by Kate Avelynn
Fists clench and knuckles crack. The tension between Sam and James as they circle breaks me in half. If I don’t stop them, only one will walk away from this.
“James, please,” I cry. “Don’t do this!”
My brother’s fists drop a fraction and he glances at me over his shoulder. There’s no time to decipher the crazy look on his face because Sam—the guy whispering I love you in my ear only seconds ago—launches himself at James, driving his shoulder into my brother’s gut. They hit the ground in a rolling snarl of curses, legs, and flying fists.
The bloodthirsty crowd, gleeful over the change in venue and opponent, cinch in tighter. Alex tries to pull me close, but I smack his hands away. “Do something! Make them stop!”
He shakes his head, eyes fixed on the fight. “No way. They gotta get this out of their system or you can kiss sex with Sam goodbye.”
If my brother and my boyfriend weren’t intent on killing each other ten feet in front of me, I would slap Alex. This is not about sex. At least, not to me.
They come to a stop with James on top, a wicked gleam in his eyes when he rams his fist into Sam’s cheek. A sharp blast of copper bleeds into the air. When they roll again, Sam is on top, blood running from his mouth, fists pounding into my brother. His pummeling splits James’s already minced lips.
Eight years of friendship, obliterated.
James lets out an inhuman roar and explodes from the ground, jerking to the side so he can kick Sam in the chest. The crowd screams its approval when Sam staggers backwards and drops into a crouch against the wall gasping for air.
James hovers over him, fists at the ready. “You think you’re a fucking saint because of your dad, but you aren’t shit! Fight me!”
Sam glares up at him. “Fuck. You.”
Wrong answer.
“Stop!” I shout right as James pivots, cocking back his leg. The crowd holds its breath, waiting for the crunch of foot against face, for more blood to rain down on the Armory—
Launching himself from the wall, Sam grabs James’s extended leg and twists, sending my brother to the floor. Before Sam can tackle him, I break free of Alex’s grasp and fling myself on top of my brother. He elbows me in the side and rolls away.
My burn screams, but I force myself to my feet and grab hold of the nearest body. James.
They glare at each other over my head, chests heaving. I trust him less than I trust Sam, so I keep my back pressed to my brother’s chest, hand fisted in the waistband of our father’s shorts, and give the double-vision version of Sam standing in front of me the darkest glare I can muster. The room spins with the effort.
“What’s wrong with you? You’re best friends!”
The validation in Sam’s eyes only infuriates me further. He wanted a confrontation like this. If he used the stupid, twisted boy logic I’m all too familiar with after a lifetime of being James’s little sister, Sam probably figured he’d take on my brother and win the right to be with me. The stupidity of this fight makes me want to throw up. All that’s missing are swords and chainmail and willowy damsels in distress.
I’m no willowy damsel.
“I’m so sick of this!” I yell. “I’m a person, not some bone you get to fight over!”
Flames lick at my burn and my aching head is full of shattered glass, but I manage to release James and hobble a few feet away before I’m too disoriented to walk in a straight line. There’s no way I’ll let Sam and James see my pain.
The pleading look I give Alex must be really pathetic, because he slips an arm around my waist and half carries me to the door without another word.
Forty-four
Riding on the back of a motorcycle while woozy is much harder than it looks. Every turn is an invitation to slide off the seat onto the peaceful pavement, every straightaway, an invitation to curl around Alex’s warm body and fall into blissful sleep.
I think he knows how close I am to passing out, because any time his left hand doesn’t have to be on the clutch, he holds my arms to his massive chest. The ride home takes three times as long as the ride to the Armory because he’s going so slow.
What a disaster of a night. At least now, I can’t delude myself into thinking James only feels brotherly toward me. It’s okay, though. I can handle my brother. He’d never hurt me, and if I put my foot down about the kissing, he’ll stop. I know he will because he loves me and I love him and that’s what we’ve always done—whatever is best for the other person.
