Chapter 20
Sloane
Pots of apple and cinnamon, clove and star anise, still simmer in the kitchen under Anders’s watchful eye, and the house is full of people—so full that no one’s noticed the way I keep siphoning Beau’s best whiskey from the ledge in his office.
Except maybe Grant, whose watchful gaze keeps finding me.
We haven’t talked since our blow up, other than exchanging a few words when completely necessary, mostly to fool our parents, trick them into thinking we’re good. It’s not working.
I watch Grant shake his head, his eyes narrow with disapproval while he moves his attention back to the conversation he’s in with the suits who work for Beau.
“Sloane?” Brennan, whose eyes are still a muddy grey color, just like they were in high school, says beneath me, and I remember I’m still collapsed in his lap. “You were saying?”
“Daydreamin’,” I giggle. His brows furrow at me in conspiracy, and I know he’s already jumped to the conclusion I’m still trying to conclude.
I sneak another sip of whiskey from the crystal Evie puts out for use on special occasions like this, and sink a little deeper in him.
He’s not nearly as solid as I imagine someone like Andy is.
He’s sort of a shell of a solid person, I notice as I let him hold the brunt of me.
It doesn’t even feel particularly nice, but I do it anyway, hoping it’s all just muscle memory and that I’m out of practice.
Grant’s eyes flit toward me again, and the slight tilt of his head tells me he’s trying to eavesdrop. Bastard. Instead of just talking to me, he’ll try to spy on every little thing I say to everyone else.
“Connie—”
“Your birth mom?” Brennan clarifies, and I let my head loll back an annoyed guttural sound.
“My mom. Anyway she called, and the number wouldn’t show anything but unknown, so I knew it was her.
Turns out she wanted to see us! Me and Grant that is.
” My hand slaps my knee with so much gusto, we both jolt a little in the chair he’s braced in, and I huff a tired laugh.
“So then I dropped everythin’ and went to Boston, because she was tryin’ to contact Grant, which—”
Like clockwork, he takes up the whole goddamn frame and looms over us, like he likes to lord over everything.
The morality police. The conversation police.
The when and where police. My eyes roll nearly to the back of my head as Brennan shifts, trying to distract from the very sensual hold he has on me.
I don’t help him, because I don’t really care what my brother—or anyone here—thinks about me.
I slice my gaze up to Grant. “Oh goodie! We were just talkin’ about you,” I taunt, baring my teeth for a smile that I hope translates to ‘fuck off.’ Brennan fucks off instead, muttering something about getting another drink, but I know Grant’s hawkish attention has shattered the little bubble I’ve been drinking myself into and sent my entertainment along with it.
The lack of sadness I feel at his loss only adds insult to injury; I should at least feel disappointed. Lots of fish in the sea, Clem always says, but I’m only irritated—not gutted—that someone let one off the hook.
“You ruin everything,” I spit. “Have you ever just not cared, for like, a minute of your life? Oh wait—you tried that. Didn’t work out for you,” I say, sweetly, cocking my head to the side, hoping the reference to Gen hurts.
“Do you want me to get you some water?” is all he says, and I feel a flush rise up my neck, the overwhelm of being talked down to only driving me to drink more.
“Stop actin’ like I’m unhinged, Grant.” I push off the chair and make my way to Beau’s study with the intermittent hand on the wall, trying to look less drunk than I am. I clasp the cool bottle of whiskey only for him to snatch it out of my hands.
“Well, you’re spillin’ your guts about Connie to anyone who will listen, so.”
So like him to exaggerate when it suits him, to blow something entirely normal and rational out of proportion, simply because it triggers something in him. He can’t bear to hear our mother’s name, so it’s my job to shield him from it?
“Some of us talk about things. I know that’s a foreign concept to you.”
“I talk to y—”
A loud bout of laughter leaps out of my throat, the notion that he communicates with me, of all people, comical, and I snatch my whiskey back.
“Not me, Grant—her. Talk to mom. Hell, talk to Gen. You just shut down the moment things get hard, or real. You’re never goin’ to feel anything worth feelin’ if you keep livin’ like this. ”
Brushing a tear from the corner of my eyes, I realize my cheeks are wet entirely, that tears aren’t just leaking, but flowing down my face, and I feel my chest start to heave.
