Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ariana
“It’s five thirty in the fucking morning, Ari!”
The lights turn on as I’m pulling off my heel.
I let out a small scream, stumbling forward. There’s my brother, standing next to the dining room table like a fucking serial killer, arms crossed in front of his chest. His eyes are red and tired, armed with dark circles underneath. The judgment that laces his expression is abundantly clear.
“Dear god,” I seethe, tearing off my other shoe. “Don’t you have anything better to do, Bundy?”
“Then wait up for my sister to come crawling in from wherever the fuck she’s been all night? No, actually. I don’t. I wish I did.” He’s glaring at me in a way he never does. To other people? Sure. But never me.
“Am I bound to this house or something?” I ask, tearing my bag off my shoulder and dropping it onto the entryway table.
“No, but you don’t know anyone in this city besides me and the girl who is fast asleep down the hall,” he reminds me. He has a point. “So, where the fuck have you been? Where do you keep going? I am getting sick of this, if you hadn’t realized that part yet.”
Oh, I’ve realized that part.
“Then mind your own business and we’ll both be much happier.”
It is very clear by the way his eyes darken that he does not like that answer.
“If you want to stay here, you’re either going to turn your location on or tell me what you’re doing. It’s been weeks of this shit, Ari. I’m exhausted. I’m worried about you. I almost followed you out tonight, but Arden wouldn’t let me.”
Oh, please.
“You’re crazy,” I say with a humourless laugh.
Because he is. He’s acting like he is. I’m not roaming the streets each and every night, spending the night in prison cells, or doing drugs.
Having a little bit of fun is not a crime.
He needs to remember that he’s the criminal in the family. I’m just the cute little sister.
“Location or explanation,” he snaps, eyes burning into me. “Or find somewhere else to stay.”
I narrow my eyes. Oh, now we’re playing dirty and making threats?
“You know that I have nowhere else to go.” Unless I go home, which isn’t happening.
“Seems like quite a fucking predicament.”
I doubt he’d actually kick me out. He’s Carter.
He doesn’t let me take rideshares unless I send him a screenshot of a picture of the driver and their car details.
I still do, obviously, because he can’t monitor my every move.
He’s overprotective and terrified of the world hurting me.
There is no way he’ll toss me to the curb.
Luckily for him, I’m tired and tipsy, and I want this argument to end.
“Don’t laugh at me.”
This grabs his attention. He cocks a brow, perching his butt on the edge of the table. “Alright.”
“I joined a boozy book club.”
His brows skyrocket. “What?”
“I joined a book club. We read books and we drink cocktails. Sometimes, we’re having so much fun that we keep the night going. We go to a few bars, dance a bit, and have some more drinks. That’s where I’ve been, Carter. Is that okay with you?”
He stares at me for a long second. “What was the book about?”
I stare right back. “What?”
“Actually, what was the book about and how did you find this book club?”
“Murder.”
“Murder,” he repeats back to me.
I swallow, dipping my chin. “Yep.”
“That’s it? What’s the main character’s name? Arden reads a lot. Maybe she’s read it. Actually, maybe she’d like to join this little club.”
Well, that can’t happen, seeing as it doesn’t exist.
I stare at him, my jaw tightening. “Ally…son.”
His face remains the same, blank and bored. So, I keep talking. Because I’ve already put my foot in it, I might as well put the other one right in there, too.
“Allison murdered her husband, and she and her friends do some Weekend at Bernie’s shit.”
His jaw pulses again. “Right, and how’d you find this club?”
“Online.”
“Where?”
“Facebook.”
“You still use Facebook?” he asks, cocking a brow. He knows I don’t. I haven’t touched that app in years.
“Sometimes.”
“Who else is in this book club?”
We’re glaring at each other, both well aware that I’m lying. Carter pushes himself from the table, striding toward me in his gray sweatpants and crumpled hoodie. I’m struck with the reminder that he’s been waiting for me. All night.
He’s pissed.
Carter steps right into my space, studying my eyes, trying to see if I look different. Looking for a clue in my face.
“Try again,” he bites out quietly.
“I don’t have to tell you my every move, Carter.”
He doesn’t budge. “Try again, Ari.”
I glare up at him, fury surging through my veins.
I’m not a child. He’s not my father. He’s not my keeper, either.
I’m just trying to live a little, and unfortunately, it’s in the way that pisses him off the most. Because I’m bad at it.
I do what is wrong for me because it gives me a morsel of control.
I have a scientific approach to this entire process that works to utter perfection.
I can never get hurt. But I hurt everyone else a bit in the process. Including him.
