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Mick kicked the door shut and was on me the moment it slammed. “What the hell are you doing? That kid’s really sick. He needs to be in the hospital.”

I closed my eyes briefly and tried to control my temper. I didn’t need his shit. “Do you think I don’t know that? He won’t go.”

“So make him go,” Mick countered. “Or at least stay with him. What was so important you had to leave him, anyway?”

I didn’t rise to his bait. He knew damn well I couldn’t
make
Ash do anything. “I had to go and see David.”

Mick frowned. “What? Ellie’s dad? Why?”

“He wasn’t that bad when I left. He was asleep.”

Mick’s gaze was hard as I deflected the question. “Pete, he was dehydrated and mentally altered when I got here. Is there something else going on here?”

“He’s not—”

“Bullshit.” Mick cut me off before I could lie to him. “You know better than this. He needs proper monitoring. If he gets any worse tonight, you have to take him in.”

I sighed. I knew he was right. What was the point in arguing? “How much fluid has he had?”

Mick stared me down for a moment, and then, with obvious relief that I was taking him seriously, he relented and gave me the professional assessment I needed. Despite his harsh tone, he genuinely wanted to help. He agreed to keep the call off the books and leave the oxygen in case Ash needed it again.

With that done, I was eager to get back to Ash, but Mick stopped me as I turned to leave and gave me a searching look that made me squirm. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Really? ’Cause you don’t look fine. You’re no good to him if you don’t take care of yourself. You know that, right? That Joe dude seems cool. Get him to stay while you get some sleep.”

I couldn’t take his sympathy. It made me furious. I wanted to scream. I wanted to punch him in the face for no other reason than I needed to hit something. I didn’t. Instead, I shrugged his hand from my shoulder and walked away.

Ash was looking considerably better when I made it back to the living room. He was leaning on Joe with his eyes half-closed, but there was color in his cheeks and his chest was moving freely.

Mick checked him over, took out the spent IV, and said his good-byes. After he’d left, Joe eased Ash back against the couch and stood too. I walked him to the door in a daze. “Thanks, man,” I said. “I’m sorry I dropped all this shit on you.”

“It’s okay,” Joe said. “I’m glad I could help. I’m not back at work until Monday. Call me if you need anything.”

“Thanks. Listen, I don’t know when Charlie’s coming back, but if you see him—”

Joe cut me off. “It’s okay. I won’t say anything. I don’t know what’s going on, but I can see Ash needs some space. You can trust me, Pete.”

For some reason, I believed him. I hadn’t missed the protective, fraternal arm he’d had around Ash, or the way Ash had accepted it. Whatever his reasons, Joe clearly cared and I was glad of it. I felt bad when he left before I could tell him so.

I drifted back to the living room. Ash seemed to be asleep, so I left him alone and sank down beside him, bringing my knees up to my chest as I tried to comprehend how we’d ended up in such a mess. Rape. Abuse. Torture. It was my worst fucking nightmare. I couldn’t handle the idea that it might have happened to Ash. I’d always known it was a possibility—maybe even a probability—but I’d never been brave enough to consider what that really meant. With it staring me in the face, I didn’t know what to do.

A hand on my arm startled me. I opened my eyes to find Ash sitting up. I glanced at the clock; it was late. “You should be asleep.”

“Why?”

There was a pause while my tired brain tried to configure a sensible answer. I failed. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” he said. “I felt like I was underwater or something before.”

“I’m sorry I left you.”

The couch shifted and he shrugged. “I don’t blame you.”

“Mick said you were pretty dehydrated,” I said. “That probably didn’t help.”

“It wasn’t just that, though, was it?”

His tone was flat. He already knew the answer, but I turned to face him anyway. “I don’t know what it was.”

Ash eyed me for a moment. “You do know something, though, don’t you? I can see it in your face. Something’s changed.”

I swallowed thickly, buying time. Because he was quiet and he kept his opinions to himself, sometimes people thought he was slow, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. He was sharp, he always had been, and he saw
everything
.

