“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t?—”
“No!”
I flinched, my heart pounding with adrenaline and terror.
“No,” he said again, more gently this time. “There is fuckingnothingfor you to be sorry about.” He turned to look at me, and I saw there were tear-tracks on his cheeks.
It hit me like a punch to the chest, and I opened my mouth to apologize again.
“Nothing, you hear me? Jesusfuck.” He shook his head. “How are you as fuckingnormaland well-adjusted as you are? After having lived throughthat?”
I didn’t know what to say.
He turned in his seat, taking both my hands again. “I need you to listen to me, okay, baby?”
I nodded, my heart still hammering in my throat.
“You are the bravest and strongest man I know.”
I felt my forehead pull into a frown.
He reached out and held my face between his palms. “Seth. Tell me what you would say to Noah if he thoughtanyof that shit was his fault.”
That was like a slap to the face. The kind you need when you’ve become hysterical.
I felt heat flush up my neck.
“Tell me,” Elliot said firmly.
“Of course it isn’t,” I whispered.
“And why are you different?” he asked me, his voice so very gentle.
“I’m bigger.” I half-swallowed it.
“You were how old when you left?”
“Fifteen.”
“Achild.”
I swallowed.
“You were both children. Why are you any more at fault than he was?”
“I was supposed to protect him,” I whispered.
“Because you were bigger?”
I nodded.
“So by that logic, your parents, who were bigger than you for most of your childhood, should have protected you?”
I was silent.
“And they didn’t?”
I shook my head.
