Hearts and Thorns

by Ella Fields

  That had me frowning. “What?”

  Licking his lips, he dropped the spoon into the soup bowl and leaned forward, squeezing my hand in both of his. “Wil, we’ll be living at college. Mom and Dad will likely find out before we’re through with college, but by then”—his top lip curled, green eyes dancing—“it’ll be too late. They can’t stop us, and they can’t control us.”

  “Then,” I said. Because although he was right, we still needed to be careful now.

  A short nod, then he lifted my hand to his mouth, lips brushing over the back of it. “Then.”

  He paid the bill while I stewed on those thoughts, happiness lighting every speck of doubt I’d been harboring. It wasn’t that I’d doubted him. Some part of me had doubted we could pull this off. But we had, and we were, and we only had to wait just a little bit longer before we didn’t need to skip towns for meals like this.

  Taking my hand, he helped me up, then wrapped his arm around me, curling some hair behind my ear. “Wanna play in the cemetery?” His smile was playful, buoyant, and I couldn’t stop myself from rising to my toes to kiss it, and I didn’t have to.

  “No,” I whispered. “That’s a little too creepy.”

  He hummed against my lips, kissing them twice before murmuring, “I’m sure they won’t mind.”

  I laughed, shoving him back. “Stop it. Let’s just use the truck.”

  After walking hand in hand to where it was parked, Jackson pulled over into a secluded wooded clearing on the old highway home, and we did just that.

  Once home, I didn’t wait for him and slammed the door. “Ew,” I groaned. I needed to change my panties, stat.

  Jackson chuckled. “You weren’t complaining when I put it in there.”

  “You’re supposed to keep more than one napkin in the glove compartment, you toad.”

  He bumped my shoulder, his hand reaching for me. I dodged it and blinked to the lit-up house. Before I could open the door, he bent low behind me, whispering, “I love knowing I’m still inside you after I’ve left you.”

  It was all I could do to open the front door without leaning back into him. I forced myself inside and kicked off my heels. Jackson headed down the hall to the kitchen, cursing when he entered.

  Something turned over inside my stomach as I slowly followed.

  Seated at the countertop, mugs of coffee in front of them, were our parents. They didn’t drink coffee this late at night.

  The coffee wasn’t the only blaring alarm. No, it was the puffiness beneath Mom’s mascara-blackened eyes, and the dejected, disgusted look in Heath’s.

  “What…?” I started, then stopped.

  They knew.

  Jackson took a step back, as if to shield me from them, as Dad rumbled, “We’ve tried, we really have, to come up with something to say for what”—he waved his hand, coughing—“what you’ve done, what you’re… doing.”

  Mom bit her lips, eyes closing over a fresh wave of tears.

  Heath took her hand in his, and that was when I saw them. Photographs, printed out on paper, spread out on the countertop. I couldn’t make out the pictures, but I knew they were of us. “How long?”

  Jackson and I said nothing.

  There was nothing I could think to say. No excuses to be made. No apologies to be said. I wasn’t sorry. We weren’t sorry. And we couldn’t excuse ourselves away.

  So we stood there, the room collapsing around us, our hopes and dreams crumbling with each new breath, and we said nothing.

  “It’s incestuous, you know,” Mom spat, sniffing.

  That had Jackson stiffening. “It’s not.”

  She laughed, then cried. “Dear god, it’s worse than these”—she stabbed her nail at a picture, the acrylic tip flying off—“disgusting things suggest.”

  Heath scrubbed his chin, his gaze never leaving Jackson.

  I longed to plant myself in front of him, to take the brunt of the impact from that disappointment. Never ever had I seen Heath look at Jackson like that. Like he didn’t know who he was, or if he even wanted to.

  “Where’d you get those?” Jackson said, his tone quiet but unyielding.

  Mom’s eyes widened. “What?” She stood, the stool behind her screeching over the floor. “You cannot be serious right now. You have tainted this family. Your sister. Our fucking livelihood,” she said, her face reddening, her voice turning guttural. “And you dare to ask how we found out?”

