HUNTER (The Corbin Brothers Book 1)

by Lexie Ray

  “Your daughter has her own room upstairs,” Jack said without looking at me. It wasn’t lost on me that he emphasized “your.”

  “How about that?” Mom exclaimed, smiling at me. “Your very own room. Go check it out. I’ll be up in a minute.”

  “Stairs through the kitchen,” Jack said, the tone of voice telling me I shouldn’t be wandering around anywhere else.

  Still toting my backpack and suitcase, as I had done so many times before, I walked into the kitchen. Where were the stairs? I definitely didn’t want to have to ask Jack that and have him ridicule me in front of Mom. I eased open what I thought might be a cupboard and was surprised by a dusty, neglected set of stairs.

  I climbed them and set my suitcase down with a thump that I hoped they heard downstairs. This was a joke. It had to be.

  My room was nothing more than an attic.

  The floor was plywood and the exposed rafters were my ceiling. A round window at one end was the only light in the room besides a naked light bulb.

  At least Jack had done me the favor of shoving some of the boxes and old trunks aside to make room for a box spring and mattress in the middle of the floor. I sat down heavily on my bed and tried not to cry. What had Mom gotten us into? I would’ve taken another couch that sagged in the middle over this.

  I looked up at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Mom’s head popped into the room, her smile only faltering for a fraction of a second.

  “Well, look at this,” she said carefully. “What do you think?”

  She sat on the bed with me, the ice in the glass she held tinkling. I reached out to get a sip but Mom held it away from me.

  “Sorry, baby, adult beverage,” she said. “We can get you some water when we go downstairs.”

  It was the first cocktail I’d ever seen in my mother’s hand. It certainly wouldn’t be the last.

  “That’s okay,” I lied. “I’m not thirsty. I’m actually a little tired.”

  “Maybe you should take a nap,” Mom said, smoothing my hair away from my eyes. “You can’t be staying up so late, you know.”

  Mom patted my knee and stood to go.

  “How long are we going to be here with Jack?” I asked.

  I hated myself for the hurt on her face, but I had to know.

  “A long time, I hope, Jasmine,” Mom said, sipping from her drink. “I love him.”

  She walked back downstairs and I fell onto my back, counting and recounting the rafters. How much could Mom love a man who would put me in his attic? How long would she endure me being up here for him?

  It ended up being a very long time.

  Mom started drinking more and more. Soon, it became a rare sight to see her without a glass in her hand. She seemed to walk around like she was in a dream. The alcohol drove a wedge between us, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I couldn’t trust her.

  I was alone in that house of neglect.

  One day, at dawn, perhaps a month or two after we’d moved in, I woke up in my attic room. It was a Saturday morning in late autumn, the last of the leaves clinging to the branches for dear life.

  Something felt different. The atmosphere was thicker, somehow. I chalked it up to the chilly weather.

  I threw on my robe and belted it before making my way downstairs. In the kitchen, I stopped dead in my tracks. Jack was at the table reading the newspaper. He raised his gaze from the sports results and met my eyes for what could’ve been the first time since I’d been there.

  My first inclination was to blurt sorry, but I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t understand why I had to continuously apologize for my existence. Also, the sound of my voice seemed to irritate him. I knew it was better to wait until Jack asked me a question.

  His eyes hadn’t left mine. “Your mother had to go in to work for a while,” Jack said. “You will clean the house.”

  It wasn’t a statement or even a command. It was just a fact. Mom was gone. I’d be doing her work. She usually teetered around the house with a feather duster in one hand and a cocktail in the other, but she got it done.

  I turned and went back the way I came to get dressed, closing the door to the stairway behind me. Assuming that a chance at breakfast or even doing my homework was out of the question, I threw on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. It was strange that Jack wasn’t at work with her. Mom was hardly ever without him. The situation was strange, but not outside the realm of possibility.

  I descended the stairs again and opened the door. Jack was standing right in my path, making me stop short.

