On their way back to the kitchen, Blain sees the furtive way Trin glances upstairs and says, “He ain’t back yet. Been gone all day.”
“I know that,” Trin replies, defensive. With scrubbed, red fingers, he picks at his soiled shirt in a lame attempt to keep it off his chest. “I’ve got to go up and change anyway.”
Blain gives him that look again, the one that says he knows better but what the hell, he’ll humor the kid. Trin hates that look. He feels it on his back and shoulders like a palpable weight, and he climbs the steps as fast as he can to escape it. In the cool darkness upstairs, he prays that Gerrick is in his room waiting because it’ll prove Blain’s wrong about the man. More than anything else in the entire world, he wants his brother and Aissa to be wrong.
But a quick peek into h
