Five Brothers
: Chapter 2

Istartle awake, not moving a muscle as I take in the sunlight coming through the windows. And the heat in the room.

I draw in a deep breath, immediately feeling the ache in my neck as my cheek and stomach press into the leather couch.

Leather couch.

Not my couch. I roll my eyes in every direction, taking in the room. The Jaegers’ living room.

And everything comes flooding back. “Oh shit.” I flip over, the blanket resting against my bare skin, and feel a crick in my neck from sleeping too hard.

I blink against the light streaming through the curtains. It’s morning. I pat the blanket, feeling my body underneath. I’m still naked. Shit, I fell sleep.

“Yeah, I’ll think about it,” I hear Trace say, and see him walk across the foyer in a towel as he opens the door for Carissa, the girl from last night. “See you.”

She walks out, and I hurriedly search, finding my school shirt and pulling it on.

Fuck, where is my skirt? I search the floor.

Oh my God. What did I do?

“Is that Krisjen’s car?” he asks. Half of his body hangs out the open door, talking to someone, and I lean over, quickly feeling under the couch for the rest of my clothes.

The smell of bacon and coffee fills the air, making my mouth water, and it hits me that someone is cooking. Someone had to come downstairs and pass me, half-covered, on the couch. I clench my teeth.

Trace comes back inside, closes the door, and I lie back down, the blanket still covering my naked bottom half.

“Oh, hey.” He sees me on the couch.

“Hey.”

“What are you doing?” he asks.

I can’t seem to calm my breathing. “Um …” I search for words. “My tires. They’re flat. I wanted to wait for the rain to stop to call a tow truck.”

He sits down on the edge of the couch. “No, we’ll take care of them. I’m good for something, right?”

He looks down with a friendly vulnerability in his eyes that turns everyone to putty in his hands.

I’m a little mad at him, contrary to what I told … whichever one of his brothers last night.

Oh my God, I don’t even know who it was …

But I should be angrier at Trace. I’m just not. What happened after I left his room has overshadowed whatever happened before.

I fist the blanket, staring up at him but still feeling the other one inside of me.

He cocks his head. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I meant to be gone already.” I start to sit up. “I’ll be out of here soon.”

“You don’t have to rush.” He stops me. “Krisjen, don’t pay me any mind, okay? I’m a shithead.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine.”

Guilt nips at me, because I’m really glad I left his room last night. What happened afterward was certainly weird. Would I do it again? Yes.

“But you did come with me, right?” he asks, studying me. “Like you didn’t fake it all summer, right? You were just teasing me about that?”

I finally let out a chuckle. I don’t want to lie, but I don’t have the heart to burst his bubble. Honestly, I never really minded. I didn’t come with Milo, either. I just liked being touched. Being close to someone.

But last night …

On the couch …

That was something I didn’t know existed.

I have every confidence Trace will get better with time, but I don’t think it will ever be like that with us.

He stands up, tsking. “You’re so mean to me. I always had an orgasm with you.”

I snort, but as soon as he disappears into the kitchen, I scurry to find my skirt. I spot it on the side of the coffee table and grab it. Standing, I pull it on and zip it up.

Dallas rounds the banister just as I finish and slows as soon as he sees me. I go still.

His gaze never leaves mine as he heads past me, and while his eyes are the same color as Trace’s, they look completely different on Dallas.

I glance down, seeing the bracelet on his wrist. My stomach sinks. Whoever it was last night would probably still be wearing it this morning.

He enters the kitchen, and I bolt for the bathroom. Down the hall, into the half bath under the stairs. I close and lock the door, pulling up my skirt and sitting on the toilet.

Jesus Christ. How could I not stop him last night? At least to wear a condom? I’m sure I’m not pregnant. I’ve been on birth control since I was fourteen, but every single Jaeger sleeps around. Except Liv, of course.

I grab toilet paper and wipe, feeling the slickness between my legs as he leaves me. I clean myself up and flush, looking in the mirror.

I’m breathing hard again, but I just stare, letting myself process.

A bracelet. Bare chest against my back. Tall. He smelled amazing and tasted like meat with a hint of bourbon. And the beer he’d just swallowed.

