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Nate’s vehement insistence that his dad didn’t hurt him makes sense. Because it wasn’t his dad, not directly. He passed his son on to his buddies for money, and what did they do with him, what did they—?”
Oh fuck, I think I’m gonna be sick.
After a while I straighten and pull out my phone, miraculously still intact after the fight, to call West.
At least it wasn’t Nate’s dad, or his stepmom who got it on with him, that same little voice in my mind quips. Because, fuck.
It’s a small consolation, though, to know he’d been passed around like a plaything among these guys—and for how long was that going on?
The bile returns in my throat, and I spit in the dirt. The phone rings, once, twice, and again. What if something else happened, what if there were more guys arriving and caught them, what if Nate is seriously injured, what if—
“Hey,” West’s voice says in my ear, and I close my eyes in relief. “You okay? Did you get out?”
“I’m out, yeah.”
“That was a hell of a fight you put up there,” West says quietly, and if he’s talking about that, Nate has to be fine, right?
“Where are you? Are you heading home?”
“Yeah, I called an Uber. We’re almost there. I called Syd. She’ll meet us there.”
“Good. How’s Nate?”
A small silence that seems to stretch for years, before West says, “He says he’s okay.”
“Of course he’d say that. Check him over, man. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Slipping the phone back in my pocket, I fish out my tobacco pouch and take out a joint—then remember I don’t have a lighter anymore.
Fuck.
I stick the joint back into the pouch, stuff it into my back pocket and start again toward home.
But a swirl of blackness comes over me, and I’m going down, slipping into the dark, before I even realize what happened.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Sydney
Throwing the apartment door open, I run into the apartment. “West? Nate! Kash!” My heart is banging around in my chest. I’m so frigging scared. “Are you all right?”
I find them in Nate’s bedroom. Well, Nate and West. West has a shiner and his lip is split, but he nods at Nate who’s sitting hunched over, his T-shirt… good God, is all that rusty color blood?
“Jesus, Nate.” I sink down on the bed beside him, take his hand, touch his face. He flinches hard, startling me. “I’m only checking that you’re okay.” I turn to West. “What happened?”
“Long story,” he mutters.
“I have time.” At least Nate hasn’t pulled his hand away, though he won’t meet my gaze. “Who did this?”
West rubs a hand over his face and sits down beside Nate, who flinches again, face paling.
Jesus…
“Just gonna check the damage, dude,” West says, his voice gentle, and I’m still not getting it. I watch as he lifts Nate’s stained white T-shirt, peeling it off inch by inch, revealing taut muscles and bruises, and cuts…
“You said,” I struggle to keep the waver out of my words, “that you had something to tell me, not that Nate was hurt, and…” I put my other hand over my mouth. “Oh crap.”
His whole left side and back is a giant black bruise.