He judges me for it. He tears a strip off me for it, all the damn time. I don’t want to hear it anymore. I want to be allowed to be who I am with no opinion from the peanut gallery. Still, I fess up, because I just want to go to bed without the lecture.
“I’m going on dates.”
His eyes shut with disappointment. “Multiple nights a week?”
“So?”
He used to have a different girl in this condo every second night of the week.
“And you’re stumbling home this late, multiple nights a week, because you’re going on dates?”
“Don’t judge me.”
That sentence is apparently his last straw.
“Where the fuck are you meeting these guys? On apps? You know how I feel about that shit, Ari—my god!” He throws up his hands, whirling around and trudging to the kitchen.
He runs a hand over his face, shaking his head the whole time.
“You can’t even respect what I ask from you?
As your brother? Send me his name and phone number.
Send me his fucking profile. I need to know who you are with and where the fuck you are! ”
“I am twenty-eight years old,” I remind him quietly.
“And you are a woman,” he snaps, which makes my anger flash to life.
I’m sick of this narrative. I can’t live in a bubble because I’m a girl.
“You are a woman living in a fucked up world, and you’re my sister.
I’m not asking you not to live your life.
I’m not asking you not to go on dates. I am asking you to protect yourself and give me some peace of fucking mind, Ariana! ”
“I can take care—”
“No, you can’t!” he screams, throwing out his hands.
His eyes are wide and angry. “You pretend like you can, and the whole world fucking buys it, but I know better! You get hurt and you come crawling to me. You fuck up and I clean it up. You get into a car with a fucking drug dealer, and my lawyer gets your ass off the chopping block! You cannot take care of yourself, Ariana. Stop kidding yourself.”
Each word feels like a stab to my chest—the blade piercing my heart, the biggest part of it, where the love for my brother lives. He stabs, and he carves, and he doesn’t even notice it’s causing internal bleeding. That it’s causing irreparable damage to whatever is left in me that’s good and whole.
“Carter,” a tired voice interrupts.
I swallow, tears burning in my eyes. Carter rips his gaze from mine, both of us turning toward the redhead who is leaning against the threshold of the hallway.
Her hair is messy as she squints through the dim light.
Arden is expressionless as she stares at him, but there is a clear warning in those dark eyes that makes both of us shrink.
“That’s enough.”
I blink, wiping my face quickly before he catches me crying.
“Sorry for waking you up, Bub,” he says, his voice soft and full of genuine regret.
Arden ignores it, eyes darting to me. “He just wants you to be safe, Ari. That’s all. Share your location with me, alright? Before you go to sleep.”
I glare at the floor in shame, but say nothing.
“You,” she says, focusing on her boyfriend again. “Come to bed.”
Carter pauses, as if debating. He glances over his shoulder at me, that icy coldness still in his expression. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
I don’t meet his eyes, I just stand in his entryway like a scorned little girl. He lets out a sigh, quietly trudging to the hall and away from this conversation. He slides his hand along Arden’s waist and presses a little kiss to her head as he passes.
I begrudgingly meet her eyes when she chooses to stay instead of following him.
After a moment, she pushes herself off the wall and walks toward me.
She says nothing, just scoops me into her arms and rubs soothing little patterns on my back.
I can’t help it, I shake with humiliated tears, but I let her comfort me.
She’s the only one who knows what I have going on.
How confused and scared I am. How this fight with my brother hurts more than the rest of it.
“He loves you,” she reminds me gently. With one more squeeze, she pulls away and brushes my hair back with her hand. “Share your location with me. He’s worrying himself to death. I won’t check it unless you don’t come home, alright?”
I dip my chin, wiping my face free of tears.
“Try to get some sleep.”
She leaves me standing in the foyer, glaring at the condo, thinking about the look on my brother’s face. Like he doesn’t know me at all.
It’s been multiple dates with multiple losers.
I go to bars or restaurants, anywhere public, and I let them buy me dinners and drinks until I’m drunk enough that I don’t feel as bad, but not drunk enough where I lose my wits about me.
I’ve slept with two of them. Both awful.
Cried in the rideshare on the way home both times.
I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know I hated the judgement I saw all over Carter’s face.
I always do. But I still do it. It’s been my pattern since I was seventeen.
Bring the worst boys in the world home and then rip their hearts out.
It doesn’t matter if they don’t try to come back, or if they never loved me, because I never cared about them. Not deeply. Not ever.
I want to scream in my brother’s face that I’m doing the same thing I’ve always done, and that the only thing different about me is that, for the first time in my life, I don’t know who the hell I am and that’s what he’s picking up on.