We’re so messed up. The wires in our brains crossed somewhere along the way, and neither of us know how to hold anything good.
At least Grant can pretend to have it together; I just fall apart, revealing all the ways I’m fractured and broken for anyone to see.
I feel my lip start to tremble, frustration welling in me at his refusal to walk through any of this.
Throwing Connie and her illness on him might not be fair, but what is fair to me? Not once since we were adopted has my brother sat down and heard me. Listened to my feelings without immediately negating them with a heavy handed corrective to just be grateful instead.
“Let’s not talk about this here, Sloane,” he tells me, voice low and assertive, like I’m a thing to be handled, and it’s the exact wrong thing to say to me when a near half bottle of whiskey courses through my veins.
“Why not?” I feel the way my voice shoots out of me as I let my glass hit our dad’s desk, my anger red hot and searing, cutting away at the cool I try so hard to keep together.
“Because it’s Thanksgiving,” he seethes, and I step back, shocked.
“And Mom is having a great time, if you haven’t noticed, and no one wants to hear about the deadbeat who abandoned us.
” The word choice is intended to slice me, to wound me, and I stare at him in true wonder, because our scars are the same.
How he could disregard that pain, rub salt right into the gashes still so clearly there, is a mystery that belies more than he probably knows.
There’s a distance he places between himself and those memories, like he’s somehow a different person from the one Connie gave up all those years ago. But he isn’t. It’s that boy, the one who waited for her to come back and shut his heart down when she didn’t, who also told Gen to leave him.
“How long are you goin’ to pretend that this,” I ask him, waving at the heavy built-ins packed with special edition texts and knick knacks that could afford a family groceries for a year, “is the entirety of your life? Have you even told Dad about the draft?”
The thing you’ve wanted to do since you were a boy? Where is that Grant?
“I don’t need to tell him yet, there’s time—”
“No, Grant!” I scream, earning me some stares around the room, my voice turning hoarse, feeling desperate.
“There isn’t time. Eventually the words are due.
The feelings come. Life happens,” I gasp, my breath stuttering.
“And the longer you keep pushing off anything that leaves you feeling even a little vulnerable, the longer you’re going to spend that life alone.
Unhappy. A sad excuse of the person you could be. ”
His eyes descend into something dark and guarded, like the words landed only to be locked up with all the other truths he’d rather not look at, and fresh tears supersede my old ones.
“So what do you prescribe, Sloane? Since you’re so fucking wise? Am I supposed to live like you? Don’t look any happier than me, from where I stand. You say I don’t face my problems—you literally run from yours. What even happened in California?”
“Fuck you,” I seethe before I feel my chest cave in, my face turning hot and damp with sweat, the tears making it hard to see anything but blurry figures.
I burst through the study door, brushing my hand along the jacquard wallpaper in the hallway that leads to the back stairwell, and sprint up the steps, desperate for solitude.
Shoving up the window in my childhood bedroom, I crouch through it, and curl up on my side, letting a weathered slate shingle dig into my cheek.
Sobs rack my body, vibrate through me as I ricochet against the roof in small, uncontrolled bursts.
The fear wells in me, over and over, before spilling, releasing, leading me to relief, only to well all over again.
To realize you’ll never evolve past who you hate, become more than your worst self, is devastating, because sometimes you can forget.
You can live life in these broad, beautiful strokes that feel infinite, can pour yourself into those moments and let the paint bleed, feeling certain you’re not ruining anything, because you’ve become good.
You’ve become who you always wanted to be, a woman capable.
You can live that life, only for it to be a myth—you were a myth.
It wasn’t you, it was a projection of who you wished you could be.
The girl you’ve always been will always claw her way out, regardless of how many layers you add, how many broad strokes you manage, no matter how much time has passed.
Is there a universe where Connie keeps me? Where I don’t get adopted? Where I don’t take my professor up on his drink invitation because I’m so eager for approval? Where I don’t have an abortion? Where I actually regret it? Where Connie isn’t sick? Where I’m worthy of being kept, by anyone?
The stars twinkle down at me, laughing, because they know and I never will. All I know is this, and it’s hell.