  The cussing startled me, and then what she’d said enraged me. I stepped forward. “He didn’t—”

  Jackson grabbed my waist. “Don’t, Wil.”

  Mom blinked, then charged forward. “Get your hands off her, right now.” Her nails sank into my arm, tearing skin as she hauled me away from him and out of the kitchen.

  I gritted my teeth against the pain, not only from her nails, but from the way Jackson lunged forward, hands raised. “Okay, don’t. Just”—his chest rose and fell, and Mom quit moving at the base of the stairs—“just don’t fucking hurt her.”

  Mom screeched, “What?” I tore my arm free when her grip loosened but didn’t rub where I felt blood trickling. “You’re the one who’s hurt her, you,” she sputtered as she stepped forward to stab a finger at Jackson, “v-vile, treacherous—”

  “I love him,” I said, for all the good it would do.

  Mom froze, and the air vacated the room, leaving me heaving with fear as she turned back, and hissed, “Get upstairs, or so help me god…”

  Heath stood behind Jackson in the doorway to the kitchen, his eyes wet and his fists curling at his sides.

  I looked from him to Jackson, and Jackson jerked his head to the stairs, his eyes pleading for me to go.

  I shook my head, mouthing a silent, “No.”

  “Bug,” he rasped. “Go.”

  It seemed to come out of nowhere, the sound ringing everywhere.

  Mom slapped him, and I screamed when she went to do it again. “Don’t you even look at her, let alone tell her what to do.”

  “It’s not his fault,” I cried, rushing to them.

  Heath grabbed me around the waist, twisting me back to the stairs. “Go, Willa. Now.”

  Mom was still screaming at Jackson, shoving him into the wall. He wouldn’t fight back by moving away. Despite what she was saying and doing, he knew he deserved her ire.

  He’d just take it.

  I gazed up at Heath, begging, “Please, it’s really not.”

  His expression remained unmoved, even as he conceded. “I have her,” he whispered. “Go.”

  I did, but only when he made good on his word and gathered Mom to him, taking her back to the kitchen while she cried and cursed like I’d never heard before. “They’ve ruined everything. Everything, Heath. Oh, god.”

  I heard the door to the basement shut a minute later and dropped to my bed, tears flooding my cheeks as I sat on my trembling hands. They itched to go to him, to tear open doors and do anything other than sit here.

  But I couldn’t.

  We were trapped.

  If I thought we were trapped, I’d thought too soon.

  Half an hour later, Mom stormed into my room, and without so much as looking at me, snatched up my purse from the floor by my feet and pulled out my phone.

  Protests slithered and writhed over my tongue, but my teeth bit them at bay. It was pointless to argue with her. She’d never been this enraged, this upset, in my entire life.

  If she wanted my phone, she could take it.

  Jackson and I were always careful about what we’d text each other anyway. Sure, there were emojis or kisses attached but never anything too illicit. Nothing that would lead either of us to more trouble than we needed to wind up in.

  “Get up,” Mom said, her voice cracked. When I didn’t move, still shaking where I sat, she repeated, harsher, “I said get up. Go to the bathroom and ready yourself for bed.”

  I got up, each step past her anger-swelling frame a slow wade through eternity.

  “Be sure to
use the toilet.”

  My feet paused in the doorway, but I didn’t turn around. I could barely stomach any of this, let alone look at her if I didn’t need to. “Why?”

  “We’ll be locking your door.”

  I frowned, unsure what she meant exactly. That is, until I’d used the toilet and showered. Wrapped in nothing but a towel, I was brushing my teeth when the sound of a drill pierced the fogged air of the bathroom.

  Almost gagging, I quickly spat into the sink, as what Mom had meant by locking the door sank in with cold, hard clarity.

  Quickly wiping the toothpaste from my chin, I pushed my hair back and shut off the water, staring at my reflection while the noise outside droned on a minute longer.

  A pale face, almost translucent, stared back at me with huge hazel eyes. So pale, my cheeks looked sunken, and veins colored places my hair didn’t.