He didn’t speak much above a whisper, he had rough hands, and there was so much heat on his tongue. All of the brothers could probably fit most of that description.

Fuck.

I look down at my body, not seeing any visible marks yet, but I feel them. An ache between my legs, some red on my neck from when he squeezed it. My arms are sore and my scalp hurts, but I’m not in pain. In fact, I fight not to smile as I feel all of it. Proof that he had me in his hands.

Could it have been Trace? He would’ve felt comfortable enough to go after me like that. None of the others have even looked at me twice. I didn’t see any tattoos, and Trace doesn’t have any yet, but then again, I didn’t see much of the man’s skin at all. Just the hands, wrists, maybe a forearm. Iron has a tattoo there. Would I have noticed it in the dark?

I grab someone’s brush on the edge of the sink and smooth out my hair, then take the tube of toothpaste and put some on my finger, wiping it over my teeth and rinsing.

I have to leave. If it was Dallas, he won’t be kind about it this morning. God, please let it not be Dallas. He hates Saints. He’s never been civil to me, let alone kind. As far as he’s concerned, we’re good for one thing.

And I really hope I didn’t give that one thing to him last night.

I head out of the bathroom, fold the blanket in the living room, and search the coffee table for my keys.

But they’re not there.

Spinning around, I scan the floor and then drop down on all fours, looking under the couch. Nothing. Did someone pick them up?

I hear Trace’s laugh, followed by Dallas’s cursing. There’s at least one other person in there, cooking. I groan, smoothing out my clothes and hair as I inch around the corner to look in the kitchen.

Army stands at the stove, flipping bacon with a dish towel hanging out of his back jeans pocket, the sun making his dark brown hair and the skin on his back look golden. The tentacles of the octopus tattoo drape over his shoulder blade.

His one-year-old son, Dex, jumps up and down as he stands on Trace’s lap, the half-eaten Cheerios and banana left at his high chair. His new white sneakers with the black Nike symbol are always on his feet because he’s just learned to walk, and his uncles couldn’t wait for all the new doors that was going to open. Soccer, climbing trees, walking dogs … But I think it’ll be a few years before he’s ready for any of that. Doesn’t stop them from buying him shoes, though.

My keys sit on the counter, and I can feel Dallas’s eyes on me as he takes a seat at the table. I move toward Army, reaching around him at the stove. “Excuse me.”

He glances over his shoulder, seeing me as I snatch my keys back and turn to leave. I don’t know how they ended up in here.

But Trace pulls me to the table. “Sit.”

I pull away. “Stop.”

“I’ll fix your tires after breakfast,” he says. “Stay and eat.”

“I can handle it myself.” I head out of the kitchen. “I don’t need your help.”

“I fixed her tires already.”

I look up, seeing Iron head into the kitchen. He meets my eyes, sweat covering his neck and chest, and I don’t realize I’m frozen until my lungs ache from no air. He walks around me, to the table, and I stand there for a second.

How did he know I had a problem with my tires? I guess that explains how my keys weren’t where I left them.

But before I can say thank you, I hear Dallas.

“You fixed her tires?”

I can hear the disgust in his voice.

“Her grandfather is sending you to prison for forty-two months, Iron. Forty, if you behave yourself, which you won’t.”

“Maybe fixing his granddaughter’s car will win him some points,” Trace jokes, and grabs my arm, hauling me over.

I fall onto the seat next to him but immediately pop back up.

I’m not staying.

“This isn’t funny!” I hear Dallas yell. He glares at me from the other side of the table. “Get the fuck out of here. Macon says no girls at the table anyway.”

“Clay eats at the table,” Trace points out.

“Clay’s more to Liv than just a piece of ass!” Dallas cocks an eyebrow at me. “Unfortunately.”

“Jesus, enough,” Army growls at him. “Goddammit. I’m sick of your shit.” He dumps the plate of bacon on the table. “I want some peace at this table for once.”

Dallas opens his mouth.

“Shut up,” Army barks again before Dallas can argue more.

The table falls silent as Army puts his kid back in his high chair and everyone starts loading their plates. It’s almost comical how they fight nonstop, and Dallas just insulted me several times in the span of thirty seconds, but I still see them as more of a family than I’ve ever witnessed before. I’ve seen them eat more meals together in the six months I’ve known them than my family has in my entire life.

