Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ERIN
My back presses against the wall as I slide down to the floor, hugging my knees to my chest. I’m sitting across from Cass in her room. Just the two of us, Mack outside the door.
She’s staring at me. I’m staring down at my hands. I can’t look at her.
Not yet.
Cass just told me everything she got on her brownie delivery intel. Mack tried to lock her in her room the minute the call came through but she threatened him with death if Lucian didn’t get his brownies while they were still warm.
And Mack has a sweet tooth, especially for Cass.
So, she took her sweet time. Delivering them at the exact moment she heard his voice.
Caleb.
Are these fog-covered marshes where the dead come back to life?
I hate that.
I hate every tremor, every breath, every stupid tear that burns behind my eyes. I hate Caleb’s voice. I hate Carlos’s. I hate the photograph. I hate that there are files.
I hate that even dead men can still make my body feel like a room I want to escape.
Most of all, I hate that Cass heard.
Sweet little Erin.
Always so quiet when it matters.
My stomach twists.
No.
I am not going to be sick. And I need to get control of that story before it gets to Lucian. Our future is already dancing on a wire. Cass can’t ever know that story.
And he can’t know all of the truth, or I certainly will lose him.
I can’t. I can’t lose him… the thought of life without Lucian steals my breath away.
I press one hand to my mouth and breathe through my nose.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
A knock comes.
One sharp rap. All business.
Not Lucian.
He would not knock like that. He would either speak through the door like a threat in a tailored shirt or open it because locks are suggestions to him.
“Rin,” Cass says.
My heart breaks. “No.”
“Tell me.”
“I said no.”
“I know. You say lots of things when you’re being stupid,” she says.
A laugh escapes me, wet and ugly.
“Shut up.” I wipe away a tear.
“We don’t say that,” she jokes.
“Cass, don’t laugh right now.”
“We need each other.” Her voice dips. “Now more than ever.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. My chest hurts.
Then Cass says, softer, “That’s why we’re going to sit right here until you tell me.”
The sob that rises in me is so sudden I barely swallow it back.
Finally, she says, “What did Caleb mean?”
Everything inside me folds. The answer is not simple.
“Rin,” she says.
I say, “I need you not to ask.”
“No,” she says, “you don’t get to lock me out of this because you’re scared I’ll break. I’m already broken if you hadn’t noticed.” She nods to the chair.
Caleb broke something in all of us and then left us to crawl around the pieces. But I’ve shielded her from this. It would hurt too much.
“Erin. What happened?” Cass’s hands tighten on the wheels of her chair.
Tears spill before I can stop them.
The room shrinks. The walls move closer. The air goes thin.
I shake my head.
She wheels closer. “What did Caleb do to you?”
I laugh. One horrible, broken sound. “What didn’t he do?”
Cass goes still. The words hang there. Too much.
Not enough.
“I don’t mean…” I stop. I can’t unsay it. My mouth refuses to move.
I’ve never told Cass any of it. I think about the part I told Lucian. When Caleb would come into my bedroom at night.
How he never touched me, but how he would stand there, naked, staring at me. I would lie, frozen, unable to move or scream. Then, he would say, ‘Watch me, baby sister. Watch what you make me do.’ Then he would… I’ve never gotten that image out of my head.
But there was more. More than what I told Lucian.
My body remembers. It always has. It always will.
I was older. The hallway. The grip. The smell of his drink. Cass asleep upstairs, broken and medicated and finally not crying. Ryan in bed. Me thinking if I screamed, he would wake. If he woke, Caleb would be worse. If Cass heard, she would try to crawl to me.
The image lives inside me.
Cass trying to crawl.
That is why I stayed quiet.
Just like Caleb knew I would.
I guess standing at the end of my bed, pleasuring himself while watching me, wasn’t enough for him.
I wrap my arms around myself. Finally, I say, “He cornered me.”
Cass makes no sound.
I keep going because if I stop, I will never start again.
“After you came home from the hospital the second time. Not the first. The second.
You were sleeping. Ryan was asleep. I was trying to clean up because there was blood on the bathroom floor from when he—”
My throat closes. Cass’s face crumples. Not fully.
She catches herself.
I hate that we are both so practiced at catching “He grabbed me in the hall,” I whisper.
Cass looks like she wants to talk, but no words come out.
“He didn’t…” I shake my head hard, as if that can knock the memory loose.
“Not all the way. I fought. I think I fought. I don’t remember it cleanly.
He held me against the wall and put his hand over my mouth and said if I made a sound, he’d go wake Ryan and let him watch what happened when women caused trouble. ”
Cass makes a sound then—a tiny, dying sound.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“I froze.” The words tear out of me. “I froze. I stopped fighting because I thought of Ryan. I thought of you upstairs, unable to move. I thought if I made it worse, he would hurt both of you. And I froze.”
