Porcelain Skin (NOW ON AMAZON KU)

30. A Little Heart-to-Heart

He seems taken back by the question for a moment. He clears his throat, one eyebrow quirked, as if trying to find what wave length my brain is on.

"Uh... what? When?" He looks genuinely confused as he scratches the side of his jaw.

"In high school. When I was ruining your sister's life. Why did you just let me do that? Why didn't you corner me, whip some sense into me, feed me the same abuse I threw at your sister? Where was the overprotective brother?" I'm staring at the balls on the table as words flow from my mouth.

"First of all," he begins as he lays his cue stick across the pool table and then turns back to face me. "I would never hurt a girl, and secondly..." He stops as he rests his butt against the pool table. He takes a deep breath before continuing. "I didn't know."

I blink twice. "What?" I gasp as I search his face for answers, "How could you not—"

"Trinity was a pretty private person. She always kept to herself, so there really wasn't any way for me to know what she was going through." He rubs a hand through his hair messily, and my eyes are momentarily drawn to the pieces sticking up. "She would hide behind a smile and this enthusiastic attitude, and she was really good at it. Really good at faking it."

"How'd you find out?" The question leaves my lips with a hesitant whisper, but Trevor hears me perfectly, because his gaze flickers from the floor and directly into my own curious stare.

"I uh..." His voice grows raspy and he rubs his left shoulder aimlessly. "I found her."

I'm already getting the feeling that this is not going to be good. I am not going to want to hear this, but I have to. I deserve to. "Found her?" I encourage, taking a reluctant step forward and leaning against the table next to him. I stare at a stain on the carpet as I wait for him to continue. He doesn't, but I can feel him watching me, so I tilt my head to get a better view of his expression.

"Emma..." He almost sounds regretful with the way my name wearily falls from his lips.

My eyes flicker to his flexed jaw before landing on the soft lips that are pressed firmly together as if trying to keep any more words from being uttered. There's something about the way he whispered my name that has me wishing for something more. Something deeper. I needed something more than the casual banter between friends.

"Please," I mutter, hoping he'll continue. My eyes find his again, and I watch him search my face for several rapid heartbeats before his shoulders fall with a tired exhale.

"I'd kind of started to notice some things that were off about her. Her smile would slip, or I'd catch her with this look on her face while she stared at absolutely nothing. There were moments when I knew she'd been crying. I don't think my parents could tell at first, but as time went by it became a bit more obvious."

I'm watching him relive the memory, and it's causing my own emotions to bubble inside of me as I expect the worst.

"We would question her but she would deny everything, saying she was just a bit stressed with homework and improving her grades, which had also gradually declined. You see, contrary to what everyone believed about Trinity, she was extremely insecure. Any pressure and she would collapse. I remember once, this was a couple years before we moved to Illinois, one of her good friends told her that she was too easily swayed and needed to learn to be more confident in herself; grow some backbone. This broke her for a whole week. She wouldn't eat meals, she wouldn't laugh. We found out later that she was just more emotional than most people, which would occasionally result in periods of pretty severe depression.

"After a couple weeks of observing her, my parents and I decided that whatever was going on was big. We had never seen her act this way before and so we cornered her one evening. Asked her what was going on, why she was hiding things, and she broke down crying, but again, she just blamed schoolwork. Our interrogating wasn't getting us anywhere so we gave up." Taking a deep breath Trevor turns to face me.