Page 53 of Now to Forever

And most terrifying: Maybe leaving won’t change a damn thing, just like Glory said.

I clear my throat.

“It’s okay not to be fine, you know,” I say, passing her another strip of wallpaper. “I don’t know if anybody I trusted told me that when I was younger, and maybe you and I aren’t so different. I acted out after . . . everything. Drank more than I should have. Dated some real winners. And it’s taken a while for me to be fine.”

“You’re fine now?” she asks, brows pinched in skepticism as she looks down over her shoulder.

“Of course, I am.” I hold my palms up. “Fine as a f—” She raises her eyebrows. “—isherman on a bass boat.”

She smooths the last strip. At the top, in the corner where the wall meets the ceiling, excess paper droops down. I frown. “Let me get a razor blade to clean that up.”

She holds out her hand. “I’ll do it.”

I pass her the blade; she drags it along the corner.

“Crap!” she hisses, stopping abruptly to suck her finger. “The blade slipped.”

She comes down the ladder, blood bursting at the tip of her index finger.

“Bathroom,” I command, guiding her with a hand on her shoulder down the hall.

At the sink, she rinses her finger, blood mixing with water down the drain of the puke-green sink. “I don’t think you’ll need stitches.” I try to examine the cut. “Let me look for Band-Aids.”

“It’s fine,” she says, jerking her hand away from me.

“Okay, nice try. Your dad will arrest me if I send you home bleeding. Let me look.” She tries pulling away from me, but I slide the sleeve of her sweatshirt up on her forearm, high enough it stays dry so I can get a firm grip.

“Scotty! Stop!” she yells, trying to pull her arm away again.

“Jesus, Wren. What the hell is wrong with you?” I squeeze my fingers around her arm, wrestling to still her.

Then I look in my hand and see her arm. Covered in white lines. Scars. At least a dozen.

I look at her; her black-rimmed eyes are desperate and filling with tears as they bounce back and forth between mine. Frantic.

No.

I push her sleeve all the way up, heart pounding in my chest as every tally mark of grief is revealed between her wrist and her elbow. “You’ve been cutting yourself,” I whisper. Two are newer. Red and still healing. “Jesus, Wren.”

At her other arm, I touch her skin like I’m not sure if she’s really there. Like maybe my eyes are lying. She doesn’t fight me as I slide the sleeve up revealing the same marks all the way up to her elbow. My chest feels like it’s been dug out with a shovel and filled with lead.

“Take off your pants,” I demand. I had a college roommate who cut herself. All over her inner thighs and across her stomach. “Now.”

Tears drip down her cheeks. “They aren’t anywhere else.”

“Dammit, Wren, let me see.” She pulls her leggings down, just to her knees—I see her inner thighs are clean. “Now your stomach.” She hesitates. “Now!” I shout, emotion burning my eyes and throat.

She lifts her shirt; her stomach is unmarked.

We look at each other, both quiet and unmoving.

“Okay,” I whisper. “This is all going to be okay.”

With a sharp inhale, Wren drops her face to her hands and lets out a loud cry. My response is reflexive: I wrap my arms around her, and she leans into me with all her weight, sobbing. Her screams and cries highlight the lie of fine—it never is.

We drop to the tile floor, her in my arms. “I’m so sorry, Scotty,” she sobs. Over and over and over. Her cries turn to sniffles and mix with myshhhs.

All I can think: I’m in over my head.

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