She hadn’t raised us with religion, but I was certain of one thing—my mom really was in a better place. Anything was better than the place she’d been in…the place I’d been in, as well.
I thought about going back to that silent house, smelling of bleach and sickness, and my knees gave way.
“Meagan!”
My brother caught me before I could fall, swinging me toward a cement bench erected beside a grave by some other grieving family.
“Don’t make me go back there,” I babbled, terrified at the idea of the ghosts that would be there, waiting for me in that house. “Please. I can’t go back there.”
“Go back where?” My brother’s face was pinched with concern, and I hated being so weak in front of him. He had his own concerns, and he hadn’t understood what it had been like in the house. He couldn’t know because I’d never told anyone.
“Just take me with you,” I begged. I knew I sounded desperate, and I hated it, but it was the most honest I could’ve been. I was desperate to get out of that house, out of this town, out of my life.
“Meagan, you know that I’m still trying to get on my feet,” Matt said, looking chagrined. “I’m sorry that you were the one who found Mom like that. You don’t want to go back to the house, and I understand that, but you have to.”
“I won’t be any trouble,” I promised him, shaking my head back and forth violently. No. I couldn’t go back to the house. I wouldn’t. I was going to escape. This was the only chance I’d get. “You know that I’ve always wanted to live in New York City. I would be able to help you with your rent. I’d get a job anywhere to start, and I’d be so good that I’d start climbing the corporate ladder, or whatever. You just have to give me a chance.”
“I know you’re going to be great at whatever you choose to do,” he said, his face sad, “but I’m living in a hole in the wall with three other guys. I can’t bring my sister into that kind of living situation, understand? I don’t trust them.”
“I’ll sleep with a baseball bat,” I said, the words rushing out of my mouth. “I can handle myself.”
Matt snorted. “You’re from Nowhere, New York, Meagan. This is New York City we’re talking about. You have no idea about the kinds of things that can happen there.”
With that statement, I knew I was much more worldly than my big brother. It was a moment that should’ve upset me more. I’d always felt that he was the one who was going to whisk me away from all of this pain and suffering and torment. He was going to be the one who was going to save me.
But he couldn’t save me. He hadn’t. And he wouldn’t.
I hadn’t been able to save myself, either. Or my mom.
“Meagan, you know I don’t want to leave you here, alone in that house,” he said, “but you have to give me a chance to establish myself in New York City before I can just bring you there to live with me. I have to pay my dues.”
He continued talking, and I let his words wash over me, unfeeling. He was promising to move me to the city in a year’s time, after he could determine how some job prospect was going to pan out. Matt sounded hopeful, determined, and that was all well and fine, but I knew I couldn’t trust my big brother to save me anymore. He didn’t have a clue about what could happen to a girl left on her own.
“So, what do you think?” he was saying, rubbing his hands together against a cold wind that had just started blowing. The unseasonable warmth was just starting to turn, and part of me was glad, hoping it would really turn nasty now, wishing for winter to freeze my impotent rage and self-loathing.
“What do I think about what?”
“Give me a year,” he said. “I have a really good feeling about this job I applied to. I’m supposed to have an interview next week. Give me a year to save up—and you start saving up, too—and then I’ll come back for you.”
I shuddered helplessly, and it wasn’t the wind. Someone else had said that to me, and it had been more of a promise than what my brother was telling me now.
“It’s all my fault,” I repeated.
“What did I say?” Matt demanded, his face stone. “I don’t want you saying that. Mom dying wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. She was sick, Meagan. You have to accept that.”
“You don’t understand.” I locked eyes with my brother. “You don’t have a fucking clue. Mom’s dead because of me. I killed her.”
Chapter 7
My brother stared at me like there was something wrong with me. There was something wrong with me—lots of things, in fact. He didn't know the extent of it. But I couldn’t blame the way he was staring at me now. I’d just told him, at our mother’s burial, that I was the reason she’d died.
That I’d killed her.
“Meagan, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, finally breaking the silence. The weather had taken a nasty turn, transforming an unseasonably beautiful day into something a little more appropriate for a funeral. The coat I’d worn wasn’t thick enough, but I welcomed the bite of the north wind. It hurt, and I deserved to hurt. The physical pain was such a nice distraction from the emotional guilt.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” I said. “I was there. You weren’t. The fact that she died—that’s my fault, Matt.”
My brother put his face in his hands. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here. I’m sorry, Meagan. If this is you trying to impress upon me that it wasn’t fair for me to leave you here, then you’re right. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t understand how bad it was with Mom. I know that it wasn’t easy to see her gradually fade away.”
I violently shook my head back and forth. That wasn’t how it had happened. That wasn’t it at all, and Matt didn’t know how truly bad it had been—our mother’s death wasn’t even the half of it.
I didn’t know if everything that happened would’ve still happened if my brother were there. It was hard to know—impossible, even, to guess. And it was painful to imagine—not to mention unfair—that I would be angry with him over his presence. He was trying to earn a living to bring more money home, to make sure our mother had the funds she needed to battle her illness.
