“Move in with me,” he says. “Today. Please say yes.”
Oh, God, how I want to. I want what he’s offering more than anything. Squeezing my eyes shut, I try desperately to gather what little strength I have left. There’s not enough. There will never be enough.
And yet, I manage to force out a feeble, “We need to talk.”
His hands slide from my shoulders to my hands. Judging by the smile on his face, he has no idea what’s coming. “Yeah?”
“Maybe you should get dressed,” I say. “You’re distracting when you’re naked.”
God, is he ever. Instead of breaking up with him, all I can think about is ripping his towel off, pressing my body against his sweet, clean skin, and losing myself. He must know the effect he’s having on me because he grins even wider and plops down on the edge of his bed. “Maybe you should get undressed,” he says. “I bet if we were both naked, I wouldn’t be near as distracting.” He reaches for my waist, narrowly avoiding my burned hip. When his fingers slip under my shirt and try to draw me closer, I almost let him.
Almost.
“I want to break up,” I blurt out.
His smile falters. “What?”
“It’s for the best, trust me.”
He stares at me, dozens of emotions I can’t name playing across his face until, finally, the hope drains from his eyes. This is the Sam I’ve never seen, the one I only got a hint of when he told me about his dad the first time. The one that reminds me so very much of James. “No,” he says quietly. “It’s not for the best and I say no.”
“Things with James are already bad enough right now without this to complicate things. He needs me more than you do. I have to do this.”
Sam gapes at me like I’ve slapped him. “This is about your brother? Again?”
“You don’t know how it is,” I say. My knees are shaking so badly, I might fall. To be safe, I pull the stool out from under his desk and sit down. “I had another nightmare about my dad last night and it was bad—really, really bad. When I woke up, James was drunk and on something and dragged me out of the house yelling about how he knows I’ve had sex with you in our room.”
I hesitate, expecting Sam to say something, but he doesn’t.
“He’s not the same person he was a few weeks ago,” I say. “I don’t know if it’s the fighting, or if he’s messed up about losing our mom, but he’s not the same. Something’s wrong with him.”
“There’s been something wrong with your brother for years,” Sam snaps. “Did you tell him about you and me?”
I shake my head. “He already knows. You know he does. He kept telling me he wanted me to say your name. He wanted to hear me say it.”
Sam runs a hand through his damp hair and stares hard at the blueprint of his future house. “So then what? He dragged you outside and then what happened?”
“He drove me into the woods.” I stare at the tattoo on his shoulder, wishing for things I’m not allowed to wish for anymore.
Sam curses and stands up. “And?”
“We talked.”
“You mean, you decided to screw me over because of some warped sense of duty to your brother.” He scowls at me and grabs a pair of underwear and shorts from his drawer. “Just dump me and get it over with, Sarah. I’ve got shit to do.”
He thinks I don’t love him. That can’t be farther from the truth. Or can it? I’m choosing my brother over him.
Watching him yank on his shorts is the last straw. When he throws his towel across the room and it lands hanging limp from the basketball hoop behind his door, I stagger to my feet. “Do you think I want to do this? I want to be with you more than anything! Even if I’m not ready for this—” I wave at his room. “—I would still do it because of you if I could, but I can’t. You don’t know what he’s done for me. I owe him everything. I’m alive because of him!”
Part of me wishes he’d hold me and tell me everything will be okay. The other half wants to throw myself off a cliff for what I’m doing to us both. He stares down at me, his arms folded across his bare chest. “James is an adult. He needs to figure things out for himself.”
I shake my head and start to protest, but he stops me.
“Yes,” he says. “That’s your whole problem—you and James don’t know where he ends and you begin. You’re too dependent on each other. Neither of you can make your own decisions because neither of you knows who you are.”
James makes plenty of decisions. All of them, in fact.
“Listen to me. You know that side of James, but I know the other. This has been coming for years. Half the reason we’re still friends is because I feel like I need to keep an eye on him.” He paces the length of the room twice, then stops in front of me again. “Your brother is seriously messed up, Sarah. I don’t want you alone in that house with him. Hell, if it wouldn’t get me arrested, I’d put you in my car right now and drive so far away he’d never find you again.”
I blink up at him. He means it. “You’d give up everything for me?”
“When are you going to get that you are everything?”
“But…we’ve only been together for a couple of weeks. How can you say that after only a couple of weeks?”
He stabs his fingers through his drying hair and resumes his pacing. “You think I don’t know this went really fast? I didn’t plan for this to happen. Hell, I didn’t even know if you’d let me talk to you, much less be with you. But then you did and we did and…” He stops in the center of the room and stares at me, his shoulders sagging. “I figured out pretty quick that this is a forever thing for me. I think it has been from the very beginning.”
“No—”
He closes the distance between us in two steps and cups my face in his hands. “Yes.”
I breathe the warmth of his words into my chest hoping they’ll chase away the hopelessness that keeps icing over my heart.
“Besides,” he adds. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be thinking about UCLA again.”
