by Logan Fox
“Fuck!” She holds her hands by her face, trembling.
I felt a sting on my cheek, but Candy got the worst of it. I grab her shoulder and spin her to face me. Ripping off my shirt, I wad it in my hand and use it to dab her face.
“Don’t open your eyes,” I tell her.
Her eyelids quiver, but she does as I say and keeps them closed. Miraculously, she didn’t get any cuts on her face.
“You’re fine,” I say gruffly, stepping back and dropping my shirt on the bar counter.
“I’m fine,” she repeats quietly, eyes still closed, mouth now pursed into a line. “I’m fine.”
Her face scrunches up. That slash of a mouth contorts, and a single heavy sob escapes her. She sags to the floor, and my heart goes right down with her.
“Hey,” I manage, barely getting the word out through my tight throat. “Hey, darling, it’s okay.”
“I’m fine,” she says, pushing weakly at me as I try to help her up.
In the distance, a door slams. I look up, squinting through the legs of a bar stool.
My father’s on his way to the pool house, hands in fists at his sides, a snarl on his mouth.
Jesus fucking Christ.
“Candy, get up. Quick. Quick!” But there’s no time for her to get her shit together. I grab her, lift her, and bundle her into the powder room. Her ass thumps onto the closed toilet cover, the impact cutting off her sobs. I grab a towel and press it into her chest. “Not a sound,” I say, putting my finger to my lips.
Her face crumples again, but she folds over and buries it the towel, muffling the sound.
I close the bathroom door, stare at the mess of milky liqueur and glass on the countertop, and my chest closes up.
Can’t see this.
He’ll know.
Can’t see her.
He’ll know.
I’m already moving before the thoughts have finished tumbling through my mind. A hand on my belt, I yank at the buckle and have it halfway out through the loops by the time I pull open the sliding door.
I keep my gaze down, tugging free my belt and letting it fall to the floor as I slide the door closed behind me. My shoes are next. The last one drops to the floor a second before my father’s shadow falls over me.
“What the hell are you doing?” he says.
I look up, squinting when the sun hits my eyes. “What’s it look like?” I ask, tugging down my pants.
Dad scans me with a sneer before his gaze snaps back to my eyes. “Where is she?”
“Who?”
“Your sister,” he snarls.
I walk past him and stand on the edge of the pool. It’s brisk out, so much so that it takes everything I have to come to terms with the fact that I’m about to jump into an icy pool.
“Haven’t seen her since we got home.” I force myself not to look at him, not to give him the slightest indication that I might be lying, and dive into the pool.
Sure, he could go into the pool house, but he looks like he’s on a mission from God—no time to waste.
When I surface, he’s headed back toward the house. I puff out the breath I’d been holding and draw cool air into my lungs.
Fuck, this water’s freezing.
I swim a few laps, willing my muscles to warm. Willing Candy to stay inside the pool house. Willing my father to give up his search.
For once, things go my way.
I’m shivering when I get out, but at least I can still feel my extremities. I pick up my clothes and head back to the pool house as casually as I can. I pause for a second and glance over my shoulder. I can’t decipher anything out of place—dad could be anywhere inside the—
A car starts up, engine growling like a caged animal.
He’s leaving, but why? Where’s he going?
I push away the thought, shivering. There wasn’t any time to grab a towel, and the air’s become arctic out here. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he didn’t go inside the pool house, that he didn’t find Candy—
The glass door slips from my hand and crashes against the jamb.
She’s sitting on the floor by the bar stools. Her hair hangs down in a curtain, and it shifts like silk when her body tenses as if she’s keeping in a sneeze. One hand clutches the bottleneck of the Irish creme, the other is fisted in her lap.
The bottle is empty.
At first, I’m convinced she downed the whole thing, and I’m already working out the fastest route to the hospital.
Then I see the wet slick down the front of her throat, her chest, how her shirt clings to her. Some of it may have gotten into her mouth, but more ended up on her.
“I’m sorry,” she croaks.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s just a little…” I don’t know what to say. “Just had an accident.”
“Accident,” she murmurs, and then nods gently. “A little accident.”
Her head nods, and this time, it doesn’t lift.
“Candy? Darling girl. Can you hear me?”
“Yeah,” she says, her voice light now, as if she’s about to drift to sleep. She’s even started to sway as if she’s about to topple over. “Doesn’t work,” she mumbles.
“Sure about that? Looks like you had more than enough to get pissed.” I ask as I sit back on my heels. “But if you want to make sure, there’s probably another bottle back there somewhere. Should I bring it?”
Perhaps she wants to believe that there’s someone in this fucked up world who won’t shun her for this. Who won’t think she’s sick and twisted and broken.
“I can still feel,” she says, and then shudders violently.
“Then it’s a good thing you stopped, isn’t it?”
Candy watches me behind a veil of dark hair, eyes the most intent I’ve ever seen.
“Candy, you have to stop drinking.”
It takes a few seconds, but she eventually looks up at me. “Can you help me?” she whispers.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Candy
I wake up to darkness and a throbbing head.
