Page 24 of Enzo
“Yeah,” I said, already pulling out a kitchen chair. I didn’t hesitate to sit down and make space.
He came over.
Not awkward this time. Not unsure. He knew what he needed.
Robbie settled in my lap, his knees to either side of me, arms around my neck. I wrapped my arms around him—supporting his back, his waist—cradling him as if he were something precious. Because he was.
Jamie froze in the doorway, cookies in his hand, but he didn’t say a word. Rio glanced up, caught the moment, and for once didn’t grin or crack a joke, gave me a nod and looked away.
He was ours to protect, but he was mine to hold.
I held Robbie close, rubbing slow circles over the small of his back. His breathing evened out, the tension in his shoulders loosening bit by bit as he leaned into me, cheek resting against my collarbone.
He didn’t need words. Neither did I.
This wasn’t about fixing anything. It wasn’t about pain or pasts or promises.
This was just… Robbie in my lap, letting me hold him, exactly where he was supposed to be.
“If I ever found out who hurt you…” I whispered.
“Three of them. You’d need to findthree,” he murmured.
“Robbie?”
He didn’t say anything else.
And I didn’t push.
NINE
Robbie
FOUR MONTHS LATER
“Hey.”
I glanced up to find Logan standing outside my door, which I’d taken to leaving open the last few days. Not wide enough to be an invitation for anyone to come inside, just enough to mean I was trying. He held a small square of yellow paper between two fingers—the note I’d left on the table this morning.
“What do you mean by duplicate?” he asked, touching the spot where his scar began. I didn’t know the whole story behind it, but the line from his temple to his lip gave him a rugged, unyielding look.
“That one’s doubled,” I explained.
Logan blinked. “What?”
I pointed to the pale green invoice on the corner of my desk—the one I’d been staring at half the night. It was buried under what I’d come to call the pile of stupidity—a stack of papers I didn’t understand the purpose of but kept sorting anyway.
“It’s a duplicate. For the shocks, you ordered on the eighteenth of last month. Same part number. Same delivery date. The serial on the packing slip ended in 2-1-4-8—this one does too.”
I handed it to him before I could overthink it again. He stared at the page, then back at me, and muttered, “Shit. You’re right. I would have just paid that.”
I wasn’t proud I’d found it. In fact, I’d spent most of the morning and all of last night debating whether I should say anything after what happened with the last missing payment I uncovered. I could’ve filed it away or shoved it in the garbage. But it hurt, sometimes, knowing things and staying quiet—especially when the people around me had been nothing but kind.
They wouldn’t use it against me—right? They wouldn’t make me do things because I could. Wouldn’t train me like a dog or lock me in a room full of files and say, don’t come out until you’ve memorized them all. They wouldn’t be likehim.
John had thought it was a joke, at first. A trick. Then the scruffy, quiet kid from the group home he visited started rattling off strings of numbers, full sheets of client data, names of every guy John had told me to watch. I never forgot a single word.
I’d been proud of what I could do. I’d loved when he ruffled my hair and called me special. I left with him willingly, when he told me about the big house with the pool, the gardens, how a boy like me would love it there.
