It almost kills me, but I drop my hands. She looks at me for one more second, then she turns and adjusts her shoulders and walks toward Ezra with a straight back.
“We should go inside and talk,” she tells him.
She doesn’t look back, so all I can do now is watch her go. Ezra goes with her, shaking off the hit.
Madison appears at my side and hugs me hard. “Thank you,” she whispers. “For looking after her.”
I rest my chin against the top of her head. Rowan stands behind her, giving me a small, tight smile before they both follow Piper inside.
“She’ll be alright,” Arthur says, squeezing my shoulder before he returns to the house, too.
When the front door closes, the quiet is deafening.
Noah stays with me. He doesn’t speak immediately. He just stands there looking at the door with his jaw tight.
“Don’t,” I say.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You were.”
“Fine.” He turns to face me. “Honestly, if you didn’t do it, I would have.” He watches the door like he wants to kick it down. “How bad was it?”
“Noah,” I plead.
“I need to know. What are we talking about? Did he ever put his hands on her?”
“No.”
“Then how bad?”
I breathe in through my nose. I think about her on the bathroom floor. I think about the music being turned down and the empty lists. I think about a woman who checked whether she was taking up too much space every time she spoke.
“He controlled everything,” I tell him. “Her clothes. Her hair. Her time. She had to ask his permission before she wore an outfit. He made her feel small. Worthless.”
Noah’s face changes until all I can see is anger and grief simmering there.
“My sister,” he snaps. “That fucker. He doesn’t know how lucky he was.”
He starts to turn toward the house, but I press a hand to his chest. “Let her deal with it, Noah. She needs to do this herself. You going in there takes it away from her.”
He’s a psychologist, and I can almost see the cogs turning as he places the blame on his own shoulders.
“You couldn’t have known,” I say, leaning back against the car. “He was careful. It was designed not to be seen. She didn’t even see it herself until she was outside of it.”
Noah paces one more length of the path and comes back. He looks at me, his voice lower now. “You looked after her.” It’s not a question.
The prickling guilt moves through me anyway. It’s not for what happened, but for the simplicity of what he’s saying versus the full weight of what it means.
My head falls between my shoulders. “I looked after her.”
Noah holds my gaze for a moment. “Then watching her walk in there with him must be killing you right now.”
I look at the house and the closed door. My heart contorts because I’m fairly sure the other half of it is in that house.
“Yeah, it’s pretty fucking shit.”
Noah puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “Come on, brother. Let’s grab a beer.”
