“It’s okay,” James whispers, smoothing hair matted with tears, blood, and God knows what else out of my face. “Everything’s okay.”
It’s not okay. It’s never going to be okay.
The way my father’s eyes flashed with something more than anger—I unleashed the monster I’d only seen glimpses of. The one that wants more than a daughter should ever give. What if he never goes away? James won’t always be around to stop him. He shouldn’t have been tonight. I barely make it to the tiny garbage can between our beds before I throw up.
Blackness.
A wet paper towel, cool against my forehead. A plastic cup of lukewarm water pressed to my lips. A peppermint candy slipped into my mouth.
James.
We’re lying in his bed. I’m trembling against his chest, drawing the warmth he’s throwing off like a furnace into the cold void of my heart. He runs his fingers up and down my arm, whispering our lullaby in my ear.
I suck in a breath of cooler air. How long have I been out this time? My lungs hurt. I’ve finally suffocated in my own skin. Maybe James did, too, because he’s holding me tighter than ever.
“I’ll never let him touch you like that,” he says. “He’ll have to kill me first.”
“Don’t.” I choke on the image of James dead at our father’s feet. “Just…don’t.”
“Look at me.”
I shake my head, shake it harder than the rest of my body shakes. After what just happened, if I see any of the blood or bruises on his body, I’ll lose it.
“You gotta look. You gotta see I’m okay.”
Thick fingers curl around my jaw and force my face upward. Other than the mostly dried blood at the corner of his mouth and a purple-ish tinge to his temple, James looks fine. There’s even a faint sparkle in his blue eyes as he smoothes more wayward hair from my face.
“Dad’s gonna have a nasty headache when he wakes up,” James tells me, barely suppressing a grin. “Sore ribs, too. Just watch where you step if you need a drink tonight.”
He did it. He finally took our father. I wish I could smile—James, the Avenger—but his cockiness quickly fades.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t mean what I said at the party.”
“I know.”
“I won’t be an ass like that again, promise. Do you believe me?”
“I do. And I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have gone into the forest. I should’ve stayed with you.”
He stares at me for a long time. Long enough to make me nervous. His gaze traces my face, my hair, my mouth, the same way Sam’s did. This kind of intimacy never bothered me before, but tonight…I don’t know if anything will ever be the same.
“Stay away from Sam,” he finally says, rolling a strand of my hair between his fingers. “I can’t handle the thought of him touching you.”
My heart skips a beat. “What are you talking about?”
When his gaze meets mine, hot and unfamiliar, I’m suddenly very aware of how close he is. How tightly our bodies are pressed together. How he’s keeping us that way with one of his strong arms locked around my back and my legs trapped beneath one of his thighs.
He’s touching me everywhere.
I panic.
And then James closes the last bit of distance between us and kisses me.
Eleven
It’s over almost as soon it begins. The press of his chapped lips against mine, hot peppermint pushing into my mouth, then nothing. While I shove at his chest, trying to dislodge his body but getting nowhere except deeper into the sagging bed, James presses his forehead hard against mine and closes his eyes.
“What— Why?” I sputter.
“I’m sorry.” His eyes are still shut, his breathing uneven. “It just felt right.”
No, it felt wrong. My emotions, fear and horror mostly, swirl in dizzying circles when I think about exactly how wrong kissing my brother is. I’ll need the garbage can again if he doesn’t get off me quick.
He must feel the heaves I’m barely holding back because he lets go. Falling to my knees beside the bed, I glare at him. “Don’t ever do that again.”
Hurt flashes across his face. At least, I think it’s hurt. It’s gone before I’m sure I’ve seen it. An easy smile takes its place—the one that usually comforts me when nothing else can. It doesn’t comfort me today. I may never be comfortable again.
“It was just a kiss, Sarah. It’s no big deal.”
“It is to me.”
