Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE | COLTEN
Yanking my fingers through my hair in irritation, I drop my weighted head, swarming with too many thoughts, into my hands.
I need a goddamn haircut.
Squinting downward, I notice strands floating around the surface of my keyboard when my breath falls across the keys.
Strands I’ve pulled out while sitting here, getting no work done.
At this rate, removing each strand one by one may save me from asking Jess to carve time out of her last night at home to give me a haircut.
I could pull off being bald.
Men with bald heads have a certain sex appeal when they have tattoos. Right?
Not that it matters. The women I’ve fucked recently—or used to since I haven’t invited a woman here since Taryn observed me with Britt that night weeks ago—focus on my happy trail leading to my other head.
Usually, Jess is the only one Cam, Bren, and I trust near our heads with sheers, but the twins take her to the University of Washington tomorrow.
We could teach Taryn—suffer through a couple of bad cuts until she improves, but I don’t trust her near my head with anything sharp or pointy. She’d probably accidentally “slip” and implant the scissors into my neck, puncturing a vital artery.
A pang of dejection blooms in my stomach. I swallow, but the growing lump only fertilizes the hollow sensation.
It’s always only been us.
The six of us.
Over the last five years, we’ve produced a balance—an equilibrium that has allowed us to survive the destruction my father’s alcoholism caused and the gaping hole our mother left.
I’ve never wanted to admit it, but I have trust issues.
It is probably not surprising, considering…well, everything.
People’s lies and promises are more destructive to the nervous system than the sweetest poison. The difference? We expect the inevitable damage poison causes. We’re taught to read the warning labels.
On the other hand, people disguise their words impeccably. They inject their lies into each syllable that lifts off their tongue, making it impossible to see what’s below the surface because their inflection seems sincere and honest.
My mother’s bellowing voice echoes through the halls, her words unintelligible because of the walls and floors separating us.
My siblings’ frightened eyes scan my face as I stand in the doorway of Brennan’s room on the top floor.
Jess has her arms wrapped around her knees, rocking back and forth on the floor.
Scared tears stream down her flushed face, and my heart aches with the urge to hold her.
To wrap my arms around her protectively.
Our parents have fought before. But this…
Alarm bells are bouncing around in my head.
Brennan is sitting in a chair with his arms wrapped around Tristan, my two-year-old brother’s head nestled into his chest, his blue eyes wide. Cameron paces the room, with newborn Elena sleeping peacefully in his shaking arms.
We all heard it.
Shattering glass scraped against our eardrums while we were in the living room just down the hall from their room, the sound raising the hairs on my arms in fear of what was going down between them.
I attempt to gain control of my trembling hands as I shut the door, leaving my siblings inside. My heart lurches into my throat, acid swishing in my stomach with each step I take down the four flights of stairs, their screaming tones increasing in volume the closer I get to the bottom floor.
My mother’s scream is cut off by the boom of my dad’s voice, the drunken, slurred shouts making me jolt in my skin.
Fuck. Why does this fight sound so much worse than every other one they’ve had?
I turn the corner, a sliver of soft light shining underneath their closed door at the end of the dark corridor.
Creeping closer, my mother’s hysterical voice springs a burning sensation behind my eyes.
I don’t want to go any further. Yet the thought of my terrified siblings huddling in the room upstairs injects a minor amount of determination into my bloodstream.
I drag my feet across the wood floors as if it’s thick tar, something trying to keep me from seeing whatever lies beyond their bedroom door.
“You’re so fucking weak, Jane!” My father’s slurred words, combined with her horrifying shriek, shake the floorboards under my bare feet outside their door.
My blood hardens to ice in my veins. Sharp shards that threaten to gut me from the inside out.
Gripping the door handle with quivering hands, I push it open. My eyes quickly scan the room, and my chest ruptures in two, my eyes widening in horror at the scene before me.
Their vanity mirror is smashed into a thousand pieces, shards dusting the countertop and sharp blades smattering the carpet.
My dad stands with his back to me, and my mom is hidden partly behind him. His head is dropped, his gaze locked on the…
My soul leaves my body, my battering heart thudding to a complete stop.
Blood pools below my father’s work boots, the large shard of glass in his hand dripping crimson onto the tan carpet. The knuckles of his other hand are white, gripping the neck of a scotch bottle.
