Page 48 of Mason's Run

“He left me, Lee,” he said, his voice muffled against my shirt. “He left me. Like everyone leaves me.”

I held onto him as he cried, trying to soothe him with nonsense words and phrases like I had when we were kids and he woke from a nightmare. He would always wake up crying, and then he’d have to goaround to everyone’s room to make sure everyone was still there. It had taken years for the nightmares to stop.

After a while, he calmed, and I watched as he started to rebuild the shell he showed the rest of the world.

“Um,” he knuckled the last of tears from his eyes and took a deep breath. “Suddenly, I’m not that hungry. Mind if we head home?” he asked.

“Sure thing, bro,” I answered. “Stay here, I’ll get the car.”

He nodded and I headed back to the Jeep. As I walked up to where I’d parked, I saw Nicki hovering at the door to the restaurant. As he saw me approach, he looked around, almost guiltily, then came outside.

“Is he okay?” He demanded as soon as we were in talking distance.

“Not really,” I said angrily. Kaine was one of the sweetest souls in the world, and this guy had thrown him away like trash.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” he whispered, his eyes fixed on Kaine in the distance where he’d sat down on a retaining wall, facing away from the restaurant so he wouldn’t have to see us. I could see the pain in the kid’s eyes, a certain wistfulness as he looked at my brother. Somehow, I got the feeling he wasn’t talking to me.

“You should be,” I said angrily. One thing our moms had taught us growing up, you hurt one Devereaux, you hurt us all.

Nicki nodded, then held his hand out, a folded-up square of paper in it.

“I know… I know I don’t deserve his forgiveness,” he began, the paper trembling in his hand. His uniform shirt rode up his outstretched arm, and I glimpsed a small plus sign tattoo on the inside of his left wrist next to a bio-hazard sign. I knew what that tattoo meant.

My eyes flew to his and I saw the pain and anguish in his eyes. He saw my gaze on his wrist and anxiously pulled the sleeve down.

“Please don’t tell him,” he whispered. “I-I need to t-tell him myself,” he said. I eyed him and the still-outstretched arm.

“Do I need to make sure he’s tested?” I asked, feeling the steel inmy voice, but not willing to soften in the face of a threat to my brother.

Nicki jumped, seemingly startled at the thought.

“What? Godno! We never…” He stammered a moment before continuing. “We were just… kids.” He continued. “I wanted to… but he wanted to wait…” He blushed and stopped, realizing he had probably shared too much.

“Please, just… just give him this,” he asked, again thrusting the paper toward me.

I took the paper he’d held and watched as he went back inside the restaurant. It was one of those green-and white-restaurant checks that servers wrote your order on. I could see there was writing on the inside part. I stared at the paper a moment, debating whether I should read the note or not, but ultimately decided that should be Kaine’s decision, not mine.

I picked Kaine up at the end of the parking lot and drove him home in silence. When I pulled the car up next to the house, he reached to open the door.

“Wait,” I said, stopping him before he could jump out.

“Lee, I don’t really think I can handle a lecture,” Kaine said, his face dejected.

“I’m not lecturing you,” I said. I dug around in my pocket and pulled out the note. “Nicki gave me this for you.” I held out the paper. “I figured it should be your choice, if you read it or not.”

Kaine took the folded piece of paper out of my hand and stared at it for a minute then shoved it in his pocket.

“Thanks,” he whispered. Before I could say anything else, he was out the door and heading inside. I sighed. Well,shit.

I picked up my phone and stared at it a moment before texting a message.

ME: Bish, are you going to be home tonight?

BISHOP: Hey bro! Yeah, why?

ME: Can you check on Kaine? He’s pretty upset.

BISHOP: …What did you do?!?