Chapter 19
NINETEEN
Carter
Kellan jerks his chin at me when he answers my knock at his front door. “Hey.” Coming from him, that’s a mouthful. His broad frame almost fills the doorway, but I hear laughter coming from behind him.
“Hey.” Holding up the six-pack of beer I brought along with me, I crane my neck to look over his shoulder. I’m not the first one here—there’s a handful of people hanging out, spread out around his living room. Somebody thought it would be fun to turn on porn, and I hear guys giving play-by-play and predicting what will happen next while the girls groan and gag.
He steps aside to let me in, now letting me see pizza boxes stacked on the coffee table. This is what I need right now. An excuse to kick back, something simple like pizza and beer. Nothing I have to put any effort into when I’m feeling on edge, like a tiny push would make me lose my grip.
All because of her. She’s not even worth it. Not even the kind of person worth going out of my way for or being nice to. So why is she still sitting in the front of my mind hours after she smarted off at me in the cafeteria?
Fuck it, I should not be thinking about this now. I’m supposed to be here to get her off my mind. That’s the whole point. Forgetting my pain-in-the-ass stepsister for a little while, bullshitting with people who actually deserve my time.
“There he is.” Briggs spots me and waves me over. “I’m glad you decided to show. Tucker is out with Maya, and the last time I saw Preston and Easton, they were trying to convince Hunter McCall to let them do an Eiffel Tower with her. Like it’s their biggest dream or something.”
“It probably is,” I decide with a laugh, cracking open a can of beer and gulping it like it’s the first thing I’ve had to drink in forever. It goes down cold and smooth, but it doesn’t do much to cool the resentment burning in my chest. Like a hot coal got lodged under my ribs. It’s burning me up inside, making it impossible to think about anything but how much I want to make her regret thinking she can stand up to me.
“So what’s up with you lately?”
So much for forgetting my problems for a little while. The beer tastes sour now, and something tells me I’m not going to enjoy this night the way I thought I would. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t give me that shit.” He hits me with the sort of look only an old friend can wear. “I know you too well. You’re walking around like somebody took a shit in your shoes—not just once, but all the time.”
“You found me out.” Leaning back in my armchair, I offer him a shrug. “Somebody has been breaking into the house and shitting in my shoes every day.”
He smirks, but there’s nothing humorous in his hard gaze. “Seriously. This can’t all be about your dad getting married, right?”
I love how he gets to decide what is and isn’t worth me caring about. My hand tightens around the can—I have to loosen my grip when the aluminum starts to crumple. “Everything’s fine. I really don’t want to talk about it tonight. I was kind of hoping to get away from it.”
“So things are bad?” His brows draw together, and I kind of hate him for looking worried.
“It’s not like that. I just… wanted to clear my head.”
“Okay. If you say so.”
Fuck, there is nothing more annoying than somebody who says that. I can only bite my tongue, because otherwise, I might say something that would lead to a fight I don’t want to have. Only because I don’t have the mental energy for it. Briggs is one of my best friends and has been for years. I won’t let Elliana fuck that up.
A bunch of high-pitched giggling catches my attention, and I turn my head in time to see Tiana stroll in from the backyard with her girls. “Oh, fuck,” I mutter, rolling my eyes at Briggs. “You could pay her to take a hint, and she still wouldn’t.”
“I think she gets off on it,” he mutters darkly. Tiana made Wren’s life hell for a while. It’s like her vocation or something. “Some people would rather get a root canal with no novocaine than show up someplace where half the people there have told them to go fuck off at least once. She wants everybody to know she doesn’t care, which means she does care, of course.”
The bitch needs to get a clue and maybe some self-respect while she’s at it. “All I’m saying is, I’m gonna need a lot more of this if I’m going to sit here and act like I wouldn’t sell tickets to watch her get her ass beat.” I hold up my can before draining it.
It’s Kellan who overhears me, clapping a hand on my shoulder when he comes up from behind me. “You want to unplug?” He holds up what looks like a small bong. “Have some of this. Let yourself melt into the chair. Nothing will bother you.”
“You’ve graduated to bubblers now?” Briggs asks, nodding toward the device in Kellan’s hand.
“It’s a smoother hit than a joint or a bowl,” Kellan explains as he hands me the bubbler.
Why the hell not? Whatever it takes to get rid of all this pressure that won’t let me go. She won’t let me go.
Yeah, I definitely need some of this.
