Page 88 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

“That’s a lie.” My eyes cut around the room, hunting for a way out.

It’s not safe here. I don’t know how I know it, but I know it’s not safe for me to be alone in this house with my brother and my mother. At the RV park I was surrounded by people who could back me up. Here there’s nobody except the two of them, who found ingenious ways to take me apart my whole life.

They can’t do anything to you anymore.

I run Dr. Delaney’s words over and over.They don’t have any control over you except what you give them.

Underneath though, I’m still panicking. Dr. Delaney never met my mother.

Mom’s planted in front of the only door I came in through, and Jake’s drifted over to block the kitchen doorway, which is the only other way out of this house.

They’ve got me trapped.

I lift both hands, palms out, the universal sign of surrender. Along with:I’m not the problem here.

“I don’t want any trouble,” I say, working hard to keep my voice neutral even though every muscle in my body is tensed. “Just let me go.”

“You don’t want any trouble?” Jake laughs, and it’s not a nice sound. “Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you fucked my wife.”

He steps toward me and I back up, eyes flicking to the couch. If I can get around it, and if he follows, maybe I can loop past him to the kitchen out the back door? My mind’s throwing out one exit strategy after another.

They lured me here for a reason.

I don’t know what it is yet, and I don’t want to stick around and find out.

Get out of the house and back to Lennon. Whatever I need to sort out with Priscilla, it can wait. Until it’s not just me alone with two people who hate me standing between me and the only exits.

Jake reaches down and picks up one of Owen’s toys off the rug—the little plastic T-rex that always sets Owen off giggling. I do the tiny-arms bit back, tucking my own arms up against my chest and stomp-chasing him around the house until he’s shrieking.

Blind rage at him even touching something that belongs to my son has me this close to snapping and taking the bait.

But this issoobviously a trap.

And I’m not the August I was even three years ago.

So, hands shaking, I breathe out hard and turn to stomp for the front door instead. “I’m leaving.”

My mother plants herself even more stubbornly in front of it.

“Move,” I tell her, low, dead serious.

She puts her hands on her hips. “Or what? You gonna put hands on your own mother? You’re just like your father. Go ahead!”

And then, bizarrely, she’s right in my face and shrieking, “Help! Oh my God, help! Somebody help!”

I back away from her again, hands still up, making it obvious I’m not laying a finger on anybody. No matter what they’re trying to pull here.

I don’t even clock that Jake’s drifted up behind me until my shoulder blades brush his chest. It’s the lightest possible contact, barely a graze. My whole body is still angled toward my mother, not him.

Doesn’t matter. It’s enough.

Jake staggers backward like he’s just taken a hit from a linebacker. Three dramatic, lurching steps, way more groundthan half an inch of accidental contact could ever explain, his arms pinwheeling?—

I don’t even have time to get outwhat the hell are you doingbefore his back finds the front window and he leans his whole weight into the glass.

It gives all at once.

One flat, cracking sound, and then he’s gone?—