“Ow.” I grimace and roll onto my side, blinking hard to distinguish shape from shadow. When my eyes finally do adjust to the lack of light, what I can make out is unfamiliar.
There’s a nightstand nearby. On it is a tall glass of water, a napkin, and two painkillers.
Slowly, reluctantly, memories trickle back.
I pause as my arm starts shaking.
I remember everything. The funeral, Wayne’s ultimatum, the wine, Truth or Dare…and that’s where things get super fuzzy.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I bite the inside of my lip as I push with my hips, urging myself closer to the nightstand so I can turn on the lamp. I reach, but I’m not close enough. Tears threaten to obscure everything.
An arm slides over me, a warm body pressing into my back. I go rigid, my breath trapped in my throat. Fingers longer than mine attached to a broad hand reach, reach, reach.
Josiah turns on the lamp, flooding the strange room in a warm glow. “What’s wrong?” he asks quietly, voice thick with sleep.
The pain doesn’t seem all that important anymore. The fact that I can remember, neither.
I sit up, and gingerly lift the sheets away from my body.
I’m still wearing my underwear.
“Did we…?” I peek at him over my shoulder, eyes widening when I take in his naked chest.
“What?” Josiah slides a hand over his face, and the sound of his stubble scraping his palm is too loud in this confined space.
“Did we…?”
“Fuck?” He sighs and turns on his back. “No, idiot.” It’s as if he’s going to go back to sleep, but then he pushes himself into a sit and runs his hands through his hair. “Christ, I just thought you might need—” He cuts off with a grunt as he scratches at his ribs, and then he’s on his feet. “Fuck it. I’m going to sleep in my own bed. You can do whatever the hell you want.”
“I didn’t mean…I just…”
“Forget it.” He slips his shirt
over his head, his back still turned to me.
My eyes dart to the nightstand. “It was you,” I say, a lump in my throat as memories swirl.
Josiah looks over his shoulder. His gaze touches on the glass of water before he straightens again. “You’re a bitch on a good day. Didn’t want to know what you’d be like with a full-blown hangover.”
“Josiah, I’m so sorry.” I know the words don’t even begin to cover anything, but at least I can try. I toss the pills into the back of my throat, and watch Josiah from the corner of my eye as he sits down to put on his shoes.
“Think I can sneak inside without them seeing?” I ask.
“Don’t have to sneak. They’re not here.”
“Where did they go?”
“Fuck if I know.” He pauses, runs his hands through his hair again. It’s in a state now, flopping over his forehead as he turns to look at me over his shoulder. “Dad came looking for you, but then he left again.”
“So why…?”
Why’d you bring me here, to this bed?
“You’d passed out. Was I supposed to carry you all the way to your room?”
And with that, he’s gone.
I sit alone in the pool house’s guest bedroom, my head thumping.
What must he think of me?
I can’t see into his mind, but I do know one thing; Josiah isn’t the monster I thought him to be. He’s still arrogant and rude, and stubborn…but there’s more to him. There’s a part of him that would risk getting into trouble to help out someone in need. Someone sympathetic enough to look out for a complete stranger, even when said stranger was a bitch to him.
Then again, he’d probably nurse a sick animal back to health too.
That’s all I am, I guess.
A bird with a broken wing.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Josiah
Candy probably doesn’t realize, but her night time chess matches with my dad cost me a fuck ton of sleep, since I rarely manage to fall asleep again after I’ve been woken up. If she has any reason to think I’m a dick, it’s because I was running on fumes back then.
Guess nothing has changed. She’s still keeping me out of goddamn sleep.
Fuck it. May as well go and do something while I wait for dawn.
Looks like Candy decided to stay in the pool house, so I don’t bother putting my clothes back on—not as if there’s anyone around to see me in my boxers.
How the fuck did she come to the conclusion that I’d screw her? Does she have any idea how drunk she was? I mean, I was pretty pissed, but I’m not like those fuckers at Sean’s party.
I snort quietly at myself as I pad down the hallway, headed for the downstairs entertainment room.
Outside Emma’s room, I come to a halt.
There’s no glow under her door tonight.
There never will be again.
I open her door and push it wide. It’s not her room anymore—just an empty shell. Too neat, too tidy. There was always something out of place when Emma was inside, even if the cleaning lady had just finished.
When was the last time I saw her? It had to have been the day we left to go to Happy Mountain, but for the life of me, I can’t even pull up that memory.
It’s so cliché, but honest to God, you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.
My lungs fill with hot lead.
I blamed Dad, but it could just as easily have happened with Candy.
It might even have happened with me.
But it didn’t. It happened on Dad’s watch, and that’s something I’ll never be able to forgive him for.
Moving as fast as my legs can take me, I leave Emma’s room. I grab a soda from the fridge in the kitchen before heading into the entertainment area and switching on the massive flat-screen television up against one wall. I don’t bother with the lights—the screen does a good enough job of lighting up the bare bones of this place.
No point in lowering the volume, and that’s why I don’t hear my stepsister come up behind me.
When something brushes the back of my neck, I jerk forward and twist in my seat, glaring up at Candy.
