Page 125 of Lessons in Cruelty

Fuck Rooke’s class tomorrow—I’ll tell him I was sick. He’ll probably be pissed, but he’ll get over it.

There’s no fucking way I’m staying sober long enough to remember any of the shit that went down in the library gardens.

…look how fucking wet you are…

Oops. Ha ha. That was a close one.

“Want a beer?” I drag myself up the bed, and then perch on the edge as I rummage through the cans on my nightstand. One of them’s gotta be sealed. I brought two six-packs in here last night to supplement my fresh bottle of Jäger.

Ezra looks almost exactly like that meme of the little blond girl in her car seat, with his lip raised until his too-white teeth catch the light. “It’s the middle of the day. And the middle of the week.”

Thank God.

But I still lean into the pretense that I’d love nothing more than to spend time with my brother. It’s how Mom raised us. It’s what Ezra taught me. It’s how I’ve learned to live.

“Should be celebrating,” I say. “This is what you—” I clear my throat “we wanted.”

“Of course we did,” Ezra says dryly, his eyes lingering on me a little longer, as if waiting for my denial. “That slut was a distraction you didn’t need.”

Yeah, that was kinda the point. We distracted each other from our fucked up lives. She was a blessing, not a curse. But when I found out the shit she’d been up to after leaving Agony Hollow…

…look at me when I use you…

I set my beer down, then carefully put my dead roach in the makeshift ashtray I created out of a dented beer can.

Ezra side-eyes me when I screw off the Jäger’s lid and take a swig, then continues prowling through my room like he’s taking careful note of every discarded sweet packet, beer can, or crusty sock.

I’m not usually a pig. But it’s hard to think about cleaning when all I can think about is how fragile and slender and warm and smooth Haven’s neck felt in my fingers as I tried to crush the life out of⁠—

Fuck!

“Slut,” Ezra says in that low, hushed tone he only uses when we’re alone. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and my legs twitch like they want to run. “Turning tricks in Ashwood for her dad’s dope, then fucking half the football team. Did she seriously think we wouldn’t find out?”

I stare at the bottle of Jäger, circling my wrist to make the booze swish around inside. “Yeah,” I rasp. “The fucking audacity on that one.”

Ezra chuckles. “You know how hard it was to tell you about that shit? I almost couldn’t do it.”

I don’t want to look at him, but I do. I know my brother’s cues by now. If I don’t acknowledge the sliver of mercy he gave me all those years ago, he’ll make me pay for it.

And I owe him for it. How else would I have found out about the guys running a train on Haven? And the thing with her dad kind of made sense. He had her stealing food back when they still lived in the trailer park so he had more money for drugs. Makes sense that he’d put her to work once she was old enough.

“You two were so close,” Ezra says, shaking his head as he goes to pick up one of my hoodies from the floor. He fingers the fabric and stares out the window like it’s a portal to the past. “I didn’t want to take that away from you, but I had to. Couldn’t have you believing in a lie. That’s what a big brother is for, right?”

The knuckles on the hand holding my Jäger have gone white.

“Shut up,” I push through gritted teeth.

“To clean up your messes.”

“Ezra, stop.” It’s a low, warning growl, as if he’s ever listened to me when I told him to stop.

“You know what? I’m glad she came back. Gave you a chance to hammer that last nail in her coffin. Now things can go back to normal. Just me and you, bro.”

He flinches when the bottle of Jägermeister explodes against the wall a few feet from him.

In the hush that follows, there’s only a soft tinkle of glass as a shard settles.

“That almost hit me,” he says, turning eyes the color of dying moss onto me. It’s probably just my fucked up mind making shit up, but I swear there’s a flicker of disappointment on his face.