Page 65 of Breaking You Open

“Betrayed you? What, you mean he cheated on you or something?”

His breath hitches, and he sniffles against his knees.

I want to hug him—want to get him out of the bath, wrap my arms around him, and dry his tears—but I can’t. I have a feeling this is the only way he’ll open up to me—with his back turned, submerged in the water, reliving what was obviously a painful memory for him. I can’t break that spell. Not when I’m right on the cusp of breaking him open.

He sucks in a shaky breath and starts to speak. “During those years, I was bullied in school a lot. I tried to make friends, but every time I reached out to someone, they turned me away. I was alone. So alone. My life wasn’t all bad though; at the end of every school day, I knew Aaron would be waiting for me at home. He was there for me, always.”

“By being there for you, you mean…”

“Uh, yes.” He whips a glance my way, blushing. “We didn’t just have sex though! We did other things too.”

“Like what?”

His blush deepens. “Like … cuddling.”

My mouth twitches into a frown. Either the water is already growing cold, or my unease is making me shiver all over. “Tell me more.”

“During my senior year, I found out…” He says the next part quickly, spluttering the words out, purging them from deep within. “I found out they were all being paid to do that to me. The bullies were paid off to bully me, and my classmates were paid off to ignore me. By Aaron.Hewas the reason all along. He wanted me isolated and friendless. He wanted me dependent on him. And I was.” His voice breaks, and his head dips down between his knees.

“Oh, Sparrow …”

“Hewas the one to give me that name. He said I was small and weak like a bird. That I was hollow inside—hollow-boned like a sparrow. My real name is Sam. I’m Sam.”

“Sam,” I say as I stroke his back, soothing his hulking cries. “Sam.”

He sniffles and turns around to look at me, eyes red-rimmed. “But I like it when you call me little Sparrow. I don’t want you to stop.”

“Okay. Okay, little Sparrow.”

He looks up at me, breath halfway stuck in his throat, voice so thin and broken it rips me up inside. “He’s still with me. He’s always with me.” Voice breaking, he whimpers, “What am I supposed to do? What do I do, Louis?”

“I don’t know.” My throat thickens up with tears, but I can’t start crying too. I don’t know how to cry, and I don’t know how to make things right. I can’t fucking do anything to help him, except hold his small, shaking body through the worst of it and weather this storm, lest it bring us both down with it. I have to stay strong for him. I’m supposed to be the older one, the wiser one. I’m supposed to have all the answers. But I don’t have the answer to this. “I don’t know, little Sparrow.” The truth is, there’s nothing hecando, and short of finding the fucker and making him pay, there’s nothing I can do either.

“He hurt me, didn’t he?” Sparrow chokes out. He turns around fully and burrows his cheek into my chest, and I hold him. “It was painful a lot of the time, what we did, but it’s never painful with you. You take care of me. I thought he took care of me too, but he never did. He only hurt me. You’d never hurt me, right, Louis?”

“Never,” I tell him, because what else can I say? I’ve hurt others, yeah, but I don’t want to hurt him. There’s no use in letting him know how fragile that promise is.

“I want to kill him,” Sparrow says suddenly.

I frown and look away, taking too long to reply.

Sparrow puts his hands on my shoulders, shaking me. “Don’t you get why?”

“I get why, but…I can’t let you do that.”

His expression scrunches up with rage and sorrow. “Why?”

“Don’t get me wrong—I want him dead too, but you have to letmedo it. I already have blood on my hands.”

“And what about whatIwant, huh?” Sparrow snarls, face covered in tears and snot. I try to dry his face with my thumbs, but he bats me away. “What about me?”

“You don’t get it. Once you’ve killed another human being, you can’t undo that. You can’t regret it, because if you do, it’ll tear you up inside for the rest of your life. Let me spare you that risk, little Sparrow. Let me bear that burden for you. If you regret his death once I’ve killed him, you’ll hateme, not yourself.”

“But I don’t want to hate you,” Sparrow cries. “And I already hate myself.”

“Stop.” I try to grab hold of him, but he evades my grasp. He stands up, gets out of the bath, and runs naked into the living room. I follow and envelop him in my arms.

“No!” he wails.

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