At least he’s always done that, giving up everything to give me as good of a life as I could possibly have at home with our father. What teenage guy works full time in a paper mill to take care of his sister? He should be out dating all the girls that followed him around school last year, or even one of the ones that gape or flirt or throw themselves at him when we’re out in public now. Maybe if he went out with all of them, he wouldn’t have those kinds of thoughts about me.
It’s my fault and these fights are just more of the same—James destroying his body to protect me. I’ve pushed him so hard about money and getting out of this house. I’ve tied him down his entire life, tied him to me and to our father and to keeping me safe instead of taking care of himself.
I’m an awful, awful person.
And then there’s Sam. After what happened this evening, I feel like a hollow shell—a Sarah-sized husk without the living center that usually breathes strongest when I’m with Sam. He loves me. I love him. He lied to me. I’ve lied to him.
And now I can’t find my way back.
Maybe that’s a good thing. I have no idea what he sees in me. Strength, he says. Beauty. A big heart. I see none of these things. I see fear, flaws, and a heart so full of blackness I can’t give up my own selfish wants to set him or my brother free. He’s given me a glimpse of what happiness should feel like, so maybe I should be grateful and move on. If I’m certain of anything, it’s that Sam Donavon can do better than me.
I owe James my life. I owe Sam the life he deserves. One believes wholeheartedly he’ll be lost without me—a fear I’ll probably never be able to talk him out of—and the other will go on to bigger and better things regardless. When I think of it that way, my decision is clear.
I don’t like that decision.
I must’ve passed out after all, because the next thing I know, familiar arms are carrying me to the front door. My hands fumble around for keys that aren’t there, but Alex shushes me. No, not Alex. Sam. He tells Alex about the house key dangling from the chain with his father’s dog tags, and then we’re inside.
Burnt meat, soot, and old cigarette smoke greet us, but are soon overtaken by the familiar comforting scent of James and our room. My sheet feels cool and inviting through my clothes. For the first time, I want to sleep naked, to feel that coolness against my skin while I dream and wake up a new person. I reach for Sam, wanting him to take my clothes off, wanting him in bed with me, wanting to push him away, wanting, wanting, wanting.
“We’re going to let you sleep,” he whispers. “James left with Leslie, so there’s no way he’s coming home tonight. I’ll check on you as soon as I get off work, okay? I’ll only be gone a few hours.”
His face. Oh God, his beautiful face. Half of his mouth is swollen and oozing blood, one of his eyes has turned a ghastly shade of maroon. I did this. He loves me and I did this.
“I’m sorry,” I breathe, but it isn’t enough.
He smiles and gently presses his broken mouth to my scabbed lips.
Behind him, Alex shifts uncomfortably. “You guys aren’t going to have makeup sex now, right? Because, for once, I’m not up for the whole voyeur thing. Driving an unconscious girl home isn’t the turn on it used to be.”
Sam ignores him and smoothes the shorter wisps of my hair away from my face. “If anyone should be sorry, it’s me. I’ve done a lot of stupid shit.”
“I love you anyway.”
He chuckles and gets to his feet. “Yeah, well, maybe you’re the stupid one, then. Don’t wise u
p, though, because I love you, too.”
“Feel better,” Alex says, tweaking one of my bare feet. “And I still mean what I said about calling me, regardless of what Captain Possessive thinks.”
Watching them file out of my bedroom, I can’t help but smile. Maybe everything will be okay. Maybe fighting is exactly what Sam and James needed.
I fall asleep before the front door clicks shut.
Forty-five
Labored breathing. The chilling hair-standing-on-end feeling that I’m being watched.
Fighting my way back to consciousness, I shift away from the nightmare threatening to drag me under. I will not have this dream again. I won’t let myself.
But I do.
A rough palm caresses my cheek. Another touches my breast and trails down my stomach to slip under my shirt. A heavy mouth covers mine. Hot, impatient breath forces its way into my lungs, breath that tastes of beer. I try to fight him off but his touch only gets rougher.
I’ll always love you and make you happy,
If you will only say the same.