He’s right, too. It’s a much smoother hit than I’m used to. Then again, I don’t smoke as much as some of my friends do. Not that I have a problem with it. But there are certain lines Dad has forbidden me to cross. He knows I drink and figures it’s going to happen whether or not he likes it, but he still has pretty old-fashioned ideas about weed, and he loves to tell stories of accidents he has seen the aftermath of . “Everybody thinks they’re fine to drive while they’re high,” he likes to remind me. “They know drunk driving is stupid and dangerous, but they figure a little weed is no problem. Tell that to the guys who have to cut them out of their car after they wrap it around a light pole.” So I don’t keep it around the house and only smoke when I’m at a party where it’s available.
Which means it only takes a few hits before I start to feel it. “Shit, this is potent.” Does that stop me from going in for more? No fucking way, because for the first time in a long time, the problems that were hanging over me when I got here don’t seem like such a big deal. Everything that was weighing on me sort of melts away. I feel lighter than I have in a long time.
“Look at you.” An unwelcome voice rings out in my ear before they sit on the arm of the chair so she can grin down at me. She’s wearing a skimpy tank top and shorts that show everything but her pussy. “I didn’t know you liked to smoke that much.”
“Yeah, I guess there’s a lot of things about me you don’t know, Tiana.” And she never will. When she leans in way too close until she’s almost sitting on top of me, I have to shrug her off. “What is it with you? Let a guy breathe.”
“I’m just trying to be friendly. I know you were mad at me before, and I wanted to make it up to you.”
“I never asked you to make it up to me. And you don’t have to,” I insist. “We’re fine, okay?”
We’re not, but I’ll say just about anything to get her off me. She is nothing but a nasty, scheming little cunt.
And that’s why the touch of her fingers on my forearm makes me flinch. “Go away,” I bark. All around us, conversation goes quiet. Not silent, but definitely not as loud as before.
“Go on,” Briggs tells her, jerking a thumb. “Stop being a pain in the ass for once.”
Her eyes narrow dangerously before she gets up without saying a word. Just having her away from me has me blowing out a sigh of relief. “She’s like shit on my shoe,” I mutter, leaning over to grab a piece of pizza. “It doesn’t matter how I try to scrub her off.”
But now that she’s gone to bother somebody else, I can relax into my high again. Nothing is that serious. Everything’s under control. After I finish my slice—which might be some of the best pizza I’ve ever eaten in my entire life—I rest my head against the back of the chair, lost in the over-the-top scene playing out on the TV.
Wishing it wouldn’t make me think of Elliana. What’s she doing right now? Probably glad I’m out of the house, the way I’m glad to be away from her for now. But it’s only for now. I still have to see her when I go home, unless she finds a way to hide out.
I’m still thinking about her when my eyes drift shut once it’s too much effort to keep them open.
“You’re fucking kidding me!”
It’s that shout and the laughter that follows it, which shakes me out of a deep sleep. Fuck, how long was I out for? My head is packed with cotton, and my eyes are dry. I’ve never had cottonmouth this bad, either. The shit Kellan gave me was strong enough to knock me out.
“She’s got great tits,” somebody says, which makes me look at the TV. Somebody switched off the porn while I was asleep—now it’s an action movie where things are exploding and shrapnel is flying. What tits are they talking about?
“It’s always the quiet ones,” somebody else decides, laughing. “The way she always walks around, all covered up, you would never know she’s got that body underneath.”
“I wonder if she thought about starting an OnlyFans page.”
“Shit, I might actually pay for that. But don’t tell anybody.”
I’m still foggy, slow, but I think I’m starting to understand, at least a little. It sounds like they’re talking about Elliana, but why would they be? Who else do I know who always walks around covered up, though? They must be talking about her.
“Oh, there he is.” One of the guys from the football team jerks his chin at me when he notices me looking around. “You’ll have to thank your stepsister for giving me something to beat off to tonight. Don’t tell me you haven’t already done it.” He laughs, making the guys around him laugh, too.
“What the hell are you talking about?” And that’s when I finally see his phone in his hand. Everybody’s holding their phones, laughing, talking about what’s on their screens.
My hand is trembling when I reach over to grab my phone. This is impossible. I’m dreaming this, right? There’s no fucking way.
But there is. I don’t want to believe what I see, but I can’t deny it as I scroll through the texts that came in while I was basically unconscious. All of them are replies to the text I sent, only I didn’t send it. I couldn’t have.
I wouldn’t have actually sent out those photos of Elliana to everybody. I threatened it. I seriously thought about it, but I wouldn’t have done it. And considering I wasn’t awake, I definitely didn’t. But somebody did.
“Where is Briggs?” I bark, standing up, looking around.
“He left a little while ago,” somebody calls out. “I didn’t know you were such a great photographer!”
“Get fucked,” I snarl. Again, I look down at my phone, wishing somebody would tell me this is a joke. A text from Maya tells me it definitely isn’t. You are dead for this. How could you? I want to tell her it wasn’t me, but who was it?