  My stomach roiled and churned. I continued to stare until the sluggish beat of my heart regulated, and some color leeched back into my face.

  It would be okay.

  They were just furious right now. They’d see how crazy this was come morning.

  But they didn’t.

  They didn’t, and not even Jackson’s yelling after he’d realized what they’d done, or the way I’d ignored breakfast and stayed inside my chamber, remotely fazed them.

  He’d tried to see me, but they watched our every move, and on Sunday afternoon, day two of my new solitude, Mom unlocked the padlock on my door and entered my room.

  She dumped a stack of boxes on the floor. “Start packing. Your dad will be here at six.”

  I scrambled off the bed, my heart in my throat, and stuttered, “What? What do you mean?”

  “Kylie’s a deadbeat, and Heath refuses to send Jackson there. So you’re moving in with Daniel.”

  With that, she marched out of my room, the lock clinking on the other side of the door.

  Moving. They were making me leave.

  A small glimmer of relief defused some of the tension in my shoulders because I knew I couldn’t live like this. I couldn’t stay here when she was acting so insane.

  I didn’t care that she had a reason to be upset with me. I only cared that she was scaring me, and the future, the one we’d planned so meticulously, was moving farther out of sight with every yelling match Jackson had with them downstairs.

  That relief was squashed when I arrived at my shelves and removed books to find the small album I’d hidden behind them. My favorite scrapbook album. The one that was made after our first kiss, during the months of torment and yearning.

  Stolen pictures and glances filled the pages, and when we’d succumbed to what we could no longer ignore, happiness, brighter than anything I’d seen, lit his eyes as he’d tried to palm away the camera.

  Unable to keep looking, I closed it and tucked it inside a box.

  I might’ve been leaving, but he was still trapped.

  We both were.

  Dad watched me unpack my clothes from the suitcase and hang them in the small closet by the door, disappointed and quiet. As he had been since he’d picked me up and carried all my things inside.

  The room was much smaller than the one I’d grown up in. It had cherry pink walls with white molding and a vintage desk that I rather liked. A light pink twin bed perched in the corner, and a cream and brown circular woven rug laid over the worn wood floor beneath it.

  Dad’s place was three bedrooms, old but tastefully renovated. All of which he’d done himself. I’d never had the heart to tell him that I preferred purple over pink when he’d so proudly showed me my room for the first time after buying the place and finishing it before he’d even started working on the kitchen.

  “Thank you,” I finally said. I wasn’t sure what else there was to say.

  His disappointment in me was evident in every stilted, near-silent move he made, but it was nothing compared to the wrath that clouded every crevice at home.

  Half my things were still in my room back at home, or what was once called home, but I didn’t mind. Besides the vital piece of my heart, I’d taken everything that mattered. If I had the courage, maybe one day I’d return for the rest. If they ever allowed me to.

  Mom hadn’t even said goodbye, and when I’d passed Heath’s study on the way to the door, he’d looked up from where he’d been leaning against his desk, then moved to the door to close it.

  “For what?” Dad asked.

  I folded a green sweater dress, setting it on the pile on the rose-gold bedding with the rest. “For, you know…” I sucked my lips, then turned with a sigh. “Picking me up. Letting me stay here.”

  A crease formed between his bent brows. His arms unfolded, and he straightened from the doorway to his full imposing height. “You’re my kid. I’m not letting you stay here. You’ll live here, with me, for as long as you want.”

  Tears burned, but I’d cried so much, nothing gathered, only threatened and ached. I nodded. “You’re upset with me.”

  “Damn right, I am,” he said, rubbing his jaw with a humorless laugh. “You’ve been screwing around with your brother.”

  “Step,” I said. “Stepbrother,” I finished, quiet and turning my eyes to my curling bare toes.

  He groaned. “Willa, semantics don’t matter too much right now. You guys fucked up, okay? You can’t excuse that with meaningless words.”

  “I’m not trying to,” I said.

  “But you want to. You want to scream it to the world that you’re the victims here, that you’re probably in love or some bullshit, and that you’re technically adults who can do what you want.”

