“Whoever decided it was a good idea to introduce letters into math isn’t someone I want to be friends with,” she grumbled.
My lips twitched. “GED?”
“Yes,” she moaned, dropping her head to the book in front of her. “It’s awful.”
I slid into the chair next to Addie and began kneading her neck. “I have a confession to make.”
She turned her head to the side to look at me. “If you tell me that you’re the one who mixed letters with numbers, I’m going to try that knee-to-the-groin trick on you.”
I barked out a laugh. “Rest assured, I’m not the inventor of algebra.”
“But…”
My fingers continued their ministrations on Addie’s neck. “But…I was a certified math nerd in high school. AP Calculus and everything.”
She sent me a skeptical look. “You were a math nerd?”
“A hot math nerd.”
Her lips twitched. “A hot math nerd is still a nerd.”
“True. But all the girls wanted to study wit
h me.”
Addie scowled at me.
I couldn’t hold in my chuckle. “I aced every test.”
“Thanks to your study buddies?” She said the words as if they tasted bad.
“I was the math genius, thank you very much. My study habits were impeccable.”
“I don’t know that I really need to hear about these study habits or sessions or whatever.”
I moved in closer, dipping my hand beneath the collar of Addie’s shirt and rubbing her shoulder. “Come on now. I could help.”
“Help? Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
My fingers passed over a patch of raised skin. It was similar to what I’d felt this morning on her waist. My movements slowed as I ghosted over what had to be another scar. “Addie,” I said softly.
“Hmm?”
“What are these scars from?”
She froze, all the muscles beneath my hand going as hard as a rock in an instant.
My gut soured, a million different possibilities playing out in my mind. “Addie?”
She ducked out of my touch, pulling the collar of her shirt tighter. “It’s nothing.”
My throat had gone completely dry. “We don’t lie to each other, remember?”
Addie stared at the textbook in front of her. The only thing that gave her away was the slight tremble in her hand as she held her collar. “He sometimes hit me with a belt.”
The words were so soft I could barely hear them. The tone was even with no emotion in it at all.
Yet those words, so calmly stated, broke me. “Addie.” Her name tore from my throat. A plea to tell me that she was lying. That no one had taken a belt to her back so viciously that it had left scars.