“You survived.”
“I let him—”
Her voice is sharper now. “You survived.”
“Oh, Rin.” She reaches for me. She leans out of her chair as far as she can and grabs my hand.
“I should have told you,” I whisper.
Cass’s eyes fill. “You should have told me.”
My face crumples. “I couldn’t.”
“I know.”
“I thought it would kill you.”
“It might have.” Her mouth twists. “But not knowing didn’t save me. It only left you alone. And he wins again.”
“He always won.” The sob breaks free then. Ugly. Loud.
Cass pulls my hand to her chest and holds it there like she can anchor me by force.
“I should have protected you better.”
My older sister, damaged, helpless, hopeless, could never have protected me.
And I couldn’t protect myself. But I thought I was protecting them.
With my silence. My compliance. My shame.
“I never should have let him into our lives.” She grips my hand so hard it hurts.
“Stop,” I croak. I hate crying. I hate all of this.
She lowers herself awkwardly, painfully, to the floor beside me. It is not graceful.
It is not easy. It takes longer than she wants, making her jaw clench.
But she does it.
She sits on the floor with me. Like before. Like we are girls again, hiding from the world under the bedcovers.
Then she wraps her arms around me.
I fall apart. Completely.
After a long time, Cass says, “I’m going to kill him.”
A watery laugh hiccups out of me. “Lucian already did.”
“I’ll kill him again.”
“I think Lucian called dibs on the corpse too.”
“We’ll share,” she says. Cass strokes my hair once, clumsy and gentle. “Does Lucian know?”
“Yes. I told him,” I half-truth.
She knows me too well. “How much? How much did you tell him?”
My body goes still.
Cass sighs. “Rin.”
I pull away. “I don’t know how much. Okay? I blocked our conversation out.”
Lies.
I remember every word I said, the feeling of Lucian holding me in bed as I said them, his body tensing around mine as if it were turning to stone.
I only told him the part about the bedroom, the part I’m not going to tell Cass. Two of the most important people each have half of my shame. That’s enough.
It’s already too much.
I didn’t tell him about that night. Or what happened. What he did to me or didn’t do.
Here’s the real problem, now…the question that has been haunting me ever since Cass said Caleb pre-recorded a message.
He knows something about me that I don’t. Not for sure.
Did Caleb do more to me than I let myself remember?
Was I really a virgin that night I answered Lucian’s request, selling my innocence to save my family?
Or was that already taken from me?
No longer mine to give.
Lucian doesn’t need to go digging up a body to stab it into a second death. And it doesn’t really matter now. Not really.
Our relationship is already built on a shaky tower of lies and betrayal.
What’s one more?
I’m not going to try and remember.
Her voice breaks, forcing me to reply. “You have to tell him everything.”
“No.” I shake my head.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t see his face when I told him the part I did.” I pull back, wiping my face with the sleeve of my sweater. “He’ll look at me differently.”
Cass’s expression shifts into something fierce and tender. “He will.”
“Cass.” My chest cracks.
“He will,” she repeats. “Because now he’ll know more of you. That changes things. It should. But different does not mean worse.”
She squeezes my hand. “Different can mean closer.”
I stare at her. “What if he can’t touch me without thinking of it?”
Cass snorts. Actually snorts.
It is so unexpected, I blink. “What?”
She rolls her eyes deeper than I thought possible. “Have you met the man? He looks at you like he wants to murder the air for touching you.”
Despite everything, a laugh bursts out.
“Listen to me,” she says. “If you hide this and Carlos tells him first, or Caleb has more dirty messages stored up. Caleb gets to hurt you again.”
I flinch. She’s right.
“You don’t have to tell him every detail.” She eyes me with that secret knowledge only a big sister has. “I know you didn’t tell me everything. And nor should you.”
She shakes her head. “I know it’s too much to tell.”
“Thanks.”
She sighs, “But he needs to know enough that Carlos can’t use it to make you run.”
“I wasn’t going to run.”
Cass gives me a look. That big sister language. No words.
“Fine.” I pause.
She doesn’t relent.
I confess. “I may have been considering a small strategic disappearance.”
“To go find Carlos and kill him yourself to save the rest of us?”
“Possibly.” I lean my forehead against hers. “But I thought better of it. I don’t want to be predictable anymore.”
“Then do the thing Carlos thinks you won’t,” she says softly and kind. “Trust someone before you’re cornered.”
A knock comes at the door. This one is different.
Low. Controlled.
Lucian.
His voice comes through the wood. “Erin.”
My heart tries to crawl out of my chest. Cass squeezes my hand.
I close my eyes.
“If you let Carlos tell him first,” she whispers, “then Caleb gets to hurt you one more time.”
I breathe in.
Out.
Then I say, “Come in.”