“How so?”
I focused on the steam-clouded lid as Emberly’s words from the night before filled my head and mixed with memories I’d long forgotten.
“I had the jerks from the baseball team following me all over town and cornering me. Trying anything to get me to drop my pants because they wanted proof—and that was the least of it with them.”
“Oh, how could I forget Duck?”
“Spent a long time blocking out my life here,” I finally admitted. “There’s a lot I did that I don’t remember.”
I started looking in the direction of the front door when keys sounded in the lock but caught on Rae’s expression.
On the understanding there.
The concern.
The way it seemed as if I’d just answered a question and raised dozens more.
“Think you’re too perceptive for my own good.” The words came out on a murmur and earned another soft smile from her.
“Yeah, it’s a fault . . . or gift, depending on who’s on the receiving end.” A muted hum sounded in her throat as she started moving away, toward where Sawyer had just called out to us. Before she could pass the island, she looked at me sincerely. “I won’t ask, but I would love to know.”
An offering.
For me to tell her in my own time.
Letting me know someone wanted to know the truth.
I didn’t respond, just looked away to give Sawyer and Rae some privacy when he came into the kitchen and swept her into his arms.
The longer I stood there trying not to listen to their low whispers and her hushed laughs, the more awkward it became, but they were blocking my way out.
So, I continued to stand there. Staring at the fucking pot I kept using as a distraction.
“You were serious?”
I turned when Sawyer’s pitch rose louder and found them watching me expectantly as Rae curled into his side.
“What?”
He nodded to the stove. “You cook now?”
“Yeah—I mean, it’s just stew.”
“I still would’ve burned down the house,” Rae mumbled under her breath.
“Oh, I have no doubt,” he said to her, all teasing and affection before nipping at her neck and looking to me again. “Your girlfriend teach you?”
My expression fell. “No.”
His eyes shifted to catch the change.
On the way I had straightened and my arms had fallen stiffly to my sides.
But his light mood didn’t falter when he continued. “Be honest . . . cooking on the rig was actually your job.”
“Not.”
“Okay,” he said in a mixture of amusement and retreat. “I was kidding, relax. Is stew all you know how to do?”
A harsh breath fled from me.
But it wasn’t in response to his question, it was at the question he hadn’t asked.
“I can do a lot of different things. This is just easy. Also thought it’d be good since a cold front came through last night.” I began stalking through the kitchen, no longer caring that they were in my way.
Either they would move, or I’d push through them.
Sawyer smartly moved Rae aside as I neared them, and I spoke as I passed. “It’ll be done in fifteen. Just shred the chicken.”
“Cays—”
“Not that you asked,” I began, turning around at the entrance to the hall to look at where Sawyer was now halfway between me and where I’d passed him, “but the greatest man I’ve ever known taught me how to cook.”
He straightened, face going blank, but I didn’t wait around for a response.
After so long, I was tired of their assumptions.
Tired of silently accepting them.
It was one thing when I was on the opposite side of the state and hearing things once a week through a phone call I could end at any time.
It was another when I was standing feet from my brother. Looking at his expressions. Hearing his emotions and implications clearly. Realizing it didn’t matter how long it had been or how hard I’d worked to change myself and make a life I was proud of.
To them, I would always be Cayson the failure. The prankster. The fuckup. The troublemaker . . .
Unable to amount to anything.
My hand stilled and my stare drifted to the side as I listened.
Felt like my lungs were screaming as I held my breath, waiting for the sound of the steps to give me a hint as to who had just started coming up the stairs.
Beau and Hunter were out with their girlfriends, but I wouldn’t put it past either one of them to use this opportunity to come home, sneaking the girls into their rooms for the night while Mom and Dad were out.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
And I was pretty damn sure Sawyer had left with our parents on the dessert run since Emberly was in the shower.
Emberly . . .
That damn girl with her wide eyes and complete ignorance of the way she looked or the effect she had on guys.
Including me.
And that mouth . . . Jesus Christ.
I glanced at the duck I’d been drawing, a familiar mixture of need and frustration pounding through me, accompanying the way my heart dipped and ached.
Cause as long as I’d known Emberly, she’d been attached to one person’s side—my brother’s.
Always there. Always touching in some way. Shit, even on nights like these, when she stayed here because her mom was out of town, she snuck away into Sawyer’s room where I could hear them talking and laughing well into the morning.
How Saw’s girlfriend dealt with it, I would never understand.
It drove me insane, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever had a legitimate conversation with Emberly.
I let the pencil shift, slowly falling so I was holding it horizontal to the notebook I’d been sketching in, and felt my blood run cold when the footsteps turned in the direction of mine and Sawyer’s rooms.
The steps too heavy to belong to any of my brothers.
Too distinct.
I’d been hearing those footsteps my entire life.
