Adam stood frozen in silence, Jesse's defiant stare boring through him, expecting his judgement. The gravity of her words made his chest constrict with pain as he realised he had been holding his breath. He exhaled slowly, not breaking eye contact, and spoke.
"Jesse…" His voice failed him, and the dry throat refused to vocalise the rest of his words. In desperate need to reassure her, he took a step forward. She moved back, arm outstretched.
"Don't! Don't look at me like that, you asshole! You know the truth. Now kindly fuck off and never speak to me again."
"What?" He baulked at the aggressive words thrown his way, and hurried forward to chase her retreating form. Luckily for him, the shed was not spacious enough for an extended escape, and after initially shrugging his grip off, she reluctantly let him envelop her in his arms.
"Don't you ever say that!" he emphasised into her hair as he gripped her to him for dear life. "I will never, you hear me, never turn away from you for any reason!"
He loosened his hold a little, still keeping his hands on her upper arms, trying to meet her wandering gaze. He could see a reflection of what seemed suspiciously like tears in them.
"What happened to you was horrible. I am so sorry you had to resort to such means to protect yourself and your mother. I am sorry that everyone has been treating you like crap because of it. And I know…" He paused, steeling himself for the reality of his next statement. " I know why you would think that I would shun you. But I'd expect that after ten years of friendship I have earned the benefit of the doubt? Wouldn't you even consider the fact that I would understand?"
"That's the fucking problem!" Jesse looked up at him then, angry tears trickling down her face as she pushed him with such force that he stumbled back all the way to the door. He braced himself on the handle, startled.
She was breathing heavily, frustratingly wiping her face with the sleeve of her jacket. "Of course, you would be understanding. Of course you'd be sorry for me, for what I had to do! Well, guess what, preacher boy. I didn't have to do anything. I wanted to!"
They both stood there, a chasm of hurt between them seeming insurmountable. Adam opened his mouth to protest, but Jesse was faster.
"All these years he beat the shit out of Mum and me, and no one bothered to do anything about it. Every time I tried to tell the teachers or the police, they would send an officer over, and she would make up some sort of bullshit excuse. Oh, Jesse is just clumsy. You know how she is, a tomboy, I say; must have gotten those bruises from falling out of a tree. She just wants attention."
She made a sharp cackle that sounded more like a snap of lightning, a crack of a thick tree branch, or the breaking of a soul. Adam could only listen and weather the storm.
"So when I had the chance to rid the world of a horrible man, that was never going to change, never going to be better: I took it. I did something no one else would do. And I am proud of it!"
The despair on her face as she said that, eyes furious and wounded, made Adam's heart break. He wanted to reach over the chasm, to soothe the jagged edges of her pain and tell her everything was going to be alright. But he knew it wasn't going to be. These empty platitudes would only make her hurt more.
He let go of his grip on the door handle and straightened up to his full height. He kept his face neutral, while his insides roiled like the waves of the North Sea. He looked at her, projecting steadfastness and stability that she sorely needed to hold on to.
"You said there was no other way. That you did what no one else would." He repeated as she gathered herself. After her curt nod, he continued. "But there was another option you hadn't considered."
"The hell are you…"
"You could have come to us." He took a small step forward. Slow and steady, before she noticed. He successfully flabbergasted her enough for that strategy to work. "Mom and I. You could have told us. We would not have turned away from you. We would have listened."
After a moment of stunned silence, Jesse choked and doubled over. Adam took another step forward instinctively but froze when he realised she wasn't overcome with grief, but rather hysterical laughter. It was so loud that the ramshackle metal walls of the shed were shaking, her voice bouncing off the surfaces in the room. Adam went over what he said in his head, but still couldn't figure out what she found so funny. He began to worry that this conversation might have pushed Jesse over the edge, somewhere deep and dark that he could not follow.
She was gasping now, shuddering bodily with the attempt to catch her breath. She met his gaze, and Adam flinched away, not recognising the person before him any longer.
