Inferno Part 3

~180~ Never Wake Up From

Trigger Warning

Ellie's POV

Taylor and I are enjoying our evening alone, watching TV, when there's a knock on our door.

Taylor gets up to answer it, and it's Jake and Nolan.

"What did he do?" Taylor asks.

"Nothing—He asked to stay with you guys tonight. See ya in the morning," Jake says as he walks away.

"What's wrong, kid?" Taylor asks as he shuts the door and stares at Nolan hard.

"Nothing," he says as he sits down next to me on the bed.

"Don't give us that—You look like you're about to cry," Taylor says as he sits down on the bed too.

Nolan sniffs and stares at the comforter.

"Are you and Ethan in a fight?" I ask, touching his arm.

"No"

"Then what happened?"

"Zoe got in a lot of trouble," he says, still staring at the bed.

Taylor nods and glances at me. "We figured—Did that bother you or something? You knew she was going to when they found her."

He sniffs again, and then looks at us. Tears are swimming in his eyes, and starting to trickle down his cheeks.

"Woah!" Taylor says as he scoots even closer. "What on earth is wrong?"

Nolan is our new Luke with his emotions, and this is so out of character for him.

"Everything," he cries as he shakes his head and wipes his cheek with his shirt.

"Ok, um...." Taylor says as he looks at me, getting nervous.

"What has you so upset about what happened? Was Jake too hard on her?" I ask softly.

He shakes his head, lifting up the bottom of his shirt to wipe his face again.

"Did you know that she was abused?" He finally asks.

"Zoe?" Taylor asks in horror.

"No—Raya."

Taylor and I exchange looks, and Taylor nods. "Jake told us."

"Jake told her that if she couldn't handle being spanked, he wouldn't do it—He would find other ways of punishing her."

"That's awesome," Taylor says, just as confused as I am.

He simply nods, and wipes more tears that are silently falling.

"What's going on, buddy? Please tell us," I beg, barely above a whisper.

He looks at me, and my poor boy is tortured. Completely tortured. "So was I," he sobs.

My heart shatters into a million pieces as Taylor and I both sandwich him between us and hold him.

We had no idea

He cries for a long while, and we just hold him. Taylor reaches behind Nolan at one point and grabs my hand. This is something we didn't realize we needed to deal with

When his sobs finally turn to sniffles, he wiggles enough to let us know to let him go. Once we do, he takes a big breath.

"For a year, right before they arrested Carrie. It was her boyfriend."

"What did he do?" Taylor asks in such a dark and terrifying tone, Nolan stiffens reflexively.

"Took his belt off and beat me with it."