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Chapter 72

“Do you need help?”

“No,” Bryn yelled, the outburst surprising him. His heart throbbed, and his pulse raced, and he grew dizzy. “I don’t want anybody’s fucking help. Not yours, not his, not anybody’s. Ineededhelp when I was six and she was hating me, or when I was ten and getting beat up, or twelve and in a brainwasher’s office, or seventeen and tying him up and holding him down and—”

“Bryn!” Marella appeared wearing an apron. It must be around five A.M. She’d be helping the cook prepare breakfast. “What on earth?”

Lights came on in the foyer. “I heard shouting,” said one of the aunts from upstairs. Fast thuds on the steps preceded Ellis materializing in the living room. His hair stuck up straight, and he’d left the button on his fly undone.

“Bryn?” Ellis asked, coming to Bryn’s side and ducking under Bryn’s arm whether he liked it or not. Butting in. Interfering.

Bryn was starting to depend on it, and it scared the living daylights out of him. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”