Prologue #4
There’s something on his face I’ve seen a few times, but it’s taken till now for me to figure out what it means. He needs this. Hunter doesn’t do a lot for himself. He sacrifices for me. He’s strong for me. He shields me from the worst of Mom as often as he can. He does what’s best for me, period.
But this is his breaking point. He’s on the precipice of having it all—a good job, a normal-ish life—but he’ll lose it all if he doesn’t do this. It’s time for me to do something for him.
I nod. “Okay. I’m coming with you, but does it have to be now? Why now?”
“Yeah, it has to be now. I’m too afraid I’ll talk myself out of it again. Don’t … please don’t talk me out of it.”
Which means he has before. Many times. Talked himself out of it, I mean.
“I’ll finish this. Get your stuff, I’ll meet you at the truck.”
We don’t take much. Just my hockey gear and some clothes. We leave Mom a note, an envelope with a pile of money, and the keys to the truck he had fixed up for me. Never even got to drive it.
“Were you actually going to leave me if I insisted on staying?” I ask once we’re in his truck because that’s doubtful at best. Wild wolves couldn’t pull my brother from me.
He laughs. “Not a fucking chance. I would have dragged your ass into the truck.”
We move to another part of the city that’s further from the high school I go to, but the people are nice, and we find a place that seems to overlook the fact that we’re brothers, young ones, and there’s not a parent between us.
All the landlord wants to know is: Can we pay the rent?
Hunter drops the name Moretti Construction, and the man rolls out a welcome mat for us.
We’re closer to Hunter’s work now, and when I finally get my license, he can walk on the days I have practice or hitch a ride with a coworker.
“Just until I can get us another vehicle,” he reminds me when I wince because of his tired eyes. He still won’t let me get a job. Not until I’m out of high school, he said.
The rink’s not too far a drive early in the morning, so I can stick with the same hockey team. I can still see Dash.
We eventually tell Mom where we are, but we suspect she knew the whole time. We tell her she’s welcome to visit, hoping that with us out of the house and no longer emotional burdens, we might rekindle something.
Weeks pass. Months. I assume she’ll become a forbidden topic, but it’s the opposite. Hunter’s been reading self-help books, and he forces me to talk about it, since we can’t afford therapy yet.
But he’s told me several times, “As soon as I can afford it, you’re going.”
Joy.
Anyway, we talked about her, and it was helpful at first, but it’s already lost its shine. What Hunt said that night plays over and over.
Fucking Christ, she doesn’t want to be helped, Dirk.
There was something else there, something Hunt doesn’t wanna tell me.
I toss my bag down on my way in from school, kicking my shoes off.
“Put your shoes away,” Hunter calls.
He was so proud of this damn shoe rack. He made me miss a whole Saturday of bed rotting to make it with him.
I had big plans. It was gonna be me, GateFlix, and a pepperoni pizza.
Instead, it was me and Hunt in waterproof ponchos—because even the rain didn’t deter him—and a noisy table saw that his boss gave him when the work site got new ones.
Hunt’s got his cookbook out, which is still fucking weird to see. My hardass brother with something out of Jamie Oliver’s library and an apron tied around his t-shirt and blue jeans. His brow’s furrowed, eyes stormier than usual.
“Hunt?”
“Set the table—for three.”
“Three?” I head straight to the cupboard.
“Mom,” is all he says.
Well, that’s one way to light my nerves on fire. I have a thousand questions, but I don’t ask any of them. His hands tremble when he reaches for spatulas and shit. They fall out of his hands. There’s a lot of swearing. It’s better I let him be.
We have everything ready to go for five on the nose, but no Mom. Hunt texts her several times, but we don’t get a text till twenty minutes later, saying she’s still coming, but she’s behind. Yeah, no shit. She’s already thirty-five minutes late.
At six-oh-eight, she makes her entrance, breezing through the door, looking around, wrinkling her nose. She misses a step, her ankle collapsing.
“Fucking heels,” she says, but there’s something … off. I don’t mean to stare, but I’m staring, watching closely.
“H-Hi, Mom,” I say. I don’t know how I know not to expect a hug, but I don’t. “You look good.”
And she does, mostly. She has fresh highlights, and the white pantsuit molds to her figure. But her eyes are devoid of spark, and it kills me a little.
Her gaze lands somewhere behind me, lips pressing into a thin line, but then she eases. “Hey, baby,” she says with forced sweetness.
My gut takes a dive, landing in a hollow place. Why did that feel like rejection? My head swivels, searching for Hunter. He’s stiff, all stone.
“Would you like a soda, Mom?” he says, woodenly. Now, that look on Hunter, I know. Protective. Mom’s setting it off. I look between them, still not quite sure.