“Colten,” my mother gasps my name, freezing me in place.
Her face is entirely white, her body shuddering.
A sheen of sweat coats her skin, glistening in the lamplight from their matching bedside tables.
Tears fall from her reddened eyes, the drips feeling like they cascade down her cheeks in slow motion.
My father’s body turns toward me slowly as if another entity possesses him. My mom clutches her hands to her stomach, her purple shirt beneath them staining a deeper plum.
The two people who used to show me what love should look like peer at me with dead eyes.
My father’s lifeless irises clash with mine.
The bloody glass tumbles from his fingertips.
Time freezes.
Every movement and every breath between the three of us is in slow motion.
Even the shard of glass falling through the air floats like the heavy snowflakes we get in the winter that plummet toward the earth. It lands flat on the carpet, reflecting my father’s crimson hand that pierces my vision.
He was holding the blade of glass.
It’s her blood.
I should move. I should do something besides stand here. Run to her, take on my father with my own hands, but the terror grips every muscle in its claws.
My father’s shoulders are rigid, and my mom bolts as he lifts the bottle to his lips to get his fix.
She sprints past me into the dark hallway, drops of blood trailing her path.
I follow her into the foyer, and she reaches for her car keys on the hook.
Opening the door, she steps outside into the night air, my wobbly legs carrying me to her as fast as I can manage.
“Mom.” I fight through the emotion clogging my throat. She halts on the porch steps. “I’ll drive you to the hospital. Please let me take you!”
She turns around to face my pleading voice. Taking a few steps back up to the porch, she approaches me and grips the flesh of my shoulders.
“I need you to promise me you’ll stay here with them, Colt. Tell me you’ll never leave them!”
I stare into her blue eyes, my lip quivering. “I promise, Mom.”
She presses her lips against my hair. “I’ll be back—” She shakes her head and taps the skin over my heart, the drumming of her fingertips splintering whatever is left of it. “I’ll be right here, always.”
I nod absentmindedly, watching as she leaves me on the porch and climbs into her silver GMC Terrain. Driving around the circular driveway, she speeds off, her red rear lights disappearing into the haze of fog overshadowing the orchard.
I’m nearly knocked over a few minutes later when my dad’s swaying, intoxicated frame smashes into mine. He tears down the sidewalk, heaves himself into his truck, and takes off after her.
My heart throbs, my lungs somehow sucking in air through the small opening in my collapsed windpipe as my dad’s rear lights, too, dissolve into the haze.
I’m left alone, my mother’s blood on my shoulders soaking through the material and chilling me to the bone as I peer at the orchard that swallowed them whole.
I distractedly rub my chest, everything inside my sternum stretching so painfully I think it might tear through my skin and expose the bottomless void. It’s holding on to those promises that can cause irreparable damage.
She said she’d be back. She promised.
How can a memory feel so vivid but fuzzy simultaneously?
I didn’t leave the porch until my dad returned early that next morning. I sat on the outdoor patio couch, perking up as his headlights shone through the dawn, his truck rolling up the hill.
I waited for her car to follow, but it never appeared.
And when he showed up alone and didn’t utter a word to me as he rinsed his bloody hands in the kitchen sink, the crimson water flowing down the drain, I knew she wasn’t coming back. Yet, I still held out hope.
Foolishly fucking held on tight to that little flicker of optimism that was buried deep in my soul.
When he offered no answers, no damn explanation, rage and agony consumed me completely.
I left.
I couldn’t exist in the same house after what he had done. Without a second thought, I drove to a place on the cliffs we stumbled across when my brothers and I were boys. A place that felt safe. Somewhere where I could yell and curse my father openly, however loudly I wanted to.
I may have bellowed curses to the wind, but I liked to imagine the bastard heard them.
Three days later, I remembered the promise I had made to her. Despite fearing my father, I went back for one reason only.
Them.
And I’ve never left since.
You think it wouldn’t take me this long to respond to an email when I answer tens a day—requests from privately owned markets, supplier inquiries, human resources, and environmental updates—but when I’m alone, my head is a chaotic little fuck.
I reread the email from our marketing director for the fifth time, and the words start sinking in.