by Vivian Lux
When the three girls arrived at the playground his heart leapt in a queer way. The listlessness that had been dragging at him since CPS had taken his two small brothers seemed to lift when he spied them. Especially the oldest one with her halo of flame-red curls.
He knew she didn't know him. He knew she wouldn't ever look his way. He was a shadow to her, unless he could get her attention somehow.
Fate had intervened in the form of three bullies. Brianna and her two gorillas, Chad and Derek. He knew them from his brief enrollment in the public school when they first moved in to 451. He was tense and ready for a fight from the moment he spotted them. He wasn't going to let the flame-haired girl hurt like he was hurting.
And so he had leapt from the top of the swing set.
And banged his head like an idiot.
But it was all worth it when Lexi had taken him into this bathroom. She closed the wound over his eyes so tenderly. No one had ever touched him with such love before. He had kept his eyes fixed on the tile floor, trying to slow his breathing as she fussed over him. That was the day she had taken his heart.
She never gave it back to him.
He splashed water on his face and wiped the droplets from his beard. He wasn't going to fuck this up again. Not this time. All those years he had wasted hating her when it was everything else he had been hating. His mother for ruining everything she touched, including the house that was supposed to turn their lives around. His grandparents, wherever the fuck they were, for giving her the house in the first place and letting him hope that things might turn out happy. The house itself.
When he returned to the tiny little bedroom, his heart sank a little to see Lexi had gotten dressed. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, her toes tapping frantically on the carpet.
She shot him a despairing look. "Fuck," she groaned.
"What?"
"I just remembered, my dad said my mom would be home to make supper."
"Why is that bad?"
She stood up and threaded her fingers around the back of his neck and pulled him down. The kiss was both passionate and sweet, and he wanted to linger there, but she gently pulled away. "I don't want you to have to go."
"So I won't."
She gave a small laugh. "I don't think they're ready for how much you've...changed."
"So you come with me."
She opened her mouth to protest, then shut it. "Okay, where?"
"I need to see something." He grabbed her hand and led her down the narrow stairs and out the front door on to the porch.
"Wait," she squeaked, slamming the door shut behind her. "Okay." She let herself be led, trusting him in a way that made his heart hurt.
Chapter 33
Lexi
He was standing at the back window, his hands shoved into his pockets, staring in to the empty house. I hadn't wanted to let go of his hand. But I knew he needed to be left alone for the moment as he stared into the tumbledown breezeway of 451.
We were in the back yard, hidden from the street. I looked up and around at the silent, gray world. Over my left shoulder, I could see clear into our backyard and the massive pine tree that was my secret hiding place from my family. It was tall enough that the morning sun could cast its shadow all the way over here, five houses down. That tree was where I kept watch on Case's family that day the social worker had returned his brothers to their mother's care. I had seen who Case really was from up there, and fallen in love with him from that vantage point.
But the inside of the house may as well have been in another country. I never knew what happened once the doors closed.
Case seemed to snap out of his reverie and lifted his gloved hands to test the door's strength. It was a flimsy looking thing, with a pattern of six squares of glass arranged in a rectangle. He leaned his shoulder against it, touching the handle as he did so, then seemed to think better of it. "Stand back," he called to me.
Then he pulled his sleeve down over his fist and punched through a small square.
I winced, expecting the sound of splintering glass to echo through the neighborhood and bring the cops raining down on us. But the wood around the window was rotted and spongy, and the glass didn't even break on contact. It just gave way with a wet suction sound and then crashed to the floor inside the house.
Case pulled his hand away and rubbed his knuckle mechanically for a moment. Then he pulled his sleeve back down and reached his long arm through the narrow opening.
"Lock was always shit," he muttered as he turned the handle and let himself in.
I tried to follow him, but my feet were suddenly not working. I had feared this place for so long. This was the bad house. It had loomed in my life like a shadowy tower on a hill.
Stepping over that threshold was hard enough for me. Getting past the barrier in my mind that allowed me to set foot into the bad house took a Herculean effort.
I have no idea how Case did it.
But there he was, standing in the breezeway. The abandoned house smelled close and stale with the unmoving air sinking down on us like a dead weight. My familiar claustrophobia tried to tell me that I was going to suffocate, but I smashed those thoughts down. Now was not the time for me to have a panic attack.
I stepped gingerly around Case to look at his face. It was twisted into a grimace halfway between pain and nausea.
"Are you sure you want to do this?"
He snarled and then coughed. "It's just a fucking house," he finally grunted. I could see him visibly pulling himself back together. Gingerly I slipped my hand into his. He didn't look down, only clutched it tightly.
There was a step up from the breezeway into the kitchen. "Watch out," he muttered and I stepped quickly to the side before I could turn my ankle in the sunken patch of the linoleum. "Still there."
"That was there when you lived here?"
"The pipes froze the first winter we lived here, and one burst," he was looking around the kitchen, his face unreadable. "Water rotted the floorboards."
