by A. M. Wilson
My shoes squeaked against the linoleum as they carried me backwards to the door. Turn around. Go get Law. Come right back. She’ll be okay. She’s gonna hang on for more than a few minutes. She’s strong; stronger than I ever was and ever will be. Just go. Get Law and come right back.
I turned and fled.
I burst through the door to the private waiting area. The second my eyes hit Law’s, he was out of his chair and crossing the room.
His face morphed into worry and pain. “Is she okay?”
Tears burned before spilling hot onto my cheeks. A thorny vine formed from years of secrets and guilt snaked around my stomach, squeezing, pricking, inflicting the pain I so deserved to feel.
I soaked him in, taking my last look of the man I’d loved my entire life. The man I fell deeper in love with over the past three days, and opened my mouth to deliver the news that would ultimately break us beyond repair.
There was no going back.
“She, she-she-she-she’s...” I sucked in air through my nose, “She’s okay. It’s not her. I need you to come with me.”
He cupped me cheek, and oh, how did I want to lay into his touch. The small movement of his thumb swiping my tears away felt like he struck a match against the sensitive skin beneath my eye.
His concerned gazed moved from me to the door separating us from her. “If you need me, of course, I will.”
I stepped out of his comfort. Our point of contact fell in slow motion between us. “It’s not for me. It’s just that, if something were to happen, I couldn’t go on–ˮ
He attempted to shut down the train of thought from earlier by cutting me off and saying, “Nothing’s going to happen to her.” Trying to close the growing gap between us, his feet shuffled forward, but it was too late. It was like the earth cracked in a powerful earthquake. The chasm between us spread wider and wider, and the tectonic plates shifted, and mine dragged me out to sea.
“Law, listen to me.” I blew out a forceful exhale. “If something did. If. I couldn’t live with myself knowing I let you sit out here, when you should have been in there with her. Family sticks together.”
“Okay, Cam, I’m listening. I said I’d go in there for you. We’ve always been like family.”
I gathered the hair in front of my head and twisted my fingers at the crown. “I don’t mean me. She’s your family, Law. She’s your real family.”
Instantly after reiterating, he brows snapped together. His voice turned dark when he asked, “What exactly are you saying?”
I couldn’t look at him. My eyes drifted to the row of chairs we’d been sitting in together not long ago, wishing and knowing I could never go back to having his arms around me and my ass in his lap.
“Look at me,” he barked ominously.
I did.
“I’m saying she’s your half-sister.”
“Fuck!” He didn’t draw out the word. He spat it sharply like it tasted foul on his tongue. “How? How in all the possibilities in the world could that have ever happened?”
I felt life leaking out of me as he went from looking at me with concern to looking at me with disgust. Could I blame him? I’d worn the same expression every time I looked in the mirror for fourteen years. The shame his produced within me was a hundred times worse, but I deserved it.
“The day you told me you wanted to see other people. I rode the bus home, since I didn’t want to get into your truck, and I thought the whole way there. I wanted to talk to you, so I got off at the bus stop and ran to your house. You weren’t home, and I broke down.”
“So, to get back at me you fucked my father?!” he roared.
I flinched. “No! God, no. The thought of revenge wasn’t even on my mind.”
“Bullshit.”
“It wasn’t. I swear to you on my life, it wasn’t. I was so hurt and alone and vulnerable. At that point, I’d truly lost everyone I’d ever cared about. Ritchie had been sick for over two years without signs of getting better. He’d been back in the hospital for a nasty respiratory infection, and the day before we got the news his cancer had spread again. Everyone around me was leaving or dying, Law, I just...” I gripped the back of my head in both hands. My eyes welled with tears, but I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to make this about me and my feelings right now. I looked to the ceiling and tried to blink them away. I hid my eyes, but I couldn’t hide the tremor in my voice. “I don’t even know what happened! One second I was crying, and the next, he was telling me I didn’t deserve to hurt so much.”
“I don’t want to hear this. You’re nothing but a goddamned whore.”
Those words reduced my heart to dust.
“Admit it. You seduced my father to get back at me for hurting you, and when you got pregnant, you ran away. No wonder you didn’t come to me.”
“Law, please,” I begged. My breaths quickened. I was near hyperventilating. “You have to believe me.”
He walked past, and it took everything to restrain myself from reaching out to me.
“I don’t have to believe anything you say. Not anymore.”
He jammed the button to buzz the nurses’ station with his thumb, and I followed him down the hall. The doors opened, and he passed through without acknowledging my existence.
“Which room is she in?”
“Six.” The word floated out of me on a shuddered breath.
“I can’t even stand to look at you. Once she’s out of the woods here, we won’t see each other again. Not in any capacity other than me coming and going. But she’s,” he jerked his finger in the general direction of Evelyn, “gonna be in my life. You will never be.”
He tore the door to her room open and left me outside. While every instinct inside me desperately wanted to follow, I gave him five minutes with her alone.
That was all I could stand.
I was grateful to see he put a chair on the left side of her bed for me. The one he occupied mirrored its position.
