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It’s not even the primary reason.
A prolonged sigh leaves me, and I falter as I go to stick the key into the ignition. Silence hums around us, as dense as the humidity dampening our skin.
I look over at her. She’s still breathing heavily, her cheeks now rosy red, arms crossed in a defensive stance. The scent of lilacs and lemon drops wafts around me, and hell…it’s ridiculous how gorgeous she is.
When I was sixteen I was awkward and gangly, but she’s a vision of beauty and grace, smelling like spring and citrus and looking like a radiant woman instead of the little girl with a crooked grin and golden ringlets I can recall so fondly.
I knew I would lose it when men started noticing her, but I had no idea it would be this difficult.
June sweeps a hand through her hair, letting it fall over to one side. The dark tresses are tinged with autumn and honey lights, bringing a gentle warmth to the blue ice glittering in her eyes when she finally snaps her head in my direction. “What did he mean by that?”
My brow furrows, not expecting the question. It trips me up for a second. “Nothing. I don’t know.” Feeling unsettled, I avert my eyes to the wheel and pop in the key. The car roars to life, sounding as rattled as I am. “He’s a damn creep.”
I feel her staring at me as I shift into reverse. June fidgets in her seat, adjusting the spaghetti strap of her dress as the tires begin to roll. “You always talk like that. I don’t understand it.”
“Talk like what?”
“You refer to Theo as my brother. Mom and Dad are my parents,” she explains, her voice a little strained, a little breathy. “You say I’m not your sister.”
My jaw twitches. “Technically, you’re not.”
“Why do you feel that way? Have I not made a big enough impact on your life?” she inquires. There is no anger there, no bitterness. Only a stark vulnerability. “Do you not care enough?”
I slam the brakes, stalling in the middle of the semi-vacant lot as I shift back into park. Ripping off my baseball cap, I run my fingers through my hair and lean back into the seat. “That’s not it at all,” I tell her. When I return my attention to June, she’s watching me with wide, glossy eyes, sliding a hand up and down her arm as if she’s chilled. “You know how much I care, Junebug.”
“Then why—”
“You wouldn’t understand. It has nothing to do with you.”
I realize we’ve never broached the details of my past before—not really. She knows the basics, of course. She knows that my father strangled my mother to death with his work tie after he lost his temper and snapped, then shot himself in the head. She knows I was in therapy throughout most of my childhood, and she knows I don’t like talking about it, especially with her.
I never wanted to be that black cloud in her rainbow sky.
June learned most of what happened that night through schoolyard gossip and internet news reports. Possibly from her parents, too. I’m not sure how much they shared with her as she got older.
But she doesn’t know the psychological toll it took on me.
She doesn’t know that it altered inherent parts of me.
She doesn’t know that I made a wish that day, standing in my front lawn, begging the cotton-candy clouds for a baby sister.
And then I got one.
I got June in exchange for my parents, and in the mind of a small, damaged child, it felt like I had caused their deaths. My wish had come true at a terrible price.
It was all my fault.
So I refused to ever see her as my sister. I refused to see the Baileys as my true family because that would make me guilty. That would have given me the darkest, heaviest burden imaginable, and it likely would have snapped me in two.
As I got older, I came to realize that it was simply a tragedy, and there is no logic in tragedy—tragedies just happen—and how we get through them, what we do after, is our only true power over them. But that was how I chose to cope at the time, and even though I understand it now, those feelings have been hardwired into me. There’s no going back.
Curling my fingers around the steering wheel, I veer the subject away from my haunted past and focus on the whole damn reason we’re sitting in my junky car at 11:00 p.m. on a Friday night. “What the hell were you doing there, June? Why…Wyatt?” I shake my head, the disappointment in my voice so tangible, it almost feels like a third passenger listening eagerly from the back seat. “He’s bad news, and you know that. He’s a delinquent. A deadbeat.”
Two blue eyes glance over at me, brimming with something like regret. Maybe an apology. “I don’t know, I just… I thought it would be fun. Celeste’s older brother was going to come, too, but he had to work, so—”
“Do you have any fucking idea how much I worry about you?”
She flinches.