Rolling his eyes, he swings his long legs over the side of the bed and grabs his cell phone off the desk. “Whatever. I’m going to make a call and then we’ll go to bed.”
He stretches, fingers brushing the ceiling, and I allow myself to see the damage he hid from me—damage that looks too fresh to have come from anywhere but our father’s hands and fists. The bottom of his t-shirt is ripped at the hem, leaving a gaping hole in the black fabric that exposes too much of his bruised stomach. An angry red line runs the length of his arm and ends with a gash that’s still seeping blood. Our father’s high school ring, probably. I have scars from gashes just like it.
I force myself to look. To let the guilt and disgust tunnel through my insides like worms. Those bruises and gashes should be mine. I might as well have put them on his body myself.
James grabs a new shirt from the closet and pauses at the bedroom door. “You know why I do it, right? Why I let Dad do this to me instead of you?”
I close my eyes, my brain too full of lead for this conversation.
“Because I love you,” he says without waiting for my answer. “That used to mean something to you, Sarah.”
As soon as the door clicks shut, I crawl into my bed fully clothed, bury myself beneath the ratty quilt, and hug my knees to my chest. Through our thin walls, I hear my father’s rattling breaths out in the hallway and James’s hushed voice in the dining room. I can tell he’s irritated, but not what he’s saying or who he’s talking to.
That used to mean something to you, Sarah.
He’s right. James’s love used to mean everything to me.
But as the press of his lips against mine replays in my head, that love starts to feel heavy, like stones pulling me under the water.
Twelve
James isn’t in his bed when I wake up the next morning.
I glance at the clock. 8:12. I’m starving, but all I can think about is washing last night off my skin. Our father doesn’t get out of bed until at least nine-thirty on the weekends. Later, if he drank the night before. I should have plenty of time to take a scalding hot shower and get out of the house before he wakes up.
Sometime during the night, he must have dragged himself from the hallway into his room because there isn’t a hulking body for me to step over. I hear the quiet rasp of a spoon scraping up cereal and sugar, muffled crunching. James loves cornflakes, but he’ll only eat them with half a bag of sugar dumped on top. Most mornings, he sits at the table for at least forty-five minutes eating bowl after bowl of cornflakes, finishing off half a gallon of milk at a time.
Knowing I’ve got the bathroom to myself for a little while, I take my time in the shower—lather, scrub, rinse, repeat—over and over until my skin is pink and raw to the touch. My first palmful of shampoo sloshes to the bottom of the bathtub when I reach for hair that’s probably in the Dumpster behind the salon by now. I miss my hair, but rather than dwell on why, I tell myself I’m saving us money on shampoo. Every dollar saved is a dollar closer to us getting out of this house.
Except, after last night, I’m not sure the original plan is a good idea anymore.
I shake my head. No. Of course James and I should still move in together. Taking on my father last night made James extra emotional, that’s all. Or he might’ve still been high. He never would’ve kissed me if he’d been in his right mind.
I shut off the shower.
Squeezing the last of the water from my hair, I slide the tattered curtain open and reach for my towel—
“Oh my God!”
I tear the curtain shut. The bathroom door—which I lock and double check five times before turning on the water every time I take a shower—is open a crack, just enough for me to see a flash of white fabric and then nothing.
When I get my breathing under control, I clutch the curtain to my chest and peer into the bathroom.
The door is closed.
Scrambling out of the tub, my shaking hands fumble with the doorknob. I didn’t imagine the whole thing—I know what I saw—but everything is exactly how I left it. Locked.
I hastily towel off and throw on my clothes, blood burning my cheeks up from the inside. Before I brush my teeth or run a comb through my hair, I dash down the hall into the kitchen to scream at James who I know will be wearing a white t-shirt. Kissing me was bad enough, but spying on me in the shower? I don’t care how emotional he is!
“Hey, Sar-bear.”
I blink at him from where I’ve skidded to a halt in front of the stove. He’s sitting at the puke-green dining room table, dumping the last of the milk into a bowl of cornflakes already drowning in sugar.
