At noon, the door opens and slams. I’m still in bed, half-asleep, half-awake, and blinking at the ceiling. The papers I stole from Pierce are somewhere no one can find them—in an old textbook I saved from my old school. Maybe it’s all the adrenaline that coursed through my veins last night, but today, I feel oddly lethargic.
“Anyone here?” I hear Ryan’s voice, and the mere sound of him makes my whole body heave with uncontrollable sobs. I cry because I want to save him. I cry because I want to save me. I cry because once upon a time, he wasn’t the man who tried to shove a hand down my skirt. He was the brother who taught me how to skateboard and got me photography accessories for my birthdays.
“Me,” I barely whisper, still lying on my bed. “I’m here.”
His footsteps become louder with every passing second. Fear stabs at my chest, mixed with an unexplainable longing. I can’t wrap my head around everything that I’m feeling right now. There’s too much pain in me to think clearly.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, his fingers hovering over my doorframe. He looks…like Ryan. Like a strong Viking. Like the man who helped raise me and tolerated my crush, then later danced on the line between appropriate and inappropriate. And even though he has lost a bit of weight recently, he is still beautiful.
I cup my mouth with my hand and shake my head, feeling the tears streaming down my cheeks. “Everything is so fucked up, Ry. I’m so mad at you. At him. At everything.”
He is next to me in a second, sitting on my bed and pulling me into a hug. I bury my face in his shoulder. He smells of gasoline and cigarettes and home. Home that doesn’t smell like flowers and cooked meals and a nice feminine perfume, but it is still my home.
“Oh, baby. Rem…” His voice disappears inside my hair, and he is stroking it, and I am breaking just a little bit more, nostalgia making my heart overflow. “What did the bastard do to you?”
“You’re both magnificent bastards.” I sniff in protest, wiggling away from him. “You. Pierce. Dad. You’re all the worst. Dad believing your lies. You making my life hell. Pierce betraying me.”
“I’m jealous.” Ryan’s voice is the softest it can be. “I’m fucking it up because I’m jealous of him. This was not supposed to happen this way. You became a different person since you started going to this fancy school, and it felt like you were leaving us.” There is a pause. Ryan stares at the floor. Then, “He came here last night.”
“He did?” I pull away so I can examine my stepbrother’s face. He nods solemnly, pushing away a lock of my hair from my face. “Sure did, babe. Threatened me. That’s how I got this pretty thing.” He points at his cheek that’s currently purple. I didn’t even bother to notice that Ryan looks all kinds of banged up. I blink once, twice.
“Did you hurt him?” I don’t know why I’m asking this. I certainly shouldn’t care, but I do. He nods.
“He probably looks worse than I do today.”
“Good,” I say, straightening my spine. “Serves him right.” But inside, my heart breaks for yet another reason.
“What’d he do?” Ryan demands, and there’s a certain edge to his voice. The same violence that’s soaring over us ever since he started mixing up with the wrong people.
And as much as I want to protect Ryan—the guy I grew up with, the guy who took care of me all those years, albeit in a weird, screwed-up way—I want to protect Pierce, too. They’ve both hurt me so bad. I shouldn’t even want to entertain myself with the idea of helping either of them, but for now, I’m keeping Pierce’s secret manila envelope for myself.
“Tell me, Ryan. What makes Pierce James hate you so much? What have you done to him?”
Ryan licks his lips and looks away.
Guilty, I think. Guilty all the way.
I rap the door to her bathroom a few times, this time growling.
“Gwen, open up for God’s sake. I don’t have all day. I’m on my lunch break. I need to teach third period in twenty minutes, and traffic is insane.”
She doesn’t answer. I feel full to the brim with discontent and annoyance. The whole Gwen situation grinds on my nerves. She is going to get help even if I have to drag her by the hair and throw her into the nearest rehab center with a room for a new tenant. Just a week ago, I spoke to Mother Dearest, who had agreed to shell out some money for a Santa Barbara resort where Gwen could get clean. We’d decided to split it halfway, me with my teacher salary and her with her indefinite amount of millions in the bank. I don’t care. I just want Gwen to get better.
“Goddammit, Gwen, the water is leaking.” I lift one foot upward and stare down at the water crawling from underneath her bathroom door. “I swear to God, if you don’t open up right now I’m going in.”
Nothing.
Up until now I didn’t feel it. The fear that grips you by the throat and squeezes hard. I kick the locked door open and find her in the bathtub, naked, her head under the water. I run toward her, slipping a few times on the wet floor. Her whole body has sunk into the water.