I look across the table where Iron has taken a seat next to Dallas. I know I told Trace I could take care of the tires, but it wouldn’t have been that easy. “You didn’t have to do that,” I tell Iron. “I appreciate it, though. Thank you.”

“We can be gentlemen from time to time,” Army adds next to me.

I look up as he holds a loaded plate out for me, his smile unusually soft. “Sit.”

A hickey mars the skin under his ear, the red-purple mark fresh. My heart kicks up a beat, and I stare at it, trying to remember if I kissed the man’s neck last night. I absently take the plate and sit down in the empty seat at the foot of the table.

“Eat,” Iron tells me. “The car has a few issues you need to have a mechanic look at. I’ll walk you out when we’re done.”

I nod, but I can’t eat. My stomach is doing somersaults. No one speaks, and I look over, seeing Dex smiling at me. I wink at him, remembering my brother and sister. Pulling out my phone, I tap out a text to Mars, letting him know I’ll be home soon.

But when I look up, I see Trace watching me. He looks away when I meet his eyes.

Then I spot Dallas casting a sideways glance, followed by Iron and Army. Their bracelets catch the sunlight coming in from the windows. Leather and iron. With the same symbol that’s tattooed on Iron’s neck and on the left side of Dallas’s chest.

I float my gaze from one wrist to another as if I’ll recognize the feel of the skin or the wear on the leather by sight. Which wrist did he wear his on last night?

“Did you find the gator?” Army suddenly asks.

I look up, noticing Macon entering the kitchen. The oldest and the head of the house.

He pulls off his greasy, sweaty T-shirt and tosses it into the laundry room. I watch him fill a glass with water, his broad back tanned and toned, and it does that thing where his muscles bulge on each side of his spine, making it look indented. His jeans hang low as he watches the water fill the glass like none of us are here.

There’s a three-inch vertical gash on the right side of his back—an old wound—and another small one on his upper arm. And those are just the ones I can see. Macon doesn’t have tattoos. He has scars. Maybe from when he was a Marine. Maybe from here in the Bay. He’s thirty-one, and the only one, other than Liv, with brown eyes. They got them from their mother.

I catch Dallas watching me, and he just shakes his head.

Macon sits at the head of the table, Army placing a plate in front of him.

“You should’ve let me come with you,” Army tells him. “You wouldn’t have been able to handle it on your own anyway.”

Macon says nothing, just starts eating.

Dallas opens his mouth, but Macon cuts him off before he has a chance to speak. “Shut up and eat.”

I cast Dallas a look, trying to hide my amusement, because I know he was going to bitch that I was at the table.

But when I look away, I catch sight of Macon’s wrist.

And his bracelet.

My smile falls, and I raise my eyes, watching him ignore us as he chews.

It couldn’t have been him. It wouldn’t have been him.

My stomach swims. It’s on his right wrist. Same as Trace. Same as the guy last night on the couch.

I float my eyes around the table. They all wear theirs on the right wrist.

“I called Collins and Barrow,” Iron tells his brother. “Asked if we could wait till midday for the grass to dry a little.”

Macon nods, the rain last night throwing off their schedule, but I’m sure they’re used to it. Florida has weather. “Swing by Trade Winds a day early, then,” he says, “and do the maintenance in the solarium.”

Iron shifts in his seat.

“And wear a shirt this time,” Macon gripes. “I don’t ever want another phone call from those fuckin’ people.”

I bite back my smile; all the places they’re talking about are in St. Carmen. The Jaegers will let us pay them for landscaping, gardening, pool cleaning, and carpentry, but other than that, they don’t want to be reminded that we exist.

“Mariette phoned,” Army tells him, finally taking his seat. “Her latest hire already quit, and no one wants the day shift.”

Macon scoops up more food onto his fork. “Call Aracely.”

“No answer.”

“Just deal with it,” Macon mumbles.

Bags hang under his eyes, and his arm looks like it weighs a hundred pounds when he picks up his coffee cup. He pushes his plate away, barely eaten, and rises, leaving the room. Back into the garage.

