WAKE (Wattpad edition)

45. Ashes.

{Cary}

It was early evening, and the house was quiet except for the faint murmur of the radio in Tru's room. Cary padded down the hall, feeling like Kadee had turned Jon a new way and fit him into a puzzle Cary had been trying to figure out for days. He pushed open the door of his own room, wondering if the quiet meant Jon had gone out the back door for a smoke.

Jon had not. He was lying on his face on the bed in the clothes he'd worked in, looking like he'd been crumpled and tossed on top of the covers. His sock feet were grey with dirt on the bottom. Cary let out his breath. He didn't know what to do with this new information that wouldn't hurt Jon more.

He tapped a knuckle on the open door, and Jon brought his arm up to hide his face against it.

Cary took a careful breath. "It's not just your fault," he said, low. "It's my fault, too."

Jon made a small, cracked noise. "You didn't get your dad fired."

Cary's eyes touched the corner of the ceiling, remembering Conall's absence from the university website. "I think I did, actually," he muttered.

Jon didn't move, and Cary swallowed, running his eyes over the skin of his friend's arms, then scanning the disorderly room for anything that could be used as a sharp.

"I need a shower," he said finally. "Unless you want to go first?"

Jon shook his head once.

"Don't—don't go anywhere," Cary said.

He took the fastest shower possible, barely putting his head under the rain of water. As he toweled off and tugged on his pyjama pants, his thoughts shuttled back to all the weeks he'd shared a room with Jon. His friend had politely turned his back when Cary shucked his clothes off to change or when he came in from the shower in his towel. If he'd given it a thought, he would have assumed Jon did it for him, out of respect for his privacy. It never occurred to him that his naked body might have made his friend uncomfortable.

He felt like an idiot—angry at himself for not guessing, angry at Jon for not telling him, angry at whatever it was that kept Jon bound so tightly around his secret that the edges looked to be cutting him to the quick.

When he returned to the bedroom, Jon had not moved. Cary stood uncertainly in the middle of the room, looking at his friend's collapsed body. "Hey," he said quietly.

Jon curled away from him. The tips of his fingers were black with dirt, pressing into the back of his neck. Cary tried to think what someone like Mel would do to care for him right now.

"You should shower. You'll feel better when you're clean. Plus...you stink."

Jon made a small, dry noise. That was something.

Cary tucked his freezing hands under his arms. "And I want to fix your cuts before bed."

Stiffly, Jon unfolded and sat up. His hair was rumpled up over his white face, and the skin around his eyes looked blotchy and raw. "I'll do them myself," he said in a strained voice. "There's nothing new."

"Show me," Cary said.

Bowing his head, Jon stripped off his shirt. The cuts lining his upper arm to his shoulder were scabbed and healing, and when he got to his feet to gather up a change of clothes, Cary could see the ones on his stomach were too. He stepped aside to let Jon go shower.

Waiting, he curled on his side in the nest of blankets on the floor, pulling the Bible Pete had given him toward himself. He paged through the Jesus stories, the rustle of their thin leaves and the now-familiar words steadying him. When Jon returned and saw what he was doing, his mouth twisted like he'd bitten into something bad. Cary tucked the book under his pillow.