"How is your hand?" Rai sighed and asked quietly, his eyes drifting downward toward the floor.
Zade didn't answer immediately. For a brief, suffocating moment, he was entirely drowned in the weight of his own guilt. If he hadn't been so damn greedy, if he hadn't insisted on wandering off to the snack aisle just to grab a few stupid bags of chips, this wouldn't have happened.
He could have stopped it. He could have shielded Rai from being traumatized in the middle of a grocery run.
He knew Rai's complex personality inside and out. Rai would be incredibly anxious right now, but he would try his absolute hardest to quickly force it down, bury it deep inside, and move on.
He was stubborn like that. But if anything remotely similar ever occurred again, Rai would immediately drag this specific incident back to the surface and use it to blame himself all over again, completely ignoring the actual perpetrator.