Don’t worry, Dallas. Pretty sure Macon didn’t even notice I was at the table this morning anyway.

I stand up, setting my plate down next to Trace, because I know he’ll eat it. “I’ll wait outside,” I tell Iron. “Take your time.”

Sanoa Bay never seems to sleep. Kids run around where their older siblings and parents played last night, and I can never tell if people are just getting in or just going out for work. There’s always music drifting from someone’s garage or someone’s house. Always from Mariette’s Restaurant, and always from the bar next door to it after 4:00 p.m.

It’s a community in the way my neighborhood isn’t. The only thing I hate over here are the dirt roads. They’re a reminder that the Bay is just the poor part of St. Carmen and not its own town. If it were, it would have autonomy over its own revenue and be able to afford the bare minimum. Like streetlamps and sidewalks.

Iron leans under the hood of my car next to me, and I hear him talk, but I don’t know what he’s saying.

He’s been kind this morning. Really helpful like he never has before.

But my grandfather is sending him to prison for three and a half years, so maybe he thought seducing me last night would be a great way to get back at my family? And now he feels guilty about it? Was it him, then?

Army was attentive at breakfast, too. He’s usually rushing around, overwhelmed, because he’s running a business and trying to shield Macon from whatever will set him off, and I’m eighteen, so what do I matter to a twenty-eight-year-old single father? But he was calm this morning. He smiled at me. Why?

Dallas was as angry as ever. It can’t be him.

Trace looked guilty when he saw me on the couch, too.

But he did walk that girl out, so I doubt he came down after me last night and left her in his room. It wasn’t him. Definitely not. I know what he feels like, and that wasn’t it.

Macon’s the only one who acted typical this morning.

And I don’t think it’s his style to sleep with his little sister’s friends, either. He’s way older than me.

“Krisjen.”

It had to be Army or Iron. Right? I mean …

“Krisjen!”

I blink, coming back into focus. Iron still leans under the hood, but he’s staring at me. Oh my God. Was I thinking out loud?

But he just smirks in that way that makes the color in his eyes look like a shamrock. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?” he asks.

Talking? What? Oh, the car.

I shrug a little. “Could you write it down? I’ll pass it on to a mechanic.”

It’s not like I’m fixing any of this myself.

He laughs under his breath, standing up and closing the hood. “I’ll give you a ride home. Just leave it here for a few days. I’ll fix it.”

“No, that’s okay,” I say it as gently as possible. “I won’t be back.”

He looks at me, and I don’t mean that to sound insulting. Last night ended much better than it started, but I need to focus now. If I don’t get ahead of my mother, she’s going to have my future figured out for me.

But he just slips my keys into his pocket. “I can drop it off when I’m done, then.”

“Why do you want to fix it?” I study him, definitely having an idea why but deciding not to press it. If he’s not going to talk about last night, then it’s either not him or it wasn’t a big deal, so I play along. “I’ll put in a word with my grandfather, but all you had to do was ask. Not that my input will help you anyway. He barely knows I exist.”

“I don’t want to hear about your grandfather, and I don’t want you to talk to him for me.” He takes a T-shirt hanging off the handlebar of his motorcycle and pulls it on. “He warned me the first time I was busted and the second, and I didn’t listen. Not sure I still would if I could go back and do anything differently.”

He’s not lying. My grandfather gave him chances.

But my grandfather also knows, as do I, that if Iron’s last name was Ames or Collins or Price, his punishment would be no more than being the butt of a joke within his father’s circle as he smokes a cigar on the golf course while they all complain about their kids.

Prison rarely makes a person’s life better. It’s more likely than not that Iron will be perpetually in and out of jail.

He steps up to me, takes my backpack, and slips it into his saddlebag. “I would like you here after I go away, okay?”

I hesitate.

“You don’t have to fuck Trace to be his friend.” Iron looks over at me. “He’s lonely. Dallas is always in a bad mood, Army is a lot older and has a kid, and Macon doesn’t talk to anyone. It would be nice for Trace to know you’re around. I know he acts like a tool, but he’s twenty.”

I always liked Trace. But I don’t want to be walked on. He and I started at the wrong place. We can’t just be friends now.

