Broken

by A. E. Rought

  “Back door,” Alex says into the biting wind, then takes my hand and forges a path for us.

  At the rear of the house, he stands on tip-toe and wedges a small window open a couple inches. A metallic flicker stabs through the snowfall when he pulls a key from the windowsill. I huddle closer when he slides the key in the lock and opens the door.

  A short set of stairs rises in front of us, and a longer set plunges off to the left into the gloom of a cellar or basement below. The braided rug swishes under our feet on the landing. The utter strandedness of my life hits me when I watch Alex climb the short back steps with the cat carrier in front of him. I have nowhere to go, except a friend I don’t want to bring trouble on, or follow Alex.

  He opens another door at the top of the stairs and steps into a kitchen.

  Everything is sunny yellow, white, wood, and covered in doilies.

  “Where are your grandparents?” and how can you think this is safe?

  “They’re in Florida,” he says, and flicks on the lights. “They’re my mom’s parents, by the way,” he adds, “and my dad hates them. He hasn’t been near here since she died.”

  He walks to a thermostat on the wall, and jacks up the heat, then walks further in the house and turns on more lights.

  Safe, I think. Actually safe, with no fire or madman chasing me.

  All the tension keeping my spine straight and legs moving snaps like a wire stretched to its limits, and coils back inside me. Standing doesn’t work anymore, and I slowly crumple to the floor. Tears rush over my eyelashes, and a wracking sob hurts my throat. I’m vaguely aware of Renfield mewing in the crate over the snotting, sobbing wreck I’ve become.

  The awkward tension leaves my wrist when Alex takes the bags from me, then crouches and gathers me into his arms.

  “You’re okay,” he says, “I’ll make sure of it.”

  I fling my arms around him, nuzzle close to his neck. I crave the leather and Alex smell. Instead, there’s nothing but smoke.

  “You stink.”

  “Well, thanks.” Rich laughter rolls from him. “You don’t smell so good either.”

  The world tilts and then centers on Alex as he stands. He takes my good hand and hauls me upright. Upstairs in the Sunshine house—the yellow and white theme is everywhere—he leads me into a small bedroom with more lace than a sewing store. White, ruffley eyelet dissects the squares of a pastel calico quilt on the bed, the doll leaning against the pillows wears ivory and lace, the curtains are lace.

  “Gran,” he tells me in a voice light and reverent, “said this was my mom’s room. They redecorated, but kept her things.”

  He disappears in the closet, then comes back dragging a large cedar trunk. The scent of lavender and mint whoosh off piles of folded denim, flannel and jersey when he lifts the lid.

  “Find something clean,” he says, “And we’ll wash our clothes.”

  “Oh. Um…” I didn’t think there was room left for awkward in my overload of stress. “I feel really funny wearing your mom’s clothes.” His dead mom’s clothes.

  “Please don’t. I’m sure she would’ve wanted my girlfriend taken care of.”

  Girlfriend. The word makes my heart want to soar. I drop a glance to the pearl ring on my left hand. Of course he’d call me that—even if I have doubts, Alex doesn’t. I heave a sigh, and slide closer, hesitant to touch the chest full of memories. He nudges me, knee in the curve of my butt, and the folds of material tip toward my face.

  “Hey!” I catch the edge, and swing my cast at him.

  “Just helping,” he says, ducking the pink cudgel. “I have a spare pair of clothes in my bag downstairs.” Then he’s gone.

  I have clothes, too, though I’m not sure what I shoved into my backpack—it might be all underwear, might be summer tank tops. Besides, the bag smells as bad as I do. I’m sure everything in it reeks. Resigned, I carefully sift through the clothing in the chest. Simple jeans, flannel shirts and pajamas, team jerseys from the different sports his mother played. The sizes are all wrong. Alex’s mother was taller than me, and curvier in the areas I wish I were. Thinking I lost the wardrobe lottery, I settle on a pair of pink flannel pajama pants (legs cuffed), a baseball jersey and pair of socks.

  Alex stands in the hallway, leather bag in hand. “The bathroom’s through there. I’ll shower first and give the hot water time to heat up for you.”

