Never in the short time I’ve seen him since he’s been back, nor in the brief time I knew him as kids, have I seen this look in his eyes.

He looks scared.

No, terrified.

The words I just spoke play back to me in my head, and I want to ram my head into the wall. What the fuck was I thinking revealing all that?

I shove away from the table to a stand, but Will’s already gone before I can even call out his name.

The front door slams shut and I flinch.

“Shit,” I breathe, blinking rapidly. I try to reach for the anger that was there only moments ago—the only thing that was holding me up—but it’s gone. Nowhere to be found.

“Sit down,” my uncle says quietly, a thread of something I can’t place shaking his words.

I shake my head and start to push away from the table. “I-I have to—”

A large hand grips my arm. Not tight enough to hurt, or even scare me, but enough to halt my rush to find Will.

“No, you’re gonna sit down. You can apologize and explain to him later.”

I drag my gaze up from his hold on me to try and glare at him.

He arches a thick black brow, not falling for it. “Now. If you haven’t figured it out yet, we’re having this little thing called an intervention. You might’ve heard of it.”

Realizing I can’t just storm off to chase after Will without my uncle suspecting there’s something more to my desperation to fix this, I figure I might as well as get this over with.

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

I sit down and he releases my arm when he realizes I’m actually going to cooperate. He grabs me another glass of water and this time I actually take a sip. Only a sip turns into chugging down the entire glass.

He chuckles under his breath as he takes it to refill from the tap.

Flushing, I mutter a thanks and try to actually savor the water this time.

He sighs. “You look like shit, kid.”

I swallow hard and set the glass down. “I feel like shit,” I find myself admitting. I scrunch up my nose. “And I smell.”

A laugh bursts out of him, deep and rumbly. It reminds me of summer afternoons spent at his place when I was a little kid, handing him tools as he worked on cars under the blistering sun.

“Yeah, you’re a little ripe,” he says before ruffling my hair, just like he did when I was little. It has a lump forming in my throat. “You pissed yourself, so we had to wipe you down...”

I squeeze my eyes shut, and I swear the water I just consumed is about to make a second appearance.

“What’s this about a gun?”