  I lifted my eyes, blinking. “Because it’s all true.” My voice was too soft, and I hated it. I wanted to be resolute, fearless, and unmerciful in this love of ours. “It’s all true, but I won’t say anything else. So don’t worry.”

  Dad shifted, and I turned back around to finish emptying the clothes from the suitcase.

  After a moment, he joined me, folding a pair of jeans with military precision. “Your mom’s raging pissed.”

  “I know,” I said. “She…” I paused, knowing I shouldn’t say it because it didn’t matter now anyway.

  “She what?” When I continued with my task, he took my chin, forcing my eyes to his hazel ones. They bounced back and forth between mine, that crease between them deepening. “She what, Willa?”

  I swallowed, admitting, “She padlocked my bedroom door.”

  Horror swept over every feature, wiping them clean of each fine line that etched his shaven face. Slack, his hand fell, and I grabbed the pile of clothes, taking them to the chest of drawers that acted as a nightstand beside the bed.

  “That’s why she made you do the walk of shame on your own,” he said. “Because I’d see.”

  I closed the drawer, then zipped up the suitcase. “Probably, but it’s okay. It’s done now.”

  His laughter raised the hair on my arms. “That fucking woman…” he cursed, then took the suitcase from me, lifting it to the top of the closet with an ease I envied. “And for the record, it’s not okay.”

  I closed the sliding door, traipsing back to the desk to unpack the albums in the box there. It had to be nearing midnight, yet I refused to try to sleep until I’d finished.

  “Willa,” Dad said from the doorway. “I hope, when the dust has settled, that you don’t go back.”

  He left before I could look at him, and I threw the empty box to the floor with the others. I wished I could’ve told him I wouldn’t go back if Mom asked, but the thought of Jackson being there alone…

  The thought of Jackson alone was enough to collapse the remaining strength I had, and I soon found myself on the bed, struggling to stay awake.

  Jackson

  I felt like I was coming undone at the seams.

  The sound of the lock being drilled into Willa’s bedroom door followed me everywhere, my dreams, school—always right there.

  How one sound could haunt you more than the events that’d transpi
red since, I wasn’t sure.

  “Willa?” Raven asked on Tuesday.

  I shook my head. They knew, all my friends did. I’d met them at the skatepark the second I could escape, needing out before I clawed my way through the brick walls.

  Willa shouldn’t have been the one locked in her room. Willa shouldn’t have been the one forced to move out of the home we’d grown up in. And Willa shouldn’t have been kicked out of school her senior year, torn away from the few friends she had who weren’t me.

  Because I knew. I knew I was the reason she’d never cared too much about making any new ones. That, and she was content to hang with Peggy, Daphne now too.

  I was under strict instruction to go straight home, and I knew my phone would be tracked, maybe even my car too.

  I didn’t care. I didn’t go straight home, and I only showed in the last class of the day long enough to say I wasn’t feeling well and then left for the school nurse.

  Faster than I’d ever ran before, I bolted outside the school doors, dived into my truck, and sped out of the lot.

  I had to see her. I had to see if she was okay, or that she was as okay as she could be, considering.

  The roads were quiet, being that most people were at school or work. I arrived within twenty minutes instead of the usual thirty and parked in the brick paved driveway.

  Her dad was at work, but Willa was there. I knew she would be.

  Which was proven a second later when the screen door slapped open, and in those damn ruffled shorts, a blue tank, and her hair flying behind her, she bounded off the porch. Over the garden, the grass sinking beneath her bare feet and her lips wobbling, she ran to me, and I unglued my feet to meet her halfway.

  “Oh, my god,” she breathed, choked and sniffing as she burrowed her nose into my neck.

  I held her so tight that I feared she wouldn’t be able to breathe, but I couldn’t ease up. My hand cradled the back of her head, holding her to me with a shaking despair.

  My eyes grew wet, my arms and hands and every part of me trying to swallow her whole. “I’m sorry, Bug. So fucking sorry it’s killing me.”