Page 25 of Break Me Apart
“I forgot.”
“Yes,” I say, standing up, “that was the part worrying me.”
I poke around in her kitchen and find enough to make something that qualifies as food if nobody asks difficultquestions. I cook while she feeds Vladimir when he wakes up, and for ten minutes, the flat feels almost normal. Baby whining, pan hissing, Cassie muttering soft nonsense under her breath as she shifts him against her shoulder. I watch her without making a show of it. The love is there in every movement, which makes the rest of it sadder and easier to understand at the same time.
When I put a plate in front of her, she actually eats, which I count as another small victory. Vladimir ends up in my arms after that because she needs both hands, and I’m apparently available.
He stares at me with the grave suspicion babies reserve for men who are not their fathers, then grabs one of my fingers with terrifying strength.
“You’re ugly,” I tell him quietly. “That’s all right. Your father is worse.” Cassie snorts into her tea, which makes me feel better. Much better.
By the time I leave, the light outside has gone that flat blue-white colour that means evening is coming early again. Cassie walks me to the door with Vladimir against her shoulder, his face mashed into her jumper.
“You’ll talk to Niko first?” she asks.
I pull my jacket on. “I’ll handle him.”
She nods, then hesitates. “Don’t make it sound worse than it is.” She gives me a tired, helpless little shrug. “I know how that sounds.”
“I will tell him the truth,” I say. “No more, no less.”
That seems to satisfyher.
I open the door, then stop and glance back. “Lock this after me.”
“Arseny—”
“I’m serious. And if you have a bad night, or you start panicking, or you hear something that isn’t there and it scares you, you ring base and you ask for Niko or me. I don’t care what time it is.”
She looks as if she wants to argue, then thinks better of it. “Okay.”
I nod once and head down the corridor. When I get back into the car, I sit for a moment with the engine off. Now I know two things with perfect clarity. Cassie can’t stay in that flat much longer. And my brother is in worse trouble than he has let anybody see.
SEVEN
CAIDEN
The air is thick with steam and the metallic smell of the hot water on the tiles. The sound is bouncing and collapsing in on itself so that everything feels closer than it actually is. It’s late enough that most of the unit has already come and gone. The noise is reduced to the steady rush of a few remaining showerheads and the occasional locker door clanging shut somewhere behind me.
Mason is standing with his back to me when I step in. I recognise him — even from the back — before I consciously notice anything else. His head is tipped slightly forward under the spray. I step up to the shower beside him as he turns to face me.
The split on his lip is extreme, slightly swollen, and pulling tight when he breathes through his mouth. There’s bruising spreading up along his cheekbone, the colour of it just starting to darken into a deep purple. His knuckles are torn open in that unmistakable way that says whatever happened wasn’t clumsy, wasn’t accidental, and it wasn’t him walking into a door.
“Don’t,” he says defensively when he sees me staring. I don’t answer him. I drop my towel onto the bench and step closer instead, refusing to pretend I haven’t seen what I’ve seen. When he shifts to reach for the soap, he twists slightly under the spray, and that’s when I see his ribs. The bruises spread from his ribs along his side, some of them finger-shaped, already dark enough to tell me they’ll hurt tomorrow in a way he won’t be able to hide.
It looks like someone held him down.
The anger travels so fast through my body that it almost makes me sick. “What the fuck happened?”
“Nothing,” he says, exhaling slowly through his nose.
“That’s not nothing.”
“It is,” he replies, and he makes it sound like a conclusion rather than a denial. “Lost my footing. Don’t worry, it’s fine.”
“Who did it, Connor?” I ask, watching the water run over his shoulder and down across the bruising.
He looks at me then. “Leave it.”