I straightened in the desk chair, scrambling to close the notebook and shove it into one of my drawers. Cursing when it dropped in at an angle and got caught.
I’d just gotten the drawer shut when my door was flung open.
“Apparently there’s no privacy in this house,” I murmured sarcastically when my dad stormed in, slamming the door shut behind him.
“For you?” he huffed, continuing toward me and grabbing the collar of my shirt. Pulling me back so roughly that I toppled over with the chair, biting out curses when I crashed to the floor. “Get up.”
I slanted a glare at him, jaw locked tight to keep back the responses swarming on my tongue as I pushed to my feet.
“Yeah . . . yeah, look at me like that,” he sneered, shoving a hand against me and forcing me back a step. “I’m not the embarrassment to this family.”
Another shove.
Another step back.
“I’m not the idiot who still can’t fuckin’ read.”
“Dad, I—”
“I don’t wanna hear it, Cays,” he yelled. “You know how much I’ve spent over the years, paying off schools and teachers? You know how humiliating it is to see them in town and know about our secret meetings—shit I gotta keep from your momma?”
I stared at him, shock ripping through me.
A snide laugh left him. “What, you thought you were making it to the next grade and the next on your own?” He got in my face, pointing at me with a shaking finger. “Someone had to make sure you went through. Didn’t embarrass us more. Someone had to take care of the retard.”
I shoved him back and immediately staggered to the side at his answering right hook.
“You’re an asshole,” I ground out, saying words I’d wanted to for so long and accepting the next hit.
“Wanna say that again?” he yelled, hand trembling where it was curled tightly around my shirt.
I didn’t respond.
Once was enough.
For years, we’d been doing this. Around and around we’d go. Him yelling when no one was around to hear.
Humiliating me.
Asking if I could read yet. Tossing three-and-four-letter words at me and demanding I read them. Punching and smacking me when I couldn’t.
Telling me he was disappointed. Embarrassed.
Calling me all kinds of shit.
Demanding I change . . . learn.
Only to repeat it a few months later.
“I’ve been breaking my back to give you every chance to change your ways,” he said, voice shaking with his anger. “For no one to know. Now I find out what kinda bullshit you’ve been pulling over at the school? Hiding the teachers’ cars. Moving the principal’s office outside. Taking the Langes’ goats and releasing them in the halls.”
The corner of my mouth tipped up and was quickly knocked off by the back of his hand.
“It isn’t funny, Cayson,” he barked.
“They’re pranks,” I ground out, tasting the slight tang of copper that clung to the inside of my cheek. “They’re harmless.”
“Harmless.” Dad huffed, looking at me with all the disgust he only reserved for these times when no one could see. “These harmless pranks of yours are gonna throw all that money I’ve already wasted on you down the drain.”
“I never asked you to do that. I didn’t even know you were!”
“No, see, this is where you thank me,” he yelled. “For saving your ass and saving our family’s reputation from the way you’ve tried to ruin it.”
“For not—” I hissed a curse and looked toward the door, my voice dropping low when I continued. “For not being able to read?”
“For not trying,” he spat. “For not doing a goddamn thing with your life other than disappointing your family.”
A harsh breath ripped from my chest. Then another.
I drove a hand through my shaggy hair, my head moving in soft shakes as disbelief and embarrassment burst from me.
Beau’s rage and swinging fists had gotten him in trouble too many times to remember.
Hunter and his girlfriend had gotten caught having sex in our church one night.
But I was the disappointment for not being able to read.
Before I could respond, I was grabbed. The hand that had been in my hair was yanked forward so hard and fast that I lost my balance for a second.
My heart plummeted.
Just dropped straight to the floor as I realized my mistake.
My dad stared, his face turning an unhealthy shade of purple as I tried to yank my hand out of his grasp. He twisted my wrist painfully until the outer side of my hand was directly in front of my face, showing me what he’d seen.
The smudges from the pencil.
“Last I checked, you can’t read,” he said, words sounding almost like a threat. “From what I’ve gathered, you can’t write because of that either.”
The muscle in my jaw feathered.
My teeth ached from the pressure I was putting on them.
My chest was rising and falling so damn fast as I stared into eyes filled with rage.
“You’re gonna tell me why your hand looks like this.” The command was a soft warning as if to say I needed to tread carefully with my answer.
But I didn’t respond.
I just stood there, silently begging him to drop it for once.
“Show me,” he demanded. When I didn’t move, he dragged me toward the toppled-over chair and righted it, never releasing me as he did. “You were sitting there when I came in, so sit.”
He didn’t give me the option to do anything else. Forcefully shoving me into the chair and holding it steady when it rocked sideways from the impact of me.
Then he was gripping me, fingers digging in behind my collarbone and shoulder, ensuring I wouldn’t move as he began searching my desk.
