WAKE (Wattpad edition)

7. Not a good person.

{Kadee}

Kadee bit her lip, realizing a second too late that her question had given Jon the opening to cut Cary down. Her family still lived by a code of shame and honour, so she was acutely aware of how much Cary had just lost in front of her. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him get up and go up the stairs without another word.

Jon's mouth twisted as he punched the buttons on the controller. He didn't look to see whether Cary was gone. "I seriously don't know what my parents are going to do with that guy. It's not like there's anyone else that would take him."

Kadee tossed her controller away, a bitter taste in her mouth. She was starting to think every guy she knew was an asshole once you scratched the surface. A couple weeks ago, she would have deflected him with a bag of chips or a back rub, but she was done with making it easy for guys to be jerks. "You've changed," she said shortly.

He darted a sideways glance at her. "What? What do you mean?"

"That was really mean—what you just said there."

Jon shrugged, the twist still in his mouth. "It's all true. That's not even the worst of it."

Kadee paused, taken aback. There was a juicy piece of Cary gossip behind those words, and she guessed that in this mood, Jon would be only too willing to dish. "I don't want to know the worst of it," she said with some difficulty. "You used to be friends. How come you're treating Cary like shit now?"

He tossed his controller on the floor, sitting back in the couch with his arms crossed. "If you don't want to hear the worst of it, then I can't answer your question."

Her eyebrows drew together, trying to read what he wasn't saying in his face. Jon looked back at her, his neck flushed and his eyes dark and angry. When she didn't stop him, he went on.

"Cary's done some serious shit, Kadee. He's not a good person. He killed his sister with his own hands—his baby sister. And he lied about that to me, to my parents. Everybody. So that's the kind of person we have living with us now, 'cause Social Services doesn't have anyplace else to put him. So maybe you can see why I'm a little pissed about that."

That took the air right out of her chest. She turned away from Jon, looking blindly at the screen, seeing the muscles in Cary's arms under his T-shirt—the way he rolled his shoulders forward so he looked smaller than he really was. "That's actually terrifying."

"Yeah," Jon said shortly.

She wrapped the end of her braid around her finger, pulling it tight to feel the pressure against her scalp. She was never telling this to anyone—she promised herself that. She was digging this out of Jon and then burying it again. "Like, recently? Did he...go to juvie for that?"

There was a pause. "No, not recently," Jon said. "He was a kid. He was six. That's why his dad beat the shit out of him so many times."

Kadee winced. Cary seemed so tough and invulnerable. She'd never thought of him as a child. It had not occurred to her that the abuse her parents talked about had happened to someone small and helpless instead of the nearly full-grown person he was now.

"Pretty fucked up, huh?" Jon got up, stretching carefully. "So, you want a break? Want to watch something instead?"

She drew her knees up to her chest, feeling small and shaky. "Yeah, maybe."

Kadee didn't stay long after that. She wanted the comfort of her fuzzy blanket and her flat screen, and her mom to make her a snack and fuss over her.

Sunlight hit her face when she left Jon's house, and she took a breath. The basement had felt dark and cold, and she was glad to be out.