  “Aw. You don’t have to freeze for me, Alex.”

  “Haven’t you figured it out?” he says. “I’d do anything for you.”

  A dozen things jumble in my mouth and die. I smile, and know it goes all the way to my eyes.

  “By the way…” He ducks into the bathroom. His voice comes muffled from the other side of the door. “There’s cat food under the sink in the kitchen for Renfield. Gran has a litter pan somewhere, too. And here,” the door opens and I see a long, vertical flash of skin when his clothes fly into the hall, “I’ll wash our clothes once you’ve showered.”

  Blush ravages my cheeks, flows past into my forehead and throat. Atop the pile of smelly clothes lies a pair of boxer shorts. Toeing his underwear under his shirt, I gather his clothes and then return to the Sunshine kitchen. The cat supplies are in the cabinet under the sink, neat and tidy—until I get Renfield taken care of and released from the plastic crate. The desperate cat uses the litter right away, even in a stranger’s home. Then I ferret Alex’s cell phone from his jacket, and call my parents.

  Mom’s a wreck, Dad’s not much better, and they’re more concerned about me than losing everything. I don’t tell them the darkest truth—Alex’s dad is most likely the culprit and trying to kill me. The story I give them is a big string of falsehoods, from Alex coming over to watch movies to him being snowed in and sleeping on the couch. Him rescuing me from upstairs is totally true.

  They aren’t happy with not knowing the address of where we are, either.

  “It’s kinda hard,” I say, “to read street signs in the middle of the night in a blizzard, Dad.”

  “Well, keep in touch, and we will, too. We’re just so thankful that you’re all right.”

  “Don’t worry so much. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Goodbye, Emma.”

  I push End Call, and close Alex’s phone.

  The glory of the Sunshine kitchen presses in on me. Welcoming, pretty, happy, and so foreign. I feel like a filthy intruder, a cancer, fouling the beauty here.

  I pace the downstairs, drifting from room to room. Pictures are everywhere, from black and white and old, to more recent times. There’s no rhyme or reason like my mom would’ve made with them; elementary here, junior high there, high school in the living room. A young girl in pigtails and a gingham dress shares a shelf with a young woman cradling a brown-haired baby. In another room is a framed older couple, the sun at their side and an elementary school Alex. I find one of him in the kitchen, probably last year, wearing an apron with a jar of preserves in his hand.

  He has a whole different life with his grandparents. He had a different life before he woke up wanting me. The stairs creak, and I feel him coming back to me, like a song rising in my blood. The electric tickle courses my skin.

  “That’s my favorite picture,” Alex says behind me. “Gran and I picked the berries and canned them that day.”

  How do I tell him I’m glad he had a normal influence in his life, other than his psychopath father? When I turn, the thought flees my head. Alex wears a dark pair of jeans, and a forest green, short-sleeved shirt. The color makes the green in his hazels really glow, and it somehow highlights his scars. How could I have ever thought he was anything other than beautiful?

  “Okay,” he says, and winks with his left eye, “now that I’m clean, you smell really bad.”

  “Thanks a lot.” I roll my eyes, and he herds me to the stairs.

  A big claw foot tub commands attention the minute I peek in the bathroom. A bright yellow checkered curtain encircles it, inviting me to scrub away the stink of disaster
. Still, it takes washing my hair three times with the citrus and herb smelling shampoo to get the smell out.

  Hair loosely braided, and a stranger’s clothes on, I walk out to find Alex waiting in the hall. Renfield sits at his feet, and the leather bag hangs from his hand.

  “Emma.” A somber expression casts clouds over his eyes. “I have to show you something.”

  I follow him down the hall to another bedroom. This one is paneled in blond wood, with white trim on the doors and windows. An old patchwork quilt of sunlight and denim colors covers the bed, and matches the hand tied rag rug on the floor. Guy stuff sits around the room, a martial arts trophy, a autographed baseball, a collection of well-worn fantasy novels.

  “My room,” he says, answering the question I would’ve asked. “I’ve spent at least one week a summer with them every year. The bastard that my dad is,” he runs his fingers over the dresser, “he wouldn’t tell my grandparents they couldn’t see me.”

