My Ex Threw Me Away, Now He's Bleeding for Me novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Bleeding

Reid was on the fifth floor, in a room with a county deputy sitting outside the door.

The deputy looked at my name on the list and let me through.

Gideon stayed in the hall.

Nell came in with me as far as the foot of the bed, in her scrubs, with her arms crossed.

He had a tube in one arm and a bandage across his ribs.

One of his eyes was swollen shut again, and the stitches in his lip had pulled open.

His wrists were cuffed to the bed rail, though he wasn't going anywhere.

"Hi," he said.

I stood where I was.

"Who did it?"

"A man in the cell. I don't know his name." He tried to smile and it hurt him. "He said his sister has a prosthetic. He'd seen the lawn video forty times. He said I deserved to find out how it feels to be held down."

Nell breathed out slowly.

"Did you fight back?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I thought it was fair."

I came closer, then, and stood beside the rail.

He looked up at me with his one good eye, and I saw that he was nineteen in it, and also twenty-two, and also something I didn't have a word for.

"I heard the tape," I said. "In front of your father's board."

"They told me."

"I heard myself on it."

He shut his eye.

"I've heard that sound every night for three years," he said. "I couldn't tell anyone."

"You could have told me."

"I know."

"Every single day you could have."

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