  “Don’t ever leave a room without me excusing you,” he said.

  Then, without even a hint of venom, as if it were the most natural thing to follow such a statement, he slapped me. Hard. On my face.

  Shocked nearly beyond words, I covered the spreading heat on my cheek with my hand. His blue eyes watched me impassively while the rest of my face colored as red as the cheek he’d slapped.

  “What the fuck is your problem?” I demanded, my vision slowly coloring red with rage. I’d never been so angry in my entire life. I didn’t choose to live here. I tried to stay out of his way. I was going to clean the house. What more did he want from me?

  All my anger—and color—drained away as Jack grabbed me by the throat. I hung onto his arm with both hands as he hauled me out of the stairwell, shut the door, and pushed me up against it.

  He got close enough to me for me to smell the coffee he had been drinking and cigarettes he had been smoking even as I coughed and gagged, trying to get air past the compression on my windpipe.

  “You are a slut and a freeloader,” Jack said in the same even tone he always used. It was so much worse than being shouted at. “You are ungrateful for my charity. You get in my way. And the only reason you are alive right now is because of me.”

  He squeezed my windpipe even tighter, making me squeak out a hoarse gasp. Helpless tears ran down my face, making his pale face blurry.

  “You will do exactly what I say at all times,” Jack continued conversationally. “You will do away with your sullen attitude. You will talk to your mother less. She is mine. Not yours. You are mine, and I keep you alive simply because your mother would be disconsolate if you weren’t.”

  Everything that I could see had taken on a faint gray cast. I tried desperately to send air to my lungs through my nose, but it just wasn’t enough. He had to let go of me. Please, God. Let go of me.

  “Now, you’re going to have bruises on your neck,” Jack continued. “If your mother notices—and I doubt she will—you’re to tell her they’re hickeys from some gang banger at school. You’re a slut, so it’ll make sense.”

  In a last ditch effort to get him to let go of my throat, I dug my nails into Jack’s skin. He didn’t so much as flinch.

  “And if you ever try to tell your mother about this little conversation, I’ll toss you both out on the streets. You won’t survive. Your mother has developed an alcohol problem, if you haven’t noticed. Her body physically needs it. I supply it. It makes her easier to control, of course.”

  Without warning, Jack released his grip on my windpipe and walked out of the kitchen.

  I slid to the floor, coughing as sweet oxygen flowed into my aching lungs. The relief was so intense that I felt stupidly grateful to Jack for simply letting me go.

  Jack.

  What was I going to do? What were we going to do?

  I numbly regained my footing, stumbling over to the sink and retrieving the cleaning supplies in the cabinet below. It took me three tries to pull the yellow rubber gloves over my shaking hands.

  The kitchen looked immaculate, along with the rest of the house, but I knew why now. There was a reason everything looked so clean all the time—it was because someone was always cleaning it.

  I wiped down the countertops, stove, and microwave with a wet rag before drying them. Next came the dishes. Then the sweeping. Then the mopping.

  Each action became the only thing to keep me going. The phys
ical labor kept my mind from working, from trying to process what had just happened to me.

  I took out the furniture polish and another rag before moving my efforts to the sitting room. I removed the baskets of categorized magazines from the table and worked oil into the wood, rubbing furiously until it shone in the light coming in from the window. I replaced the baskets and refolded the throw on the pale white couch. I washed the window, swept the floor and mopped it.

  I couldn’t stop working. It was the only thing that kept me going.

  It wasn’t until I got to the hall bathroom that everything caught up to me.

  I turned on the light and sobbed quietly at the finger marks on my neck. Already turning purple, I knew they’d be black before the day was over. A hickey? Sure. Mom would never believe that. I clung to the sink, paralyzed with desperation.

  It suddenly became clear to me what I was going to have to do. I’d have to get Mom alone and show her the bruises. I’d tell her exactly where they came from—not from some idiot at school. And if Jack threw us out, so what? We could survive. We could. We’d done it by ourselves for years before he ever slithered into our lives. We could do it again. I could drop out of school, get a job, help with the rent. It could happen.

