68. Leo
Leo
“Hey.” Her voice is so soft and weak, and it makes my heart ache.
“Hey. Come inside.”
She follows me into the house, and I close the door behind us. I hug her, then let go.
I notice how tired she looks. Her long, dark hair is up in a messy bun. Her eyes are a little red too from crying.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
She fidgets with the hem of the gray, oversized Hollis U sweater she’s wearing. It’s my old sweater I let her borrow a couple of years ago.
“I wanted to get out of the house for a bit. I thought I’d come here to check on you,” she says.
She follows me into the kitchen. The sound of Wally running over to greet her makes her smile. I watch as she leans down to pet him.
“How about some tea?” I ask.
“That sounds nice. Thanks.”
I fill the electric kettle and grab one of the mugs from the shelf behind me.
“So. How are you holding up?” she asks, sitting at the kitchen island. Wally lies down on the floor by her feet.
“I’m fine.” I stand on the opposite side of the island facing her. “I’m the one who should be asking you that. Making sure you’re okay.”
She sighs, her shoulders sinking with the movement. “I don’t need you to fuss over me, Leo.”
“It’s not fussing. You’ve been through a lot, Zoey.”
“So have you.” She pauses. “I saw the video of you beating up Jeff on social media.”
“We don’t need to talk about that right now.” I grab the kettle and pour hot water into her mug. “Has Jeff tried to contact you?”
“No.”
“Has he been to your place at all?”
She shakes her head. “I get an alert from my Ring camera anytime anyone comes through the front door, and I haven’t gotten anything. He hasn’t come to the house.”
“Good.” I ball my fist at my side, remembering the moment I saw him grab my sister last night. The anger resurfaces instantly, but I swallow it back. “I don’t want you going over there alone. Not for a while. Just in case he tries to come back. We need to get the locks changed too.”
She’s quiet as she stares down at her mug of tea. “He still needs to come over and get his stuff.”
“No, he doesn’t. I’ll move all his shit out of there and leave it on the street. He can come get it then,” I mutter.
Zoey looks up at me. “Leo.”
“He’s not getting in your house, Zoey. That piece of shit isn’t going anywhere near you ever again.”
Her eyes go teary, and I instantly feel guilty for sounding so mad in front of her. That’s not what she needs right now.
I step over and sit on the stool next to her.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to come off so angry.”
She wipes her face with the sleeves of her sweater. “I just…” She lets out a shaky breath. “I just can’t believe I was so stupid. I can’t believe I let him treat me like this for so long. I can’t believe I didn’t break up with him sooner.”
That protective feeling hurtles through me once again.
“You’re not stupid,” I say gently.
I grab a box of tissues from the end of the island and slide them over to her. She grabs one and dabs at her eyes.
She shakes her head, but I gently touch her arm. “Zoey, look at me. You’re not stupid.”
She looks at me, then focuses back on her lap. She’s quiet for a long moment.
“I never thought I’d ever put up with an abusive partner.
I’m such a cliché.” She stares ahead. “For a while, I thought he just had a bad temper. Lots of people have a bad temper. But then our fights got worse. He’d corner me and yell at me.
He’d call me names. He’d grab my arm so I couldn’t leave the room until he was done screaming at me. ”
I swallow back the bile in my throat, hearing my sister tell me all the awful things Jeff did to her. But she needs this. She needs to talk about what happened. She needs to process it in a safe setting.
“Whenever he’d grab me, it would leave bruises on my arm or my wrist,” she says in a sad voice. “He always apologized. And I thought that made it okay. I told myself that wasn’t the same as hitting, so it wasn’t abuse. But deep down, I knew it was wrong.”
She lets out a shaky breath and blows her nose.
“He started getting jealous. He started accusing me of the craziest stuff.” She wipes her nose with the tissue. “If a male barista or male server was friendly with me when we went out, he’d accuse me of flirting with them in front of him. I’d never do that.”
I give her arm a gentle squeeze. “I know that, Zoey. That’s not like you at all.”
