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He pauses but doesn’t look at me. “What?”
Maybe it’s the late hour or the pain in my body or the scent of whiskey in my nose. Maybe it’s because I’m heartbroken. Maybe it’s because I’m just realizing I might have lost my brother for good.
Whatever it is, I find the courage to ask the one question that’s been burning me alive. “How can you forgive him but not me?”
Carter looks at me then, just enough of a turn of his body to meet my gaze. The hate I find there would be enough to bring me to my knees if I wasn’t frozen. “I haven’t forgiven either of you. And I’m starting to think maybe I never will.”
He walks away from me so easily then. Like we didn’t sit across from each other inside a blanket fort when he was seven, his blue eyes wide as he told me with all the seriousness in the world that he wants to grow up to be just like me. Like I didn’t spend two months’ worth of my allowance when he broke his blue Power Ranger toy—his favorite—to replace it even though I was so damn close to having enough for the video game I desperately wanted. Like I didn’t eat all his broccoli whenever Mom looked the other way because he swore it tasted like toes. Like he didn’t spend an entire summer sleeping on my bedroom floor after watching a scary movie at a sleepover. Like I didn’t eat enough ice cream with him to make both of us sick when he got his heart broken for the first time. Like I didn’t bring him to his first Pride festival, not even teasing him when he got all flushed and fidgety at all the shirtless men walking around.
Like I didn’t hold him close at Mom’s funeral and promise him it’d be me and him forever.
Like he didn’t hold me close and promise the same right back.
Like we aren’t even brothers.
Like we never were.
I pour the drink down the drain. I don’t deserve the way it’ll numb this feeling inside of me. I don’t deserve the relief of that. The escape. I deserve this pain. This aching, clawing thing that’s growing in my chest, threatening to eat me whole. I deserve so much worse.
Of course Carter hates me so much.
I wonder if it’d help him to know I hate myself too.
I’m about to walk out of the kitchen when the fruit bowl catches my eye. Carter never even grabbed one. I eye a lemon, remembering a report I read once about a slave’s horrific punishment involving knives and lemon juice. I take the yellow fruit in my hand, somehow feeling calmer just from the weight of it.
I lock myself in my room, wet a towel, lay it flat on the floor, use my Gerber knife to slice the lemon, squeeze the juice across the towel, yank off my shirt, and go to my knees. From the way my back is burning, I’m pretty sure just the shirt removal broke open all the cuts that had scabbed. I make sure the area that hurts the most lands in the middle of the towel when I lie back.
The pain is white-hot and immediate. I roll my head to the side, exhaling through clenched teeth so I don’t scream.
I deserve this.
I deserve so much worse.
Chapter Six
Nolan
After two straight nights of very little sleep and another early morning wandering the safehouse with my heart in my throat and a need to do something vibrating beneath my skin, I wind up in the kitchen again. It’s early. Too early to make Matt anything to eat. My own stomach doesn’t feel very hungry either.
Maybe something that will take time?
I rifle through the cabinets and fridge, taking stock of everything. I’ve never had much time to cook—I was always pretty busy with school and football—but my favorite thing was helping my mom and grandma in the kitchen for Sunday family dinners and holiday meals. By the time I was a teenager, I was already an expert at multitasking in the kitchen and improvising recipes. When my grandma passed, I slid right into her spot, my mom giving me sad smiles as she bossed me around. When my mom passed away just two years later, leaving me alone for my last month of high school, I cooked nearly every night just to feel them with me. Food had always meant comfort. Even without them, that hadn’t changed.
I could do that. I could cook for the survivors and the operatives who saved us. I could give them that comfort. Give myself that comfort.
Just the thought of being useful in that way makes the restlessness inside of me calm.
That’s probably why I end up going a little overboard, something I don’t realize until I’m standing in the middle of the kitchen, pancakes bubbling on the griddle, nearly every surface covered in a variety of breakfast foods.
“Good mor—oh,” Mast—Jake, he’s Jake—says as he stops short. “Oh, wow.”
My cheeks go hot. “Um. Yeah. I’m… sorry.”
“Sorry?” He shakes his head, giving me a kind smile that looks strange on his face. I wait for something like fear or anger or… anything really, to well up inside me, but there’s nothing when I look at him. The absence of feeling ends up making me feel more on edge than anything else. “Don’t be sorry. This is great, Nolan. It’s just—you know this isn’t expected of you, right?”
“I know.” I know and I hate it. Expect things from me. Please. I need to be good. I look away from him, my hands trembling a little. I consider getting back to work to help ease my anxiety but don’t want to be rude. Then again, I’m allowed to be rude to him now, aren’t I? I’m not sure I have it in me. “Can I do it anyway? Cook again sometime, I mean? It helped.”
He doesn’t ask what it helped, either because he’s respecting my privacy or because he understands. Probably the latter. He’s in love with one of us survivors after all, following Carter’s friend, Casey, around like a lovesick puppy the past two days. Why did Travis fall in love with Carter? Why did Jake fall in love with Casey?
