The Centre - a Home for Fox (bxb+/poly)

12. Times Up

🦊 F O X 🦊

The room was so silent you could hear a pin drop.

I slowly exhaled. "Bare with me please...", reluctantly. There was no stalling now though, So I started from the beginning.

"I left Connor in the kitchen to use the bathroom, I made it to the first bathroom but it was locked. So I went to the one further down towards the game room. When I was done, I made my way back. But I never made it back to the kitchen." I pulled on the strings of my joggers while I replayed the events that happened last night.

"Why's that?" Vance's low voice pulled me back.

"I bumped into Zane...."

Rewind to Last night:

"Ouch, fuck!" I collided with the person leaving the bathroom sending me to the wall.

I looked up and saw Zane but he was shirtless. My mind couldn't process what I was seeing. The skin on his chest and stomach was marred. There wasn't an ounce of skin that didn't have some sort of ridge or scar blemishing it.

I gasped and placed my hand over my mouth. He turned around to grab something behind him. The same was on his back as well. Long welts cut through his alabaster skin.

"Fuck!" He whispered. Almost under his breath, but I could still make it out.

He tried to push past me, but I put my arms up to stop him.

"Move, Fox."

"No!" I looked into his eyes, "What happened, Zane?"

"It's no concern of yours, now move!"

"Some of those look fresh, Zane."

I looked at him, really looked. My eyes crawled up his damaged chest to his face. I looked at his chin, jaw, cheek bones, eyes, eyebrows, hairline and hair.

This is the first time I was able to see his complete face.

Holy fuck.

"Zane...no...tell me it's not true. Please."

His head bowed. He elbowed his way back into the tee-shirt he was holding in his hand. He abruptly turned around and ran to the front door. I ran after him.

"Wait Zane! Wait. Talk to me. we can talk about this! It's OK!!" I yelled out. Not sure if it would ever be OK.

I tripped on the stairs going down; landing on the hard asphalt of the driveway below scrapping my face and pushing my teeth through my bottom lip.

—

"But he wasn't always called by the name of Zane, was he Wren?"

All eyes followed mine to watch Wren.

"What?" His forehead creasing. "Oh yeah... no, his given name is Alexander. His family would call him Xander but his little cousin couldn't pronounce it so she called him Zane. It stuck I guess....why Fox? What does that matter?"

I looked over to Bryce. The others followed. Bryce had a brow raised in confusion. "What's going on Fox? I don't get it."

"I'm sorry.... I only just..."