He moved. Suddenly he was leaning over me and peering into my face. “Where did you go?”

His scrutiny was intense and searching. I couldn’t hide from it. I pushed him away and scrambled to my feet. His eyes were haunting me. I had to get away.

“Pete, don’t go.”

I slammed to a stop as the desperation in his voice hit me like a truck. Perspective suddenly came crashing down. There was no worse feeling than knowing I was making this harder for him. I turned and went back to him, just catching him before he fell. “I’m sorry, Ash, I’m sorry. It’s okay.”

He fought against me as I pushed him back on the couch. “No, don’t do that. You have to tell me. You know something, I know you do. Pete, please, you have to tell me.”

I stared at him. He was frightened and confused, but he was alert and desperate. He knew something was badly wrong with him, and the weight of not knowing was killing him. I had to give him something, even if it hurt him more. He had to know.

I took both of his hands in mine and pulled him to his feet as what was left of my heart shattered into tiny pieces. “Come with me.”

I
TOOK
Ash into his studio. He had a love-hate relationship with the room already, and it was the only place in our home I could bear to taint with the horror I believed was to come.

He sat on the archaic futon and hugged his knees to his chest. Damn thing was so battered and old it didn’t fold up anymore, but for some reason, I’d never gotten around to chucking it out. I sat down beside him. He watched me through wary eyes as I draped a blanket over his shoulders. He knew I was stalling. Trouble was, I didn’t know where to start. David had told me not to tell him our suspicions, at least until we knew more, but I had to tell him something. Something had to give.

I thought hard and searched for a place to begin. Ash was fifteen when he left his last foster home. It hadn’t been a happy place; it was a shithole where the kids were left to fend for themselves. There was no food or clothes; half the time they didn’t even have power. Ash cut his losses and ran when his foster “mother” began turning tricks at the house. Somehow, he ended up in Philadelphia, but that was a story for another day. The most obvious gap David had identified came before that,
way
before that. After piecing together what little we knew, neither of us had any idea where Ash had been for at least four years of his childhood. To find out if Ash himself could tell me, I’d have to dig deep and ask him questions I’d never dared ask before.

“Do you remember when you lived in Houston? You said you lived in a group home until you were nine. Where did you go after that?”

Ash frowned, confused. “Back to foster care.”

“I know that, but where? Who did you stay with?”

He thought for a moment before he shifted abruptly. Irritation flashed over his face. “Why are you asking me that?”

“Can you tell me?”

He stared at me. The seconds ticked by, and it became painfully clear that he couldn’t. He backed away from me, narrowed his eyes, and scooted along the futon until he hit the wall. “Why are you asking me that?”

His question was whispered this time. The irritation was gone and the words hid a desperate plea for me to leave it alone. The sight of him cowered in the corner made me sick to my stomach, but I couldn’t let it go. I inched closer to him, close enough for him to reach me but still leaving him space. “Ash,” I said carefully, “I went to see David today.”

Ash narrowed his eyes again, the distrust in them clear. “Why? You’d already seen him.”

“I was worried,” I said. “And I needed help. Something’s triggering these… episodes in you. We need to figure out what it is so we can fix it—”

I broke off as my voice fell away. I tried to hold his gaze, but it was hard, harder than I’d ever imagined. The situation had snowballed so quickly; I’d completely lost control of it. A month ago, our lives had been normal. Normal for us, at least. Now I was trying to find the words to tell him I suspected something so awful I could hardly look at him. “Pete?”

I opened my eyes, and he was still huddled up on the end of the futon. Despite the weeks of soft blond scruff on his chin, he looked younger than I’d ever seen him before.

Shaken, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “David thinks something happened to you when you were a kid, something you can’t remember.”

“Like what?”

“He thinks someone hurt you.”

Ash rolled his eyes. “I got beat up every place I ever lived until I was big enough to hit back. That shit was normal where I grew up, Pete. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I don’t mean just violence.”

He was silent as he absorbed my words. I watched him process their meaning and waited for a reaction, any reaction, but none came. His face remained blank. “I’d remember something like that.”

