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“I told myself you did.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It’s not.” His voice is softer now, carrying the weight of every unspoken apology.
I laugh, but it comes out jagged and wrong. “I wasn’t okay.”
“I know that now.”
“You—” My hand clenches the comforter as my voice wobbles. “You should’ve known it then.”
He absorbs every word, doesn’t flinch, and doesn’t scowl. I almost ache for the comfort his anger would bring—something familiar to me.
Adrien rubs his thumb slowly across his palm. “I wanted you to be fine,” he says quietly. “I wanted to believe Sherry was enough. That whatever problems John had with her were between two adults who hated each other and that you were still being cared for.”
My mouth twists; bile rises. “You wanted it to be true so that you didn’t have to do anything.”
He grimaces almost imperceptibly. “Yes.”
I look away from him, focusing on my rabbit and smoothing the fur I’ve messed up. I whisper, “So you forgot about me.”
“God, no. I never forgot you.”
“That’s worse.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “If you forgot, then maybe you could say you were hurt, and everything was horrible and time went by and you just… lost me somehow.” My voice trembles. “But if you remembered me…” I can’t finish.
Adrien doesn’t ask me to continue, because he knows exactly what comes next.
If he remembered me, then every birthday passed with him knowing, every Christmas I woke hoping the doorbell would ring, every school year when no one ever cared to ask how I was doing in my classes, every time Mom brought home a new boyfriend and I had to wonder how they would hurt me this time. Every time I sat in my room after hearing a car outside and let myself imagine, for half a second, that maybe someone had come for me. Every time I was left alone and expected to fend for myself rather than have someone take care of me.
That time when Mom’s boyfriend nearly killed me because I’d painted my nails, and he’d caught me before I had time to use the nail polish remover. All those nights in the hospital wishing someone would see me and—and want me. That they’d not accept the lies from Mom and him and give me back to them. That when I wet the bed from fear, and Mom watched as an adult man held my face against the sheets and yelled at me for being worse than the dogs he trained, someone would burst in and take both of them away.
He remembered.
He just didn’t come.
I turn my rabbit around in my hands and stare at his stitched face because it’s easier than looking at Adrien. “Did you know I went to the hospital? Did you know and… think I was still okay?”
He stiffens. For a moment, the weight of all those missed chances presses between us, louder than anything he could say.
“When I was ten.”
“I know about it now.”
“Now?”
He nods once, curt. “Yes.”
“Not then?”
“No.”
A hollowness blooms in my chest, as if some vital part of me has gone missing. “Would you have come?” I force the words out. “If you’d known?”
Adrien’s brows draw together. “I’d like to think so.”
“That isn’t yes.” My voice quavers.
Adrien murmurs, “I don’t know what I would have done then, Kamden. I know what I want to say now. I want to tell you I would have shown up, taken you away, killed the man responsible, and figured everything else out afterward.” His jaw tightens, muscles coiling like steel cables. “But I don’t get to rewrite who I was, just because I hate him now.”
