“Xeni, what is this?”
Panic flashes across his face, euphoria draining away in an instant as his eye widens and color floods his cheeks. He tries to close his legs, thighs trembling as he snaps them together.
“It’s nothing,” he mutters, gaze dropping to the floor as he curls inward.
“It’s not nothing,” I retort as I part his knees. I lean closer, tracing the scars with shaking fingertips and a tenderness that belies the storm inside me.
“Who did this to you? Who…”
My gaze meets his, and the shame I find there is crushing.
“Did you…”
Thick emotion closes its fingers around my throat, squeezing until every breath is a chore, and I suck in a shuddering inhale that rattles in my chest as I stare at the patchwork of cuts on his thighs.
“Did you do this to yourself?”
“Bash,” he whimpers, voice so small and even more broken.
“Why?” The question tears from me as my fingers continue tracing the cuts. “Why would you do this? Why would youhurtyourself?”
My hands roam over his skin even as he shakes his head in a silent plea for me to stop.
Searching for more, driven by a need I can’t name, I push at the hem of his shirt and lift it higher.
A mournful, animalistic wail slips loose from my throat.
“Xeni, whatisthis?”
His mark used to be the same warm chestnut brown as my skin, but now it’s pitch black andwrong, twisted and unnatural, puckered and drawn tight like scar tissue pulled too harsh over a wound that never healed. Rough beneath my fingertips, raised and jagged, it’s a grotesque shadow of what it once was.
Blinding anger surges through me as my eyes move higher, ready to demand answers, but it’s swept away by the brokenness I find there.
His face is etched in anguish, and his single eye is an endless pool of sorrow deep enough to drown in.
I can’t bear it.
I wrap my arms around his back and pull him forward, tucking his face into the curve of my neck as his first sob breaks free, muffled and shattering against my skin. I stroke his hair in slow, soothing passes, cupping the back of his head and holding him close.
He fits perfectly against me like no time has passed, and for once, I don’t fight the need to keep him there.
“What happened to you?” I whisper into his hair.
“It doesn’t matter,” he cries against my neck. The words are jarred and broken by his sobs, each one a shudder that racks his frame.
“It matters to me,” I say, pressing my lips to his temple. “Please, just tell me.”
“It doesn’t matter… nothing mattered until you, and then you were gone, and nothing mattered again. I hate it, I hate everything, and I hatethem!”
His voice rises until it fractures with the volume, and his fists clench tighter in my shirt as fresh tears soak the fabric.
“Nothing matters…” Xeni’s voice cracks, the words dissolving into a choked sob as he buries his face deeper into my shirt. “It doesn’t matter!”
His whole body trembles against mine in violent shudders as he clings to me like I’m his only anchor to the earth. His fingers dig in, like letting go would shatter him completely.
I pull back enough to meet his gaze, and he scrambles to hold on tighter like he thinks I’m walking away. “It’salright, Xen. I’m not going anywhere. Let’s get you somewhere comfortable.”
“Xen?” he whispers with another quiet sob, and gods, he sounds so hopeful.