“He accused me of sleeping with my boss at the daycare because he got me a gift for Christmas,” she says. “He got all the employees gifts. I told that to Jeff, but he wouldn’t listen. He flipped out, then showed up there last week and yelled at my boss.”
“Jesus,” I mutter.
“I was asked to quit after that.”
“What? That’s not fair.”
“I don’t blame them. There were kids around when it happened, and they have to put their safety first.”
“Zoey, you love that job. You love those kids, and they love you. It’s not fair that you lost it because of something Jeff did.”
She shrugs. “They did what’s best for the kids. That’s what matters.” She looks down at her lap again. “I’m embarrassed that wasn’t the last straw. I really thought I could make him understand, and he’d go back to being the sweet, funny guy I met.”
Tears stream down her cheeks, and she wipes them away. “I guess my last straw was getting my head shoved into a wall. Pretty pathetic, huh?”
I grab her hand. “You’re not pathetic or stupid or weak or any other horrible thing you think about yourself. You were in a relationship with a guy who manipulated you and mistreated you. He knew what he was doing to you. He knew how bad he was treating you. It’s all his fault.”
She blinks at me, the look in her eyes pained. I know it’s going to take a lot more than my words to get her to believe that none of this was her fault. But that’s fine. I’ll tell her as many times as I have to. Because she’s my sister, and I’ll never give up on her.
“Thanks. I really needed to hear that.”
I hug her. “You’re gonna get through this. And I’ll be by your side the whole way.”
She squeezes me tight, then we break apart. She drinks more of her tea.
“How about you? How are you really doing?” she asks.
I’m about to tell her that I’m fine, but she shakes her head.
“I know you’re not fine, Leo. Tell me the truth.”
I rub the back of my neck. “Okay, fine. It sucks that videos are circulating on social media of me beating up Jeff with no context. It sucks that tons of strangers are making shitty comments and assumptions about me when they don’t know anything about what happened.
It sucks that I’ll probably get benched or suspended for it because my coach is pissed that one of his players is going viral for being a violent maniac.
But it is what it is. I can’t do anything about it. ”
Worry flashes in my sister’s gaze. “Wait, you’re in trouble with your coach for defending me?”
“It’s fine. I’ll handle it.” I huff out a breath. “And I didn’t tell him about why I fought Jeff in the first place. I know you’re really private about this. You don’t want people to know what happened between you and Jeff. And that’s okay. It’s not my coach’s business. It’s not anyone’s business.”
Her gaze turns thoughtful as she looks at me. Then she hugs me.
“You’re the best little brother in the world, you know that?” Her voice shakes with emotion as she speaks.
I hold her tight, smiling through the lump in my throat.
“Thanks for having my back,” she says.
“Always.”
She finishes her tea, then gets up to leave.
“You sure you don’t want anything to eat?” I ask.
“I’m not that hungry. I’m just going to head back to Mom’s and sleep.”
I walk her to her car and watch her drive off.
As I head back into the house, my phone buzzes with a text. When I see it’s my dad, I glower at the screen.
Why is there a video of you all over social media beating up your sister’s boyfriend? What the hell is going on? Do you have any idea how this makes you look?
I grit my teeth, hot with anger. He’s got to be fucking kidding. He sees that video, and his first reaction is to text me and not check on her?
I fire off a text.
Have you even thought to check on Zoey? Do you even care about what she’s going through right now?
I stand there, my heart pounding, feeling like I want to scream. I know Zoey probably hasn’t told him what happened to her, but she shouldn’t have to. He’s our dad. He should be the one to reach out. The second he saw that video, he should have called her to make sure she was okay.
But no. All he cares about is yelling at me for jeopardizing my future as a hockey player.
Even though it was justified. Even though it was to help Zoey.
I try to imagine what he’d say if I explained that I was defending Zoey. He probably wouldn’t care.
I head back inside the house and block his number from my phone so I don’t have to deal with him anymore.