“Shit.” He fixes the blankets. “You should rest, baby.”
“Yeah, but Shane… I need to tell you something.”
“Sure thing. What’s up?”
“Mason… He talked to me earlier. At school.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. “What’d he say?”
“He said…” I swallow hard.
“What’d he say, Reagan?”
I can’t look him in the eye. “That you don’t see me like a sister. That you want...”
Shane goes very still. Then he jumps to his feet. “I’m gonna kill the son of a bitch.”
Fear courses through me. I grab his wrist tight. “No, please. I told him he was wrong and never to speak to me again.”
“But he didn’t listen. He followed you home. How else did he find ya?” He yanks his hand away and strides to the door. “I gotta shut that—”
“Is he wrong?”
He blinks at me, and his throat bobs with a swallow. “’Course he’s wrong. He lost his fucking mind. He’s just messing with your head ’cause he wants ya for himself, that sleazy bastard. I see the way he looks at you, Reagan. I’ll kill him if he ever touches you.”
“I told him the same thing.”
“You did?” Astonishment blinks in his gaze. “Goog girl.”
“But we both know that’s not true, just like we know those weren’t keys in your pocket. Not yesterday… Not when you slept next to me.”
He lunges toward me. “Shut the fuck up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re just a little girl.”
My chin wobbles as I flinch. “Please don’t be mean to me. You scare me like that. I don’t want to be scared of you, too.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry, alright.” He sits next to me again. “I didn’t mean to scare ya, baby girl. It’s just what you’re saying… You have a fever. You don’t mean any of that shit.”
“Is he wrong, Shane?” I repeat.
He clenches his teeth. “What you want me to say, huh? The fuck you want me to say?”
“That you care about me like I care about you. That it’s okay to love me…just like I love you.” I reach for his hand. “I don’t want to be just like a sister to you, Shane. I want… I want more, too.”
“You crazy, Reagan? You can’t. We can’t.” His eyebrows hook, and he seems like he’s in pain. “It ain’t okay. It’s fucked up sick.”
“Sick? Fucked up?” Fury blazes in my chest. “What’s sick is being locked up in an attic, left to bleed for two days because I spilled the milk. What’s sick is being thrown out in the cold for hours because I breathed too loudly. What’s fucked up is having a needle stabbed inside me because I got my period, Shane.”
“Reagan—”
“You know what else is fucked up sick? The person who is supposed to love you the most turning you into her punching bag for fourteen years, and if you dare shed a tear, you get a broken rib on top. A father who turns up the TV sound to cover his daughter’s screams instead of rescuing her. A mother who tells her sick daughter she wishes her dead instead of taking her to a hospital.”
Pain spreads across his features. His balling fists slam the bed before he pulls me tightly into his arms. Fourteen years of smothered aches explode from my eyes and soak his t-shirt. His chest heaves against my shaking. He lifts my chin so that our gazes meet. My heart beats frantically as he stares into my tears for a lifetime.
Then…
“Fuck it.” His mouth crashes against mine.
The kiss is nothing like the one on my cheek at the beach. It yanks me into a new domain that I can’t begin to fathom. His lips move against mine like he’s drowning and I’m air, like he’s been holding back for a long time but can’t anymore. It’s consuming me, deconstructing me and then rebuilding me into someone else.
