Page 19 of High

He gave me another hug and I squeezed back. This was nice because unlike with Thio, there was no expectation. Arlo might as well have been my brother by blood. He planted a kiss on the top of my head and I laughed, smacking his back hard before he let me go.

“So you just came to see me?” I asked.

His grin went crooked and guilty. “Well, I also wanted to talk to my brother for a minute. Do you mind?” he asked, switching his attention to Thio. He let me go, and the two wandered down the beach away from me a bit and then bent their heads together.

The waves rolled and crashed to the sand, and a dull thump of fear settled into my gut the longer I stared. It had been so long since I’d been on a wave. I wanted my favorite board, but it was in Pedregal, probably never to be seen again, and even worse, it might even be dry-rotted by now with no one taking care of it. I stepped forward and sloshed into the salty water until the cold hit my knees. I didn’t know how long I was out there, glaring at the waves, daring them to rock me off my feet, before Thio was cursing and splashing in beside me.

“Manny, what are you doing?”

“Did you lie about Papá? I need to know now. I want all the lies in the open.”

“No,” he said, and he sounded pissed off.

I held up a hand to him when he looked like he was going to keep talking. “You have to expect me to ask. You told me convenient lies about a lot of things for a long time.”

“I never lied.”

I stared at him.

He sighed. “I didn’t tell you some things. Yes, fine. But I never lied about anything important.”

Rage simmered in my stomach like acid and I sloshed away from him. I hit the sand and stomped past Arlo and his concerned frown, power walking all the way to the house. Once back on solid ground, I went inside and found my way to the bedroom I’d been given. My blood boiled hotter as I stared around the room and realized this wasn’t Thiago’s room. It was a room for me to be in by myself. This wasn’t at all what I’d thought would happen. I’d been alone in a room of my own for so long. That fury in me clawed up my throat until I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I peeled my shirt off and headed into the bathroom, slamming the door closed behind me, and wasted no time getting into the shower.

I wanted to wash off the last twenty-four hours, hell, the last half a decade. Nothing had ever quite been what I thought it was, not even the quiet, good parts of my life. How could killers have made my early life so wonderful? I hit the switch and bowed my head under the spray, letting the warm water pelt me. I closed my eyes and tried to relax but couldn’t. The bandage on my cheek got wet, so I yanked it off and tossed it on the floor, not caring where it landed.

My muscles tensed. Behind my eyelids I saw my father, bleeding out on the bottom of the teardrop pool, even though that hadn’t happened. I saw Thio the same way, even though I’d left him whole and well on the beach. I shuddered as a replay of that man outside this morning, broken on the ground, pounded through my brain in technicolor reds that hadn’t happened in real life. There had barely been any gore at all, but in my mind I created buckets of it. I stood there breathing too fast and tried to let the water comfort me.

Eventually a light rapping on the door startled me into looking around at the lights in the room that seemed too bright. The shower door opened and Thio was there with a towel held out. He turned off the water and looped the cloth around me. Part of me was happy he didn’t make his touch sexual right now because I felt shattered in so many ways, and the rest of me was disappointed I wasn’t so fucking great that he couldn’t help himself.

I had no idea what to think.

“Were you indulging me back then?” I asked. “Did you feel the same way?”

“What?” Thio asked as he grabbed another towel from a cupboard and slung it around my shoulders. He swiped my wet hair off my forehead. “I don’t know exactly how you felt then, or feel now, but I’ve always wanted you near me, conmigo, and I’ll tell you as many times as you need to hear it.”

My face burned. He got yet another towel and began to dry my hair for me.

“What were you doing? Trying to drown yourself in the shower?” He was joking, and when he moved the towel away, I could see his smile, but coldness quaked in the pit of my stomach.

“Thought about it, while I was waiting for you.”

The towel dropped from his hand and slithered to the floor where it landed with a dull whump. His smile wilted.

“When it seemed like you would never come, I thought about a lot of things.”

A large vee formed between his dark brows. “I—”

“Don’t. I’m telling you, is all. I was in a really bad place, and I don’t feel like it’s totally gone. I don’t want to miss out on you, but….”

He dragged me close and held me tight to his chest. I rested my forehead against him. This was maybe the best spot on earth. Slowly, the frost in me began to melt.

“I’m glad you didn’t hurt yourself,” he whispered.

“I’m not the same as I used to be, either.”

“Yes, you are.”

I shrugged. I really wasn’t the same kid he’d dropped off for a few days at home in the sun, but I didn’t know how to make him understand.