his skin, and head back to the bathroom for a clean one. He’s pushed up on his elbows now, but still mostly stretched across my bed. I return with a clean cloth, kneel on the sheets beside him, and start again.

“No,” he says, huffing a deep breath, teeth clenched as I work the towel over the roughest-looking wound. “Nothing could be worse than that night, you know that.”

Except . . . maybe I do know a worse night. At least for me. But that wasn’t about him.

That’s a selfish thought, Lillian. My dad’s voice snaps me back from the darkened lower trail my thoughts were taking.

Ministrations paused, I gaze up at Toren. But he’s looking everywhere but at me.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask again.

Nostrils flaring, he grits out, “The restraining order.” His hand nearest my leg makes a tight fist, before trying to relax, outstretched fingers just brushing the bare skin of my knee, lingering over where the silk of my dress just spills over my thigh. “Your dad told the Harrises. About that night. Gave them all the paperwork and everything.”

I freeze then, not daring to move. As if he can’t stop touching me, Toren’s fingers keep reaching, dusting over my thighs, like the glowing sun over the moon. A reversed version of a solar eclipse.

“Are they angry?” I ask, before grabbing his chin with my fingers. “I can talk to them, you know. They love you and if I just tell them—”

“They know the truth,” he says softly, before tilting his mouth to kiss at my palm. “They believed me.”

I nod.

“They love you.”

I say the words again, because I think he needs to hear them. I think Toren deserves to hear those words from every good person around him every day, for the rest of his life. And I still think it won’t be enough.

He’s half asleep, sprawled out across my bed, and I tuck the blankets and pillows up around him carefully, until it’s all perfect. Then, I kiss his forehead and he hums happily, his mouth kicking up into an easy smile.

Toren deserves more of those too.

“I love you too.”