That had all been in vain.
I wasn’t so sure she’d been sick anymore. That was how warped my reality was. Someone with enough knowledge of medicine, who had access to the right or wrong drugs, could simulate anything, more or less.
I was painfully aware of that. I just didn’t know how to tell my brother. He’d already dismissed the worst truth I’d tried to offer him.
I loved my brother, as much as I could love a person anymore, but his practical nature sometimes got in the way. He thought everything had an explanation—that if he just asked the right questions and thought about it long enough, he’d be able to divine anything.
He was the older one, but it was apparent I was going to have to protect him from this awful truth. Sometimes, brother dear, shitty things just happened. There weren’t reasons for them. There wasn’t an easy explanation, one that tied the narrative up in a neat little bow and left you satisfied.
There were real monsters out there, and one of them had been living with us.
Another one was me.
“I understand why you weren’t here,” I said finally, “and I don’t blame you for it. You were trying to help the family.”
“I didn’t do enough,” he said, his shoulders slumping. “I couldn’t protect you from seeing Mom deteriorate. And I couldn’t earn enough money to get her better treatment.”
How had I worked myself into this position? My brother had been overprotective of me for my entire life. How could I protect him from his own guilt when mine was trying to swallow me whole?
“Mom was just really sick, Matt,” I said. “It mystified the doctors.”
“She should’ve had better doctors.” Poor, practical Matt.
“It’s better that she’s at rest.” I couldn’t believe the words I was finding to say. Of course our mother wasn’t better off dead, not when I wasn’t
entirely convinced she’d been sick in the first place. “She suffered a lot.” That statement was true, but not at the hands of some arbitrary illness. There was a name I could give her tormenter, but I didn’t trust my brother with that knowledge.
I didn’t want him to think I was crazy on top of everything else. I could imagine him weeping as he locked me away in some institution and threw away the key. He’d never believe anything I’d tell him, and it would destroy our relationship. Right now, I needed him to get me out of this town. I couldn’t sacrifice our bond over something as awful as the truth.
“You know better than I did what happened,” he said, sighing. If he could admit that, why couldn’t he believe me when I told him I was at fault in her death? Was it that painful to believe? It would give him the explanation he craved, the easy bow that would help him sleep easy at night.
Only it wouldn’t be an easy sleep. My brother would never forgive himself, and then I’d have one more life on my hands.
The heavy equipment roared behind us, shoving the dirt on top of our mother’s casket. Each heavy thump of the earth falling on top of her made us both flinch.
I suddenly wished I were crazy enough for my brother to lock away. If I were removed from reality, I wouldn’t have to deal with this. I couldn’t deal with this. My anxiety flared mightily, and it felt like the heavy equipment behind us was piling dirt on top of me, load after load, keeping me from breathing.
“There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” my brother said, though I could barely hear him above the roar in my own ears, the harbinger that I was about to lose my composure.
“What don’t you understand?” I asked, my voice faint. I could tell him lots of things he wouldn’t understand, lots of things I still didn’t understand myself.
“I don’t understand why Carl didn’t come to Mom’s funeral.”
It was at that statement I started vomiting.
Chapter 8
Levi’s townhouse had become something of a playground for me. I loved to while away an afternoon by lurking through the sumptuous rooms, not having to pretend very hard that they belonged to me.
Each time I decided on a room that was my favorite, the designation lasted for all but a handful of minutes until I revised it, settling on something different. I would love the foyer for its rich wooden floors, the way my shoes sounded when I walked across it, the curve of the staircase up to the second floor, the high ceiling and its dangling chandelier. It was the room that set the tone for the rest of the house, and it did not disappoint.
But then I would remember everything about the master bedroom—the enormous four-poster bed with long, maroon curtains, the shaggy alabaster rug that shielded my bare feet from the cold floor, the way the lights could dim and fade and brighten according to whatever mood needed to be lit, and, of course, the amazing sex I was having in there. It was perhaps the room I spent the most time in—though that didn’t stop Levi and me from christening other parts of the townhouse with our coupling.
He hadn’t been joking when he’d told me several weeks ago that he thought he was getting addicted to me. We had sex at least twice every day, his appetite just as rampant as mine. I was always after that light at the end, the physical release that would temporarily calm my inner turmoil. Sex with Levi was better than sex with anyone I’d ever experienced it with, and my view on my own sexuality was shifting.
Sex was something I’d binged on back in my hometown. I’d seduce any man without knowing him, knowing that if I could manage to get off at the end, the orgasm would remove me from my cares—if only for a few brief moments. That relief would be enough for me to throw myself at whoever came by, whatever they looked like, with no regard for my personal safety or their personalities.
I hated myself for my weakness and lack of resolve. I hated the fact that I used sex as a coping mechanism for the very real horror I’d undergone—the one that continued to torment me, even though it was in the past. And I especially hated that my anxiety about my sexual proclivities just continued to pile on top of all the other anxieties I already had.