“His only memories of our mother were after she’d gotten to her worst,” he tells me. “He was never nurtured, not the way the rest of us were or how Liv was, because she was the only girl. Trace missed out on a lot. He needs a woman in the house.”

After she’d gotten to her worst …

Their mother died by suicide more than eight years ago. Two months after their dad died of a heart attack.

She’d been depressed long before that, though. That’s about all I know. Trace doesn’t talk about it, and I never pressed Liv for details. They were so young, I doubt they really knew the full measure of what had happened with their mom. Macon and Army will remember the most.

I just shake my head. “I can’t pay you for the car,” I admit. “And I’ve got my own problems, Iron. Trace will be fine. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“Nothing has ever been okay,” he whispers, looking down for a second. “I’m used to it. Trace is still young.”

I watch him, both of us falling silent.

He’s worried. He knows he probably wouldn’t have avoided this if he could go back and do it over, because Iron lives for people to give him a reason to hit them, but he doesn’t feel good about what he’s done, either. Did it just finally dawn on him that his family needs him, and in a week, they’ll be without him for years?

He clears his throat, digging out a set of keys, and I see they’re not mine. “Do you have another car at home?” he asks.

“My dad’s old Benz.”

“Does it run?”

“Yeah.” I nod. “It should.”

He sighs, gesturing for me to climb on his bike behind him. “You don’t have to pay me,” he says. “I need something to do this week.”

He starts the bike, and I take the helmet he hands me, pulling it on and fastening it as I sit down behind him. Wrapping my arms around him, I hold tight as he takes off, through the green and shade of the swamp, over the tracks, and onto the two-lane highway as his tires finally touch pavement.

He revs the gas, sending the bike lurching, and I squeeze my arms around his waist, pressing my body close to his.

He’s warm. And tight under my hands.

My friend Amy said he was good. She said he and Dallas didn’t let her get any sleep.

Thoughts of how he might’ve been with her versus me—if it was him last night—hit me, and I push them away.

It’s not worth dwelling on. I won’t be going back over there.

We cruise into the main village of St. Carmen, a street sweeper cleaning the spilled palms and flowers from the storm last night as potted ferns and perennials swing from hangers under streetlights. Shops begin to open, and I unlock my fists, pressing my fingertips flat against his stomach. The wind blows my hair over my back. And while thoughts creep in that I’m practically doing the fucking walk of shame when Clay and the rest of my friends are busy with classes, making something of themselves, I force myself to appreciate this moment. It feels better than school. Better than home.

I wish he’d keep going. Down the coast. To the Keys. Cuba. Anywhere.

I always feel too much guilt. I should be doing this. I should be doing that. I shouldn’t sit down. I shouldn’t wake up late. I shouldn’t drink or party or skip a workout. I rest my cheek against his back, close my eyes, and fly through the wind.

Before I know it, he pulls up to my house, and I see the gate is open.

My mother is home. Great.

He slowly pulls down my driveway, and I spot my mom’s new Maserati parked off to the right. She bought it, because she’s still married to my father, and while I’m sick of her, I’m kind of excited to see my father react when the first payment comes due.

Iron stops behind it, out of direct view of the front of the house. It’s nice how he’s trying to save me from getting yelled at, because he knows no parent wants their daughter getting brought home—in the morning—by a Jaeger.

I sit there, not letting go, though. “Is it weird I’m enjoying this town more with all my friends gone to college now?” I ask him.

I feel him take something out of his pocket.

“I mean, Clay is still in town,” I say as I climb off the bike, “but she’s busy. I don’t have to see too many familiar faces from high school. It’ll only be embarrassing when they come home for the holidays and I’m still doing nothing.”

He flicks his lighter, mumbling over his cigarette as he lights it. “At least you won’t be in jail.”

Puffs of smoke rise into the air. I don’t remember that smell last night. Iron doesn’t smoke a lot, but he smokes every day.

“True,” I say.

If I were him, I’d be depressed, knowing where I was going to be in a week. It’s almost better to just get arrested and go, without the opportunity to dread it.

“It can always be worse.” He peers over his shoulder at me. “And once in a while, it will be. Stay in the moment. This could be it, right?”

