Forty-eight
After sitting in the park for God knows how many hours trying to get my thoughts in order, I drag myself home and up the driveway. I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life, and as the sun sets on our quiet little town, I’m just now seeing how big of a mistake it was. There’s no way James will agree to the conditions I made up on the walk over—conditions he’ll have to abide by if he wants me to stay. No more fighting, no drugs, and no gun top the list.
I should’ve stayed with Sam.
But I didn’t. And now I have to face my decision.
Even if James’s truck hadn’t been parked in our father’s spot, I’d know he’s home. Our bedroom light is on, and Godsmack pours from our window at its usual ear-blistering volume. Taking a shaky breath, I open the door.
The door encounters resistance almost immediately. I frown and push a little harder. Plastic grates against linoleum. Poking my head through the foot-wide gap in the door, I squint into the dark foyer. Whatever it is isn’t too big. I should be able to move it. I push against the door a little harder, forcing whatever is in the way to give a little, and slip inside.
I’ve only made it another two steps when I trip over something hard and heavy. Wincing, I rub my shin with one hand and feel around for whatever the thing is with the other. Wood. A table. What the hell? Did someone break in and trash the place? Panic grips my throat. If someone broke in, James might be hurt. After everything that’s happened, finding my brother dead on the floor would kill me.
I stagger forward, thoughts of Sam and my mistake forgotten, and nearly twist my ankle tripping over something small. I fumble along the wall for the light switch in the living room. Before I find it, the room floods with light.
James is sitting in our father’s orange chair, but I hardly see him. I’m trying too hard to absorb the mess of broken furniture and shredded clothes scattered around him on the floor. My clothes. Our father’s clothes. The bookshelf from the living room is on the floor, crushed into several large pieces. The scratchy, beige couch is slashed. Newspaper and books, torn up. Unable to breathe, I force myself to look at James. I need to know he’s okay if there’s any hope of me keeping it together.
He’s staring at me from his place in our father’s chair, unscathed and perfectly calm, with the gun resting on his left leg. The fury in his eyes betrays his calm facade. I stop, frozen.
He picks up the gun and studies the barrel. “So, I followed you this morning.”
What’s left of my blood feels like it’s sucked from my body, leaving me cold and trembling. “It’s not what you think.”
“Really? I know you and Sam hang out in the forest during the week whenever you’re not at that flower store, and that you went swimming in the middle of the night when we were camping. I know his sweatshirt is buried in the back of your underwear drawer and that you haven’t been to the library in months.” He cocks the trigger. Releases it. “Did you know they don’t have cookbooks at the library?”
This is bad. This is very, very bad. Before I can pull myself together enough to scream at him for stalking me, he tightens his grip on the gun and stands up. “After everything I’ve done for you, after all the shit I’ve taken and how much I’ve loved you, this is how you repay me? Fucking my best friend and then having the gall to lie about it?”
“I knew you’d be mad. I didn’t want you to be mad.”
It sounds like such a lame excuse now and I wonder how I ever convinced myself lying to James was the right thing to do. He keeps coming at me, the hatred dark blue in his normally sky-blue eyes. Just like our father’s. Stumbling over a ripped pair of jeans and a pile of books, I crash backward into the wall.
“Of course I’m mad,” he says in a deceptively calm voice that oozes malice. “You lied to me. All our lives, you’ve been lying. You said you wouldn’t leave, and you are. You said I’m enough for you, but I’m not. You said you love me as much as I love you, and you don’t.” He stops right in front of me, so close I can taste the anger rolling off him. “You’ve been fucking Sam, and you’re supposed to be mine!”
He backhands me with the fist holding the gun. The lights flicker and I have to fight the blackness trying to take me. The blood seeping into my mouth from somewhere tastes like the dirty pennies we used to suck on when we were little. I cower away, desperate to disappear into the wall that’s keeping me too close to him. He hit me. Me. I press my sleeve against my mouth and look at the big splotch of blood left behind when I pull it away.