The second drawer he opened was the one that held my notebooks.
He stilled for a moment, as though he didn’t want to believe I’d really gone against him again, before grabbing the notebooks and tossing them onto the desk. Releasing me to open them and flip through page after page after page.
All filled with my sketches and finished drawings.
“Coulda sworn I told you to knock this shit off,” he said softly.
I nodded but didn’t respond.
Ever since that first morning when I was nine, I’d been careful. But there had been the rare occasions when I’d inadvertently started doodling, and he’d be there.
The last time, no one else had been around.
I hadn’t even realized he had been until he was smashing my face against the table and paper, never saying a word, letting that action say enough.
“The fuck is all this?” he grumbled, then held it out toward me, showing one of the hundreds of ducklings I’d drawn over the years.
Emberly.
Because that goddamn girl was always on my mind.
I jolted when he began tearing pages from the notebook. My spirit lurching and crying out in silent plea as he gripped the partially crumpled papers in his hand and went through the other two until all that was left were jagged pages reaching out.
“This sissy shit,” he mumbled over and over again as he went. Shoving the wads of my drawings into his pockets once he was done.
Bending, he picked up my metal trash bin and dropped the notebooks in before slamming it against the edge of my desk.
I didn’t react to the noise.
I didn’t react when he grabbed my jaw and jerked my head up so I would look at him. “Enough. You hear me?” Releasing me, he rapidly jabbed his fingers against my forehead and said, “You’re stupid. I know that. I can try to hide that. But get it through that empty fucking head of yours that no boy of mine is gonna be a fag.”
I jerked, brow puckering as shock and confusion stunned me and had me stumbling over my words. “I-I—you what—I don’t—what the hell? Dad, I’m not—I’m not gay.”
“Sissy shit,” he repeated, pointing to the bin that lay on its side.
My mouth fell open, stare blank as I tried to understand how he could associate one with the other. “They’re just drawings.”
“For once in your life, do something right. Man up.”
My hands lifted weakly, chest pitching with a pathetic huff. “What, like Beau? Getting suspended and arrested because he can’t stop fighting?”
“Be a hell of a lot better than the waste you’re turning into.”
That piercing silence? That was my heart falling to the floor.
Being crushed.
Obliterated worse than ever before.
“Killin’ me, Cayson,” he ground out as he headed for the door.
“Yeah, you like to remind me.” It was nothing more than a breath, but it didn’t matter anyway.
He was already storming out. Opening the door so forcefully that it bounced off the wall.
I stood . . . to throw something or leave or just yell. Rage against the pain and humiliation that came with these talks.
But I hadn’t made it more than a step before the trembling in my body turned into hot stinging in my eyes.
I sank onto my bed and dropped my head into my hands as the first unbidden tear fell.
I’d only been sitting on the edge of the bed for about a minute after having stalked out of the kitchen before my brother followed me in.
Steps slow. Expression guarded.
The room filled with his hesitation and made my muscles twitch with the need to move restlessly, but I stayed still.
“You know, I imagined this,” he finally said with a breath of a laugh. “You coming back.” He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the wall, letting his head rest there. “I thought it would fix things. I thought it would help.”
Hurt slashed through my chest at the words he didn’t say but still seemed to ring through the room. “Sorry to disappoint.”
I looked away, my jaw grinding as I struggled to remain calm.
To remain silent.
To wait until he was finished with his composed assault.
But he didn’t continue.
He let minutes pass until the silence was too much.
Until that need to move overpowered everything else, and my knee started bouncing to match the furious pounding of my heart.
“Tell me how.”
I paused in my movements for only a second before resuming, faster than before. “How what?”
“How am I supposed to trust you?” He hurled the question at me like I should’ve known.
Like I should’ve answered it as soon as I set foot in this town.
“To not leave,” he said, voice straining. “To not fuck everyone over again. To not break them. To not destroy my best friend like she’s a game.”
Everything slowed.
My restless movements. My racing heart.
I bent to rest my elbows on my knees and dropped my head into my hands as hazy bits and pieces of a past I didn’t fully remember swirled and made the ache in my chest grow.
“I guess you can’t,” I finally said when all those pieces were replaced with one image.
Emberly.
Looking up at me the night before like I was hurting her just being here.
Sawyer’s sigh filled the room, the sound saying everything without a word: He’d hoped for a different answer but wasn’t surprised.
Once he was in the doorway again, he asked, “Cays, are you gay?”
My head jerked up as ruthless memories raced through me like flash fire. Muscles tensing on instinct, as if preparing to defend myself from a fight I didn’t want any part in.
“What?” The word came out harsher than I meant for it to, but it was hard to stay calm.
It was hard not to let that old hurt and rage burst forward. For the memories to twist into suspicions of why he would even think it or ask.
Whiskey (Brewed Book 2) Page 8