He kept scanning around him, his eyes darting wildly. I followed his eyes, taking in the grimy kitchen. There was a sour smell in the air, like food long gone bad. The dark wood of the cabinets only added to the gloom.
Case kept staring, his breath coming faster and faster. I followed the direction of his eyes and saw he was staring at a radiator in the corner, his lips twisted into a snarl.
"What?" I breathed. It was a normal looking radiator, with chipped white paint peeling back to reveal the layers of avocado green and blush pink of previous eras.
He didn't answer, only strode up to it and stared at it. He knelt like he was looking for something and when he found it, he sat heavily back to the ground. He turned to me and pointed at the pipe that emerged from the wall. "Do you see that patch where the paint wore away?"
I sank to my knees next to him. His breathing was heavy and labored as he ran his finger over the pipe. The paint had been completely rubbed away here, exposing the rusted metal underneath.
"I see it."
Case sucked in his breath and let it out in a burst. "So it's real then?"
I looked at him. "Of course it's real."
He looked up at the ceiling. "Sometimes," he paused. "Sometimes I just hope that the shit I remember was just stuff I made up in my head."
I swallowed, unsure of what he could possibly be talking about. I remained silent, hoping he would tell me more, but not wanting to press him to reveal his pain.
He was silent for a long time, so I startled when he finally started to speak. "I was getting too big for her to slap around," he began. "She told me she was tired of me getting in the way all of the time. So she and her big-ass gorilla of dealer got the bright idea of handcuffing me to the fucking radiator." He rubbed his finger over the chipped paint while I swallowed and blinked back tears. "She got that Neanderthal to hold me down cause I was too big for her to handle herself." He sniffed in derision. "She just had to get the cuff on me."
He started rubbing his r
ight wrist absently while he stared at the ceiling. I looked closer and saw a pale line across the skin where the hair didn't grow. "Once I was stuck there, everything was perfect for them. My little brothers were too fucking terrified to do anything but stay quiet and that's all they fucking wanted. I was stuck here in the kitchen, out of the way, so nothing prevented them from shooting up right there in the living room in front of Hunter and Jonah."
A small sound escaped my throat and I clapped my hands over my mouth. My cheeks were slick with tears I hadn't even known were falling. "Case...."
He looked at me like he was just realizing I was there. "I yanked on that fucking cuff for days," he said tightly. "I kept thinking that I was almost there, that just one more pull would get me free." He rubbed his wrist faster. "It got so bloody that I started wondering if maybe I could use the blood to slip my hand free. But nothing fucking worked."
The tears slipped silently down my face as I remembered those weeks where he would just disappear. If only I had known then. If only I had had the fucking courage to just walk down the street and knock. "Casey," I whispered, calling him by the name I knew him by back then. "Oh god Casey, how did you get free?"
He sighed and stood up. "When she and the big guy," he paused and laughed bitterly. "You know, I can't even fucking remember his name? He was just one more in a string of dipshits she brought around to fuck. Well, when she and dipshit-of-the-week finally passed the hell out after a three day bender, I convinced Hunter to go looking for the key."
His eyes grew brighter. "He was terrified that she would wake up and catch him. He was sobbing the entire time, but he kept those sobs quiet. For me. He faced his worse fucking fear at seven years old to try to protect me like I protected him."
His voice caught and he choked and coughed. I realized that the memory of his brother's pain hurt him more than the memory of his own. It filled me with awe.
"He searched for hours, while Jonah was curled up in a ball in the corner, sucking his thumb." His lips twisted into a grimace that could almost have been a smile. "Six years old and he still sucked his thumb like a baby. I couldn't get him to stop, and then I stopped trying because it gave him more comfort than anything I could do for him. So I just let him suck his thumb and he probably got beat at school for it, but what could I fucking do?" His voice was rising, higher and higher as the anger took him. I slid back, pressing my back into the wall, flicking my eyes between the man in front of me and the patch of worn pipe to the side.
"Casey," I whispered. "Casey, you did so well."
He snapped his eyes down to blaze at me and for a moment I thought he was going to hit something. I cringed involuntarily and his whole expression changed in an instant.
He dropped to a crouch and tipped my chin up. "Don't you ever fucking cower like that again, Lexi, do you understand me? I would rather saw my own arm off than ever see you afraid of me." He dropped his head like he couldn't bear the weight of it a moment longer.
My words stuck in my throat. Instead I lifted my lips to him. His head was buried in his hands and so I kissed that sweet scar above his eye. The one he had inflicted upon himself to save me.
He made a low noise and stood up. The close air swirled around him, currents of air moving for the first time in years. "One more thing, Lexi." His voice was soft as he reached for my hand.
We walked gingerly through the front hallway and turned to the stairs. A cheap chandelier had been ripped from the ceiling and now dangled precariously from a frayed electrical wire. Case had to step out of the way to avoid hitting his head. Luckily the window on the front door let in a shaft of weak light, enough to see our way through the gloom. "Are you sure it's safe to go up there?" I ventured, looking up the staircase. "The floor may have rotted."