I unclenched my fists and tried to recall exactly how David had explained it to me. “Not necessarily,” I said. “When bad stuff happens to young children, sometimes they react to it by suppressing the experience. It’s more common in kids that have no one they trust enough to confide in.”

“Suppressing? They forget about it?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “The memory is there, it’s just the mind conditions itself not to think about it.”

The shrewd look on his face wasn’t the devastation I was expecting. Shock washed over me as I realized he was actually considering the idea. I put my hand on his knee, ready to back off if he shied away. “Do you understand what this could mean?”

He nodded slowly and hugged himself a bit tighter. “It’s like the dream.”

“What dream?”

“I never told you?”

I shook my head. “I know you have bad dreams, but you’ve never told me what they’re about.”

Ash hummed thoughtfully. “There’s only one, really. It’s been the same for years. It went away for a while, but it came back.”

“What’s it about?”

He closed his eyes and it seemed like he wasn’t going to tell me. Shamefully, I felt relief, until he sighed, opened them, and slowly uncurled his legs. “Someone comes into the room I sleep in,” he said. “I don’t know where it is. I just know it’s weird because it’s dirty
and
it smells of bleach.”

I swallowed thickly. “What happens when the person comes into your room? Do you know who it is?”

“No,” Ash said. “I just know he holds me down and….” He stopped and gathered his words. “I try to move, I always try to move, because I can’t breathe, you know? Then he burns me with something and I have to stop. I always used to wake up when I couldn’t take the burning anymore.”

He told it with almost an aloof detachment, like it had happened to someone else. I squeezed his knee to get him to focus, and my heart pounded. I didn’t like the haze that was beginning to descend over his face. “Used to? What changed?”

Ash turned his head slightly. Suddenly the blank look was gone. In its place was the fear and horror I’d expected all along, but it wasn’t fresh, or new; his expression wasn’t the face of someone who’d only just thought the things I was thinking. I shook him gently. “Ash, what changed?”

“The end,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “After I heard that guy in the store, the dream got longer until I was waking up feeling like someone was lying on top of me. They were all over me, Pete, like they were inside me and under my skin. I could feel them everywhere and I could smell the burning. It smelled like when I burned my hand.”

I swallowed to contain the bile building in my throat again. Ash had scars on his back, scars that looked an awful lot like the cigarette burn on the palm of his hand. The murdered kid in the park had suffered appalling injuries too: blunt force trauma, broken bones… burns. Was it really possible that Daryl Hunter had tortured Ash too?

No, no, no.
I couldn’t let my mind go there. Shit like that was the stuff of nightmares. It couldn’t have happened to him… anyone but him.

Ash said something. I blinked and turned to him. “What?”

He opened his mouth and shut it again. “Pete… I don’t… I don’t know what to do.”

His distress cut through my own like a guillotine. I leaned back on the futon and tried to get a grip on myself. “It’s just a theory,” I said. “Lots of psychiatrists don’t believe it’s even possible to repress memories. Just because David says it doesn’t mean it happened.”

He chewed on his lip. “But how would I find out if it did?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know if you ever could for sure. You’d need some kind of special therapy.”

Ash made a face, and a vague memory of him describing the half-assed therapy he’d had in rehab flashed into my mind. He hadn’t responded well to it. Typically, he’d thought it was bullshit. I didn’t want to start that battle just yet, but I had to give it to him straight. I owed him that. “David’s going see if he can find out where you were during the time you can’t remember, but Ash, even without all that, you need help. You know that, don’t you?”

He didn’t argue. Somehow, we’d both accepted that David had probably been trying to help him all along. I sat back, relieved—relieved and terrified. I was sitting beside him telling him he needed to get help, but I didn’t have the first idea of where to start, or if it would even work. How the hell was he supposed to trust me? There was one question I had to ask, though. “Is this something you’ve thought of before?”

Ash sighed. “Sort of, I think, but it’s never come together properly. I’ve had all this shit going round in my head for… fuck, I don’t even know. I know it’s wrong, but it feels better to have some logic behind it.”