“I’d rather a crisp white if you have it.”
“Can we just … get food in us before wine, Mom?”
“Trying to be the man of the house, Hunter?” she says. “If you’re gonna be a man, just tell me you don’t want me drinking.”
Hunter grits his teeth, making some kind of decision. “I left a watermelon on the back porch. Dirk, can you grab it for me?”
“Um, okay.” As soon as I’m on the porch, the door shuts behind me. Yep, he was getting rid of me to speak to Mom alone. I take my time, straining to hear their voices, but I can’t make out what they’re saying.
When I head back inside, Hunter’s pulling a chicken out of the oven, and I place the watermelon I know he didn’t really need, on the island. The tension’s molasses thick, and Mom’s at the table with her blazer off now, sipping on a soda.
“Need any help?”
His eyes flick toward Mom. “Sure, bud. Bring that salad to the table.”
I do, with all the sour energy of this room curdling in my gut. I sit at the table with Mom, kinda wishing she hadn’t come. Didn’t expect to feel that way. I thought that us living on our own would fix things, but maybe we were never the problem.
“How’ve you been, Mom?” I ask, trying to salvage the night. Maybe she feels guilty that we had to leave. Maybe if I show her we’re okay, she’ll feel better.
“I’ve been great,” she says. “Be even better with a glass of pinot gris.”
Hunter slams a platter of chicken on the table. “Eat first,” he tells her. “Dirk, sit over there, please.”
He points to where he usually sits at the other end of the table. It’s pretty obvious he’s trying to put space between me and Mom, which is made even more obvious when he plonks hard into the seat I’ve just vacated.
“I guess we all just do whatever Hunter says, huh, Dirk?” Mom says.
I shrug. “Pretty much.” I smile in Hunter’s direction, and he offers me a weak one in return. He usually rolls his eyes and laughs when I say something of that nature. I’m quickly losing my appetite here.
We pass serving dishes around, piling food on our plates in silence until Hunter breaks it.
“Dirk’s doing real well in school and hockey,” he says.
I beam over the praise.
“That why you left? Him? Needed to take him away from the big bad she-wolf?”
Hunter glares, and his fingers flex. I’m waiting on tenterhooks to know the answer, too.
I don’t doubt I factored into his decision, but I got the sense that his leaving had more to do with her.
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he’s up and over to the fridge, carting back a bottle of white, placing it on the table in front of her.
“Here. All yours,” he says.
“Fucking finally.” She pours a hefty glass and takes a sip so long you’d think she was about to wilt from thirst. She fills the glass again.
“Eat,” he says.
“Yes, King Hunter,” she mocks.
With wine in her, Mom relaxes. She launches into stories about her at work.
She laughs. I missed that laugh. She even smiles in my direction, and I’m hit with a memory of racing into her bed at night when I was small, pushing my way between her and Dad.
She’d pull me to her chest and smell like flowers and run her fingers through my hair.
She loved me then, right?
Could she love me now?
Her words slur together, vowels spilling long and lazy as if she’s forgotten how sentences are supposed to behave. Her hand misses her glass a few times, fingers fumbling before finally catching it. Hunt takes whatever’s left in the bottle away.
“Time for dessert,” he says, but his voice is stony. Mom’s laugh didn’t have the same effect on him as it did me. His guard’s up, in full alert mode.
Mom scowls. “I’m fine.”
Hunt ignores her, bringing out a chocolate cake he bought from the store—he’s still mastering baking.
“Cake? Heck, yeah,” I say, fist pumping. I hadn’t spied it earlier.
“Dirk’s fave,” Hunter says. “He’s been doing well in school, so I thought we’d celebrate tonight.”
Hunt did this for me? He was proud of me? My throat tightens as a tender feeling slides under my ribs. Maybe my big brother’s praise shouldn’t mean so much to me, but it does.
I only get a fleeting moment of that high.
“What, so you’ve got him on a rewards system like he’s a fucking puppy?” she says, like I’m not even there.
“We don’t have a lot of money,” he explains, tightly, but that’s all he offers.
Her razor-sharp gaze lands on me. It’s what makes her such a tigress in the boardroom, and it’s terrifying. “Don’t you feel bad at all? Sucking up all his money on expensive hockey equipment, getting rewarded with cake,” Mom says with disgust laced into every word.
It’s like an explosion on the inside. All the pieces of me blown apart, too many to put back together—some already lost to the nothing. I jolt and take a shaky breath.
“H-Hunt said we had the money for hockey,” I offer in a raspy tone, doing my best not to fucking cry like the baby she thinks I am.