“Sorry,” she mouths, shrugging. Her eyes flicker to the television. “Can’t sleep, huh?”
I don’t bother replying. Instead, I turn back to the TV and kick up the volume a few notches.
She just keeps standing at the corner of my vision. When did she come back inside the house? From the floral scent wreathing her and her crisp PJs, she had enough time to change her clothes and take a shower. Her hair is damp and pulled into a braid, her face glowing like she’s just washed it.
The perfect daughter, if you rule out the fact that she’s an alcoholic with an attitude problem.
Eventually, she comes to sit on the couch with me. I want to tell her to fuck off and go find somewhere else to mope, but then I hear those words again.
Can you help me?
I catch her glancing over at me before hurriedly looking away. I shift on the seat, and reluctantly grab one of the throw blankets neatly draping the back of the couch. “Wasn’t expecting company,” I say, tugging the blanket over my lap.
“It’s okay,” she says. A moment later, she takes the other blanket and pulls it over her shoulders.
In a snap, I’m back in the bathroom all those months ago, our first day of school.
The first time I saw her bruises. I should have realized back then that if she’d drank enough to injure herself like that, then she might need a fucking therapist.
She huddles into the blanket, drawing it tighter and tighter around her. But she doesn’t say anything. Oh no, not the proud and stubborn Candace Fur—Candace Bale.
“Should have dried your hair. Then you wouldn’t be so cold.”
“Josiah?”
I don’t know why she decided to call me that, but anything’s better than Jo. I glance up at the ceiling, and then lower the volume. I’m watching on-demand, but that’s no excuse for her to interrupt the movie. “What?”
“How much does your Dad know about…Sean?”
I twist in my seat. “What’s brought this up?”
She’s staring straight ahead at the screen. “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing.”
Her shoulders sag. “Thank you.”
“He’d have come down on me like a ton of bricks for letting you get hurt.” I let out a low laugh. “Or have you forgotten the fact that he put me in charge?”
“Of course not.” She lifts her shoulders, as if she’s trying to huddle into herself. Then she peeks at me, eyes narrowed. “They didn’t…they didn’t fuck me.”
“Jesus,” I mutter, holding up a hand. “I don’t want to know.”
But she just keeps talking. “I mean, they—they tried to—but I totally freaked out. I think I bit one of them.”
I’m staring straight ahead, trying to block out the sound of her voice. But now my mind’s churning, and I can’t stop listening.
I do my best not to think about that night because when I do, I become unnecessarily violent. I dropped football the next day, because I couldn’t stand the thought of being in such close proximity to those sick fucks. I’d told Coach it was so I could focus on my grades, and he bought it. Dad bought it too. He even told me he was proud that night at the dinner table.
Candy didn’t look up from her plate that night. She didn’t touch her wine. When her mother asked her what was wrong, she said she had girl-stuff, and then excused herself from the table.
I’d been going back and forth in my mind—one minute convinced I had to report them, the next absolutely positive that I couldn’t. I told myself it was because I was protecting her—who the fuck wanted to sit up in front of a judge and relate a sordid ordeal like that to a crowd of strangers?—but I also knew it was because nothing would come of it.
I didn’t have many friends at Maple Ridge besides Alex, because the guys there are all fucked in the head. They think they can get away with anything, and they often
do. Sean, especially—with his dad working on the force, there’s nothing much he can’t sweep under the carpet. And, for some reason, he never hesitates to.
“You chased them off?” I ask, finally looking at her again. Warmth floods my chest as I think of her in that red room, wild as a rabid dog, clawing and biting anything that got close to her.
So not her blood then. Theirs.
“I guess,” she says absently. The movie’s still playing, and a particularly bright scene washes her face with light. That light glimmers off a tear track.
Fuck.
“Hey, that shit’s done and dusted.” I attempt to inject a smile into my words, but it falls flat.
She fought them, and she won. I don’t know why I’m so fucking proud of her, but my mind’s too fucked to figure it out. Instead, I reach out for her and brush my fingertips against the edge of her shoulder. She starts at the touch and sends that azure-blue stare my way.
“Come here,” I murmur, beckoning her with a flick of my fingers.
If she’d stayed where she was, then I’d probably have left and gone to bed. She should have stayed where she was, because then we’d still just be two kids watching movies way past our bedtime.
But she didn’t.
She gathered that blanket around her shoulder and moved closer, inch by inch.
And the whole time, those big eyes of hers stayed on me. They mirrored every emotion trundling through my mind.
Wariness.
Utter fascination.
Heart-pounding anticipation.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Candy
Josiah’s body is warm and hard against mine. I hold myself stiffly, not sure what he wants from me. What he wants to do to me. He drapes an arm over my shoulder and draws me a little closer, then gently pushes my head to his chest.
To provide comfort?
My body grows heavy. Every inch of me is supported—either by Josiah or by the couch. I’ve never felt this…safe before.
He turns the sound back up, and I watch the images stream over the screen without paying them much attention. I can’t; I’m too busy focusing on the way his chest lifts and falls under my head with every breath he takes.