In a bright green t-shirt and jeans.
He pauses mid-bite, dripping spoonful of milk and flakes poised above his bowl. “Something wrong?”
“No, nothing’s wrong,” I say.
His face is pale, his expression empty.
He looks guilty.
But the counters are clear. There aren’t any white t-shirts hanging from the back of his chair or stuffed into the corner. I consider looking in the refrigerator, but its hinges squeal when the door opens and closes. I would have heard that from the bathroom.
Oh, God. Of course it wasn’t James.
“Have you seen Dad?” I croak.
His gaze drops to his bowl of cornflake glop. “I think he’s still in bed. Why are you so freaked out?”
“I’m not.” But I am, and we both know it. I can’t stop searching the room for white t-shirts or glancing over my shoulder at the dark hallway. Trying to focus, I glance at the clock.
8:54.
Denial wells like lava in my gut. Maybe he got up early to use the bathroom. When he realized I was in there, he went back to bed. No harm done.
But what about the locked door?
I sink into the chair farthest from my brother and watch him methodically shovel cereal into his mouth. Watching his mouth only reminds me of where it’s been and what it felt like.
Firm. Dry. Warm.
That’s the last thing I should be thinking about, so I force myself to grab the box of cereal and study the nutrition information. I’ve gotten all the way through the daily supply of iron when James gently takes the box away and reaches for my hand.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know you’re still pissed about me kissing you last night, but I can’t stand thinking you’re scared to be around me now. Are you scared?”
I pull my hand away and mumble, “No.”
“Yeah, you are. You can’t even look at me.”
Without warning, he shoves away from the table, knocking his chair over in the process. I flinch away from the sound of dishes being slammed into the sink, my eyes on the clock—8:56—and my hands over my ears. If I can’t hear the sound, maybe my father won’t either.
“This is killing me,” he says, throwing open the pantry cabinet so he can cram the still-open box of cornflakes back in. Cereal spills onto the shelf and rains to the floor. “I know I fucked up but, God, can you really blame me for freaking out? For all I knew, Sam dragged you off into the trees and fucked you like he fucks all the girls at Leslie’s parties.”
My stomach churns when I picture Sam coaxing girls like Claire up the trail to our log. No, not our log. There’s no our anything. Even though I shouldn’t, I start to ask James which girls and how many, but he’s too caught up in his rant.
“And then when you left, all I could think about was what Dad might do to you if I didn’t get here in time to stop him. I thought I’d find you messed up and bloody and—”
James chokes on whatever image is in his head, his eyes fiery and wet. When I stand up, he backs away. “I actually prayed the whole way home. I prayed the cops wouldn’t pull me over and throw me in jail for driving high. I prayed Sam would be smart enough to stay here until I got home instead of leaving you. I prayed I’d stay sane long enough to make Dad pay if I got here too late…”
This time he actually does lose it. In seventeen years, I’ve never seen my brother cry. He grinds his palms into his eyes and hunches over as he tries to keep it in. Seeing him like this shreds me to the core.
He doesn’t shove me away when I slip my arms around his waist and bury my face in his chest. “God, James, please don’t.”
“You’re everything to me,” he says. “I’ll never forgive myself if something like that happens because I fucked up. Never.”
Listening to his broken words, feeling his back tremble beneath my hands, I forgive my brother for everything he can’t. “Shh…you saved me, just like you always do.”
He nods and squeezes me tighter. “Love you, Sarah.”
“I love you, too.”
And I do.
Thirteen
Someone knocks on the door a few moments later. James is slow to release me, but I know it’s because he’s embarrassed about crying, not because he wants to stay close. Though I’m no longer sure last night meant anything to Sam—or whether this makes me relieved or sad—I run back to the bathroom to comb my hair and brush my teeth, just in case it’s him.
I’m pathetic.
