Chapter 45 - Dove
Three years later
I stand in front of the electronics store and pretend the ground is interesting. Cracked concrete, gum spots, cigarette butts, anything to keep my good eye from drifting toward the glass door.
Because my other eye? It’s a whole situation.
It throbs when I blink. I smeared on heavy black makeup this morning, and my hair hangs in my face. But I can feel the bruise pulsing through the strands.
Jag expects me to be here every day after school. If I don’t show, he’ll find me. Which would be fantastic if I didn’t share a room with two other girls.
If Jag climbed through our window, the whole foster home would explode. Then we’d have to move again, and I’m tired. Tired of switching schools and learning new rules and changing my name, appearance, and identity.
I hike my backpack higher on my shoulder and go in, jingling the bell over the door.
“He’s in the back.” The store owner stands behind the counter, not bothering to look up.
I shuffle past old DVD players and towers of discount phone cases until I reach the storage aisle.
Jag crouches there with a box cutter, slicing tape off a shipment of speakers.
His hair curls around his ears, shaggy and wild. It looks different now. Grown-up different. He could be on a movie poster if he ever bothered to smile.
The amber color of his eyes is different, too. Harder. Older. Meaner. Because he learned too many things nobody his age should learn.
And his body… I pretend not to notice, but he grows in these strange, sudden ways. He’s big. Everywhere. Not fat. Every part of him is hard and strong. His uniform shirt pulls across his chest, and his muscles stretch and stack like bricks.
His face is dreamy at every angle, and sometimes, when I look at him, my stomach feels weird.
I’m thirteen. I shouldn’t notice things like this. Especially not about my brother.
But I do.
Everyone does.
I brush my hair over my eye and walk toward him. He glances up. Just a flick. Barely a second.
The box cutter freezes in his hand. His jaw turns to stone, and he stands in one smooth push of muscle and anger.
“Who?” He tosses the blade and strides straight to me.
It’s not a question. It’s bloodstains under his fingernails.
“It’s nothing.” My heartbeat kicks into a drum solo. “I’m fine.”
“Let’s go.” He grabs my hand, firm but not rough, and pulls me toward the front.
“Stop. Wait. You’re at work.”
He doesn’t stop.
“Where are you going?” The owner straightens behind the counter. “Hey! You can’t leave, Simon!”
Simon. I’m not the only one with a dozen names.
“Then I quit.” Jag flings his plastic badge across the counter and keeps walking, hauling me with him.
This job is better than all the awful things he’s done for money over the years. He can’t quit.
Outside, the Las Vegas heat shocks my system, but Jag doesn’t slow. We’re half a block from the store before I manage to yank my hand out of his.
“You can’t lose your job.” My voice shakes with all the things I can’t tell him. “Please, Jag.”
He whirls on me. “This is more important than a fucking job.”
My throat closes. Sometimes he forgets how big he is. How scary he looks when he’s mad. But I know he’s not mad at me. He’s mad for me. Which is worse.
His hand swallows up mine and pulls. We walk fast, him dragging, me stumbling, past tourists and pawn shops and the guy who sits on crates and yells at the sky.
We cut down the side alley that smells like rotten fruit.
Then another that smells like death. And another.
And another. Until we end up behind the abandoned apartment building where he lives.
We climb crumbling stairs. On the top floor, he pulls out the padlock key from around his neck and shoves it into the lock he drilled into the door.
Inside, the air is hot and stale, but familiar.
His setup crowds one half of the room. Towers of humming computers and mismatched monitors. Wires everywhere. Boxes stacked on boxes. He stole most of it. Probably from the store that he just quit.
Power cords snake from the lamp and computer equipment into a hole in the wall and out to wherever he siphons electricity. He steals the Wi-Fi from the smoke shop on the corner. If it goes down, he curses loud enough for the pigeons on the roof to fly away.
On the other side of the room is his bed.
It’s not a real bed. The thin, tattered cushions came from broken lawn chairs he found in a dumpster. He taped the pads together and threw old blankets on top, forming a narrow spot barely wide enough for him. His legs hang off the edge, but he never complains.
The floor is busted tile and rough cement, and the walls are cracked and leaky.
It’s ugly. It’s perfect. I’m happier here than anywhere else.
He shuts the door and slides the interior bolt. Then he turns to me, eyes on fire. “Tell me what happened.”
“I told you. It’s nothing.”
“Nothing doesn’t leave a bruise that big.”
