Page 2 of Well Aware

I’d come to see her because she missed Iris, and I could tell.

In between class and soccer practice, I’d picked Iris up from daycare and brought her here for a lunch pick-me-up.

Neither one of us realized that Cain would drop by, too.

He only dropped by when he couldn’t get a hold of Rose fast enough. He had to be in constant contact with her whenever he felt like it, and when she didn’t appease his obsession, he’d start stalking her.

I should’ve known that he would find her today.

“You’ll make it up to me when you get home.” He shoved her away.

I winced when her back slammed against the locker behind her.

Since Cain’s family funded this entire hospital, it wasn’t abnormal to find the McDuffs circling around the hospital, checking to make sure their money was well spent.

“Yes, I will,” Rose promised.

She would, too.

Because she liked to breathe.

God, how did this become our life?

He walked out and both of us stood silently, praying that he actually left.

We stood there for a solid five minutes before Rose finally looked at me.

I came out of the bathroom and pushed the stroller into the room.

“He’ll never leave me alone,” she whispered as she looked down at her daughter. “She’ll never be safe.”

“Rose…”

My sister moved surprisingly fast for someone that had just had the shit beaten out of her.

Even if the only way you could tell was by the bruises on my sister’s fingers where he’d shut the locker on her hand when she hadn’t acknowledged him fast enough.

“No, listen to me, sister,” she whispered, cupping my face with bruised fingers. “This isn’t an option anymore. You have to take her. And you have to go.”

Like me, my sister was adopted.

Though, we were both adopted from the same family, so she was my full-blooded sister. Our dad, a half-Japanese visiting dignitary, had fallen in love with our mother, a lovely Southern Belle who had begged for him to stay.

So he had.

They flew to Japan several times a year so that my dad’s side of the family could meet us and spend time with us, but the majority of the year we lived in Tennessee, where we lived with my mother’s family at her estate.

Dad was a businessman that made bookoos of money doing something with finance. Mom was a stay-at-home mother who loved taking care of us.

Then they’d both died in a car crash.

A drunk driver had hit them so hard that the front half of their vehicle had detached from the back half.

Both Mom and Dad had died on impact.

At the time, Rose and I had been six and seven.

Aunt Daisy and Uncle Angus had adopted us shortly after, taking us in as their own.