  I turned on the water and washed my face. It was puffy, and I realized for the first time that it had a slightly blue tinge. Had Jack almost killed me? Staring into the mirror, my expression scared me. The whites of my eyes were bloodshot, making the green flecks of their hazel color stand out. I looked like a stranger, desperation coloring all of my features. I smoothed my hair and took a deep breath through my nose, trying to calm myself. This was going to work because it had to, I decided. There wasn’t an alternative.

  When Mom came home from work, the house was immaculate and I was trying to seize an opening for her attention. Her regular routine was to spend about an hour in Jack’s room. Then she usually mixed herself a drink in the kitchen while Jack took a shower. I refused to ruminate about what they might be doing in there.

  So when I heard the familiar tinkle of ice in a highball glass, I tumbled down the stairs and burst into the kitchen.

  “Mom,” I said breathlessly. “I have to talk to you.”

  She barely glanced at me. “Jasmine, I’ve had a long day,” she said, exhaustion plain in her voice.

  I knew that her long day had been primarily composed of longing for the drink she was about to suck down.

  I switched tack. “I was thinking that maybe we could move soon.”

  Mom ignored me and focused on dumping as much of her cocktail as she could into her stomach. I sidled into the light, raising my head. I’d changed into a tank top to better display the wretched bruises on my neck.

  She exhaled with a sigh and I could smell the stink of gin in the air. Did that cocktail have any mixer in it at all?

  “Why would you want to move?” she asked, looking at me. “We have everything we need here. Aren’t you happy?”

  I swallowed. Why hadn’t she said anything about my bruises?

  “Of course I’m happy,” I lied. “Jack is really good to us, you’re right. It’s just that I’m a little worried about the gang activity at my school. One of my friends got beat up this week and I think I would be more comfortable in another district, maybe.”

  This would normally get her attention. Mom loathed gangs. They had apparently taken a large toll on her own childhood, though she refused to talk about it.

  Her eyelids didn’t even flicker.

  “Maybe you’re keeping the wrong friends,” she suggested, an edge to her voice. “I certainly hope you’d stay away from the vacuum cleaner who gave you those hickeys. Have some pride, Jasmine.”

  With that, Mom left the kitchen.

  No, we wouldn’t survive on the streets anymore, I realized. Gone were the days where we could spend the night on a bus in search of new hope with the rising sun in the morning. The bus didn’t serve liquor. Only Jack served enough liquor to keep her happy.

  I’d lost Mom to Jack. That was obvious to me now, even though he’d told me exactly the same thing this morning.

  I was alone in this house. Alone in this situation. Alone.

  Crushed under the weight of defeat, I climbed the stairs again. No part of this house was mine, not even my room. Not even my bed. What was supposed to feel like a refuge now felt like a prison.

  Crossing the attic, avoiding the creaky parts out of habit, I stared out the window. Families walked down the sidewalk on the way to the neighborhood park, with mothers pushing strollers and fathers lifting giggling children over their heads. Why couldn’t any of that belong to me? Why couldn’t I have a loving family? The word “family” seemed as elusive as the idea of having a real one. Visions of Jack and Mom enveloping me in a comforting hug were actually laughable.

  I looked down at the porch and saw Jack sitting in the rocking chair,smoking. It was his favorite evening habit. How could I get rid of him? Half-baked schemes of poison or prison or some Superman to whisk Mom and me away flitted through my mind.

  Almost as if he knew what I was plotting, Jack lifted his eyes to the attic window. He stared at me, his expression placid. He continued puffing and looking at me until I backed away from the window, my heart in my throat, beating hard enough to make the bruises hurt.

  There wasn’t an escape, I realized, unless it was something that I orchestrated myself. I vowed to bide my time until I saw my way out.

  Desperate days turned into weary weeks. Months fraught with danger melted into years.