  “It’s hard to picture him being kind.”

  “Things were fine, as long as they went his way. For the most part they did.”

  “And then you woke up…”

  “And then you woke me up.”

  He smiles, steps closer and runs a fingertip along my neckline to my braid. I knew it wouldn’t last long. With a little tug, the strands spill loose and damp down my back. “I dreamed about you before I regained consciousness.”

  How can I respond to that?

  “Sit down,” he tells me, pointing at his bed. “You’ll probably want to anyway.”

  I perch on the edge of the bed, near the pillows. My white cat runs up, and pads across the pillows making himself at home, as long as he’s close to me. Alex drags his leather bag to the other end of the bed and sits, too.

  “Before I left my house, I took the file my father showed me.” He pulls out the manila folder and puts it between us. He returns his hand to the zippered mouth, and pulls out at least a dozen plastic vials of a red liquid. “This is the serum my father has been injecting me with and telling me it’s a vitamin booster. It isn’t. My survival depends on weekly injections of that combined with a modulated electric treatment.”

  Alex places the formula on the folder, and pushes them to me, then watches my reactions. The red liquid is the color of rubies, has a thickness and sparkle to it in the overhead lights. He suffers injections of this every week? Alex is still paying for his father’s sins. Tied to a drug and electrical current to keep him alive.

  “My life is in your hands,” he says. Then Alex grabs the hem of his t-shirt and pulls it off. His scars are a map of life and death and the laws broken to revert them. “I know what my Dad took from you. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it. And I swear I will never take another dose of that medicine if letting the heart in my chest stop beating will end your pain.”

  The shock of his words stabs into my own heart and beats the air out of my lungs. An unbidden image flashes behind my eyes: Alex, pale, lifeless in a coffin. My heart stumbles, and the pain flares wider. The thought of losing Alex hurts worse than any ache I thought I ever suffered. The truth he’s insisted on since his dad exposed the crimes stitched into his body finally hits me. Daniel’s heart is Alex’s, his memories are, too. It doesn’t matter who the guys were before. Alex is alive and loves me. And I love him.

  “Oh God, no Alex.” I push the folder and formula back into the bag and shove it to the floor. “I don’t want to live without you.”

  “I mean it, Emma.” He pulls me to him, chest to chest, eyes searching my face. “My heart is yours. I am yours.”

  I brush my fingers over his cheek, and into his hair. “And I’m yours,” I whisper.

  I feel the groan in his chest when he hooks an arm around me and crushes me to him. The electricity races my nerves to my heart.

  “We’ll have to turn my dad in,” he whispers. “It’s the only way to be safe. I’m sure my grandparents will let me stay here.”

  “I want to be with you.” The weeks at school without him echo like a hollow ache. I don’t ever want to live like that again.

  “You are,” he says, voice husky. “And I’m not letting you go. Ever.”

  I don’t want him to let go. I want to live forever in this moment. A nervous kind of anticipation floods me when he guides my knees and presses me back on the pillows. Renfield sniffs indignantly and pads to the other end of the bed. Energy slicks my skin in waves when Alex kisses me. Not hesitant or awkward. Firm, claiming me, claiming us.

  He gasps a little when I press his mouth open and nip his bottom lip. A tremor having nothing to do with the blizzard rides the length of his body.

  I slide my hand between us, and press him up. Light pours over his lean muscles, shines on his scars, an invitation, and a mapway to learn who Alex has become. I trail my fingers down the lines in his neck, following the feather light strokes with kisses, then across his chest to their intersection over his pounding heart. I place my palm there, thinking, It beats for me.

  “My turn,” he whispers.

  Shivers chase the tingles over my skin when he brushes his fingertips along the hem of the baseball jersey. The tingles turn to surges of heat when his fingers brush my ribs and his lips find my neck. His fingers stray further, sweeping curves where my bra should be. Breath hitches in my throat, and escapes in a sigh.

  “Want me to stop?” he asks, his words warm on the skin of my collarbone where he’s tugged my neckline down.

  It’s my turn to groan. “No.”

