twelve #2
I curse and punch the steering wheel. The car swerves, and the light pole comes up fast, so fast I barely miss it.
I drop down off the curb and keep driving, cursing Maverick, and Mabel, and Baron.
He doesn’t have to be so good. He doesn’t have to have such strong morals, like he got them all when we were divided before birth, and I got none.
I don’t know what’s right or wrong. Baron always knows.
I have to look to him, or my brothers, or Dad.
How do they just know, while I can’t even figure it out when I watch other people?
Because when I do what they want, what they ask, half the time, it’s wrong, but I don’t know until after the fact.
I never know until it’s too late, until it’s done and there’s no taking it back.
Baron has a code to live by. So does Royal.
He doesn’t believe in killing. He lets people live because he knows that’s worse.
Except Dawson.
Except Dad.
He knew when to make exceptions to the rules, while I can’t even figure out the rules to begin with.
I think about sitting outside Maverick’s house all night, waiting for him to come out with whatever piece of ass he found to fuck him tonight, but I’m not sure I want to be alone with myself until then. So, I let Alice take me by the hand and lead the way.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m standing in the gravel lot of the familiar house, staring up at the dark windows.
I remember the first time I came here, when I showed up to help Mabel get ready for her date with Baron.
There were other times too, times when I was Baron, times when I was myself, times when I got so lost in pretending that I almost couldn’t remember which one of us I was.
If we drove her over the edge with our games, she took part of me with her.
I think about it now, how much easier it would be if I were Baron. If I didn’t have to feel any guilt because I always did what I knew to be right, and since I was always certain, no one could ever change my mind. It must be paradise.
I pick up a pebble and throw it, but it bounces off the side of the house. It takes three or four tries before one of the pieces of gravel hits the window. After a few more, the curtain moves aside. I can’t see him, only the sway of the white curtain. Aside, and then back.
I don’t know if he’s coming, so I throw a few more pieces.
After a minute, the window slides up, and he sticks his head out. “Baron? What are you doing here?”
“No, you asshole,” I say. “It’s Duke.”
The window slams, and the curtain swings back.
I stoop, scoop up a whole handful of gravel, and hurl it against the house.
“Colt! I know you’re awake. Come out, come out, wherever you are!
” I sing the last words, cackling to myself as I grab another handful.
I won’t let him ignore me just because I’m not my brother. I’m important too.
Before I can throw more, the front door opens, and Colt stumbles out, still tying a thin robe around himself. “Are you out of your mind?”
“What the fuck are you wearing?” I ask, nodding to the robe, which ends just above his knees.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he counters. “Throwing rocks at my window like a lovelorn puppy?”
“More like a dog lured by the scent of a bitch in heat.”
He stops on the railing on the big wooden deck that wraps around their house. “You can’t come here, Duke.”
“Why?” I ask. “I thought our families were on good terms now. So we can be friends.”
“We’re not friends.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not inviting you in,” he says. “We have company.”
“I don’t want to come in.”
He sighs and rakes his fingers through his hair, which is disheveled from sleep. Unlike Mabel’s straight, silky strands, his is curly and chaotic. I imagine running my fingers through it, how they’d tangle in the strands, how it would make him moan.
“What do you want?” he asks, sounding weary and defeated, as if I’ve been here every night in more than my mind. Maybe I haunt him like he haunts me, and he’s as sick of me as I am of him.
“I want a cigarette.”
“Fuck, Duke,” he says, smacking his palm down on the railing. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I just can’t get right, you know? You’re the only person who understands.”
“I don’t think I do,” he says, but he sounds so beaten that I know he’s lying.
He might hate it, but he gets it.
“Let’s go sit in the hot tub,” I say, starting for the back.
Colt doesn’t move from where he’s standing. I stop at the corner of the porch and gesture for him to follow.
“You know I won’t give you what you want,” he says, his expression guarded.
“You don’t know what I want.”
“Oh, but I do.”
He smirks at me, his hair blowing in the breeze like a lion’s mane, looking all mussed and rumpled. I can almost smell him again, the masculine scent I used to know so well, tobacco and leather and smoke. I itch to move closer, to see if I can catch a hint of it on the wind.
“Fuck you,” I say.
“Pass,” he says, reaching into his robe pocket and pulling out a pack of smokes. “I’ve got Lo for that.”