Whoever it is has already knocked three times by the time I accidentally swallow my mouthwash and race back to the entryway, just as James answers the door.
For the first time ever, Sam looks uncomfortable standing on our doorstep. “Hey,” he says, his eyes passing from me to my brother. “I, uh, came to check on Sarah. She seemed pretty upset last night, so…”
Beside me, James has gone rigid. “She’s fine, no thanks to you.”
Sam gives him a dark look. “Right. Because she would’ve been much better off hanging out with Alex and his idiots until the cops showed up? Hell, I’m surprised you’re even here.”
James grumbles something highly inappropriate under his breath. I glare at him. Clearly they’re incapable of handling this like adults. “I’m walking to the library. Why don’t you guys hang out today? You know, remember that you’re actually best friends. There’s probably a baseball game on.”
Baseball games remind me of the Dodgers, which reminds me that I still have Sam’s black sweatshirt balled up somewhere on my bedroom floor. After all the crying I did last night, there’s no way I can give it back until it’s been washed.
“I gotta work,” my brother says.
“Me, too,” Sam says. “Next weekend, maybe.”
James ignores him and gives me a hug. “I picked up a half shift today. Figured we could use the money. Promise you’ll leave?”
“Promise.”
“I’ll come by the library when I get off.” He hesitates on the doorstep, shooting Sam a sideways glare, then stalks down the walkway to his truck. “You and me need to talk,” he tosses back over his shoulder.
“Yep,” is all Sam says. As soon as James is out of earshot, Sam turns to me, his eyes the serious, storm-cloud gray I love. Used to love, I correct. “I don’t want things to be weird between us,” he says, “but if I made you uncomfortable—”
“You didn’t.” And then, because I can’t help myself, “Why? Have things gotten weird with all the other girls or something?”
He frowns. “What other girls?”
I desperately want to finish this conversation, to see if the perplexed look on his face means what I hope it does, but James backs his truck into the street and honks the horn way too loud and way too long for nine o’clock on a Saturday morning. All the dogs on our street start barking, and someone a few houses down screams profanities out their window.
Still frowning, Sa
m says, “I better go before someone calls the cops.”
From the doorway, I watch him cross our scraggly lawn and climb into his beat up car. My brother lets up on the horn as soon as Sam starts the engine, then guns it down the street toward the mill. I wait until Sam’s car disappears in the other direction before giving up hope that he’ll come back.
Sighing, I close the door and get started on the cereal and dish mess James left behind. I wash and dry his bowl and spoon, throw the milk carton into the recycling bin in the garage, wipe down the counters, sink, and table, and I am about to sweep up the last handful of crushed cornflakes when I hear it.
My father’s bedroom door.
I freeze, my eyes on the microwave clock.
9:21
He’s early. He shouldn’t be out of bed for another nine minutes, at least. Nine minutes that I now desperately need because I’m running behind and will be lucky to get all my things together and out the door by 9:30.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The bathroom door clicks shut. I hear the toilet seat flip up and hit the tank, his groan of relief—
My hands fly to my ears and the broom clatters to the floor. I’ve got thirty seconds, tops, before he staggers out to the garage to get his morning beer fix. Maybe he’ll be in a better mood now that he’s gotten a full night’s sleep. Maybe he won’t punish me for James kicking his ass. Maybe he’s already forgotten about the spilled beer and the lesson he wanted to teach me.
I make a run for my room. I’ll just lay low until this blows over. If I give him a few days, enough time to lose his mind to the beer and come back around, I’ll be safe again.
The toilet flushes. I’m shaking too hard to open my bedroom door, let alone grab the keys, my purse, and a pair of shoes that are lying somewhere inside. He’s at least ten feet away, but I can sense him through the walls.
Someone knocks on the front door. I give up trying to get my stuff and dash to the foyer.
Please let it be someone I can let in to distract my father long enough for me to get out. Please, please, please.