I nod.
“You shouldn’t. We’re here now. We’re okay.”
“That’s right.” Nate reaches up and ruffles Kash’s short hair, though the brightness of his eyes betrays his light tone. “You’re back with us. Where you belong.”
But I’m not done fretting. “Zane said… he said your uncle was abusive. You never said anything about that, to me, or in your journal.”
Silence descends on the table. The guys are looking at Kash now, their faces solemn.
He puts down his fork, wipes his palms on his pants. “He didn’t beat me, if that’s what you mean. He locked me up a lot. Left me on my own or with the housekeeper. And it fucking hurt to have my family’s murderer be my guardian. It was fucked up.”
“How did you run away?” West wants to know. “How old were you? How did you survive?”
I guess I wasn’t the only one with questions. And I guess West isn’t the only one averse to replying, because Kash curses softly, pushes back his chair and walks out of the kitchen.
Well, shit.
We find him on the balcony.
He isn’t smoking, just standing there, leaning against the rail, looking at the street below. I let Nate and West go ahead and flank him, put their arms around him, and it touches me so much that he instantly straightens and does the same to them, so the three of them are sort of hugging.
“Syd?” Kash’s voice is faint, and I hurry around them, inserting myself between them and the rail so I can hug him, too. “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for.” I hold on to him as if he’ll vanish into smoke. “Didn’t mean to push like that.”
“It’s hard… to think of those times.” His heart is pounding like a jackhammer under his ribs. I rub circles over his chest. “That journal… was supposed to help.”
“I’ll shut up,” I whisper.
“No, that’s not what I want.” He takes a deep breath. “I want to tell you guys everything. I said I wanna get better, be happy, and this is a start.”
“Take it easy,” West says, shaking him a little. “Breathe, Kash. There’s nothing you have to do right now but let us hold you.”
But he shakes his head. “Dad was killed when I was twelve. I left when I was fourteen. I grabbed…” His breaths are short and shallow. “I grabbed what I could and bolted the moment the housekeeper took her eyes off me for three seconds. I took…”
“Enough,” Nate growls. “Enough already. Let’s go inside.”
“I took a bus,” Kash goes on stubbornly. “Got a ticket to Detroit, and from there to Pittsburgh and then Philly, to get as far away as I could. It was… rough. I still looked too much like a kid. Late bloomer, I guess. Most people wouldn’t hire me. I was scared to sell the valuables I had with me in case my uncle tracked them, even though they belonged to me. My dad gave them to me, and just…”
His voice cracks and we just wrap him up more tightly between us.
West curses under his breath.
Nate looks furious at the world. “I’m gonna find your uncle and fuck him up, I swear.”
It earns him a crooked smile from Kash. “Anyway, I got by. I stayed there for a while, got a fake ID, found a job in a bakery, then in a fast food joint. Pay was shit. Then I moved away. Kept moving, so he couldn’t track me easily. Always paid cash. Always used prepaid cards for my phone. Never gave my real name. Never slipped up.”
“Until you met us,” I whisper.
“And you saved me,” he whispers back, kissing the top of my head. “Know what? Enough talking about the past. Nate’s right. Let’s go to our bed. There’s time to talk about sad times in the future.”
We fall on the bed together, in a tangle of bodies, still dressed and with our shoes on, and we make no move to undress. There’s this pressure in the air between us, crackling and shifting, this need to make sure Kash is okay. He’s lying with his head on West’s chest, Nate beside him, and me half on top of him, because I couldn’t get close enough.
I tug on his T-shirt, needing to feel the warm flesh underneath. It’s not sexual, not right now. I need to feel him, touch him, reassure myself he’s okay.
We’re all slowly coming to terms with our pasts, our losses and traumas, the black holes in our minds that suck us sometimes down. We’ve all lost our own, our families. Even I’ve finally come to accept that my mom isn’t and won’t be a part of my life.
But at least she didn’t murder the ones I love and didn’t chase me around the country trying to off me. Important detail, right?