“I got into a fight.” I stare at my beat-up sneakers. I found them in a lost-and-found bin at school, and they don’t fit right.
“Who?”
“I said it’s nothing.”
“You’re not leaving until you tell me who hurt you.”
That makes my heart sink because I know what he’ll do.
The girl who blackened my eye? She didn’t mean to do it. It was stupid. An argument. A thrown brush. I was in the way. The foster mom didn’t care enough to separate us.
He inspects my face, not the bruise, but the way I press my lips together. We hit that wall where I won’t say anything else, and he knows it.
Exhaling through his nose, he jerks his chin toward the attached bathroom.
He follows me into the small, doorless room.
The sink doesn’t work. The tub is rust-red at the bottom.
Buckets of water line the wall, filled from a hose somewhere outside.
The toilet only works when he pours water into the tank.
His clothes hang on a rope he strung across the window, and they sway as he walks past them, brushing his shoulder.
“Sit.” He flicks a finger at the closed toilet lid.
I obey as he grabs a cloth from a crate, dips it into the cleanest bucket, and crouches before me. He’s too big to squat like that without his knees practically touching his chin.
He wipes the smeared eyeliner from my face, careful not to hurt me. I know when the black eye fully appears because he goes rigid.
Blond whiskers cover the sharp angles on his jaw and cheeks, making him look older than twenty-one.
He looks like a man, not the boy who used to sleep on sidewalks with me curled under his arm.
He has this vertical line that shows up between his brows when he’s focused, and it’s there now, deep and angry.
“Tell me what happened.” He grips the edge of the sink.
“It’s over.”
“It’s not over until I know who did it.”
I shake my head.
“Then you’re staying here tonight.”
My heart lifts, stupid and fast. I love staying here, and it’s not like I’ll be missed at the foster house. No one keeps track of my whereabouts.
Except Jag.
“Put this on.” He snatches a shirt off the line, tosses it to me, and leaves the bathroom.
I pull the huge garment over my head. The hem covers my shorts, so I take them off and stay in my underwear.
When I come out, he sits at his desk, bathed in the blue glow of his monitors. His fingers fly across the keyboard, coding or breaking into something or whatever illegal thing he does for money now.
I sink onto the cushions, pulling my knees to my chest.
He glances at me every few minutes, waiting.
I don’t talk.
He doesn’t force it.
We’re good at this. Our silent fights. Our wordless peace. But I feel him waiting for my truth.
I watch him work for a while, the captivating way he focuses, the magnetic way he moves.
Then I try to sleep, but when I close my eyes, I think about how his body would feel lying on top of mine, the hard press of his mouth against my lips, and the sounds he would make if he put his hand between my legs.
I think about that every night until my skin feels too hot and my own hand rubs between my legs.
I used to tell him everything, but I could never tell him that.
My stomach grumbles, loud enough for him to hear it.
Without looking at me, he reaches under the desk and pulls out some packages from a box. Foil-wrapped crackers, a plastic cup of peanut butter, and a box of raisins land on the cushion beside me.
I tear the cracker packet open with my teeth and eat every crumb, dipping them into the peanut butter and scraping the cup clean with my finger.
After a long and unsuccessful attempt to sleep, I push myself up and pad over to him, the oversized shirt brushing my thighs. He doesn’t remove his gaze from the screen, but he tilts his head when he senses me behind him.
I rest my hands on his shoulders. His muscles tense then loosen under my touch. I rub slow circles the way he likes, the way I’ve watched him do to himself when his neck locks up.
His body runs hotter than mine. He’s my very own heater. I lean down and fold my arms around his neck. My cheek presses into the back of his head. His hair smells like sunshine and whatever soap he used in a bucket.
Then I kiss him. Not on the mouth. On his cheek. Then the top of his head. The place where his hair parts.
This is how it’s supposed to be. Him and me. Together. When we’re apart, something inside me goes wrong. I don’t know how to breathe right.
He sets one hand over mine, holding it in place for a second before letting go. His eyes flick to a different monitor, and that’s when I notice it.
The street outside my foster home.
I lean closer.
He clicks a key, freezing the footage right as a girl steps off the bus.
Me.
My stomach cramps, not scared, just worried. Like finding out he can record the thoughts in my head.
“What is that?” I whisper.
“I’m learning how to control the public cameras.” He doesn’t look guilty. He looks smug.
“Why? What for?”
“If you won’t tell me who hurt you, I’ll figure it out myself.” He taps a few keys, rewinding.