  The warmth he’s brought to my body and back to my soul spreads when he slides his fingertips down my stomach, and glides them along the waist of my borrowed flannel pants. His mouth leaves a tingly path down my stomach. I melt beneath his lips when they brush the skin below my belly button.

  “Did you mean what you said?” His lips brush over my bare skin. “Are you mine?”

  “Yes.”

  Words die. I drown in Alex’s touch. He places kisses everywhere, our clothing hitting the floor to do it. I’m amazed he thought to bring protection, then conscious thoughts go the way of words. His touch is electric, his kisses like fire. I’m more alive in his arms than any moment in my life. Being with Alex is all sensation and emotion, building and building, taking everything fractured between us and burning it into something pure and singular.

  “I love you,” I whisper, before pulling on his t-shirt and the blankets.

  “Always yours,” he promises, his jeans rubbing my legs when he curls around my back after shutting off the lights.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The bed lurches and hurls me into consciousness. I reach for Alex, and find only empty sheets. Wrong abrades my drowsy nerves, fills the air and smells like fancy cologne and car exhaust. Blinking, I try to scrub sleep from my eyes. The light is all wrong, choppy and moving as shapes twist and struggle in front of the windows.

  Worry seizes like a cramp behind my ribs.

  “Alex?” Where is he?

  “Emma, run!”

  Run? What is he talking about? I pray for my sleep foggy brain to wake up.

  “Hold still, damn you,” a familiar voice growls.

  “No!” shouts Alex, and then, “Stay away from her, you asshole!”

  Who needs to stay away from me?

  Another blink and scrub of my eyes and my vision clears. Alex’s father and Alex are all tangled up and wrestling by the window. The older Franks has his son in a headlock. Panic screams from every line of Alex’s body. He jerks and writhes, his bare skin flashing dawn light around the room. He rams his head backward into his father’s jaw, to no avail.

  “Let me go!”

  “Oh no, son.” His father’s voice drips icy sarcasm. “I did and look where it got me.” He wrenches Alex around so he’s pointed at me. “I gave you the perfect life, the perfect future wife. But, no, you’re so blind in love with that pathetic girl you can’t see straight. You want to be with her so badly, fine. I’ll make it permanent.”

  I gasp
in horror when he pulls a syringe from his pocket, jabs it into the vein in Alex’s neck and depresses the plunger.

  “No,” Alex mouths. A pull batters my insides when his hands reach for me.

  The fight leaves Alex. His eyes widen, and tears shine above his lashes. One fat drop rolls down his cheek, dragging his body’s strength with it. Gravity claims his hands and then Alex hangs like a rag doll from his father’s arm. Doctor Franks bends at the waist and opens his arms, letting his son’s body pour to the floor. Abdomen, chest, and then cheek, the carpet claims him.

  His eyes stay fixed on me until he can’t keep them open anymore.

  The boy I’d given my heart, and myself to, lays silent on the floor.

  My pain finds a voice. “You killed him!”

  “Don’t be stupid,” the arrogant man scoffs. “After everything I did to make him live again? You’re not worth that much. Now,” his father says, gesturing to me with a gloved hand. “Take care of that, will you?”

  Take care of me?

  Motion behind sends chills rocketing up my spine. I spin, yanking the quilt back up around my bare legs. He’s there, lurking at the foot of the bed like a monster in a horror flick. Ugly red hair, a twisted grin.

  “Josh?”

  “I guess all my cracks about you being a whore weren’t far off…”

  Stars explode in my vision when he lunges forward and backhands me. Pain flares in my jaw and the side of my head. A slung glare makes sick dizziness whoosh in my skull like water.

  “Really,” Doctor Franks sniffs. “I’m not paying you to beat her.”

  “Call it creative license,” Josh says, then pounces on the bed.

  I drive my knee up, hit his thigh instead of what I’m aiming for. Josh shakes his head, starts to tsk through his teeth, and I stop the mocking noise by clawing his face with my left hand. His eyebrows crash together over his nose, matching the speed of red welling in the scratch marks. I notice the shiny color right before Josh smacks me again.