The tiny flicker of hope I’d just started to feel again dies. “See? That’s why I have to do this. You have to go to UCLA. You have to get your degree and build your house. You can’t do any of that if you have to take care of me.” I sink back onto the stool, my legs turning to jelly again. “I refuse to be the reason you get stuck in Granite Falls with some crap job.”
“And that’s where you’re wrong.” He squats in front of me. My eyes follow his waist and the way his skin moves across his abs. A tap on the chin brings my eyes back to his. “If we get married—”
“Sam—”
He presses his finger to my lips. “If we get married, I’ll actually get more financial aid. You will, too. I’m not saying it will be easy, but we can make it work.” His hand drifts back to my cheek and he smiles. “You have to trust me.”
“I don’t know…”
“I do.” He smiles and draws my knees apart so he can kneel between them. “We can stay here until next month and stick to the original plan. When we move, I can work and go to school at the same time. We’ll find you a job, too. Maybe even at the same place. You won’t have to worry about applying to UCLA until you’re ready. Say yes.”
This isn’t going well. I was counting on his anger, not controlled logic. I’m not going to be able to keep saying no if he keeps making sense. I shake my head even though he’s winning.
“Yes. Let me show you what it’s like to have a real family,” he insists. “Let me love you like my dad loved my mom. I’ll never let anything bad happen to you again.”
He presses a kiss to my stomach and everything inside of me breaks. I slump over, bury my face and hands in his hair, and let the tears come. The desperation in his voice, the way he clings to me almost as tightly as I cling to him, how he picks me up and pulls my legs around his waist—I feel my resolve crumbling. When he whispers, “Marry me, Sarah Jane O’Brien,” and tries to kiss me, it crumbles completely.
“No!” I gasp and wrench myself from his arms.
I want to be with him more than he knows and more than I can ever explain, but I can’t. There’s a gun in my closet with Sam’s name on it if I do the selfish thing and stay here.
“I need to help James get past what happened to our mother,” I sob from where I’ve fallen to the floor. My gaze drifts to the bed so he won’t see the lie. “Detective Lilly thinks he did it and I need to make sure he doesn’t do something stupid like bomb the jail when they finally realize it was our father. I need to get him used to the idea of me being safe now that our father’s gone. Maybe after—”
“After he forces himself on you?” He glares at me, the intensity in his eyes an ugly thunderstorm black. “I know you’ve been lying about the kisses. How do you know that’s not next?”
“He would never force me!”
Even as the words spill from my lips, I have my doubts. Last night was the first time he’d forced me to do anything against my will and it was a fluke. Too much alcohol, too many drugs. That’s all.
I’m lying to myself.
I feel it taking over, the panic that’s been clawing at the edges of my mind for years. It wraps sticky black tendrils around me that tighten, tighten, tighten until I can’t breathe from the pressure. I claw at my shirt and back toward the door.
“He’ll never let you go.”
I know he won’t. “I have to try.”
“I love you.” He reaches for me. “Please don’t do this.”
Strong boys like Sam Donavon should never have to beg. Should never have to reach for the scarred hands of a girl who isn’t worth his love and beg her to love him back.
“I’m so, so sorry,” I whisper, and run from his room.
Forty-eight
After sitting in the park for God knows how many hours trying to get my thoughts in order, I drag myself home and up the driveway. I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life, and as the sun sets on our quiet little town, I’m just now seeing how big of a mistake it was. There’s no way James will agree to the conditions I made up on the walk over—conditions he’ll have to abide by if he wants me to stay. No more fighting, no drugs, and no gun top the list.
I should’ve stayed with Sam.
But I didn’t. And now I have to face my decision.
Even if James’s truck hadn’t been parked in our father’s spot, I’d know he’s home. Our bedroom light is on, and Godsmack pours from our window at its usual ear-blistering volume. Taking a shaky breath, I open the door.
The door encounters resistance almost immediately. I frown and push a little harder. Plastic grates against linoleum. Poking my head through the foot-wide gap in the door, I squint into the dark foyer. Whatever it is isn’t too big. I should be able to move it. I push against the door a little harder, forcing whatever is in the way to give a little, and slip inside.
I’ve only made it another two steps when I trip over something hard and heavy. Wincing, I rub my shin with one hand and feel around for whatever the thing is with the other. Wood. A table. What the hell? Did someone break in and trash the place? Panic grips my throat. If someone broke in, James might be hurt. After everything that’s happened, finding my brother dead on the floor would kill me.
I stagger forward, thoughts of Sam and my mistake forgotten, and nearly twist my ankle tripping over something small. I fumble along the wall for the light switch in the living room. Before I find it, the room floods with light.
James is sitting in our father’s orange chair, but I hardly see him. I’m trying too hard to absorb the mess of broken furniture and shredded clothes scattered around him on the floor. My clothes. Our father’s clothes. The bookshelf from the living room is on the floor, crushed into several large pieces. The scratchy, beige couch is slashed. Newspaper and books, torn up. Unable to breathe, I force myself to look at James. I need to know he’s okay if there’s any hope of me keeping it together.
He’s staring at me from his place in our father’s chair, unscathed and perfectly calm, with the gun resting on his left leg. The fury in his eyes betrays his calm facade. I stop, frozen.
