Chapter 4
Four
Storm
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Groaning, I scrub my hands over my face, then roll over and clamp my pillow over my head.
Too early.
Too fucking bright.
Too damned quiet. Or not. Because—
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Christ,” I mutter, pulling it more tightly over my ears, trying to muffle the annoying sound.
Which works…absolutely not at all.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap!
“Motherfucker!” I snap, tossing the pillow aside and throwing the threadbare fabric that counts as a blanket back. Dust billows up as I storm past the faded posters of video games and swimsuit models, the grimy trophies and medals, the faded and dogeared books.
But I’m not staring at my pointless accomplishments or the tattered remains of my past.
I listening to that fucking tap, tap, tap.
It gets louder as I march out into the hall, as I pound down the stairs, as I turn for the kitchen and—
“What the actual fuck?” I snap as I find the source of the tapping.
My fucking brother just looks up at me with a surprised Pikachu face. “What?” he asks and when I just glare at him, he shrugs and turns back to the backsplash tile he’s removing.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“There’s coffee,” he says.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Anther shrug. “Removing this ugly ass tile.”
“Why?”
“I’m tired of looking at it.”
“No, I mean why are you bothering? I thought we agreed to sell.”
He shrugs yet a-fucking-gain. “You made a proclamation. I haven’t agreed.” Tap. Tap. Tap. “Plus, the will hasn’t even been read yet.”
“And?” I ask. Then when he doesn’t reply, add, “That’s not going to change anything.”
As soon as my legal obligation is done, I’m out of here.
Yet even as I think that, my mind drifts toward a slender brunette with anger in her eyes, secrets written across her face, and a daughter cradled against her chest.
“Why not?” Rain says. “Maybe we can fix it up enough and rent it out as an Airbnb or something.” Tap.
Tap. Tap. Up comes another tile. “Or maybe,” he says, something threading through his tone that immediately has me clenching my teeth together, “it can be a home base for you now that you’re with the Hawks. ”
With the Hawks.
To anyone else that would be an innocuous statement—hell, it would even be a thoughtful one, offering to fix up a place for me to stay near my job.
But instead, it feels like a slap to the face.
A reminder of all that I’ve failed at.
And all that’s so seriously fucked up—the past, the present, the fucking future.
And great, now I sound like a character from A Christmas Story.
Ba-ha-ha, I’m the Ghost of Christmases Fucked.
Because we sure as shit never had any good ones in this house.
Unfortunately, Rain takes my silence as an agreement to his offer of fixing up this shithole.
“I was thinking we could redo the kitchen.” Tap.
Tap. Tap. “First get rid of the eighties tile and the shitty appliances. I know you like to cook—or you used to, anyway, so we could really do it nice. Built-ins and marble countertops, change out the lighting for something more modern. I have a lead on a vender who does custom metal work and they make gorgeous fixtures.” He puts down the chisel and picks up his phone, starts scrolling through it.
“I think they’ll be at the next craft fair at Bits & Bobs.
” He holds it up, a photo of a killer light fixture on the screen.
But…
I can’t do this.
“Blossom can probably arrange a good deal,” he goes on, “and we could—”
We could?
We?
“Fuck no,” I grit out.
A pause as he drops his hand, his phone bouncing against his thigh. “Right. Well, there are other options for lighting. We—”
“It’s not about the fucking lighting.”
He nods like I haven’t just bitten his head off and taps away at another tile.
“Yeah, I get that. We should focus on the big stuff first. The bathrooms are atrocious, and I’m half-convinced the tub is going to fall through the floor of the upstairs one.
Plus, I don’t think the laundry room has had a working water line in the last five—”
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” I clench my hands into fists at my sides. “Or are you being purposefully dense?”
“So, not the laundry—?”
“No,” I snap, “not the fucking laundry or the bedrooms or the godawful, mold-filled disasters that try to pass as bathrooms. Not this ugly kitchen or the front porch that looks like a stiff breeze will blow it over. My home base won’t be here, not fucking ever.
Not in this fucking house, not in this fucking town.
Not—” I cut myself off before I say something unforgivable.
Before I admit something unforgivable.
I close my eyes, grinding my teeth together, barely resisting the urge to punch my fist through the smoke-stained drywall.
Because the last time I stood here, the last time I argued here…
My father—
Bile burns the back of my throat as I grind out, “We’re not redoing anything, and I’m sure as fuck not living here. We’re selling the house and putting all this shit behind us.”
The silence that follows is charged with pain, with violence, with anger…with all the things that make Harrisons Harrisons.
But Rain doesn’t launch forward and punch me, as I expect. He just a sighs, sets the chisel aside, and leans back against the counter, his eyes seeing far too much. “So you can leave again?”
Rage explodes inside me, turning my words into something so biting and guttural I can barely understand them. And I’m the one fucking speaking them. “Are you kidding me with that shit?”
He just lifts his brows. “You’re the one who left for seven years.”
“And you get medal for what?” I growl. “For coming back a year ago? You left too, asshole, and you have no right to judge me for doing the same.”
He left me to the violence, to the rage, to the pain.
He left me to deal with it alone.
I woke up one morning and he was gone, bags packed, room empty.
After he promised—
“I went away to college,” he says quietly. “It’s not like I was fucking my way through half the female populace and spending all my free time in bar fights.”
Like you is the insinuation.
Hell, it’s the fucking truth.
The last year I’ve—
No.
I’m not fucking going there. Not in this house. Not in this town. Not ever again.
“What do I know about how you spent those years?” I shrug, the venom in my tone deadly. “Except that you sure as shit didn’t care enough to look back.”
Didn’t care enough about me to check in.
Didn’t care enough to make sure I was safe—
“What are you trying to say?”
“That you’re as much of a selfish prick as I am?”
He’s in my face in an instant.
“What?” I taunt. “Are you gonna take a page out of the Harrison Family Playbook and beat the shit out of me? I could take it then, could take it when you left me alone to face it, and I can definitely take it now, asshole”
A jerk through his body, and for a second, I think he is going to hit me. And God I want that. I want it so much, want the excuse to hit him back, to draw blood and break knuckles and destroy the fucked-up remains of the past we’re standing in.
But he just holds still for a long moment before he sighs and shakes his head, goes back to his—
Tap. Tap. Tapping.
“Dad left the house to both of us,” he points out, like a fucking dog to a bone.
“You’re seriously trying to make that point as you’re actively changing something that we should both have an opinion about?”
“You want to keep this shitty tile?” he asks dryly.
No, I want this fucked-up trip down memory lane to be over with.
Want to not be here.
Want to not—
Fuck, I don’t even know what I don’t want, except that I don’t want—no, that I can’t be here.
“Fine.” I toss my hands up. “Do what you want with the house. I’ll sign whatever papers you need.”
He grips the chisel tighter. “What about your shit?”
There’s nothing important for me here.
There never was.
I turn for the hall.
“Burn it, trash it.” I shrug. “I don’t give a fuck.”
“Seriously?”
“Yup.” I shrug again. “Nothing here matters.”
“Nothing?” he asks. “Or no one?”
I spin back to face him. “I think you know the answer.”
Hurt ripples across his face and I hate that it makes me feel even more like an asshole than normal.
Hate it when he says, “Cool, man. That’s nice,” and goes back to chiseling that the guilt sinks deep, makes itself feel at home with the rest of my fucked-up emotions.
But I don’t apologize.
And I don’t help him remove the tiles, don’t so much as look at the broken water line in the laundry room.
I just go upstairs, get dressed, grab my phone, my wallet, my keys.
Then I walk out the front door without any intention of looking back.
And…oh how the universe laughs at me for even thinking that’s possible.