Chapter 10
Creed
The fire’s burning tall, everything Jeremiah owned going up in black smoke. It’s oddly purifying, watching the flames lick his boots, medals, cigar box.
We sit on the patio furniture, adding bag after bag of my father’s shit to the fire. Dash brings out another bottle of amber liquid, either scotch or bourbon, I can’t tell through the heat haze from this distance.
He comes closer and plops down beside me, chugging from the bottle before passing it to Hyde. His eyes flick to the top-floor window where Millie locked herself after dinner.
Noah’s with her.
He went up there ten minutes ago and Hyde’s growing increasingly restless. I can relate. It’s been a while since we lit this bonfire and I still can’t fucking stop thinking about Millie and how she sat down, chewing the cold pizza when I told her to.
She looked like a deer caught in the headlights when my three friends ganged up on her. Her fingers trembled, barely peeking from under her baggy jumper, lips thinning, eyes vacant. I don’t know why I grabbed her, why I ordered her to sit.
It was instinct.
She looked overwhelmed, ready to cover her ears and rock back and forth, so I grounded her the only way I know how.
With control and orders.
It shouldn’t have felt so good when she listened.
What is wrong with you?
She looks soft, delicate, so sweet and innocent. Life has chewed her up and spat her back out smaller at least three times and now I’m here, fucking enjoying her following my command?
Bile churns in my stomach, guilt rotting my insides. That dominating nature is a part of me I don’t like... a mirror image to my father’s personality.
You’re just as fucked up as he was.
My hands itch to break something because the scariest part isn’t that she listened. It’s that for a second it made me feel fucking euphoric.
“She’ll be down soon,” Noah informs, joining us outside, a chessboard tucked under his arm.
Hyde’s eyes cut to him, jaw ticking, hands clenching into fists, and that’s enough for Noah to read him like an open book.
“You going to give me the ‘stay away from my sister’ talk?” he asks, accepting the bottle from Dash.
“I already did, twice,” he shoots back, squaring his shoulders before exhaling a steady breath, his demeanor changing into a caring older brother. “I’m not doing it for her benefit, Noah.”
That makes my brows pinch together. “What?”
Noah spares me a glance, something hard, unreadable, almost hateful in his expression. He masks it, shifting his eyes back to the fire. “He thinks she’s defective.”
“No, I don’t,” Hyde snaps. “But she’s not okay. She’s defensive, she has trust issues, and I think... I think she’ll be taking her trauma out on someone. I don’t want that to be you. I can see the way you look at her.”
“You see what you want to see,” Noah deflects.
He might think he’s subtle, but the four of us have been friends since freshman year. We know each other’s defaults, and the way Noah’s acting around Millie isn’t his. Close, but cracks form in his composure, big enough to betray his interest.
“You can hide behind your overprotectiveness,” he continues, leveling Hyde with a dark, cold stare. “Whichever way it swings right now. But the truth is, you don’t understand her and you’re scared.”
Hyde takes the bottle from him, chugging for a few seconds. Looks like he’s in the mood to wipe his memory.
“Can you blame me? They checked her through and through and found nothing wrong, yet she barely fucking speaks. She just... exists. She isolates herself, hides in baggy clothes, eats the bare minimum.”
Everything he’s saying is true, but there’s another reason Hyde’s scared... guilt. He wasn’t there when she needed him. He wasn’t there before that, either.
No one was.
Not him, not their parents, who idolized her in all the wrong ways when she got a second chance at life after battling cancer for two years at age seven.
Hyde said they called her their miracle baby.
They did a one-eighty once she was in remission and instead of raising her, they let her lead, spoiling her rotten because she survived.
From what little Hyde let on this past year about their childhood, Millie was an open, happy, and deeply empathetic kid. She trusted everyone until it came back to bite her. After the hell Evan put her through, she flipped herself the other way, building walls so high they seem impenetrable.
Her idyllic worldview lasted much longer than mine, but she’s finally seen what I’ve known since I was five years old: the world is a dark place full of monsters.
“Ever since it happened, she’s been surrounded by people who witnessed her humiliation,” Dash says, uncharacteristically serious. “Now she’s at Gravemont, with us. Different setting, different people. Give her time, Hyde. She’ll be okay.”
