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The blood drained from my face. Beside me, Soren went perfectly still, every muscle in his body locked. Jonah closed his eyes. Like some part of him had expected this all along.

“He hit him.” She whispered it like she was still processing it but knew it to be true. The words echoed, and nobody moved. Nobody breathed.

I understood it even more then, as clearly as I could see the people standing next to me. Lane as a little boy, growing up inside that house. With that man.

The picture came into crystal clear focus. The anxiety, the depression, the carefulness. The constant expectation of disappointment. The way he apologized for things that weren’t his fault. The way his entire body had tensed reading that text from Bryant. The hesitation every time his father came up. A lifetime of surviving someone volatile.

Not just difficult as I had believed, but dangerous. Was this why his mother left? Or had she been simply trying to survive?

Either way, she’d left Lane behind.

The thought hollowed out my chest.

And then I had left.

I put a hand against the wall to hold myself up. If I’d understood . . . really understood . . . I never would have walked away.

Julia wiped at her eyes.

“The police arrested him,” she finally said. “He was passed out drunk when they got there.”

Jonah muttered another curse.

My legs gave out, and the chair caught me before the floor could. Exhaustion seeped into my bones as pieces of the past snapped together one after another. All the years, and it never crossed my mind that Lane wasn’t safe.

Bryant had always seemed arrogant. Demanding. A businessman accustomed to getting his own way. Never in a million years had I imagined he was capable of swinging a baseball bat to hurt his own son.

If this was what he did as an adult . . .

What had Lane survived as a child?

Julia lowered herself into the seat across from me. For several moments nobody spoke.

Then quietly, Soren asked, “Did he hurt you?” There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that neither Soren nor Jonah intended to let Julia leave this hospital without making sure she was safe.

Julia looked up, confused. Then understanding flickered across her face.

“No.” The answer came too quickly.

Jonah noticed too. His thumb dragged slowly beneath his lower lip while his jaw worked. Each of us internally considered the same question.

Julia laughed. A tiny broken sound. “I always hated that.” She stared at the floor. “The way he could make people afraid without touching them.”

Her voice cracked. “The way he made me afraid.” And then she said something that made the entire hallway seem like it stopped breathing. “I should've left years ago.”

Jonah’s eyes narrowed.

Julia laughed again. This time it sounded even more hollow.

“Actually . . .” She swallowed. “I almost did.”

Something shifted in the air.

Soren leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

Julia stared down at her hands, then toward the imaging doors as though searching for the courage to keep going.

“Lane told me—not in so many words—that Bryant asked me out because he’d found out we were dating. I didn’t realize until afterward that trying to take what belonged to Lane was some kind of game to him.”