James has gone whiter than a ghost, looking at my mouth and his hand and the gun and me, completely dumbfounded. Seeing the first tear streak down my cheek is enough to snap him out of it. He shoves the gun into the front of his jeans and yanks me against his chest.
“Oh, fuck, Sarah. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” He smoothes my hair away from my forehead and kisses the bruised skin slick with cold sweat and fear. “I get so mad and this was the maddest I’ve ever been…”
Dazed, I don’t pull away. His body heat is as familiar to me as my own, more familiar to me than Sam, and comforts me even though he’s the reason I’m losing myself. I just stand there limply and let him hold me against his body.
“If you tell me you’re not with him, I’ll believe you. Just tell me.”
I shake my head. “I’m not with him.” Not anymore.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he touches my cheek, caresses my arm, runs his fingertips down my spine. Gentle. Tender. “Good,” he murmurs. “We’ll have to move somewhere Dad’ll never find you. We can change our names, and then you can get a job working with flowers or go to college or do whatever you want. I’ll do anything if it’ll make you happy. Just tell me what to do.”
I hate that James’s touch feels so good, that it’s always felt so good. I lean into him and close my eyes needing more of it and more of him. Being in his arms takes me back to every time he stumbled into our room, battered and broken and bloody, looking to me for comfort and love. I gave it so freely, just like he gave himself so freely to keep me alive. Safety and love—that’s what James has always been to me and I begged him for all of it.
And God, how I want what he’s offering. Somewhere else. Away from the ghosts in this house. Away from all the memories. That’s what Sam offered, too. What I plan to give myself.
“If we change our names, we don’t have to be brother and sister anymore,” he continues. “We could be together and no one would get mad because they won’t know.”
When his touching shifts, turning needy and heated, I shudder and pull away. James is right there with me, though, and backs me up against the wall. One hand skims my chest while the other seeks out the bare skin where my shirt has ridden up above my jeans.
“Please don’t do this,” I say, my voice breaking. “You’re ruining everything.”
“You want the same thing I do,” he breathes into my hair. “Let me give it to you.”
I wedge my arms between us, giving me maybe an inch of breathing room. It’s nowhere near enough. “I don’t want this. You’re sick, James. You need help.”
“Bullshit.” James backs away, his expression a frightening combination of disbelief and fury. “I’m not the one begging to be touched and kissed in the middle of the night. Every time we sleep in the same bed, I have to pry you off me, so don’t you dare tell me I’m the sick one.”
My mouth opens and shuts as I flounder beneath the implications of his words. The nightmares…if they were real, the hard body crushing mine was James and not just a horrific figment of my imagination. And then the nights I thought the person caressing me was Sam and I begged him to give me more…
My stomach lurches.
“So you do remember.”
Everything inside of me goes numb when he smiles and presses his body against mine again. I want to cry over how familiar this feels, for the hope on his face, for how perfect some of those dreams felt when they should have been repulsive, but the gun tucked in his waistband bites into the soft flesh of my stomach and keeps me still.
I don’t fight him when he cups my jaw in one of his hot palms, tilting my face up to his. “No one is gonna love you as much as me. Not Sam or anyone else. You’re mine.”
When he kisses me, I hardly notice. It’s a quick press of his ruined lips against mine before he searches my eyes for some sort of reaction. I have no reaction. I stare back at him, hollow, vacant.
Fresh blood on his lips, James frowns and kisses me again, longer this time. When he tries to work my mouth open, his tongue sliding across my bloody lip, I turn away.
“Please…” He mirrors my every move, following as I turn my face right and left so our mouths are never more than a couple inches apart. “I love you. Let me love you.”
Sam said the same thing, but this time the words have the opposite effect. I shake my head harder but he’s right there, keeping my body melded to his.
He dips his head and presses his mouth against mine so hard, the split in my lip our father gave me rips back open. The pain snaps me out of my numbness.
“No!” I try to twist away, but everywhere I go, he’s there forcing me to accept his kiss, his hands on my body, and my fate. I fight harder. “I’ll never be with you!”
The door flies open, slamming into the wall less than two feet from my head.
“Get your fucking hands off of her!”