But if you leave me to love another,
You’ll regret it all someday.
I wake suddenly, sitting up and screaming into the blackness.
4:42.
He tackles me back onto my pillow. “Shhh!”
Unable to breathe beneath his weight and with his hand crushing my nose and mouth, I stare at the dark, man-shaped shadow. He isn’t supposed to be here, not tonight, not when I’m alone. Seconds before I suffocate, he shoves himself away from me and staggers to his feet.
“How could you, Sarah?” he asks, words slurred. “How could you fuck Sam?”
“James?” Everything inside of me goes still when the stench of sour beer blasts me in the face. I push myself up on my hands, numb to the pain in my hip. “Are you drunk?”
“What’s it matter to you?” He takes a big step closer, slams his knee into my cheap metal bed frame and nearly crumples. He manages to stay upright but only barely. “Say. His. Name.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say weakly.
“Stop lying to me!” he bellows, then grabs his head as if the sound was even more deafening inside of it. “I can smell the fucking condoms.”
My blood turns to ice in my veins, crackling and splitting, until I’m sure I’m going to have some sort of frozen aneurism. I barely remember the forced lovemaking session after the night I’ve had. What did Sam do with the condom?
James’s fury shifts to despair and he drops to his knees. “God, Sarah, do you hate me so much you had to fuck him in our room?”
In the faint moonlight, I can see the misshapen lines of his face. The fight. “I don’t hate you. And I’d never purposely hurt you. I love you.”
He shakes his head, his big shoulders trembling. “No, I love you. You’ve never loved me, even though it’s supposed to be me and you, forever.” He reaches for my waist and buries his sticky face in my stomach. “Why can’t I be enough? I want to be enough so fucking bad.”
“You are enough!”
“I’ll never be enough and you know it.”
This is horrible. More horrible than I imagined. I close my eyes and stroke his crusty hair, very quietly singing our lullaby.
His shoulders stop trembling halfway through the verse and by the end I think he’s humming along with me. I hope so. I scoot farther down on my bed so I can reach him better and because his lumpy face pressed into the bruises on my lower stomach hurts.
“I’m sorry about Leslie,” he mumbles into my shirt, which is bunching up around his face as I wriggle lower. “She doesn’t mean anything to me. Promise.”
I couldn’t care less about Leslie and I am about to tell him so, but then he turns his head, moving my thin t-shirt out of the way with his big hands, and I realize how bad an idea it was to scoot lower. He nuzzles into my bare chest instead of coming higher into my arms, breathing me in and pressing his lips to my skin. I gasp and shove at his shoulders.
“Damn it!” he roars. My hands fly to my ears because he’s right there in my face, tiny drops of spit flying. “Don’t you understand? Do you understand anything?”
He hauls me off the bed and throws me over his shoulder. I scream, a short sound I can’t keep in no matter how hard I try because his shoulder is digging into my hip and it’s almost as painful as the boiling water that burned me in the first place. I shut up immediately though, because he throws open the front door and staggers toward his truck.
“We’re going to the beach,” he says, dumping me into the passenger seat. “Right now, tonight. You’re going to be with me and we’re going to camp on the beach.”
He’s hardly making sense, which reminds me that he’s drunk at the very least. “Wait, you’ve been drinking. And Leslie—you were at Leslie’s. Are you on something?”
He laughs—a cold, unfriendly sound—and slams the door shut in my face. I lean across the seat to smack his lock down but I’m too late.
“Please,” I say and grab his arm. “I don’t want to go tonight. Can we go back inside and talk? I’ll stay up as long as you want and we’ll talk until we figure this out.” I have no idea what I’ll say to calm him down, but I have to come up with something. With him this messed up and pissed off, he’ll drive straight to Sam’s and kill him if I tell the truth.
“No more talking.”
He backs out of the driveway herky-jerky and then peels off down our street. I close my eyes and pray for a cop to be sitting on the corner by the park. Detective Lilly, even. Maybe we’ll get pulled over and James will get tossed into jail where he’ll have no choice but to cool off.
