Free LeftInTheDarkness by Stephani Hecht Page A

look. Not only was he wearing a hospital gown, but they had shaved away part of his brown hair, so they could stitch up one of his many wounds. He brought a hand up in a desperate attempt to fix it, but Devlin reached out and stopped him.
    “Don’t. You’re perfect,” Devlin said.
    “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t look like a character from The Nightmare Before Christmas .”
    A jolt of pain shot through Taylor’s injured wrist, reminding him that his body was still healing, and he really should be in bed. Even though he tried to hold it in, a whimper slipped past his lips.
    Devlin’s eyes widened in concern as he reached out to grab Taylor’s elbow. “Here, let me help you.”
    When Taylor began to pull away, Devlin rolled his eyes. “Come on. We know that I’m usually a dick. So, take this moment of kindness and just run with it.”
    Taylor let out a soft laugh, because anything harder would have hurt his ribs. “Fine, but just so you know, I’m putting this in my diary of never-to-forget moments.”
    “Sad thing is, I know you’re not kidding, and you really do keep one of those.”
    Showing a tenderness that Taylor hadn’t thought possible, Devlin eased him onto the bed and then pulled the covers up.
    “Do you want me to call a nurse and see if she has anything for your pain?” Devlin asked.
    Taylor shook his head. “That junk makes me feel sick to my stomach.”
    Actually, it was more than that. It made him feel like his mother. There almost wasn’t a time where Taylor couldn’t remember her either going through one of her spells or being high as a kite. The last thing he ever wanted was to be weak like her.
    “Okay,” Devlin replied, letting the subject drop easily.
    Not that it surprised Taylor. Most of their friends thought Devlin was the most shallow and self-centered of them all. Taylor knew differently. He’d never met a person deeper than Devlin. Worse, Devlin felt empathy toward all of them, which in a sense made him weak, too. So it wasn’t a shock that Devlin chose to hide that fault under layers of sarcasm and snottiness.
    Taylor decided to change the subject to something more interesting. “I heard about you and Christian.”
    The smile that crossed Devlin’s face was too genuine to be faked. “Word travels fast.”
    “Do you really like him?”
    The open way Devlin reacted told Taylor that, but he still wanted to hear the words. Christian might have only just recently moved to their town, but Taylor and he were already close friends. He didn’t want to the see the shy, sweet kid get his heart broken.
    Devlin raised his gaze. For once he let the real him show. Gone were all the signs of snarkyness. “Yeah, I do. A lot.”
    “You’ve liked him all along, haven’t you?”
    “We both know you already know the answer to that one,” Devlin replied as he fiddled with the edge of the blanket.
    “Then why didn’t you say anything sooner?”
    When Devlin just shrugged, Taylor gasped in understanding. “It was because of James. Wasn’t it?”
    “I didn’t want to step in between them. I know we’re all pissed at him right now, but James is still my cousin, and I didn’t want to be that much of an asshole to him. Besides, you saw the way Christian used to look at him. It was like James was Bieber and Christian was every American teen girl. There were a few times where I actually had to wipe the drool off Christian’s chin.”
    Neither of them mentioned why Christian no longer wanted James. It was the same reason why they were all pissed at James, and, to a certain extent, why Taylor found his ass planted in an uncomfortable hospital bed.
    Even as he sat there, he could still hear Christian’s screams from that night, James! Come back! They’re killing him!
    But James hadn’t come back. Instead, he’d chosen to stay hidden in his closet, even though that meant running away when his friends had needed him the most. Every time Taylor closed his eyes, he could still