And there are no bubbles.
No bubbles.
She isn’t breathing.
“Gwen, Gwen, Gwen, sweetheart.” My voice is foreign to my ears. I sound…frantic. “You’re okay. Come on. Let’s get you out of here. Come on.” I grab her by the hair before dragging her out. I lay her on the floor and am actually stupid enough to worry about how cold it must feel against her skin before I dial 911. My fingers are shaking. I can’t look at her. Not because she is naked. Because she is blue.
After I hang up on the girl from the emergency center, I roll my older sister to the side, trying to get her to throw up some of the water she’s swallowed. Then I roll her back onto her back and try to administer CPR to her dead body. I don’t cry. I’m not even all that sad at this point. I am mad. Fucking furious, to be honest.
“What the hell did you do that for? Fuck!” I roar.
“Shit, Gwen. You don’t look hurt. You’ll be okay.”
“Gwen. Gwen. Gwen. Gwen.”
The ambulance arrives a few minutes later. I watch from the corner of the living room as they zip her into a body bag. It dawns on me that I have no one to call. No one to share this with. I bet my parents won’t be surprised if I call them.
“She looked…fine,” I say to one of the paramedics.
Even to my own ears, this sounded crazy. My sister wasn’t fine. My sister was a heroin addict. She was a junkie. She’d been looking gaunt, malnourished, and wild-eyed for a long time now. From about three months after she followed me to Sin City, to be exact.
“Looks like an overdose,” the young, pimple-suffering man says, his voice apologetic. “I think she suffered from cardiac arrest, but you’ll know more after they send you the report. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Yeah.” I scrub my face with my palm. “Me too.”
I go back home, get into my own bathtub, and stare at the tiles. I thought I had processed it, but I was wrong.
The penny drops two weeks later. I do well in those weeks. So well. Make all the necessary funeral arrangements, notify my parents and our friends, have people come over—colleagues, friends, ex-lovers—and help me set everything up.
It’s two weeks later when I drive down the strip when it finally hits me.
The light is red. I look out the window of my car and see Ryan Anderson crossing the street with a random chick that looks like a typical drug addict. Smeared makeup, swollen eyes, and scrawny body wrapped in a mini skirt.
His arm is flung over her shoulder, and he is laughing and whispering something into her ear.
He did it.
He did it to Gwen, and now he is going to do it to this girl.
She is so out of it, she would let him get away with anything, I know.
The next morning, I hand my resignation to Headmaster Charles and decide to dedicate the upcoming months to making sure Ryan Anderson will never ruin another life again.
“Keep your resignation to yourself.” Headmaster Charles pushes the letter I wrote across his desk. “Let’s talk about it next year. You might feel differently.”
“I will never feel differently. I can’t work. I can’t concentrate.” I can’t breathe. My sister raised me, goddammit. And what have I done in return? Dragged her down a rabbit hole of drugs, alcohol, and bad choices.
“You will, Mr. James.” The left corner of Headmaster Charles’ lip slides up in half a smirk. “When you’re ready, it’ll happen. There’s a lot to look forward to in life, even if it doesn’t seem that way right now. Always remember that, hmm?”
The screen door whines as it swings back and forth, and how long has it been since this house has seen a handyman? I want to get her out of here. I was goddamn close to doing that, too.
Pacing on her porch, I inwardly convince myself that I can reason with her. Remington is a smart girl. Surely, after I give her the whole truth, she will understand.
But then I remember that Remington is like a live wire. She’s emotional and bold, and she doesn’t do anything half-assed. She feels everything so much deeper than I—or most people, I suspect—and that’s why she’s so hurt. She’s been badly burned by almost everyone in her life, and I’m no better.
I knock on the front door—it’s locked, thank God—three times, lose my patience before the second is over, and ring the doorbell endless times. It’s not working. Big surprise. I wait a few seconds, then knock again.
Nothing.
I know she’s here. It’s creepy as hell, but I can feel her. Like I know she’s in a classroom even before I walk through the door.
“Remington!” I shout, not giving two shits about the fact that anyone can hear and see me. I’m way past killing my career. At this stage I’m pretty much dancing all over the corpse of it. “Open the door, sweetheart. Come on.”
The worst part is that I can actually hear her sniffling. She is crying. I can peek and look at her through her window, but I’d like to think I have more dignity than that. “Remi,” I say, now more softly.
Nothing.
“I have news on Christian. I know you want to know,” I lie. Jesus Christ. I am a fucking douchebag, but I can’t help it. After a few seconds, I hear her padding barefoot on the floor, and the door opens. She looks like hell. Pretty as spring, because it’s still Remi, but still.