“And I’ve got your sister,” I say. “If I wanted to fuck, I’d bust in one of her holes.”
He tries to act like he doesn’t care, tossing his hair back all cool and lighting a cigarette, but I see the tick in his jaw. I know Colt. I’ve watched him simmer for years. I always thought he’d erupt one day, but he never did.
“Then what do you need me for?” he asks, sucking casually on his cigarette.
“I just wanted someone to talk to.”
“Sounds like something for your therapist.”
“I’m not a pussy,” I snap. “I don’t go to therapy.”
He arches a brow like a cocky bastard and drags on his cigarette. “Explains why you’re at my house at four in the morning instead of at home in bed with your girlfriend.”
“Fuck you,” I say. “I’m not gay.”
“I know.”
“Give me one of those.”
He hands me the pack. I slide one of the long, white sticks out. My fingers shake as I put it between my lips. Colt lights me, and I stare at the flame, hypnotized as it licks over the tip. When it flicks off, the ghost of it dances behind my eyelids.
“Got any Alice?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I don’t do any of that shit anymore. I don’t even drink. Just these.” He lifts his hand, gesturing to his cigarette.
“You’re lucky,” I say, dragging on mine. “I wish that’s all in needed.”
“Real fucking lucky.” The corner of his mouth tugs up in a rueful little smile. “That’s what everyone tells me.”
“You are,” I say. “I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat.”
“But you got everything you ever wanted,” he says. “Don’t tell me it’s not all you hoped for.”
“It’s not,” I say, climbing the stairs to stand next to him. Every step feels like slogging through mud. “I think… You were right. I don’t think Mabel can ever love me again.”
“Shocking.”
“I know it’s dumb, okay? But I thought… I really thought she could.
That she would, once she was with us. I thought she’d remember how it was before.
I know you didn’t understand it, but it was good between us.
She loved us. She was exactly what we needed.
It might seem weird to someone outside it, but inside, we all fit. ”
“If you say so.”
“We did,” I say. “I know you don’t think I’m capable, but I loved her. I still love her. But we broke her, and now… Now she’s broken. She’s not the same, Colt.”
He snorts out a breath and taps his cigarette on the railing. “You broke her, but you expected her to… What? Fix herself, and then fix you?”
“She was supposed to fix everything.”
“You mean to tell me your actions have consequences?” he says. “And not just for you, but for all the innocent victims you targeted?”
“Fuck you,” I say, spitting the words at him like poison darts. “You’re not innocent.”
“I wasn’t talking about me,” he says coolly.
“Your sister isn’t innocent either.”
“Assuming you mean because she dared to carry Darling blood, I beg to differ,” he says, like some snooty asshole. “But that aside, even you can’t deny that Gloria and her sisters did nothing to deserve your wrath.”
“It wasn’t wrath,” I say. “We weren’t mad at them.”
“Then why’d you destroy them too?”
“I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head and dragging smoke into my lungs, feeling it turn them black like the videos they made us watch in health class. Everything inside me is black as tar, heavy and cloying, smothering me slowly from the inside out.
“It was like a game,” I say. “I don’t know why I played.
I got caught up in it, and it just never ended.
My brothers knew the rules, they told me to play, so I did.
That’s how it was with your sister too. I’m not going to play innocent and say I didn’t enjoy it.
I did. I loved the game. But it didn’t seem real.
I loved her, but destroying her was part of the game, so I loved that too.
Even when she left, when she almost died…
I knew she didn’t mean it. That she was waiting for us.
It was just another move, a countermove to what we did.
We had to play the long game after she disappeared, to wait and be patient, and then it was our move again.
But now the game is over. We won. We got our prize.
But it’s not the prize I was playing for. ”
“So you broke your doll, and now you don’t want her?”
“She doesn’t want me,” I correct, staring at the sky in misery. “She’s different.”
“Or maybe she’s exactly what you made her,” he says.
“If she was what we made her, she would have made everything good again, like she did before.”
“Stop looking for someone to fix you,” he says. “There’s no easy fix, no magic ingredient to add that’s going to make it all better. No one’s coming to save you, Duke.”
“So what, I’m supposed to just give up and jump off the bridge like she did? Swallow a bunch of pills like your mom?”