He knocked his fist against the wall. "It doesn't seem like this place is ready to give up quite yet." Then he looked back at me. He must have seen the fear on my face. "Walk where I walk," he instructed.
I followed his footsteps carefully, trusting that if the boards could support his mass, they could support mine. The upstairs hallways smelled worse than the kitchen. It was an old scent, a human scent.
As if reading my mind, Case sniffed too. "When the water got shut off, we started pissing in buckets," he explained. "Some of them spilled."
I sniffed again. The sickly scent of stale, urine-soaked wood assaulted my nostrils and I felt my stomach heave. The hallway before us branched off into three rooms and a bathroom. It was just a normal house, very similar to mine. But it felt so different.
Case wasn't moving. I stepped around to check his face again and was surprised to see that it was actually peaceful. I looked into the room where he was staring.
It was bare. The single grimy window let in a sharply angled shaft of light that laid a patch of gloomy winter sunlight on the floor. Directly next to the patch of light was an old, bare mattress.
He was staring at that mattress like it was an old friend.
"Was that, their bed?"
He nodded. "It's still here." He started forward and knelt in front of it with reverence. "I put them to sleep here. Every night." He swung himself around to sit on it, rubbing his hand over the faded, grubby fabric. "It was the first time they had slept on a mattress. We had been living in our car so long that when they first laid down on this, they were still crunched up in tight little balls. They didn't remember the cots at the shelter, she had stopped taking us there when they were really little because they kept forcing her to detox." He shook his head. "I had to teach them that they could stretch out."
He smiled serenely as the tears slipped continually from my eyes. He spoke of horrors like they were blessings. Two little boys sharing a dirty, bare mattress.
"Where did you sleep?" I wondered.
He looked up at me. "In front of the door."
I looked at him in shock. "You didn't sleep up here?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because if anyone tried to come in, they would have to deal with me first," he said fiercely, "before they got to my brothers."
My mouth opened and shut. I couldn't form the words that I wanted to say about that. "Did you have a mattress?" I asked instead. Stupidly.
He looked back down at it. "No," he said softly. "I slept in a pile of our clothes." He slowly stretched himself out, leaning back on that filthy mattress. "But I would lie here with them if they were scared or had trouble sleeping." He turned and sniffed. "I never realized how awful it smelled."
I gave a small laugh through my tears and made to move towards him. He opened his arms for me and I snuggled down in to them, turning to face him so I could hold him as tightly as possible. I listened to the beat of his heart as my tears soaked his shirt and finally slowed. My heart found his rhythm and beat in unison with his.
"The only way you'd ever know that we lived here was by this old stinky mattress," he muttered.
"It doesn't smell very good, " I agreed. He laughed shortly and stood up, peering around the tiny, dust-choked room.
"We were here and then we left. Like ghosts." He turned and looked at me. "Did anyone wonder where we had gone?"
I swallowed and looked at my toes. "I didn't hear anything," I said, hating the truth.
He grunted a half laugh. "A family just disappears from the block, and no one notices or cares." His voice was rising again and I stood up and pressed my hand to his chest, feeling his heart starting to race once more. "There was no one who gave a shit that we lived or died. We lived in hell under their noses and no one gave a shit enough to stop it."
I grabbed him by the neck and yanked him down, pressing my nose to his and staring into his eyes. "I gave a shit."
He blinked and then his mouth was on mine, hot and wild and desperate. He clung to me as I clung to him while the pain wracked his body.
He lowered me on to the mattress and I didn't even think to protest. The stink of the mattress was replaced by the delirious scent of him.
This time
our lovemaking was slow, gentle and quiet. I held his face in my hands as he moved above me, his eyes fixed on mine. The pale blue was dark with grief and desire all swirled together in a sapphire storm.
I wanted to be for his pleasure. I didn't want to be selfish and lose control so I held myself back from the brink.
Until he bent down to my ear and let his lips brush my earlobe as he whispered, "Come for me, Lexi. I need to see you come."
I squeezed my eyes shut and let his words wash through me. Loosening my grip on him, I let the sensations that I had been holding back flood through me. The orgasm tore at the edges of my grief and the tears squeezed out of my eyes even as I cried out in pleasure.
He was watching me, his lips parted in awe. "That was the first good thing that ever happened in this house," he groaned.
I reached down and pushed him higher inside of me, wanting to pull him in where I could keep him always. "Make this be the second, Casey." I whispered as I clutched him. "I want to feel you come inside of me. Don't worry about anything anymore. I want you to let go of everything."
He started to pump faster, his eyes squeezed shut, his teeth bared in concentration. He pummeled into me harder and harder as I held on for dear life. "Yes sweetheart," I urged him. "Yes."
With a strangled shout, he arched his back, thrusting inside of me so deeply that I could feel him everywhere at once. He shouted my name and then fell forward on top of me, his fingers tangled in my hair while his cock twitched and retreated.
We stayed like that for longer than I thought possible. I lay by him, stroking his forehead and slipping my fingers through his hair. When his exhausted eyes closed, I kissed him one last time. "I love you," I whispered as his breath came soft and regular.