“How is he doing?” She hugs the door to her chest, like it can protect her from me. Like she needs to be protected. I shake my head.
“Sorry, I don’t actually know. I just needed you to come here. I…”
As I start talking, she tries to slam the door in my face. I’m quick to sneak an arm and stop her—fuck, that hurts—and push the door open as I walk in without her permission. Technically, she can call the police. Logically, she should. But I’m taking some risks here in the name of whatever the hell it is that we have.
“You’re a liar, a cheater, and an asshole,” she spits in my face, pushing me away. Her eyes look sunken. Like she’s been crying for hours. “I trusted you, Mr. James! It may not mean a lot to you, but to me? To me it was everything.” She grabs an empty vase on her dining table and throws it across the room, and I feel a stab of pain, because I know that she’s the only one here who would ever think to put flowers on the table. She wants everyone to think she’s hardened and callous, but there’s still a girl in there who, no matter how much life throws at her, still tries to make her dark world just a little bit brighter with some goddamn flowers. The vase misses me by an inch. I take a step toward her. She holds up a finger at me.
“Don’t. You’ve lost your right to come anywhere near me. I will call the police right now if you don’t leave. I don’t even care enough to ask what fucked-up obsession you have with my stepbrother. I just want you out of my life. We have one more semester to tolerate each other. Don’t come near me.”
“You know that’s not possible,” I say coldly, taking another step in her direction, knowing exactly what I’m doing and how dangerous it is, and still taking the risk. “I can’t stay away from you.”
“You can, and you will. From me. From my family. From everything I care about and you want to destroy.”
“Remi, I did this for you.”
“Mr. James,” she enunciates, like we’re not personal anymore. Like we never happened. Like I didn’t study every single curve in her body and saw her bewildered expression as her body let go and combusted with pleasure in my hands. “I hope you don’t believe the bullshit you’re feeding me, because I sure as hell don’t.”
“Ryan is dangerous,” I tell her. She is shaking all over and hugging her midriff. I want to make her pain go away, but I know that I can’t, so I continue. “Ryan is the reason my sister died. She overdosed on the shit your brother gave her. He fucked her and he drugged her and ultimately he killed her.” There is no emotion in my voice.
“Liar!” She lunges in my direction and pushes me away. “You’re lying. Get out!”
“I was afraid he would do it to someone else.” I stay rooted in place, staring at her dead in the eyes. “And then I met you, Remington, and that trickle of fear became paralyzing when I realized his next casualty may well be the woman I’m falling in love with.”
No truer words were spoken, and yet, I don’t find my truth particularly liberating or comfortable. I find it oddly infuriating. Maddening, even. Because this wasn’t supposed to happen, and yet it did, despite my best efforts.
I fell in love with a girl who felt like a woman and made me feel like a man instead of a ghost.
I fell in love, at the beginning with an idea, in the middle with her curves, and in the end, with the whole package.
I fell in love with my student, and now I am standing here, asking her to sin. Asking her to do the thing I would argue against and frown upon. Asking her to love me back.
Remi throws her head back and laughs before shaking it somberly.
“Get out.”
“Remington…”
“No. Get the fuck out, Pierce.” She stalks to the door and opens it wide. “Get out of my house, out of my life, out of my head. You’ve had enough time to tell me all of this about Ryan. You had the time to warn me. You had the time to explain yourself. You had every opportunity to make this right, or let me decide for myself if I wanted to be in a relationship with someone who relentlessly pursued the persecution of my brother. You’re a lawyer, for fuck’s sake. You know what he’s facing. Don’t tell me you don’t recognize how bad you’ve hurt me.”
“I know. And let me assure you…”
“No. You’re done assuring me. Out,” she says again, and this time I really have no choice. I can’t force her to listen to me. “You’re done here. Please don’t make it awkward at school and make me do something that would jeopardize your career.” She says that in the flattest voice I’ve ever heard her produce before adding, “And that goes for your plans to take Ryan down, too. I have leverage over you, Mr. James. I strongly suggest you leave my family alone and focus on your own. Go find another stupid girl to ruin.”
Harsh words from a girl who knows what a harsh life feels like.
I give her one last look to see if there’s room in her heart to give me another chance. There isn’t. Her face is hard, and her quivering lower lip is the only indication that maybe she once loved me, too.
“Out.” The word falls from her lips more quietly now.
I leave, without the girl.
Without the evidence against Ryan Anderson.
And most importantly, without my soul.