Page 126 of Indigo Sky

He nodded solemnly. “I don’t have any way to sugarcoat all this. She has a few broken bones, a lot of bruises. She needs some stitches on her face. Nothing she won’t heal from. But … she went through quite an ordeal,” he said, regret in his voice. “Beaten, sexually assaulted … the fucker did quite a number on her.”

That was when it finally hit me. After everything we had gone through … after everything we had seen, heard, done …

That was the moment when I hung my head and began to cry.

“Oh God,” I whispered, the words pushing through my tight, emotion-filled throat. “God, Kate …”

“I’m sorry,” Officer Payton said.

Something touched me, and I jumped back until I realized he’d reached across the table to lay a hand over my arm.

After a few minutes, I ground the palm of my hand against my eye and wiped the tears away. Officer Payton handed me a napkin, and I barely thanked him as I crumpled it in my hand and dabbed it at my eye.

God, I was soangry. So bitter. So fuckingpissedthat I had been too late. That I hadn’t done enough. That I hadfailed. And it wasn’t just her. It was her father. It was Angela, Nate—fuck, even Donny. I had even failed him because the guy had needed help, hadn’t he? And I hadn’t given him the chance to get any before I bashed his skull in. It was all on me. For being too slow, for being too late, for being—

“Hey.” Officer Payton’s brusque voice broke through the chaotic cacophony of insults passing through my exhausted brain. “Listen to me, okay?”

I lifted my narrowed gaze to his.

“Whatever’s going on in your head, stop it,” he demanded. “None of this—nothing that happened tonight—is your fault.”

Except that I could think of moment after moment that could’ve gone differently had I justacteddifferently. If I had just broken into the trunk of Kate’s car at the shop, if I’d just stormed that living room instead of waiting …

If I’d just stayed with her instead of making her go to that goddamn shop alone.

How was I ever supposed to live with this guilt constantly prodding at my weary mind?

“It’ll get easier,” Officer Payton said gently, as if reading my mind. “I promise, it’ll get easier.”

But that was the thing, wasn’t it? I wasn’t sure I wanted it to get easier. I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to be okay in a world where poor Angela ceased to exist. How could I ever be okay after what had happened to Kate and Nate?

Oh God, Nate.

“Where’s Nate?” I asked Officer Payton.

“He’s in surgery,” he answered. “And that brings me to my next question … how was he involved in all of this?”

I huffed a laugh, my lips barely twitching into a half smile as my mind began to slip toward the past. “How much time do you have?”

***

I didn’t know how long I sat in that room, telling Officer Payton every memory, every detail of my life with Nathan Manning up until the showdown at Kate’s father’s house. I told him things I probably shouldn’t have, things I had thought I’d forgotten, things I wished I hadn’t remembered. Things that were—let’sface it—all too incriminating to be said to an officer of the law. I mean, by the time I was finished, he had every reason to arrest both of us, but he didn’t so much as whip out the cuffs.

“You guys have been through some shit,” he said, nodding gently.

I wiped my eye. I couldn’t remember when I’d begun to cry again. “Yeah, we have.”

“But you kept coming back to each other,” he said.

I laughed despite my resolve not to. “Who the fuck knows why?” I grumbled.

“Because some friendships defy what makes sense, Revan,” he replied. “Some exist only to maintain some sort of balance between right and wrong. The world itself can’t exist without black and white, and sometimes, if you pay attention, that line down the middle starts to blur, and each side blends into the next. They sort of adopt each other … and I think you’d agree.”

Officer Payton left me with a pat on the shoulder and the promise that everything would eventually be all right. Believing him felt a lot better than dwelling in a murky ocean of sorrow and regret, so that was what I chose to do, no matter how difficult it was.

My parents were on their way. They had been upset that they weren’t called sooner, considering the circumstances. But I couldn’t help that they hadn’t been the first people on my mind, and it wasn’t until Officer Payton and I walked to another room and he let me borrow his phone to make a call that I dialed Mom’s number.

When they walked through the automatic doors into the waiting room, I stood to greet them like it was any other day. They rushed toward me. Mom threw herself into my arms, and Dad laid a hand against my shoulder.

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