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He catchesat him "What?"

"You really believe that"

"Sure" A hint of a smile curves his lips "I do"

"Then youlike I did

His jaw tenses and his gaze slides off ht behind his eyes "It rong"

"Tell aze flicks to his i about this Finally About how he got the ily back on h my voice forced hi to hear this I’ve waited so long to learn what he did to deserve that--if he did really do anything at all He had been a child when the Agency i too terrible Especially then As good, as honorable, as he is no could he have been worse as a boy?

"I was eleven," he begins, his voice drifting, curling into the brightening air washing over us "It was before my foster mom took me in, and I was at a home for boys We slept in a dorht it was cool Bunk beds, you know"

I nod

"I’d been there a few months I’d moved from a different facility to this new one for older boys," he continues "I was still fighting to findthe piss out of each other"

"Sounds like a prison movie"

"Yeah Not that different Any tis had finally started to ease up for me, and then this new boy arrived I can still remember his name Branson" Sean expels the nae as er?" I feel uy

"Yeah I was pretty average for e then I shot up six inches the surown uy had a beard by three p was brief, of course No one wanted to take him on The second day he was there, he decided he wanted hs hoarsely "He could have picked on one of the others with a top bunk, but no, I was the lucky one"

His hand round between us His fingers trace a small pattern on the back of it For once, I don’t shrink frorossed in his story His words weave around me like a spell