The kitchen island is blessedly cool, and I lay my face against it in hopes it’ll staunch the nausea that won’t subside. Small bites of bacon, courtesy of Anders, are all I can manage between sips of water, which I can only handle between bouts of cold stone pressed against my cheek.
The house is quiet, save for the birds that chirp through the perpetually open kitchen windows, and I let the silence numb me since there isn’t anything socially acceptable at this hour that will.
I know that once the hangover wears off, once I’ve kept a good meal down and I’ve showered, changed, I’ll be well on my way to normalcy.
Normalcy.
I huff an exhausted laugh against the counter before slowly pulling my head up, jolting when I find Evie waiting by the tea kettle, watching me.
“Good mornin’ my little wild cat,” she says, her smile a small warm thing that I don’t want. I glance down at the counter, blinking at my bacon. “How are you feelin’?”
“Like shit. Obviously.” I swallow, pulling in a breath as I shut my eyes against the brightness.
“Beau told me about your fight with Grant.” Those eyes of hers crinkle in curiosity as her head tilts, the freshly washed waves, not yet blown and sprayed into place, falling to the side. She’s older, and the realization has something sinking in my stomach.
“Don’t worry about it,” I mutter, spinning off the kitchen stool to grab a mug for some coffee.
“Sloane,” she orders, shockingly stern. “I need to talk to you.”
Sighing, I turn to face her, a blue striped mug cradled in my hand.
“Your father doesn’t know you aren’t attending your program yet.”
My heart trips over itself, my shoulders freezing in place. “But you do.”
“You know he doesn’t read those tabloids. How can you be so careless, Sloane?” Evie eyes me like this is some grave thing I’ve done, and I know it isn’t ideal. I know.
But given the context—the context being the woman who gave me life is nearly on her deathbed—I could actually give two fucks about getting a piece of paper from a ritzy art program who hires professors that regularly engage in sexual relationships with their students.
“I’m sorry?” she asks on a small gasp, and I’m not even sure which part of that I mumbled out loud. “Sloane—” she reaches out, her fingers only brushing my wrist as I wrench myself away and flee up the stairs.
It’s unsurprising that she follows because she’s never known when to give me an inch or give me a mile; she always seems to choose the wrong one. Not bothering to knock on my door, she bursts in, her eyes glassy as her lips purse the way they do when she’s furious.
“I do not,” she starts, taking a calming breath, “I do not pretend to know what it is like to be you. And I don’t deny that you had a hard life.
But Sloane, you have people. You have us.
I—” she falters, pressing her lips together.
“I am your mother in the ways that count, and it kills me that you don’t think I can carry any of that with you.
” A streak glistens down the side of her face, and she knocks it away with the back of her hand.
“I have,” I say, voice hushed, “a mother.”
“How is she?” she asks, the sincerity in her gaze lancing across my skin, because how can it be sincere when she took us from her. When she laid claim to me when I’d already laid claim to Connie.
“Sick,” I whisper, the world unfurling that deep seated dread inside me.
“Does Grant know?”
“He doesn’t want to talk to her. She wants to tell him herself.” Evie nods, understanding.
“And this prof—”
“Don’t do this,” I cut her off, my lip curling in irritation.
“You don’t want to know about my life.” My arms find the piles of clothes I’ve amassed this week and begin shoving them into my luggage; I can’t stay here any longer.
I’ll tear at the seams, spill my disastrous energy everywhere, a human oil spill that’ll contaminate everything it touches.
“Sweetie, yes—I do. I—”
“What, so you can fix me? I don’t need fixin’, Evie. I am who I am. When will you get that?”
“I love who you are,” she says defiantly, and I scoff, the hard sound of it causing her to wince.
“Sure. And pigs can fly.” I zip my luggage shut.
“Don’t go, Sloane,” she pleads, and I deflate, knowing Clemmie’s house won’t be the reprieve I need and deciding to stay.
“Just—” she says suddenly, moving closer. “You’ll tell me? If you really need me?” Concern, deep and rageful, wells in her eyes, and I resent myself for not being who she wants me to be. Someone who would never have put herself in this position in the first place.
“Sure,” I lie, knowing I’d never force her to look at the mess I’ve made.