Page 107 of The Sound of Him

“Just say it. If I don’t like it, I’ll say no.”

But see,sayingit means giving away the information, and then he knows about it, regardless of his decision. He knows Carter is aware of the location of the safehouse. Casey is aware. He’ll know and it’ll be over.

He won’t kill them.

If I beg him, if I call Keaton and get him involved, he won’t kill them. He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t. He’ll be pissed, but he won’t kill them.

“Carter wants to go to college,” Kellan says slowly, as if trying to jog my memory.

“Yeah. He - uh. He wants to go to the college. Nearby. PTU.”

I blink to try to make the trees stop blurring as I wait for the bomb.

It’s quiet when it drops. Eerily quiet. Nothing but a low, monotone echo, “PTU.”

My throat is too tight for words, but I manage a sort ofmhmsound.

“How does Carter know PTU is near the safehouse, Ace?”

Lie. Just lie to him. It’s easy. He’s not even here, not looking you in the eye, can’t see you fidgeting, you can pull it off. Just lie. Fix it. Walk this back before-

“Was it Maison who told him where your safehouse is located?” he asks, and absolutely any warmth he had before, any of the practiced kindness he was using to comfort me, is gone. It’s so far gone, I’m already wondering if it was ever really there at all. “Or was it Travis?”

Fuck.

“I-” I swallow, choking on the lie. It physically hurts to force it out. “It was me.”

“Bullshit.” And now we’re at the next stage of his angry voice - the dark one. The dangerous one. “What’s my one rule, Ace? What is my one fucking rule when it comes to you?”

The trees are blurring because I’m crying.

That makes sense.

“No lies,” I make myself answer.

“No lies,” he repeats.

“I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m sorry. Kellan, please, I-”

“Stop.”

I stop.

Then I listen as he takes a very specific breath. The kind of breath he reserves for the very bad moments in life. I can so clearly picture him doing it, always the same way - a deep inhale through his nose, a slow tilt of his head to look up at the ceiling, a pause, then a long exhale as his head settles back in neutral.

I’ve only caused this particular response from him once, as far as I remember.

It was the end of my first week living in his house. I had been sitting on my big bed full of fluffy, pretty blankets, looking around at the room full of things just for me. There was a dresser full of nice, warm, soft clothes, a bookcase full of colorful picture books Kellan had promised he’d read to me until I could readthem on my own, and a big wooden chest full of toys. Keaton had just come to visit and brought a teddy bear that was bigger than I was. It was laying on the bed next to me, ready to cuddle. I had already checked and he fit under the bed with me, my perfect buddy whenever I needed to hide.

I sat there on that bed surrounded by all of those things and worked up the courage to go find Kellan.

I'd found him lounging on his fancy leather couch, legs spread, a glass of something that burned when I got a whiff of it resting on one thigh. It was the softest I had ever seen him. No fancy suit or expensive watch. No phone glued to his ear. No important looking papers in his hands. It was just him in sweatpants and a faded shirt with letters across it that I couldn’t read - an old college shirt, I later figured out.

He had tilted his head toward me, eyes a little slower to leave the TV like he didn’t want to have to look away. Then he’d given me that weird smile of his, the one that didn’t feel fake or scary, but also didn’t feel real. I didn't know then why it was like that. At the time, it was just different, something I couldn’t place, which ended up making it scary anyway.

He’d said, “Hey, kid. You want to come watch the game with me?”

And I’d said, “I want to thank you. Can I make you feel good? For all the nice things?”