Page 52 of Xavier

“H-He...” Dexter choked out. “He just... I was trying to... go to the bathroom and...”

“You’re okay, Dex.” Shoving myself into the stall with him was difficult, even with the way he was pressed back against the far wall. I reached out to grab at his arm to try and gently coax him out but he refused to move.

Tears spilled down his cheeks, a loud sob following right after. He was shaking so hard that I was afraid he was actually having a seizure. Pivoting my body to the side, I got the door shovedclosed behind me and kept it that way with a hand planted on the top of it.

Reaching across the short distance, I took Dexter by the arm again, but instead of trying to pull him toward me, I ushered him down to the floor instead, letting him cram himself back into his tight corner without the risk of him passing out and falling.

He buried his head into his knees and rocked himself, his sobs barely muffled while they reverberated against the tiled walls around us.

“Dex, you’re okay, I’m right here. I know that was scary.” I cupped the top of his head with my hand to run my fingers through his hair. “I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you.”

When I caught that guy—because when I got this all sorted out I would hunt him down until I was able to wrap my hands around that skinny neck—he was going to wish he never stepped foot on this damn property.

My military training would be pinpoint focused on making sure that man never walked, let alone tried to peep on another teenager, again.

“How?” he managed to choke out, lifting his face away from his knees just enough to talk. “You—you didn’t... you didn’t know...”

This was definitely a panic attack, with how hard his breath was coming in and out of him. I’d had very little experience dealing with something like this for a kid, and had even less training on what to do to break someone out of it.

Dexter’s face was red from how hard he was crying. Tears continued to leak down his cheeks and pool onto the fabric of his jeans. He was heaving air into his lungs, not quite catchingenough of it before another sob took over and forced it all back out again.

“You screamed and I came.” I swallowed the bile rising in my throat and tried to keep my voice level as I spoke. “That’s all I needed.”

“Not last time.”

What the fuck?

“What do you mean ‘last time’?”

He shook his head, burying it against his knees once more.

My throat clogged up, a wave of nausea hitting me. “Dex, what do you mean ‘last time’? What happened?”

The memories of Dexter’s almost confession to me late last year hit me like a train, slamming into me with enough force that I had to lean back against the door of the stall to steady myself.

The urge to deny the truth laid out in front of me—to beg for it to not be real—was bringing tears to my eyes. The evidence was too clear to deny, Dexter’s panic attack too severe for this to have been a first time thing.

This was the stuff of repeated trauma slapping you across the cheek with a swiftness that shocked you down to your core. The kind that I’d lived with for the past two decades that still stole my breath away at times.

“Who the fuck hurt you, Dexter?”

When he finally lifted his head again, he whispered, “Father Thomas.”

My heart shattered to pieces.

Does your mother know?

Those words were what almost came out of my mouth next before I bit my tongue hard enough to hurt. Now was not the time to be asking him questions. Right now, I needed to snap him back into reality before he actually passed out and hurt himself.

Pushing away from the stall door again gave me enough room to lift Dexter up from where he was and slide him over to me. He crumbled against my chest the second I wrapped my arms around him, clinging to me in the same way he had when he was a toddler.

He buried his face against my shoulder and continued to tremble. I rocked him with me, keeping my hand steady against his back to try and ground him while I spoke to him softly like I had when he had nightmares after Kate and I put him to bed as a baby.

This horrible secret he’d been carrying with him this whole time, not able to talk about it as it festered away at his soul, was the worst injustice I’d ever seen.

Who in their right mind would hurt someone like Dexter?

Take advantage of him in the most sickest and twisted way possible?

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