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He glances at me again, then frowns at the bed for a long minute. “Do you think you could stay for a while?” he asks. “We don’t have to fuck. We can just cuddle.”
I cross my arms, rubbing them against the shiver that’s still working its way through me. “What do I get?”
“Whatever you want,” he says, climbing onto the bed.
“If Baron comes back, you’ll tell him I’m free?” I ask. “That neither of y’all can mess with me anymore?”
“Yeah, whatever,” he says, reaching for me.
I let him pull me down with him. I turn onto my side, throwing my leg over his. “I won’t spill your secrets,” I promise, cupping his cheek. “I just want to be able to do what I want.Wear what I want. Be who I want. I don’t even know who that is without you.”
He snorts. “You mean without Baron and Royal. You’d be exactly the same without me.”
“You’re wrong,” I say, leaning in to give him a little kiss. Then I cuddle up to his soft pillows and pull his head to my chest, the way he likes. I said that to be nice, but also to keep him from excusing himself the way he likes to do. He likes to find ways to pretend it doesn’t count. If he’s too drunk, if he took Alice, if he was caught up in the thrill, if he was just going along with his brothers. I’ve enabled him. I let him off easy, made excuses for him even when he’s done the same horrible things his brothers have.
I don’t have to do that anymore.
I don’t have to do anything for him.
But one more time, I hold him until he falls asleep because he just lost his dad, and his brother, and gained a sister, and he’s fucked up enough already without me adding to it.
When he’s asleep, I untangle myself from him and slip back out the window. I could go out the front. Harper lives here, and we’re tight now. But I don’t want to risk seeing Royal, and I don’t want him giving Duke shit about me, since he still hates me. There’s enough chaos in their family without me being one more reason for conflict, even the barest bit that my presence might cause.
Unlike my house, Duke’s is so easy access I can barely call what I did sneaking in. I climb out his window, stroll along the wrap-around balcony, and descend the left set of curving front steps. Then I head down the gravel driveway toward the road. I spot an older lady hiding in the bare azalea bushes smoking a skinny cigarette, and I wave. She holds a finger to her lips, then gives me a wink and a grin.
I smile back and keep walking, but my heart twists up inside me. My grandmother might have hidden her vices, but if she was caught, she wouldn’t smile. She’d have pretended it never happened, and there would be an awkward weight between us, a silent threat and a thunderous glare every time our eyes met. She passed away young. I remember going to her funeral, the way Dawson took off his tie on the way there and left it in the car. It’s one of the only times Mom got mad at him instead of the girls. They got in a fight right before the service, her hissing in fury and him shrugging her off like the thirteen-year-old boy he was.
I stood between my sisters, a smile plastered on my face as we greeted a few guests who didn’t want to interrupt Mom or go in without offering condolences. I felt so proud of myself, so mature, as I stood there faking smiles and a somber mood. I felt like a real Walton woman, strong and noble in her suffering, even though none of us liked the mean, pinched-faced grandmother who delivered stinging swats to our thighs if we sat with our knees apart more than an inch and sharp stabs to the middle of our backs if we slumped.
And I remember a few years later, when Dad was taken away and we came running back here with our tails between our legs, Mom saying, “Thank God my mother’s not here to see it.”
I understand that sentiment when I walk through the door and find Everleigh snuggled up on the couch with Rylan. I wouldn’t care if he was dating another girl if it wasn’t one of my sisters. But I know why she did it. I know she’s proving herself to the Dolces, that they put my sisters on probation, making them prove our whole family isn’t as much an enemy as the Darlings. Things are changing, but not that fast, and like Duke pointed out, not that much. Rylan is a boy, so he’ll be fine, whatever happens. My sisters might not.
I keep walking, pretending I don’t see, don’t care.
Rylan jumps up when he sees me. “Hey, Gloria,” he says, shifting awkwardly.
Ignoring him, I waltz by, head held high. I will never let him make me feel small again.
“Lo,” he calls after me, but I continue up the stairs.
Maybe I’m being petty, but fuck him. He doesn’t have to rub it in my face. I know the Montgomery house has a TV. Hell, Rylan probably has a nice sixty-inch mounted on the wall in his room. Sure, ours is big, but the boxy old thing’s so ancient that flatscreens hadn’t even been invented when my great uncle bought it, and the color’s always orange in one corner. They could watch TV at his house if that’s what they want to do.
I hear his footsteps on the stairs behind me, taking them two at a time to catch up, but I don’t slow for him. My heartbeat drums hard and fast against my sternum, but I ignore it. He’s hurt me before, and I survived it. If he hurts me again, I’ll survive it. I know now that he can’t touch me, that whatever he does, it can’t hurt me a fraction as badly as my sisters can.
Thanksgiving was a tense, mostly silent affair around our place. It used to be a big deal in Savannah—my great uncle came, grandparents from both sides of the family, so many aunts and uncles and cousins that I couldn’t even remember their names. Our cook brought in help, and we always had enough to send them home with whole meals for their families after our enormous extended family had eaten, filling the cavernous dining room with noise, every seat taken at the table so long you couldn’t even talk to someone on the other end.
Now, we’re too disgraced to speak to family. It was just the four of us sitting in front of the TV with our individual, microwavable, frozen turkey dinners. I retired to my room as soon as I finished. It was hard enough the last two years, without Dad and the big family. That felt like the worst thing in the world, to not just lose Dad but the whole family, the grandmawho wrapped us in warm, soft hugs and gave us too many presents; the grandpa who pulled quarters from behind our ears and played pranks on us; the herd of cousins who would climb on the playset in the backyard with us, fix our makeup and play dress-up; the great uncle who would build soapbox cars with us and spent our first holiday here with us.
I thought that was the worst loss we could bear. Now I know how wrong I was, that a house can still be a home without a big family, even without a dad. But not without a brother. That’s the tipping point, the straw that broke the camel, the wound that doesn’t heal. This house isn’t a home anymore. It’s a prison, the walls haunted, the air sick with loss, the floors creaking with the weight of our insurmountable grief.
“Gloria, wait!” Rylan grabs my arm and spins me around at my bedroom door. His face is etched with regret, his eyes hollow. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I say, prying my arm from his grip.
“It’s not,” he says. “Lo… I didn’t mean…”
“To stick your dick in my sister?” I ask. “Oh, wait, make thatsisters.”