He doesn’t speak for a while, eyes on the flames, fingers curled around his glass. Then his gaze sharpens, shifting my way. “What was that earlier?”
Heat prickles my neck.
I know what he’s getting at but I play dumb. “Elaborate.”
“You telling my sister to sit and her listening. That. What the fuck was that?”
“Sounds like something you should ask her.” I pull my cigarettes out, flick the Zippo and inhale the smoke.
“You treat her like a helpless child, Hyde,” Noah pipes in, either deflecting again, this time for my sake, or preparing to dig me a grave right next to my father’s.
“No, I don’t, I just...” He makes a frustrated sound at the back of his throat. “She’s been through so much when she was a kid, but this time around, she didn’t come out in one piece, and all I’m doing is trying to help, but I don’t understand her anymore.”
I don’t think he ever understood her, but I don’t point it out. Hyde’s been beating himself up for months perfectly well without my sucker punches on top.
“You coddle her,” I say, instead, locking eyes with him. “You act like she’s a lost little puppy. One slice, okay? You skipped breakfast, didn’t you? You need to eat, Millie, please,” I mimic. “She won’t disappear if you stop cushioning every word.”
“She is fragile, Creed.”
“No, she’s not,” Noah cuts in, getting on my nerves with all his unearned insight.
He spent three evenings with her. I’ve spent a hundred hours listening to Hyde vent, listening to him talk to her over the phone, listening to him spiral over the past and the present.
Noah doesn’t know shit about Millie, but he sure thinks he does when he adds, “I think she’s at war. You said her silence is a defense mechanism.”
Yeah? What’s her favorite color, motherfucker?
Dusty pink.
“That’s what her psychiatrist said,” Hyde mutters.
He wasn’t happy when Millie was released from Dr. Quinn’s care. I think he hoped for a clear diagnosis. One with a cure. Flu of the mind, if you will. Something that’d go away after a course of antibiotics.
Though given her history, pills wouldn’t be advisable.
“He might be right, but from what I’ve seen?” Noah says, leaning back in his seat. “She’s struggling. She uses silence as a shield, but it makes people either overlook her or walk on eggshells.”
Hyde scrubs a hand down his face. “So what? I should bark out orders like Creed?”
I shake my head. “No, your dynamic is set. You can’t change it. It won’t work. You’re the overprotective brother. Dash is the comedic relief; she smiles at him most.”
“Damn right she does.” The man in question beams.
“Noah’s the one she’s comfortable with,” I finish.
“And you?” Hyde questions, eyes narrowed. “What are you? How do you explain her not talking when you’re around but still listening to you?”
I inhale more smoke, holding it in my mouth for a minute, unsure how to answer. “I have no idea.”
“Creed’s a constant,” Dash chirps, passing the whiskey back to Noah. “He’s the only one not treating her like she’s made of fine china.”
Hyde turns. “We don’t—”
“We do,” Noah cuts in, resigned. “You hover, I tread lightly, and Dash... well, he’s clingy. Consciously or not, we bend over backward in our own ways.” He looks at me, jaw ticking. “Creed doesn’t.”
The fog clouding my brain clears and I see past Millie’s obedience, a smirk curling my lips when realization strikes.
“Everything you do, she pushes back,” I say. “You ask nicely, she ignores it. You coddle her, she shuts down. You set boundaries and she jumps to test them.” I flick the ash off the end of my cigarette. “She pushes back.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Hyde’s hands clench into fists.
It means she’s a brat and needs to be bent over my knee.
“It means she’s angry and guarded, unsure how to center herself. Maybe she’s waiting for someone who won’t fold.”
Our conversation stops abruptly when the patio door slides open and Millie walks out, wrapped in Noah’s hoodie.
My fingers tighten around the armrest, but then I think about the way her body stilled when I grabbed her wrist. How quickly she sat down and took a bite out of the slice, chewing like a good girl.
In that moment, her obedience scared the hell out of me.
Now? Now it turns me on.
I subtly adjust my cock, loathing myself that much more. She’s my best friend’s—my brother by choice’s—little sister. The last thing I should imagine is Millie in my bed, at my mercy...
Hyde will use a tire iron to wrench my spine through my ass if I get anywhere near his sister.
And it’s just a matter of time.