swollen they are. His bottom lip split so severely, a mixture of dried and fresh blood decorate the lower half of his face like a Halloween mask. He’s unconscious, that’s obvious enough. The masculine arm in the picture having gripped his hair to tilt his face upward to allow the photograph to be taken.
“Jesse,” I whisper. “What? Who?”
“Sarah,” she answers me, numbness having claimed her for the moment.
“Sarah?” I echo in confusion, but she doesn’t respond.
I move to stand, but she grabs onto my leg, holding me hostage.
“I need to call Rocco.”
“Please, no. Camryn, you can’t.”
Hands twisted into my pant leg, she stands on her knees, begging me with her life. Face blotchy with the salt of her tears, chin quivering incessantly, her confidence strips away, leaving a young girl pleading with a stranger to help her.
“Hey.” I drop back down, pulling her into a hug. “Rocco will fix this.”
“No,” she cries into my shoulders. “Not when he realizes what’s happened. What I’ve done.”
Pushing her shoulders back, I look into her eyes. “What you’ve done?” I query.
Her head moves up and down quickly. “He’ll hate me forever.”
“That’s not possible.”
“You don’t know what I’ve done.”
Hands gripping her cheeks, my thumbs swipe at her cheeks, attempting to remove the rush of tears silently streaming down her face.
“What did you do?” I ask gently.
“This was all my fault,” she declares. “They retaliated.”
“Who retaliated?” I question, confusion setting in.
Her chin lifts and drops slowly, her bottom falling to the ground as her body gives up. “They’re punishing me.”
“Who?” I stress.
“Sarah,” she tells me, pausing for a moment before adding. “Jonathan.”
My blood runs cold. Pure liquid ice coursing through my veins.
“Jonathan?”
Eyes closing in regret, she nods. “I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry.” She repeats herself over and over again. The words nothing but stuttered sobs that send shockwaves up my spine. Every cry like the whisper of his name tying itself around my vertebrae, ready to snap it at any given moment.
Jonathan.
“Talk to me,” I beg her, needing to understand how Jonathan became entangled, not only with my mother, but in something sinister enough to involve the attack of a teenage boy.
“Sarah,” she whispers again.
The cogs are turning so quickly in my head, I can’t get any to line up, to make sense.
“You’re talking to Sarah?”
Chin wobbling, she nods.
Click. Fears falling into place like puzzle pieces I didn’t even know I was missing.
“Did she send you here?” I breathe. “You coming to Dominic’s home… was that her idea?”
Her head shakes vehemently, her hand coming up to wipe at her nose, transferring the snot and tears from her face to the bare skin of her arm.
“Blake, I’m so confused, you’re going to have to fill me in.”
She forces herself to inhale, defeat now defining her. “I fucked up,” she tells me. “I really fucked up, Camryn.”
“We can fix it,” I assure her, not one hundred percent believing my own promise.
Head dropping into her hands, thick, jagged sobs wrack through her body.
I move in closer, sitting on the floor beside her to drag her into an embrace. I made the mistake of forgetting she was a teenage girl. A child. Her life has forced her to grow up too quickly, but deep inside, she’s a scared little girl needing someone to guide her.
Climbing onto my lap, her face buries into my chest as she cries. My hand rubs up and down her back, a soft shh echoing the movement in an attempt to calm her.
It takes some time, a good ten minutes, but she settles, her sobs trailing off into sporadic stuttered breaths. Eyes, wide and unseeing, stare into nothing.
“Blake,” I test softly.
“Sarah was watching Dominic’s house,” she starts, her eyes still fixated on nothing, her voice completely devoid of emotion. “She saw us there and approached me.”
She sniffs, her palm coming up to graze the upside of her nose. “She offered us cash.”
“You and Jesse?”
Finally, she blinks, turning to look at me before she shakes her head. “Yes. No,” she corrects. “Just me. She knew Jesse wouldn’t give her the time of day. He despises her. She was always around, she got Mom hooked on smack and whatever else she was snorting and injecting.”
My hand never ceases its constant track up and down her spine.
“It was a lot of cash,” she tells me robotically. “Enough to set us up with a new life.”
Her chin wobbles and she lifts her palm, pressing it against her jaw to stop it. “It was before I knew Rocco. Before