Then I texted Hart.
Do you know what’s going on with Elliot?
It wasn’t very long before I got a response:His dad was killed a year ago today.
“Oh,fuck,” I said out loud to the phone, my stomach immediately clenching in knots.
I was trying to come up with some excuse that would cause Hart not to think that I’m a ragingly insensitive asshole when the little dots appeared, telling me he was typing something. So I waited.
He didn’t tell you, did he?
No. Shit.
I was rushing to pack up everything, and promptly dropped a stack of paperwork—annoyingly, a verylargestack of paperwork—scattering pages all over the floor.
“Fuck!” Because now that I knew why Elliot had been weird, I realized that I reallyneededto go back to the house. Because you don’t leave your boyfriend alone on the one-year anniversary of his dad’s murder.
My phone started buzzing. It was Hart.
I thumbed the answer button, then speaker so I could talk while picking up papers. “I’m going back to the house as soon as I clean up the mess I just made,” I told him.
“Seth.”
I paused. “What?”
“There’s no reason you should have known it was today,” he said.
“I could have looked it up,” I mumbled.
“And I could’ve fucking told you, because I’ve known that dumbass my whole life, so I should’ve realized he’d keep that little detail to himself.”
And now I was feeling guilty both for not knowingandbecause that meant he didn’t trust me enough to tell me.
“Don’t you dare feel guilty about this, Mays,” Hart said sharply.
“How can Inot?” I asked him, and even to my ears, I sounded just as upset as I felt, which I thought I’d do a good job of hiding. Apparently not.
“Because this is on him, not you,” the elf argued. “Shithead doesn’tsharethings with anybody. He hasn’t talked about it for like six fucking months. Which, okay, I haven’t lost anybody really important to me, and I don’t fucking want to, but that can’t be fucking normal.” He paused, then spoke again before I had a chance to even open my mouth. “Or healthy.”
“Probably not,” I agreed. I finally managed to get all the papers back in a stack that I thought was probably more or less in the right order—not that it really mattered, since the pages were numbered, so I’d figure it out later—and took them over to where they were supposed to go. “I need to get going,” I said. “Back to the house.”
“You living there again?” he asked.
I stared at the phone, incredulous, not that Hart could see me. “He didn’t tell you?”
“Again, Mays, that stripey dumbass doesn’t tell anybody anything.” He sounded exasperated.
“I’m staying there until Smith can catch the assholes who are threatening him. Because the skinned badger and dog they left him are quite enough dead animals, thank you.”
“No fucking shit,” Hart agreed. “So you moved back in?”
I took a breath. “No, not exactly.”
“Can I ask why the fuck not?” From anybody else, the curse would be a sign that he thought I was insane for not doing it. From Hart, though, it was just the way he talked.
“I’m not there yet,” I told him, my neck and cheeks hot. I don’t know why it was any of his business what my reasons were, or why I felt ashamed to explain it, for that matter. I wanted my own life. I wanted Elliot in it, yes, but I needed to know for myself that I could be an independent adult. Not completely reliant on someone else in order to function.
And I wasn’t sure yet if I’d proved that.
