“Where the fuck are you meeting these guys? On apps? You know how I feel about that shit, Ari—mygod!”He throws up his hands, whirling around and trudging to the kitchen. He runs a hand over his face, shaking his head the whole time. “You can’t even respect what I ask from you? As your brother? Send me his name and phone number. Send me his fucking profile. I need to know who you are with andwhere the fuck you are!”
“I am twenty-eight years old,” I remind him quietly.
“And you are awoman,” he snaps, which makes my anger flash to life. I’m sick of this narrative. I can’t live in a bubble because I’m a girl. “You are a woman living in a fucked up world, and you’re mysister.I’m not asking you not to live your life. I’m not asking you not to go on dates. I am asking you to protect yourself and give me some peace of fuckingmind,Ariana!”
“I can take care?—”
“No, you can’t!” he screams, throwing out his hands. His eyes are wide and angry. “You pretend like you can, and the whole world fucking buys it, but I know better! You get hurt and you come crawling to me. You fuck up and I clean it up. You get into a car with a fucking drug dealer, andmylawyer gets your ass off the chopping block! You cannot take care of yourself, Ariana. Stop kidding yourself.”
Each word feels like a stab to my chest—the blade piercing my heart, the biggest part of it, where the love for my brother lives. He stabs, and he carves, and he doesn’t even notice it’s causing internal bleeding. That it’s causing irreparable damage to whatever is left in me that’s good and whole.
“Carter,” a tired voice interrupts.
I swallow, tears burning in my eyes. Carter rips his gaze from mine, both of us turning toward the redhead who is leaning against the threshold of the hallway. Her hair is messy as she squints through the dim light. Arden is expressionless as shestares at him, but there is a clear warning in those dark eyes that makes both of us shrink.
“That’s enough.”
I blink, wiping my face quickly before he catches me crying.
“Sorry for waking you up, Bub,” he says, his voice soft and full of genuine regret.
Arden ignores it, eyes darting to me. “He just wants you to be safe, Ari. That’s all. Share your location with me, alright? Before you go to sleep.”
I glare at the floor in shame, but say nothing.
“You,” she says, focusing on her boyfriend again. “Come to bed.”
Carter pauses, as if debating. He glances over his shoulder at me, that icy coldness still in his expression. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
I don’t meet his eyes, I just stand in his entryway like a scorned little girl. He lets out a sigh, quietly trudging to the hall and away from this conversation. He slides his hand along Arden’s waist and presses a little kiss to her head as he passes.
I begrudgingly meet her eyes when she chooses to stay instead of following him.
After a moment, she pushes herself off the wall and walks toward me. She says nothing, just scoops me into her arms and rubs soothing little patterns on my back. I can’t help it, I shake with humiliated tears, but I let her comfort me. She’s the only one who knows what I have going on. How confused and scared I am. How this fight with my brother hurts more than the rest of it.
“He loves you,” she reminds me gently. With one more squeeze, she pulls away and brushes my hair back with her hand. “Share your location with me. He’s worrying himself to death. I won’t check it unless you don’t come home, alright?”
I dip my chin, wiping my face free of tears.
“Try to get some sleep.”
She leaves me standing in the foyer, glaring at the condo, thinking about the look on my brother’s face. Like he doesn’t know me at all.
It’s been multiple dates with multiple losers. I go to bars or restaurants, anywhere public, and I let them buy me dinners and drinks until I’m drunk enough that I don’t feel as bad, but not drunk enough where I lose my wits about me. I’ve slept with two of them. Both awful. Cried in the rideshare on the way home both times.
I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know I hated the judgement I saw all over Carter’s face. I always do. But I still do it. It’s been my pattern since I was seventeen. Bring the worst boys in the world home and then rip their hearts out. It doesn’t matter if they don’t try to come back, or if they never loved me, because I never cared about them. Not deeply. Not ever.
I want to scream in my brother’s face that I’m doing the same thing I’ve always done, and that the only thing different about me is that, for the first time in my life, I don’t know who the hell I am andthat’swhat he’s picking up on.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ariana
“You’re staying in tonight?”
I shoot my brother a look as he waltzes into the living room. He studies me skeptically, but I’m bundled on the couch, tired from proving a point all day by ignoring his existence each and every time he speaks to me.
I soften a bit when he hands me a dirty martini to sip on. I pop the skewer out and slide two of the olives into my mouth.
