Page 31 of Forever We Fall

He’s quiet for so long, I figure he’s either not going to respond or he’s fallen asleep. Though I think the former is most likely. It’s his prerogative.

“In a way, your story hurts me more than my own,” he finally says.

I’m gaping in the darkness. “How is that possible?”

“I know how wonderful you are. I know what you deserve, and I know what you don’t.”

My heart expands so wide, it takes a mold of my rib cage. I press my hand to my sternum to keep it inside my body. “Arlo, you’re the bravest, most beautiful person I’ve ever met. I know you don’t deserve any of the shit you’ve dealt with since your parents and brother left the house that day. I also know you’re not going back to your uncle’s hellhole ever again.”

“I have to go back, Hota.”

I sit up and flick on my bedside lamp. Arlo blinks up at me.

“No, you don’t.” I’m up, pulling my knees under me to keep from touching him. “We’ll talk to the headmaster, the cops, hell, the news. Anyone who’ll listen.”

“I don’t have proof.”

A pit forms in my belly, pulling the contents of my stomach to the ground. I’m kicking myself for not stepping in when he first showed up and for not taking pictures of his injuries and emaciated frame. But he was so skittish back then. So terrorized.

“Stop.” Arlo pushes to sit, facing me. “It’s not your fault.”

I open my mouth to speak, but he cuts me off.

“The guilt is all over your face, and it’s not yours to carry. Not even with your mother.” He smiles and shakes his head. “How were you to know she’d walk in? How were you to know she wouldn’t be just regular mom-level freaked out by it?” His dark eyes center on me. “You helped me more than anyone the very first time I saw you. That’s not nothing. It’s everything.”

“You can’t go back there.” I throw the cover back and am about to get up when he grabs my leg through the blanket.

“I have to.”

“To…get proof?” I choke.

“No.” His perfect head shakes slowly.

Then I know. Like a lightning bolt behind the eyeballs. I know the answer to why he’s been watching wrestling practices for weeks on end with no intention of trying out for the team.

“You’re going to kill your uncle.”

I don’t respond to his invariably precise aim. There’s no way I can make him an accomplice in the devil’s work.

“I want to help.” Hota spouts this like he’s deciding he wants sushi for dinner, which he always does and can never get because we live in a boarding school in the middle of nowhere UK.

“Absolutely not.” I lie down and cover my shoulder with the blanket. “We never had this conversation.”

“I know you’re trying to protect me,” Hota snaps.

I rocket off the bed, standing next to him in an instant. My face is shoved so close to his that I can see the faint veins in the whites of his eyeballs.

“Of course I am.” My broken voice rattles around the room like a pathetic roar.

With both hands, I snatch his pillow from behind him and press it against his chest. Using it as a barrier, I press against him to drive home the point. “He would hurt you without a second thought. He would kill you to hurt me.”

Just the thought of him injured makes me want to burn the school to the ground. My fingers clench in the softness of the pillow so hard I shake.

“There’s no way I’m letting him set his eyes on you again. Much less his filthy fucking hands. Do you understand?”

I shove off him and huff breaths in and out of my burning lungs.

“No.” He throws the pillow at the far end of the bed. It bounces onto the floor. We both ignore it. There’s no anger in his voice, but it’s soaked with pleading. “If you’ve been watching practice for the last few weeks, you’ll know I’m far from helpless.”

---