"Fucking hell, Adam. What was I supposed to do? Pull your mom away from your dying dad's bedside and go, 'By the way, Mrs Penhalyn, I know you are losing the fight with God for your husband's life, but do you mind taking a detour and embarking on a long and tedious slog to prove to the state that my father beats me? Thanks."
She tipped her head up to the sagging metal ceiling and sighed. "Besides, same shit would have happened. As long as my coward of a mother continued to deflect all my attempts to get that bastard locked up, you would have been hitting your heads against a wall. Nothing would be different. Except, if he found out I told you, he would have probably killed me."
Someone older and jaded was peering out from her brown eyes back at him. Adam swallowed, trying to wet his parched throat, and realised he had absolutely no reply. What would anyone even say to that?
Jesse chuckled, exhausted. "Jesus, Adam. You are fucking clueless."
The loud bang of the door behind him caused him to lurch forward as Dylan barged into the shed, short of breath and looking paler than death.
"Perfect timing, as always!" Jesse exclaimed, a manic grin on her face. "Can you explain to Adam how daft he is?"
"I'm gonna stop you right there." Dylan caught his breath and raised a finger, voice calm, albeit with a slight quiver. "I am not getting in the middle of whatever this is. I've had enough mediating other people's shit today."
He turned to Adam, distraught. "Hey, bud. I know you two are in the middle of an emotional breakthrough, but we need to get out of here. I… erm… might have messed up a bit."
"What's new, Captain Obvious?" Jesse scoffed.
"What do you mean?" Adam immediately honed in on Dylan's uncanny ability to ground him to earth. The previous feeling of terror and confusion was ebbing with every blink of those oddly coloured eyes.
He hesitated. Adam loathed it when Dylan stopped mid-sentence, rubbed the back of his head, and looked as though he were swallowing whatever he really wanted to say. And this was the second time today. He was Dylan's best friend. They were supposed to share everything. And the thought of Dylan hiding things from him, things he could help with, things he could fix, made him viscerally angry.
On that note, Jesse has been hiding things from him too. Suddenly, the initial shock of her revelation wore off, and it was as if he could see her clearly for the first time: a terrified girl, always fighting her battles alone, not wanting to accept help from anyone else. Both of his friends kept lying to him. And Adam had enough of it.
"Tell me." The command left his mouth unbidden, a mind of its own. Dylan stiffened beside him, but continued.
"I ran into Monica earlier and might have, accidentally, mind you, told her you were looking for Jesse. Well, not actually told her; she appeared to have known already and did some sort of reverse psychology interrogation technique on me, or something, to gather intel."
He paused at Adam's confused look and shrugged. "Listen, she is scary as hell. I think we should skedaddle, possibly to the haven of calculus?"
"Oh, fuck no! Let her come here!" Jesse piped in, voice crescendoing in panicked volume. "If you don't have the balls to tell Adam to stay away from me, maybe his harpy of a girlfriend can! She is definitely down with the program. Fire and brimstone sermon probably tattooed on her chest, the mad bint!"
"Wait, what?" Adam's head snapped back to Jesse, horror climbing its way from his shins up his calves.
At some point she ran her fingers through her braided hair, which now looked like a bird's nest. "Oh, yes, you don't know, do you? Your bae is a manipulative, zealous control freak." At his blustering attempts to speak, she cackled again. "What did I tell you?! FUCKING CLUELESS!"
"Goddamn it, Jesse! Can you be quiet for fucking five minutes!" Dylan shouted, startling them both. He was panting heavily, one hand on the side of his temple. "We don't have time for this. Let's just leave first, okay? We can sort this all out later."
Jesse's eyes narrowed dangerously.
"You wot, mate?" she drawled, her London twang as pronounced as it ever was. "Finally got some courage to yap back at me?"
She took a few menacing steps towards Dylan. Adam sighed. These two were like oil and water, bickering incessantly over the smallest things, Dylan sniping at Jesse, Jesse threatening to twist his head off, Dylan hiding behind Adam. A familiar song and dance in these unfamiliar waters.