No cops, of course. No Detective Lilly when I actually need him. I buckle my seatbelt and hold on tight as he roars toward I-5. “Where are we going?”
At the last second, when the Interstate onramp is less than ten yards away, he cranks the wheel to the left and veers off toward the hills instead. The truck skids through the intersection, its tires screeching on the pavement. “Camping,” he repeats calmly. “But not at the beach. I changed my mind.”
This is way worse than the Interstate because the roads up here are steep and windy. James is having a hard time keeping the truck on the road let alone in his own lane, so I’ve been curled up in my seat, chewing my nails for the last twenty minutes. We’re going to get creamed when a logging truck flies around one of the corners—I just know it.
Desperate, I try again. “Please pull over and talk to me. You’re not okay.”
He shakes his head.
“I’m scared.”
I’ve used the same voice, the same words, hundreds of times and every time, I was either already in James’s arms or he immediately pulled me into them. I’m counting on the same reaction. When he glances over at me, his swollen brow furrowed, I know I’ve got him.
“Please,” I whimper. “You’re scaring me.”
He slams on the breaks and violently steers us into the dirt on the side of the road. We’re alarmingly close to Sam’s secret place. Suspiciously close.
“So talk,” he says, glaring at me in the darkness.
I consider getting out of the truck. If he snaps, I’ll be able to run into the trees and evade him long enough for us both to calm down. Then again, I’m barefoot and he’s not. He’d catch up even more pissed off than before.
“I love you,” I offer instead. “It hurts me that you think I don’t.”
He laughs but the sound quickly turns into shuddering sobs. After years of my brother never crying, to see him broken and hurting like this is a knife to my chest.
“Mom’s gone, Dad’s gone, and tonight, that fucking detective took Leslie away…” He scrubs the tears from his eyes and looks at me. “I could’ve handled losing them, but losing you is killing me.”
Seventeen years of pain reflects back at me from the shadows. In the dark, I can’t see his blackened eyes but I can feel the pain in the tense air between us, can smell it in his sweat, can hear
it in his voice. If I lean across the seat and kiss him, I’ll taste it. “I am so, so, sorry,” I say and unbuckle my safety belt. “You haven’t lost me, though. I’m right here.”
He eyes me warily as I scoot closer. I touch his arm. He’s like a caged animal ready to strike out. I’ve never seen him this tightly wound, this ready to snap. His eyes dart from my hand on his arm to my face and back. I move to my knees, taking a chance because I know with all my heart he’d never hit me, and wrap my arms around his neck.
“I love you,” I whisper. “Only you.”
There’s no way I’m telling him the truth now. Not in the middle of a dark forest with him drunk and quite possibly high. To bury my pain, I whisper my love for Sam namelessly into my brother’s ear, over and over.
It takes him a minute, but James finally slumps against me. “You wouldn’t lie to me?”
“No.” Yes. And damn, it hurts.
He nods and turns his body toward me so we’re chest to chest and squeezes me tight. A sense of foreboding inches up my spine, following the path of his fingers, which keep right on going into my hair. Sam has held me exactly like this countless times, his mouth at my neck. With me on my knees and his hands locking me in place, all James has to do is lift his chin a few inches and we’ll be kissing.
“We should be together. You and me. Don’t you know?”
I do know. At least, I know he believes it. I hold my breath as he strokes my hair, trembling in his arms and waiting for the inevitable. When he finally draws my face to his, I close my eyes. I hate myself for ruining my brother. I’ll do anything to fix it. Seeing James destroyed hurts worse than torture.
But he doesn’t kiss me. No brush of lips, no shared breath, no anything.
“When you were really little, she used to braid your hair,” he says, rubbing a lock between his fingers. “Skinny yellow braids like ropes, but softer. Prettier. Mom used to get mad at me for sticking all my little army men into your hair, but watching you walk around with green things hanging off your head was hilarious. She never spanked me, though. Or you.”
