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“Both things can be true, but they’re not. You’re just hurt.”
“I’m—” Lips don’t work. I can still taste her. She’s in my arms, surrounded. Doesn’t seem to mind. “I’m fine.”
Bristol brushes a hand over my eyes, and I humor her and close them. Also, I can’t keep them open. “You’re hurt, but I’ll kiss and make it better.”
This woman. Kisses, all over my chest. Alternating with nips. Sharp, quick bites with her teeth.
“She left when I was two. I don’t remember it.” Once I’ve started, I can’t seem to stop. It’s like that night in the ring. Couldn’t stop hitting Mountain Man. Can’t shut my mouth. “Emerson said she went to get milk—” My voice catches, and I have no idea why. Bristol’s kissing her way slowly down my torso, wet, open-mouthed kisses and even presses with her lips. “—and she didn’t come back. Took Sinclair with her, but not—not us. He came back six months later.”
Bristol moves back up, her lips on my collarbone. She shifts her body so she’s over me. I can’t see her, but I don’t think I could look her in the eye for this, anyway. The weight of her is enough.
“Without her?”
“Because she died. Because he came home from school and she was gone. He said—” I don’t know what I’m reaching for. My hand finds her hair, and I run my fingers through it, undoing the knots. “She went for a walk in the park before work and ran across—” Someone. A man. It’s always a man. We’re monsters. “Somebody killed her. Police found her body in the park the next day, and Sinclair came home.”
“I’m glad he did.”
“I’m not.” Anger rakes fingernails across the inside of my chest. “He shouldn’t have come back.”
Phantom punches. Blinding light. Bristol, kissing my hip bone. Fuck, that hurts. It hurts so much.
“Why not?”
“Because our dad wasn’t good. He wasn’t up to having us. Never any money. Never enough food. He was angry.”
She pauses. “He hit you?”
“All—” Her lips on the crease between my leg and torso feel like a knife. It’s pleasure, but it hurts. I don’t want it to stop, and it cuts. “All the time. And he locked us in the—”
My lungs seize. The only reason I don’t turn over and scream into a pillow is that Bristol’s hands are sliding down my abs, then back up. Then down. Half of me is lost in that sensation, hard for her again. The other half feels it like a fist to the jaw.
“Closet,” I finish. There. She’s heard. She knows. “For a long time. My brothers—” Emerson, sitting on the kitchen floor, his back to the pantry door. It was always empty. No food. What it had was a sturdy deadbolt on the outside. Hands in his lap, staring at nothing, perfectly still, and I knew, I know, that’s how he’d spent the hours inside, too. “He kept them in there longest. I think they tried to get in his way so he’d hurt me less. But if he could punch me, then I was out. I was out.”
“I’m so sorry.” Bristol’s propped over me again, her hair brushing my stomach. She keeps touching me. Hurts. Feels good. Hurts. “Is that why you were worried about Emerson?”
“Sin could handle it. Emerson’s different.”
“How?”
“He just—he doesn’t think the same way we did. He doesn’t see things the way we do.” And. “He panicked. He had panic attacks.”
“When he was—” Bristol’s voice shakes, but she clears her throat. “From being locked in?”
“No.” It was worse than that. It was so much worse than that. “When Dad would let him out. He said it was safer to be alone, where nobody could touch him. I remember Sinclair on this couch. Piece of shit. Dragged it in from the curb. He had a black eye.”
“From your dad?”
“From Emerson. He’d been in there two days and Dad was already pissed when he let him out. Beat Emerson up for it. So Em waited for him to leave for his shift, and then he ran. Sinclair went after him, and I went, too. He told me to stay in the house, but I didn’t. And—”
Wind and night and open sky. No stars. Headlights and pollution and the air cold in my lungs.
“That house was near an overpass. Two lanes of traffic on the bridge, five lanes underneath.”
Bristol is completely still, palms flat on my chest. I find her fingers and count them. Five fingers. Five lanes of traffic.
“Sin tackled Em off the guardrail. They almost rolled into the street. Emerson saw the sky and panicked. He tried to get away and got Sin in the eye.”
Sin, sitting with his back to that guardrail, legs out in front of him, Emerson’s head on his shoulder. He held one hand over Emerson’s eyes. Later, Sin sat on the couch, his face flickering in the light of a late-night TV show. Emerson was curled up next to him underneath every blanket we had in the house, his head on Sin’s thigh. Sin kept one arm over the blankets, adding weight, and used his other hand to hold a bag of frozen peas to his face.Come watch the show with us, Will.Only one of them was watching, but I went.
