Page 77 of Silent Desires

Me:I’m sorry.

Chapter forty-eight

Seeing this tiny, broken girl constantly passing out is killing me. I only want her to be safe and happy, and we can’t even manage that in our own home.

Between me, Jasper, and Atlas, she doesn’t move an inch when she loses consciousness in our arms. Then we hear our phones chime all at the same time.

“Let’s clean the wound while she’s unconscious, so it’s less painful,” Ben says, shifting into doctor mode. He’s not a doctor, but he’s smart and often plays medic for all our non-life-threatening injuries.

Jasper scoops her up and sits in a kitchen chair with her in his lap. I help position her injured arm on the table and step back to let Ben work.

Pulling out my phone, I read the message she managed to send before passing out.

“Why is she apologizing?” I ask.

“What?”

“Right before she passed out, she texted us saying I’m sorry. Why is she apologizing?"

“Because she lied,” Jasper says, staring at her arm. Well, yeah, it was obvious to all seven of us that this injury wasn’t from falling, but I have no idea what caused it. It doesn’t look like a knife wound, we’d seen a few ofthose over the years. This was a circular shape, like a little hole. Although it looked infected so it was hard to tell what the original injury looked like.

I wonder how long she’s had it. Have I touched her arm and caused her pain without even knowing? Didn’t she seem to be in pain when Tucker hugged her the other day?Bullocks!How long has she been hiding this from us? We could have helped days ago.

After a few minutes, Ben comes in with a handful of supplies. He places a towel under her arm and starts cleaning the wound.

“Shit. It’s badly infected,” he says, grimacing as he works. “I think this could be what caused her fever.”

“That’s bad. It means the infection’s in her bloodstream. Shouldn’t we take her to the hospital?” I look around at the guys to gauge their thoughts.

“They’ll contact her mother,” Dom states, his eyes fixed on her unmoving form. “There’s no way she wants a hospital record of Mina. It could have bad repercussions.”

“Thisisn’t bad?” Atlas snaps angrily. “She can’t go back there.”

“She’s under eighteen,” I say, sounding like a broken record, even to my own ears.

“I don’t care!” he yells. “This has to stop.”

“Nothing has changed, Atlas,” Dom says, pacing the room in agitation. “Either her mother is helping hide her from someone worse, in which case, she’ll take Mina and run, and we’ll never see her again. Or her mother is the killer and—”

“And that means Mina is in danger in that home, and she can’t go back there,” Atlas quietly yells, not wanting to wake her.

“What do you think will happen if we keep her here and don’t let her go home?” he asks Atlas calmly.

“She’ll finally be safe.”

“What do you think her mother will do? She’ll go to the police and tell them her daughter’s missing. It will take them all of five minutes at the school before they know she’s been hanging out with the twins and they end up on our doorstep.”

“I’ll hide her,” Atlas says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

“Fuck, Atlas, I get it. Ido! But they’ll figure it out, and if we go to them and show them the injury, I don’t think it will be enough, not yet.”

“We need to get Mina to tell us what’s going on,” I state, making them turn their frustrated gazes to me. “It’s all well and good saying what we want to happen, but it’s up to Mina. We ask her if she wants to stay here, even just for tonight, so we can help figure this out. Maybe simply knowing we’re going to be here for her will help her open up to us.”

The room falls silent after that. None of us want her to go back, but we’re all afraid of making things worse. When Ben finishes cleaning her wound, we move her to the living room. She leans against Atlas and we all take seats around them, afraid to let her out of our sight.

After a while, Mina stirs, and her eyes slowly blinking open. She gazes around at our concerned filled faces and I witness the moment she remembers what happened. Shame fills her gaze as she tries to sit up.

Atlas murmurs a soft, “no,” holding her tightly to his chest. His arm is draped across her side, and she winces. Instantly, he lets go, concern flashing across his face as he helps her sit up.

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