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“Was he in love with her?”
“Nah, I don’t think so, but only he could say for sure.” He pauses, and then says, “They both came from a fucked-up place, so he understood her, and she understood him.”
“Where’s Leo now?”
He eyes me. “Ask your brother. I tried to get Bass to leave the crash site with us, but he refused, said he knew just where to take Leo to drown him out.”
“Drown him out... my brother didn’t know how to swim.”
He shrugs. “Maybe Leo didn’t either.”
I sigh, looking along the car. “My brother. He’s not here, is he?”
“No,” he answers instantly, watching me closely.
“Did you make him leave?”
He stares a long hard moment and then shakes his head.
No.
He didn’t make him leave.
He chose to leave and didn’t tell me.
Did he feel like he couldn’t?
My chest begins to ache as I stand in front of a car I’ve been waiting to find parked outside my aunt’s house for the past four years.
Bass said he was working to better our lives, and maybe he is, but what a shitty sister I’ve been to do nothing other than wait for his hand to take mine.
I’ve been sitting idle, waiting for my big brother to call and tell me it’s time, that we’d be a family again and build a new life somewhere away from it all. Start over.
Why should I be his responsibility?
Why should he have to grind his ass for anyone other than himself?
Maybe he no longer wants the added weight a little sister brings?
He didn’t ask for the messed-up life we had, and he’s already saved me once, many times if I count all the days and nights he took the beatings for me.
I step back, eyeing the Cutlass, flashes of the day he was finally given the keys, still too young but able to reach the pedals to drive it, coming back and with it, the ache of the blows that followed increasing in numbers.
I never told my brother how every time he’d leave for an angry evening’s drive, angrier hands would come down on me.
He needed his escape, and I was okay with being the punching bag that allowed him that.
I was younger, thinner, and weaker, smaller all around, but for a few short minutes, I was protecting him.
Or that’s what I convinced myself.
Anger swims in my stomach, stiffening my muscles as pressure builds behind my eyes.
My dad told me if I wanted it to stop, I’d tell my brother to stay home.
I lied to my dad and said I begged Bass to, often, but he wouldn’t listen, all so my dad would think Bass didn’t care as much as our dad thought he did.
If I really had asked, Bass would have stayed without hesitation, sold the car and stashed the cash so the desire to hop behind the wheel was never there. My dad would have then used the knowledge to hurt us in a different way.
Bass by going after me, me by going after him.
My hands begin to sweat.
I’m so sorry, brother. It’s time for you to live your life without having to worry about mine.
I lift the bat over my head, bringing it down with all my might, and the windshield shatters the rest of the way, breaking off and falling into the front seats of the car.
I lift it again, taking it to the back ones. I swing and swing, from right to left, left to right, until, finally, they too bust through.
I growl and grunt, the bat between my shaky hands held high in the air when suddenly Royce is at my back. He uses his hips to push me forward until my body is pressed into the car.
His hands start at the curve of my elbow, warning me they’re coming, and slide up from there, not stopping until his fingers are spread wide along mine. He wraps his palms over my hands and pushes even closer.
I’ve got it is what I imagine he’d whisper if he felt the need to speak, but his body does it for him, strong and firm and unmoving.
I let go.
My arms fall like dead weight, but with his held up the way they are, the way mine were, mine can only drop backward, over our heads.
My elbows rest over his chest near his shoulders, my wrists lying perfectly at the curve of his neck, our height is so different.
When he doesn’t force them down, I make a risky move. I give him all my weight, hoping he’ll accept it and close my eyes as blackness takes over them.
He does with zero hesitation.
My heart pounds wildly in my chest, and I attempt to calm it, but each breath comes out choppier than the last, more ragged.
Royce’s arms drop back, his fingers finding and lacing over mine at the base of his neck. He folds them there.