This could be it. The Tryst Six motto. A reminder that time is the most valuable commodity and no one can buy more of it.

We can try, but the clock ticks and it never stops. It never slows.

“For what it’s worth,” I tell him, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know. I just …” I’m not sure what I’m trying to say. He did the crime. Multiple times. Blew the chances he was given. He chose this. “I just know you’re good. A good person.”

Despite his troublemaking.

His eyes soften, and I can see the wheels turning in his head as he looks at me. Finally, he gets off the bike and digs into the saddlebag, the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “I know how you can pay me back,” he tells me. “For fixing your car, I mean. Mariette needs help at the restaurant, and you don’t seem to have a job.”

He pulls out my backpack.

But I shake my head. “I told you. I’m not going back over there.”

“Done looking for love in all the wrong places?”

“Isn’t that a song?”

He comes around and holds out the straps of my bag. I slip my arms through, feeling his fingers graze my skin. My skin tightens, tingles spreading.

“I enjoy this town more this time of year, too,” he says in a low voice. “The college kids are gone, and the snowbirds haven’t arrived yet. For a little while, it’s just ours. Nothing else really changes. It’s always summer here. But the nights do cool down a little, and the streets are quiet enough that you can hear the wind in the palms. The air smells better. We finally come outside. It’s the locals’ turn to play.”

A taunt laces his tone, and I swear I feel his breath on my neck.

He’s right. I never really thought about it like that. Saint or Swamp. We’re both still locals.

“I’ll kind of miss you, kid,” he almost whispers. “I hope you had some fun in Sanoa Bay at least. While you played.”

A jolt hits me low in the belly, and I turn around, but he’s already climbing back on his bike. I watch him speed off, and for a second, time slows as he leaves, turns, and disappears behind the hedge wall.

A knot twists in my stomach for just a second. I said I was done there, but it suddenly hits me that I don’t know when I’ll see him again. I almost take a step as if I’ll catch up to him, but I shake it off and head inside.

I’ll miss him.

I step into the house, hearing the buzzer on the stove going off, and rush into the kitchen. Bateman, Paisleigh’s nanny, pulls a sheet of fresh-baked pastries out of the oven, and I exhale. I forgot he was going to be here today.

“Morning,” I call out, dumping my backpack on the chair next to my sister as she sits at the island. I lean over her. “What are you working on?”

“Drawing dinosaurs.”

Her hair, just a shade lighter than mine, is styled in two reverse French braids that Bateman undoubtedly did when he got her up this morning. I think my mother stopped doing her kids’ hair with me.

I peek at the triceratops walking underneath a rainbow. “Nice,” I tell her. “You know they weren’t purple, though, right?”

“We don’t know for sure that they weren’t,” she replies too assuredly for a five-year-old. “No one is actually sure what they looked like, just made guesses based off nutrients they found in the bones and other things like climate and vegetation at the time.”

She goes to a really good school.

I kiss her head. “Touché.”

She continues drawing, and I ask Bateman, “Is she upstairs?”

He nods, his eyes flashing toward the ceiling.

I grab my phone and head up the staircase, that job at Mariette’s feeling like heaven right now.

I scroll through my notifications as I head up, spotting a few pictures of Liv and Clay at breakfast this morning. I smile. Liv’s in town. I didn’t expect her back before the holidays. She went up north to Dartmouth for college. Clay loves her to death, but it’s really fucking cold up there, so Clay stayed home for school.

But I think the real reason is that she’s reconnecting with her parents. Years ago, they lost her younger brother to leukemia. Now they’re divorcing, but it’s only made all of them closer. She doesn’t want to lose that.

And I also see a follow request from Jerome Watson.

I close my eyes, exiting out of social media.

I pass my brother’s closed door and stop at the doorway of my mom’s bedroom as she comes out of her bathroom, dressed in a pretty white dress with short sleeves, a square neckline, and a tight fit around her body.

It’s mine.

She pops her head up, carrying some toiletries to an overnight bag. I guess she plans on being gone tonight, too.

“Oh, you’re here,” she chirps. “Good. Sit down.”

I shuffle to the chair at her vanity, seeing all her jewelry in a pile on top. What is she doing?

