Page 53 of Our Secrets and Scars

“What?” I rear back. “He’s done this before?”

Holden nods gravely. “Several times.”

“I don’t understand,” I stammer. “How?”

I can’t finish the sentence, the words getting caught in the dryness of my throat, but Holden seems to understand the direction of my question.

“People always cover for him and if they don’t, it wouldn’t matter anyway because his dad’s the police chief.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Cover for him?”

He falls quiet for a long moment. Long enough for me to begin drawing my own conclusions, my opinion of him lessening more and more with every second that passes.

In all the time I spent writing to him while he was in prison, I never once asked what he did to end up in there. I don’t know why, but I just had this kind of instinctual feeling that he wasn’t a dangerous man. That whatever he did wasn’t because he’s evil or inherently bad, but simply a mistake he made once. Petty theft, maybe. Or joyriding, I don’t know.

And don’t we all make mistakes? Some are just worse than others.

But his non-answer to my question has my thoughts rearranging themselves. It’s one thing to make a mistake, to fuck up as a juvenile the way we all do. It’s another to help conceal sexual violence.

“Not for that,” he says finally. “Never for something like that.”

“But for something else?”

He nods silently. And though I’m relieved that he wasn’t involved in that side of Owen’s malevolence, I can’t help my thoughts from spiraling with ideas of what it could be that he did for him.

“What was it?” I press.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Don’t I have a right to know?”

Holden cocks his head to one side. That strange expression from earlier is back, the one that I can’t place. It’s kind of cold, yet it burns with so many emotions that it’s impossible to decipher even one of them.

“Why?” he asks, his voice cool and dry. “You don’t want anything to do with me, right?”

I frown at his harshness, though I know he’s right. What entitles me to demand anything of him when the last time we saw each other, I was telling him to leave? The very day after he gave me his virginity.

“Right,” I whisper.

“Tell me, why did you decide to end things between us, Violet?” He stands and moves so that he’s in front of me, and I’m forced to tilt my chin to look up at him. “Is it okay that I call you that?”

I narrow my eyes, my heart pumping. I’m already battling with the fog that lingers from whatever substance I consumed last night, but Holden’s surreal behavior makes it even thicker. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

He blows out a breath and shrugs casually. “Just something you said last night.”

“What did I say?”

“You asked me not to call you Violet.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

My eyes scrunch shut as I try desperately to remember the conversation last night, but my efforts are futile. I don’t remember seeing Holden, let alone exchanging words with him. But clearly, I did. And whatever it was that I said obviously wasn’t good.

“You don’t remember?” He smirks.

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