Page 85 of Crown of Thorns
I clench my jaw. “Nothing.”
“Yes, you have.” He sets the coffees down, takes my hand. “You’re hurt.”
“Just a scratch.”
“Let me take care of you.”
“Louis—”
“Hush, big guy.”
He produces an emergency kit from his bag.
“You came here with that?”
He shrugs. “I keep it in my football bag.”
Cool fingers clean the cut. The disinfectant stings. He clicks his tongue but doesn’t comment.
“So this place was your granddad’s?”
I nod. “Looks like it.”
“You’ve never been here before?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Why keep all these photos here?”
“I don’t know.”
I stare at a photo from my thirteenth birthday. My dad had come back from overseas. We threw a party, and he refused to show up for it.
“Are you proud to be a Deveraux?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Sure. Good name. Power. Money. Family is tight. We all live next to each other down by the coast. Three beach mansions. Big pool. Tennis court. I’ll take you sometime.” He grins. “If you want me to.”
I don’t answer. Because if I say yes, I’ll believe I belong somewhere again. And if I say no, I’ll lose this.
He peels another photo off the wall. “Look at your chubby cheeks.”
“I did not have chubby cheeks.”
“Oh, you did. You were adorable.”
I groan. He wiggles his eyebrows. I chuckle despite myself.
He makes things lighter. He always does.
“Seriously, this place is weirdly amazing,” he says. “Like a temple of memories protected by thorns.”
I think of his words.
Maybe I’ve spent too long hiding behind a mask. Playing the perfect professor. The youngest in the country. Smiling on cue. But here, surrounded by dust and ghosts, I see the truth. I’ve been waiting for someone to pull me out of the wreckage. And he did.
Even pain is proof I was once part of something real.
We sit for a while, silent, shoulder to shoulder on the edge of memory. The air is thicker now, sun climbing, heat pressing through the gaps in the wall. My shirt sticks to my back. Dust floats in slow spirals. Neither of us speaks.