“Who did this? Who fucking sent these pictures out?” I could kill somebody. I’ve never been so close to committing violence in my life. I only thought I was before now. All these smirking, laughing assholes—totally clueless, not giving a shit about anybody but themselves and the next thing that will distract them from life for a little while.
“Tiana!” One of the guys calls out, almost singing her name. “Somebody wants to talk to you!”
I should have fucking known the second I saw the text. Who else would do something that wretched? I don’t know how she got away with it without somebody stopping her—Briggs left, Kellan was busy hosting everybody. If anyone else noticed, they probably figured it was all a joke anyway and didn’t bother trying to stop her.
“Where the fuck is she?” I’m as close to murder as I can be without actually ending her miserable life as I march through the house, knowing she’s not smart enough to leave after pulling some shit like this.
When I find her in the kitchen, I don’t stop marching until I have her backed against the glass doors leading outside. “You are lucky I don’t put you through this fucking door,” I growl, leaning in. Something in my face makes her eyes bulge and her mouth fall open. “How dare you? You went into my phone. You sent those fucking pictures out to everybody? What is wrong with you?”
“Maybe you need to ask yourself that question,” she sneers, but her voice is shaking. She’s only pretending she isn’t scared. She should be scared.
“Stay away from me, and I mean forever,” I whisper. “Don’t ever speak to me again. Don’t come near me. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t exist—and believe me,” I add, “you want it that way. Because otherwise?”
Slamming my fist against the door, close to her head, seems to get the point across. She looks horrified, stricken, and she deserves to. She deserves much worse.
But right now, there’s someone else on my mind, someone much more important. Someone I rush home to while trying like hell to get her on the phone. “It’s me again,” I announce when I get Elliana’s voicemail for the third time. “Just answer the phone, okay? Or call me back, something. I’ll be home soon. We need to talk.”
Am I na?ve to think there’s a chance she doesn’t know yet? Who am I kidding? If Maya saw the photos, I have no doubt she called Elliana right away to make sure she was all right. When I think of her being all alone in her room, the way she usually is, trying to deal with all the feelings this must bring up in her… I slam the heel of my hand against the wheel, cursing myself for taking those pictures and for keeping them in my phone to begin with.
She won’t care that I’m sorry, not that I blame her, but I have to try to get the message across. I’m out of the truck almost before I have the chance to put it in park, running up the front steps of my house with my heart pounding and blood rushing in my ears.
“Elliana?” I call out once I’m inside. The house is silent, the lights off except for in the kitchen. I run in there to look around—there’s a half-eaten sandwich on the counter, telling me she was having dinner when the world fell apart. Because of me, at the end of the day. Tiana sent those pictures out, but I’m the reason they existed.
My feet pound the floor, then the stairs, Elliana’s voice ringing out in my memory. Telling me about how she was bullied. How she could have died the night they threw her in the pool. All that defiance she hit me with in the cafeteria, reminding me she had already been through so much and that I couldn’t do any worse.
There is no way she won’t take this as my response.
The sound of her heartbroken sobs crushes me, but comforts me at the same time. She’s alive in her room, at least, with the door locked against me. I mean, everyone’s got to have a breaking point. She’s strong, but she’s not invincible.
Knowing she’s alive, if devastated, is still better than the alternative. “Elliana, I didn’t send those pictures out. It was Tiana. You’ve got to believe me. I fell asleep at Kellan’s after I told her off, and she was pissed, so she went into my phone to fuck with me.”
No response. “You know that’s the kind of thing she would do, right? I’m not making this up. Other people saw her do it. It wasn’t me.”
Fuck. Even though I’m telling the truth, I hear how hollow it sounds. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me. It was all her fault. Sure, it is Tiana’s fault, but I am not blameless. The girl on the other side of the door knows it, too. No amount of truth will ease her agony, because it can’t unsend those pictures. It can’t erase the memory of every person who has looked at them since they went out.
Touching my forehead to the wood, I plead, “Open the door. At least let me see you. Let me apologize face-to-face. We’ll figure out a way through this, but I need you to open the door.”
I’m talking to myself. All she does is cry a little louder than before. Because of me. I wanted to ruin her, didn’t I? I wanted to make her suffer the way I only thought she made me suffer.
I didn’t understand real suffering until just now, sliding to the floor with my back to her door. Wanting more than anything to make it up to her, knowing I can’t. My punishment is listening to her cry and knowing there’s not a damn thing I can do to make it stop, because I’m the one who made it happen in the first place.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I call out. Does she hear me over her sobs? I don’t know, but I have to try. “And I can wait forever if I have to. You have to talk to me, eventually.”
But when I put myself in her shoes, I know damn well I would rather starve to death than face the person who destroyed me. I only hope she doesn’t decide to take it that far.