It was a cycle I couldn’t break.
Then Levi had come along, out of the blue, to see what he could do to save me. My brother, in death, had pushed the exact person I needed in my direction, and I had seized upon him with no intention of letting him out of my grasp.
With Levi, sex was a sure thing. Our bodies were in tune with each other from the start, and we never said no to each other. We never wanted to say no. That’s how good it always was. We never failed to bring each other to completion, to make each other feel desired and cherished. Levi once missed an entire week of work simply because neither of us wanted to get out of bed or put clothes on. It was like a fever dream of pure carnal ecstasy.
His hands roamed every inch of my body; his tongue followed the paths his fingers decided on.
Our lips locked so that we had to breathe for each other, taking in air that was exhaled in moans, the only language we needed for the entire week.
Our fingers threaded together, my arms pushed up over my head, gripping his hands as he pumped again, and again, and again.
The way my whole body ached when it wasn’t being touched, making me press myself up to him, torso to torso, belly to belly, my legs against his, wishing that I could simply sink into him and never resurface as only myself.
If we weren’t already addicted to each other, that was the week when it happened, barely stopping to eat or drink, continuing our affections in the shower whenever one of us decided it was time to take one.
I cringed to think of what the staff members at the house thought of us. We were neither discreet nor quiet, not bothering to cover up when we’d go for a bottle of water down in the kitchen, or a quick bite of something to eat from the refrigerator—perhaps bringing back up to the bedroom a bottle of chocolate syrup for a little fun.
I hoped that, after the first day, the staff members had just decided to make themselves scarce.
It was a novelty, realizing that I was living in a place that came with its own staff. The townhouse, itself, wasn’t that much bigger than my old house had been. It was two stories, but it came with a butler, a cleaning army of two, and a full-time chef.
For someone used to getting her primary nutrition at a gas station in my walking rambles around my hometown, the chef was a real novelty—as were the meals she made whether I requested them or not.
Full breakfasts magically appeared on a table by the bed: crispy bacon, succulent sausages, eggs fluffy, over easy, poached, hardboiled, pancakes as light as air, thin crepes encasing fresh berries and cream, oatmeal in all incarnations, omelets stuffed with mushrooms and crisp peppers, and muffins I’d prefer even over cookies and cakes.
There wasn’t a food item that was off the menu during lunch. I could wander down to the kitchen and request something from the chef or just give her free rein over what I’d be eating, which was what I did most often. I liked to watch her bustle over the stove. No matter what a person did, if they loved it, it was always apparent while they were doing it. She watched each pot and pan boil and simmer, stirring and tossing its contents, never burning or undercooking a single item. It was a glorious sight to behold, and I always felt that the food tasted even better after I’d watched her make it.
I often requested breakfast items just because they were so good, but she also made a mean soup and sandwich combination, pastas, meats, Asian fusion, tacos, wraps, everything.
The chef was on call for dinner, but we often didn’t utilize her services then. Levi enjoyed returning to the townhouse after work to find me there, waiting for him. He had been taking me to a different place for dinner every night since I’d arrived in the city, and I had yet to be disappointed.
“What if I liked last night’s place so much that I wanted to go there tonight?” I’d tease him as he drove us to yet another restaurant.
“You’ll just have to wait until it rotates back into our dinner schedule,�
�� he’d say, those blue eyes sparkling even if his mouth was set in a straight line.
“And just when will that be?”
“Years and years from now.”
It made me laugh, but it was true. There were so many restaurants just within a couple blocks of the townhouse. The idea that we were going to eat at every restaurant New York City had to offer without repeating one of them—as some restaurants closed and new ones opened in their places every single day—was exciting. My hometown’s claim to fame was a brand-new McDonald’s restaurant that I’d refused to eat in. I could get whatever I needed at the gas station for cheaper, usually. Coming to the Big Apple had broadened my world more than I could’ve possibly imagined. We saw everything—Times Square, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park. We did everything—ice skating, the movies, Broadway, boat rides. We went to museums together, to art galleries, to libraries and shops and shows. Even though I had the money I’d brought to the city with me, Levi insisted on buying me new clothes and shoes. We made a game of it, me trying on nearly every item in the little boutiques he took me to, modeling each and every one of my new outfits for him.
In the end, I had more clothes than I ever had, even growing up, back in my hometown. And he still didn’t think I had enough. Sometimes he would come home from work and surprise me with a soft cashmere scarf or a silky dress or a handbag.
“You have more fun shopping than I do,” I told him as he handed me a lingerie set of satin so soft that it seemed to have been spun from clouds.
“I just happened to see it in a window somewhere,” he said, laughing. “What, you don’t like it? I can take it back.”
“Don’t you dare,” I gasped, hugging it to my chest. “It’s mine, now. Too late.”
“I could do without shopping,” he admitted, smiling as I held the lingerie out to admire it in the light from the window. “I just like the look on your face when I bring you something new.”
BOUGHT: A Standalone Romance Page 102
