Chapter 10: Chapter 10

“It’s not like he went and got me in the ribs, is it?” Alex asks.

Ryan recoils at the image. He immediately realises—here, with the stark reality of Alex’s bruises glowering at him from their respective places—that Alex isn’t making a joke. It’s a serious consideration, which in likelihood means…

“He’s…?”

“Of course he has,” Alex says, as if Ryan has asked whether it is summer.

And Ryan can’t wrap his head around it, and he vaguely notes that he’s shaking, and Alex is so, so calm, like this is all normal, and Ryan feels sick and ill and he doesn’t know what to do

“You have to tell someone!” Ryan yells.

He knows he’s yelling. He’s fully aware that he is yelling and that if he doesn’t calm down and shut up, Nan will come investigating, and that will be all kinds of complicated.

“Why?”

Ryan cannot honestly believe that Alex is asking why. That he’s sitting there, calm as an ox-bow lake, asking whyWhy

“You can’t just let him do that to you!”