I sat down and scooted as close as I could to her head. Reaching down, I lowered the guardrail, crossed my arms, and created a resting place for my head next to hers. My arms served as a pillow. The beeps and expirations of her machines filled the silence.
A train crashed in my mind, memories of the day I’d tried so hard to suppress assailing me from all sides. I’d blocked them out and hadn’t allowed myself to relive them for fourteen years.
Today, I wasn’t strong enough to do that. They flooded forward. The dam I’d erected to hold them back was broken.
12.
Fifteen years earlier...
It was snowing.
My mind was numb as I ran the two and a half blocks from my house to Law’s. I couldn’t feel the hard ice crystals pelting my back and melting in my hair.
I couldn’t hear the wind whipping past my ears or the cars splashing through the puddles along the side of the road.
Headlights where nothing but a bright flash of yellow. The car behind them didn’t register. The sky was a mass of chaotic hues of gray.
Sometimes being numb didn’t mean being unable to feel. Sometimes being numb meant feeling anything and everything all at once and being unable to process it all.
That was me. I was numb. I was feeling everything in a way I knew it was about to destroy me.
Law and I got into a fight at school. A big fight. An epic fight. The kind of fight most people don’t walk away from and remain best friends.
Let alone, friends.
Or even less, boyfriend/girlfriend.
Which we weren’t anyway.
This happened at lunch, and the entire rest of the day, I couldn’t focus on anything else. I should’ve been happy he was honest with me. Instead, I was crushed.
I took the bus home, rather than catching a ride with him like I did every day, and that gave me a moment to think about what he’d said.
“We should use this time for experiences, Cami. I want our future to have no regrets.”
“You and me, we’re a forever ki
nd of thing.”
If that were true, then he’d have no problem being with me right now. But he had to go on to say this.
“I’m going to date Steph.
The memory of those words rang throughout my head as Law’s house came into sight. They made my gut clench and ache more than the Olympic speed I set my pace to in my desperation to get to Law before he left.
With the icy snow numbing my face, I couldn’t even feel the tears streaming down my cheeks.
I hit his porch still running and hurtled up all three steps in one leap. My fist collided with his front door. Still pounding, I shouted, “Law! Open up!”
Nobody yelled back and the door didn’t move. I hiccupped a sob and a clarity entered my desperate mind. My surroundings appeared, and I took them in. Law’s truck wasn’t even parked in the drive.
Disbelief placed my hand on the door handle and turned.
Shock moved my feet forward inside of his house.
Pain sent me running up the stairs to his second-floor bedroom.
Empty.
I barely made it to the edge of his bed before my knees gave out, and I collapsed. Naively, I thought my opinion would get to him. Would change his mind. He knew how much I cared about him, didn’t he? Why would he try so hard to push me away when I was begging him not to?
Why was she better than me?
I was stupid, that’s why. I’d lost just about everything. My parents were gone. Ritchie’s condition deteriorated daily. Maybe Law’s had enough of the lonely girl with the sad story? As many times as I heard bad news or lost somebody, he’d been there to support me. Could I blame him for saying enough is enough?
Maybe he’s right. He needed to have real high school experiences while he still could. Cancer and death and money were adult responsibilities he shouldn’t have to think about.
But where did that leave me? I couldn’t just walk away from my life. I couldn’t pretend my parents were still alive and that the brother I looked up to wasn’t dying from cancer.
The tears physically hurt as they trailed down my sensitive cheeks. I fisted my fingers into the soft duvet on his bed.
“Why now, Law?” I whispered.
“Cami? Are you all right?”
Law’s father stood in the entry to Law’s room, gripping the doorframe almost as if he were holding on.
I startled and tried to dash away the tears on my cheeks, but it was no use. They kept falling. “Y-yes. I’m sorry for barging in.”
“Did something happen to Ritchie?” He asked with the same tone of concern his son would have, and that twisted my heart further.
“No, sir. Nothing like that.”
“Law?” This time his voice held fear for himself. He stepped further into the room and stopped at the end of the bed, fingers gripping the footboard.
“No! I-I’m sorry,” I choked, another sob taking hold at hearing his name aloud. This might be the last time I sit in this house.
“Then what is it?”
I dropped my head, sucking in a deep breath through my nose. “We had a fight,” I muttered.
“Oh.”
“I love him, and he’s on a date with another girl.”
His father sighed and rounded the bed to sit beside me. “It’s no surprise to me that you love my boy. The two of you have been nearly inseparable since we moved here when he was seven.”
A fresh wave of tears assaulted me at the years of memories.
“That said, he’s gonna do what he wants. That might mean seeing other girls. That might mean the two of you don’t end up together. But, Cami.” He waited until he had my attention. “As clichéd as this sounds, if it’s meant to be, he’ll come back to you.”
“That’s bullshit boys say so they can fool around while the girl waits for them to come back.”
He laughed, and his eyes focused faraway. “Yeah, maybe.”
“I don’t want to wait for someone who isn’t coming back.” I started crying again. I couldn’t get a handle on the pain and talking wasn’t helping me.