He was about to step between them, as he always did, when something lunged from the corner of his eye and did it for him. A young man, almost as tall as him, silver hair still blowing in the nonexistent wind from his swift movement, was, for lack of a better term, squaring up to Jesse.
"I suggest you leave him alone." He said in a deep voice, with a heavy Slavic accent, and even heavier intent. Jesse sized the young man up and scoffed.
"Who the fuck are you?"
"Nikolai?" Dylan exclaimed from behind him, hands going to the boy's arm. "What are you doing here?"
"Are you ok, Dylan?" the blonde poser asked, an objectively handsome face scrunched in concern as he put his hand on Dylan's shoulder. For some reason, Adam felt a burning urge to slap it away.
"Don't worry. No one will threaten you in my presence again." He said, like some B-movie knight, hands pawing all over Dylan, who clearly was too shocked to stop him.
"Excuse me." Adam interposed himself between them, not intending to be excused. "Have we met?"
This Nikolai fellow looked like trouble. The type that would slowly but surely veer you away from the righteous path somewhere wicked. Dylan would never admit it, but he was nice to a fault. He always gave the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes, with people like this, you shouldn't. They stared at each other for a moment when he spoke.
"Not directly. I have met one of your team members earlier today. Marty Spencer?" Adam did not want to, but flinched when he heard the name. The sneaky upstart in front of him noticed and smirked. "You should do a better job as a captain. I wouldn't allow such brutes on my team."
"Well, it's not your team, is it?" Adam felt childish saying it but couldn't help himself. He vaguely heard Dylan whisper-shouting at him to stop and Jesse just mumbling nonsense to the side. But all of his attention was on not backing down from this man before him. He felt that he would be giving up a lot more than just his pride if he did.
"Stop it, Kolya," Came a raspy voice from the direction of Nikolai's emergence, and his female carbon copy was standing there, dressed as if she was going on an arctic expedition and, of all things, a lit cigarette in her hand.
Nikolai turned away from him, Adam marking this confrontation as a win in his secret book of petty grievances, and exchanged a rapid back-and-forth of what sounded like Russian with the girl, before shrugging and turning back to look at Adam.
"Hold on!" Jesse's voice rose over the chaos. Adam felt rotten for having all but forgotten she was still there. "Have the two of you been eavesdropping on us all this time? Fucking shameless!"
"Sorry," said the girl, her no-nonsense attitude oozing off of her like mist. "We were about to head back when the two of you barged in and had your dramatic lovers' fight in front of the only exit. At first it was awkward. Then it was too entertaining to interrupt."
"You guys are too loud." A quiet voice pierced the tense air of the room like a sharp blade. Adam turned to see Ian, closing the shed door behind him, calmly looking at Jesse beginning to swear in earnest at Nikolai's sister, who seemed even more amused by it.
"I could hear your bickering all the way to the school entrance. You might want to keep it down." He stated matter-of-factly and shrugged. Adam looked back at the mess and steeled himself to manhandle Jesse, who now had her facade of bravado firmly placed over the lacerated wounds of her true self. If he didn't, he couldn't vouch for the physical safety of anyone in this room. Jesse wasn't having any of it, pushing off his gentle attempts at calming her down and getting thoroughly antagonised. Nikolai joined his sister, looking warily at Jesse.
"Guys."
This time he put Jesse in an armlock as she was littering the pair with 'No respect for privacy', 'Fucking gopniks!' 'Go watch TV if you want entertainment. Oh, wait. Do you even have TV in your Slavistan!?' to which they both responded with amused looks and quick comments in Russian to each other.
"Guys."
Ian was nagging them again. Adam was going to deal with the bomb defusal first and get to him later. He knew the boy couldn't help it, but dear God, it did get annoying sometimes.
"GUYS!"
This was the first time Adam heard Ian shout. He didn't even know he was capable of it. They all collectively turned to look at the nondescript, neat form of the boy as he announced.
"There is something wrong with Dylan."