  Biding my time was incredibly hard. I tried to adhere to Jack’s orders. If I couldn’t make myself smile, I at least hid my scowl. I gradually eased away from my mother, letting her lose herself in the bottle.

  Once, I realized that I hadn’t spoken in the house for one whole week.

  It was immediately apparent, however, that nothing I did would ever please Jack. If I stood silently in a room, waiting to be excused, he’d cuff me for inactivity. If I asked to be excused, he’d slap me for speaking out of turn.

  I was doing the dishes after dinner one night as Jack smoked at the table and Mom swilled her drink. A wet glass slipped from my soapy hands and broke on the floor.

  Jack was on me in a second, bending my fingers back until several joints cracked. He wasn’t even frowning. His face was as frighteningly blank as ever.

  “Stop!” I screamed, in agony. “Stop! I’m sorry! Mom! Mommy!”

  “Stop whining,” Mom said, sounding like she was speaking from behind a curtain. Her mind was already well veiled with cocktails. It always was by dinnertime.

  “Clumsy girls deserve to be punished,” Jack said. “You’ll remember to be more careful next time, won’t you?”

  “Yes,” I sobbed. Anything to make him release my hand.

  Three of my fingers were sprained. I could barely bend them.

  “Finish the dishes,” Jack said. He took his pack of cigarettes and headed out the front door to his rocking chair.

  I shuddered, looking at all the delicate glassware in the sink. How was I going to manage with my mangled hand?

  Ice tinkled from the table as Mom finished her cocktail. She rose unsteadily, staggering toward the bar to make herself another drink. How many was she going to pour down her throat tonight, I wondered? Something inside me snapped.

  “Did you see what your boyfriend did to me?” I demanded hysterically, thrusting my hand into her face. “Have you been seeing what your boyfriend is doing to me? Do you see anything anymore? Fucking drunk!”

  For a moment, I thought I saw a shadow of Mom—the person Mom used to be. She looked confused, angry, and sorry. Then, whatever demon drove her to drink reasserted itself. That devil, thirst.

  “Get outta my face,” Mom mumbled, shoving me away from her. She mixed a drink and downed it immediately before fixing another. She chugged it again. She was mixing another when I ran upstairs.

  I couldn’t stand to watch her anesthetize herself that way
. It was unbearable without having the same tools at my own disposal. I faced every situation painfully sober, naked, without so much as a shield.

  I started staying away from that hateful yellow house. I invented every excuse I could come up with. By then, I was a junior in high school.

  “Beta Club today after school,” I’d say as I was running out the door, “National Honor Society,” though my grades were far too low, “soccer,” though I’d never kicked a ball in my life, “group project.”

  I’d already begun withdrawing from all my friends at school, driven away by their concern at the injuries I couldn’t hide with a turtleneck or long sleeves.

  Jack would probably murder me if the police got involved.

  Instead, I’d crouch in the library until the school kicked me out. I read everything, anything to stop my thoughts and fears from consuming me.

  When they locked the doors to the school, I’d ride the bus. I had a pass to get me to and from school, but I’d visit the neighborhoods we used to live in. I thought about how life would be different as I stared up at the apartment buildings that had hosted happier times between Mom and me. How did everything get so screwed up? I’d ride to the end of the line, the bus driver blinking in surprise at me because he thought everyone had gotten off at their stops.

  Even then, I was learning to become a shadow. I just didn’t realize it yet.

  If I got home too late, there would be hell to pay. Mom would be inconsolable, spitting and screaming at me in a full drunken lather. Jack would beat me in front of her, saying that it was for my own good. I had to learn to listen. I had to learn to mind.

  “You’re lucky Jack gives a shit about you,” Mom slurred. “He wants you to be safe and good and you just spit in his face. You don’t give a goddamn about the people who love you.”

  The people who love me? The next day I had to explain a black eye to my high school counselor.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Stark,” I said, shrugging and grinning sheepishly. “I’m just not very athletic. I was trying to catch a baseball, but it hit me in my eye.”