“Aw, girl. Come here. Don’t cry over my boneheaded son.” His father opened his arms wide, and I accepted. It’d been a long time since I’d had comfort from someone other than Law, and having spent so much time in his house, his dad was probably the closest thing I had to a parental figure. I didn’t view him as such, but so long as his son cared for me, he did as well.
Which meant if I lost Law, I’d lose his parents, too.
I was sick of loss. Why couldn’t anyone I loved stick around?
The tears wouldn’t stop. They worsened with the hug so his father eventually pulled away. He handed me a tissue from the box on Law’s bed. “I don’t want to know why these are here,” he joked, getting a small smile from me. “Let me get you some water.”
When he left, I crawled up to Law’s pillow and curled into a ball on my side, facing the room. My head was a million miles away, in the land of memories and futures that would never happen, while my heart was lodged in my throat. Tears leaked continuously until the cotton beneath my cheek was soaked and strands of hair stuck to my face. The tissue clenched in my hand became useless.
It took a while for his father to return. I assumed he was calling Law to come deal with me, because what adult male wants to deal with a hormonal, crying, teenaged girl? But he came back with a soft look on his face and a glass of water in his hand.
He sat down close, the side of his left hip near the crook where mine bent, and handed me the water.
As I came up on one elbow, I noticed the unmistakable smell of booze on him. Law’s father wasn’t a big drinker, but it seemed the last few weeks he’d been picking up the bottle more often.
I wrapped my fingers against the cool glass, the condensation making them slippery. “Thanks.” I chugged it.
He took the glass from me and placed it on the nightstand. I flopped back onto the pillow and tucked my hands beneath my head.
“Let me just... stop crying... and I’ll go.” The words stuttered as I tried to breathe through the tears.
“My son is an idiot.”
My eyes flew to his at those words. His eyes were the only thing the two of them had in common. Looking into them hurt me so bad.
“He’s got such a good thing right in front of him, and he’s throwing it away for nothing. That girl has been chasing after him for months. If he doesn’t get his head out of his ass, he’s going to regret this for the rest of his life.”
I whimpered, the words hurting what’s already damaged. “You aren’t helping,” I cried softly.
He brushed the strands of hair away from my forehead. “You’re beautiful, and my son is a damn idiot.”
The compliment warmed me and made me feel understood.
What was happening here?
His eyes unfocused as he stared just above my forehead. “He’s still a boy. Doesn’t know how precious women are. But I’m a man, Cami. I know,” he muttered.
I shouldn’t have asked. I knew it wasn’t right, but I did it anyway. “What do you know?”
His eyes focused back on mine, and he dropped his elbow to the bed to lean in closer. The tips of his fingers skimmed my hip. My body froze; at the same time, the air seemed to evaporate from my lungs. I held my breath.
“I know how a beautiful woman deserves to be treated. How to make her feel good. I can show you, Cami. Being with someone doesn’t have to hurt this much.”
I didn’t think I answered. Maybe my subconscious took over and my head gave an imperceptible nod. Maybe my lips whispered yes, and I just don’t remember. Or, maybe it was on my face. My features gave the invitation, and he gladly accepted.
Whatever it was, the next thing I knew his mouth was on mine. Firm, yet exploring.
The first second felt wrong, but then my body softened. A man kissing me felt good. Everyone wants to be loved. To be wanted. Why was this so different?
I knew why, but in that moment, it was easier to pretend. It was easier to tell myself that I w
as worthy of attention when I felt anything but. It was easier to shove Law’s choices under the rug to be dealt with at another time. It was easier to push down the sickness at what was happening and imagine I was kissing someone else.
His body moved to cover mine more fully, and I stiffened.
“Relax. You’re so beautiful.”
He reached between us and unsnapped my jeans. Exhaustion from the crying jag set in, and my vision blurred. A haze overtook me.
The puzzle tore into jagged snapshots at that point, ones I could only seem to recall if I really tried.
His hands and mouth touching me. The pain of him pushing inside. The angry bite of stretched and shifted clothing. The sensation as he found his release.
The urgency of his voice coaxing me to get dressed.
The silence of him driving me home.
The forceful suggestion that we should keep what happened a secret, which only served to remind me that I wasn’t cared about, at all.
***
Three weeks later, after missing my usually regular period, I took a pregnancy test that came out positive.
That same night, Law showed up at my house when I got home from work at the local diner to get me back.
I’d said no.
The next day, when I should have been in school, I walked back to Law’s house. His father was home, as I’d expected, and seemed almost terrified to let me in the door.
“What happened before can’t happen again.”
He thought I was there to have sex. I was so dead inside that there wasn’t room for playing games. “I’m pregnant.”
He’d let me in long enough to try to talk me into an abortion. When I’d refused, not because I wanted something from him–but because I couldn’t imagine letting a doctor murder the baby growing inside of me–he got angry.
“You’re nothing but a little girl. What did you expect to happen here?” He tore a hand through his short, buzzed hair. The sight of those hands nauseated me. “That I’d leave my family to raise a child with you? If anybody found out, I could go to jail.”