“I’m taking your brother to church,” she tells me. “You come, too.”

She hasn’t attended since my father left nearly a year ago. She wanted to avoid the stares and fake sympathy. I know why she’s going now.

Jerome Watson will be there.

“Why don’t you marry him?” I ask her.

At forty years old, she’s only eight years older than him. They’re closer in age than he and I are.

“Because I’m not having any more kids,” she retorts.

And I’m certainly not having any anytime soon, either. “I’m not going to church. And I’m not accepting his friend request, so you can stop encouraging him.”

She zips up the leather satchel, removes her glasses, and walks over, reaching around me to get her perfume. “He will make sure your brother and sister stay with me instead of your father and that paid-for piece of ass,” she bites out, not missing a beat. “He will make sure I don’t grow old in some assisted-living center surrounded by early bird specials and denture cream. He will secure the lifestyle you’ve always known. You’ll have everything, Krisjen.” She peers down at me, spraying a shot of Guerlain, and cocking an eyebrow. “You’re coming to church, and he’s going to bring you home. You may stop off for lunch, and then later in the week, you’ll invite him over for a barbecue, where you’ll laugh and play with your brother and sister and show him what a good girl you are before you present him with those caramelized onion, roast beef, and goat cheese focaccias you make so well.”

She leans down, planting her hands on my armrests. I turn away as she gets in my face.

“Then you’ll move on to a few dinners, where I will let him bring you home later and later and your dresses will get tighter and shorter, and then, finally, I will let you know when it’s time to let him seduce you, because he’s going to want a test-drive before he commits.”

I fold my lips between my teeth to keep my chin from shaking.

“You’re going to do what you have to, and you’re going to blow his mind, do you understand?”

I swallow hard. I refuse to give her a fight.

“Now, I’m not crazy,” she states. “I know I sound horrible, and when I was your age, I probably would’ve wanted to kill my mother for saying the things I’m saying to you, but that ‘follow your heart and persevere’ bullshit rarely works for most of us. You have to grow up and fuck people you don’t want to fuck, because there is one thing that’s worse on this planet, and that’s being poor. I guarantee, no matter how much you hate him, you’re going to hate Paisleigh growing up in the Vista View Apartments a lot more. We need you, do you understand?”

Fuck …

“You let Milo fuck you because you wanted a popular boyfriend.” She goes back to her bed and slips her feet into her heels. “May as well get some purses and shoes out of the next one.”

Every muscle in my body tightens as she disappears into the bathroom again, and I get that fantasy of shoving everything I can into a backpack and hitchhiking out of here flashing through my mind. Anywhere. Seattle. Montana. Alaska.

But I would never leave Paisleigh and Mars.

I don’t want my parents to die, but sometimes I have other fantasies that include them mysteriously disappearing. Prayers or running away aren’t going to save me, though. I’ll just have to figure a way out of this. I’m smart.

I leave her room, grab a quick shower, and change my clothes.

I can’t be here today. I need my dad.

If he would just pay her off and show up for his kids … He doesn’t even have to show up for me. I’m grown.

They need him, though. If he acted fairly, I might have options.

And the irony of that isn’t lost on me, either. Begging for one man to save me from another.

No. I’ll figure it out. I need to think. And not in church.

I jog downstairs and pick up a banana out of the fruit bowl. I wrap my arms around Paisleigh. “Wanna spend the day with me?”

She nods quickly.

I dig my wallet out of my backpack, grab the keys to my dad’s old car, and quickly sweep her into my arms.

“Just get her clothes and lunch ready for school tomorrow and then you can go, okay?” I tell Bateman.

He narrows his eyes. “Are you sure?” But he sounds a little excited by the prospect of an unexpected day off.

“Yes.” And I practically run with Paisleigh out the door before my mother comes downstairs.

I put my sister in the back seat of the Benz, strap her into the booster, and then unlock the top, putting it down on such a sunny day.

“Yay!” She giggles. “And turn up the music!”

“You got it, princess.” I start the car, my dad’s old cassette tape still in the player. Olivia Newton-John blasts over the speakers as we cruise to the only place I feel safe, shouting the lyrics as we cross the tracks.