He picks up the gun and studies the barrel. “So, I followed you this morning.”
What’s left of my blood feels like it’s sucked from my body, leaving me cold and trembling. “It’s not what you think.”
“Really? I know you and Sam hang out in the forest during the week whenever you’re not at that flower store, and that you went swimming in the middle of the night when we were camping. I know his sweatshirt is buried in the back of your underwear drawer and that you haven’t been to the library in months.” He cocks the trigger. Releases it. “Did you know they don’t have cookbooks at the library?”
This is bad. This is very, very bad. Before I can pull myself together enough to scream at him for stalking me, he tightens his grip on the gun and stands up. “After everything I’ve done for you, after all the shit I’ve taken and how much I’ve loved you, this is how you repay me? Fucking my best friend and then having the gall to lie about it?”
“I knew you’d be mad. I didn’t want you to be mad.”
It sounds like such a lame excuse now and I wonder how I ever convinced myself lying to James was the right thing to do. He keeps coming at me, the hatred dark blue in his normally sky-blue eyes. Just like our father’s. Stumbling over a ripped pair of jeans and a pile of books, I crash backward into the wall.
“Of course I’m mad,” he says in a deceptively calm voice that oozes malice. “You lied to me. All our lives, you’ve been lying. You said you wouldn’t leave, and you are. You said I’m enough for you, but I’m not. You said you love me as much as I love you, and you don’t.” He stops right in front of me, so close I can taste the anger rolling off him. “You’ve been fucking Sam, and you’re supposed to be mine!”
He backhands me with the fist holding the gun. The lights flicker and I have to fight the blackness trying to take me. The blood seeping into my mouth from somewhere tastes like the dirty pennies we used to suck on when we were little. I cower away, desperate to disappear into the wall that’s keeping me too close to him. He hit me. Me. I press my sleeve against my mouth and look at the big splotch of blood left behind when I pull it away.
James has gone whiter than a ghost, looking at my mouth and his hand and the gun and me, completely dumbfounded. Seeing the first tear streak down my cheek is enough to snap him out of it. He shoves the gun into the front of his jeans and yanks me against his chest.
“Oh, fuck, Sarah. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” He smoothes my hair away from my forehead and kisses the bruised skin slick with cold sweat and fear. “I get so mad and this was the maddest I’ve ever been…”
Dazed, I don’t pull away. His body heat is as familiar to me as my own, more familiar to me than Sam, and comforts me even though he’s the reason I’m losing myself. I just stand there limply and let him hold me against his body.
“If you tell me you’re not with him, I’ll believe you. Just tell me.”
I shake my head. “I’m not with him.” Not anymore.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he touches my cheek, caresses my arm, runs his fingertips down my spine. Gentle. Tender. “Good,” he murmurs. “We’ll have to move somewhere Dad’ll never find you. We can change our names, and then you can get a job working with flowers or go to college or do whatever you want. I’ll do anything if it’ll make you happy. Just tell me what to do.”
I hate that James’s touch feels so good, that it’s always felt so good. I lean into him and close my eyes needing more of it and more of him. Being in his arms takes me back to every time he stumbled into our room, battered and broken and bloody, looking to me for comfort and love. I gave it so freely, just like he gave himself so freely to keep me alive. Safety and love—that’s what James has always been to me and I begged him for all of it.
And God, how I want what he’s offering. Somewhere else. Away from the ghosts in this house. Away from all the memories. That’s what Sam offered, too. What I plan to give myself.
&n
bsp; “If we change our names, we don’t have to be brother and sister anymore,” he continues. “We could be together and no one would get mad because they won’t know.”
When his touching shifts, turning needy and heated, I shudder and pull away. James is right there with me, though, and backs me up against the wall. One hand skims my chest while the other seeks out the bare skin where my shirt has ridden up above my jeans.
“Please don’t do this,” I say, my voice breaking. “You’re ruining everything.”
“You want the same thing I do,” he breathes into my hair. “Let me give it to you.”
I wedge my arms between us, giving me maybe an inch of breathing room. It’s nowhere near enough. “I don’t want this. You’re sick, James. You need help.”
“Bullshit.” James backs away, his expression a frightening combination of disbelief and fury. “I’m not the one begging to be touched and kissed in the middle of the night. Every time we sleep in the same bed, I have to pry you off me, so don’t you dare tell me I’m the sick one.”
My mouth opens and shuts as I flounder beneath the implications of his words. The nightmares…if they were real, the hard body crushing mine was James and not just a horrific figment of my imagination. And then the nights I thought the person caressing me was Sam and I begged him to give me more…
My stomach lurches.
“So you do remember.”
Everything inside of me goes numb when he smiles and presses his body against mine again. I want to cry over how familiar this feels, for the hope on his face, for how perfect some of those dreams felt when they should have been repulsive, but the gun tucked in his waistband bites into the soft flesh of my stomach and keeps me still.
I don’t fight him when he cups my jaw in one of his hot palms, tilting my face up to his. “No one is gonna love you as much as me. Not Sam or anyone else. You’re mine.”