Page 53 of His Heart

The bathroom door opened and we looked up. Brooke came out looking marginally better. She was still wearing the cut-off shorts I’d seen her in earlier, but now she had a shirt with long, wide sleeves and tiny flowers embroidered down the front. She’d cleaned the dried blood off her lip, but her bruises stood out, purpling red against her skin.

“She should put some ice on that,” Charlie said. He got up, grabbed the ice bucket, and left.

“I’m sorry to do this to you,” Brooke said. “You don’t even know me.”

“I told you, it’s okay,” I said. “I wouldn’t have given you my number if I hadn’t meant it. I’m glad you had someone to call.”

She nodded.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” I asked.

She pushed up the sleeves of her shirt, revealing dark red splotches on her wrists and forearms. “Here, too. But that’s all.”

“Who did this?” I asked. “Your boyfriend?”

“He’s not really my boyfriend,” she said. “I guess he thinks so.”

“Will you tell me what happened?”

She pulled her sleeves down and sank onto the bed beside me. “I’ve been crashing at his place for a while. After I saw you earlier, I went home. When he came back a couple of hours later, he kind of freaked out on me.”

“Why?”

“I told him no.”

Rage swirled in my gut, but I kept a lid on it. This wasn’t her fault, and I didn’t want to scare her by getting angry. “We should call the police.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to deal with the cops.”

“Why not?” I asked. “He assaulted you.”

She stood. “Back off.”

“Hey, I’m just trying to help.”

“Jesus,” she said, rolling her eyes, her demeanor suddenly defensive. “I took some stuff earlier that’s not exactly legal and I’d rather not get arrested for it, okay?”

“What did you take?” I knew she’d probably been drinking. She smelled faintly of alcohol. But I needed to know what else I was getting into here.

“Just some Xanax,” she said. “It’s not a big deal. But I didn’t get them from a pharmacy, you know? And after the last few weeks I’ve had, it would be just my luck and I’d get busted.”

“You do that often?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Just once in a while.”

“But you drink a lot?”

“Why are you asking me about this? It’s none of your business.”

“Maybe it’s time someone made it their business,” I said.

“I have to go.” She grabbed her bag and made for the door. “I shouldn’t have called you.”

I stood. “Brooke.”

She stopped in front of the door.

“Do you have a place to go?” I asked, knowing she probably didn’t. There was a reason she’d called a perfect stranger, and it wasn’t because she had a lot of options. “I’ll take you if you do.”

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