Chapter 43 Noel #2
Brandt pointed toward a narrow hall. “The bathroom, I bet. She’s been in there all night.”
I nodded and made my way to my little sister. The bathroom was dark, but the morning sunrise coming in through the window showed a human-sized lump on the floor, draped over the toilet seat. Reaching inside, I tried to flip on the light switch, but nothing happened.
“Light’s broken,” my sister’s frail voice came from inside.
“Shit.” I crouched down and scooped her into my arms. “Caroline?”
She slumped against me, so frail and limp I stopped short from pulling her in tight, afraid I might hurt her.
“I’m so glad you’re here.” Curling in close, she shivered and cuddled her face against my collar.
I kissed her hair and tried to keep it together, but fuck, my little sister. When I spotted dark splotches splashed around the rim of the toilet, I choked. “Is that...Jesus, is that blood?”
Made me think of Eva Mercer and the way she’d bled after getting punched in the stomach.
Caroline didn’t even lift her face. “Probably.”
“Oh, hell. Did you have a miscarriage?”
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and sniffed. Wetness soaked through my shirt, telling me she was crying. “No. I...I...Sander’s parents offered me money to get rid of it...so...I did.” The last three words were whispered and clogged with tears.
The breath whooshed from my lungs. “You...I...” I shook my head, not sure what to say. My fingers trembled as I brushed the hair out of her face and kissed her temple. “Is this what you wanted?”
“I don’t know,” she croaked.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I ground my teeth together. “Fuck, Caroline. If you’d wanted to keep the baby, I would’ve helped you. You realize that, right? I know I lost it when I found out, but I was mad, and disappointed, and scared shitless.”
“Well, what do you think I was?” She pushed back to glare up at me. “I was scared too, Noel. And you weren’t here. What was I supposed to do?” Burying her face into her hands, she wept openly, her shoulders trembling from the force of her sobs.
Fisting my hand against my mouth, I watched her fall apart. This was my fault. I’d failed my family. I’d failed Aspen.
I’d failed, period.
“I’m sorry,” Crawling the few feet she’d scooted away from me, I pulled her back into my arms. But she remained stiff, and it broke me. I buried my face in her hair. “I’m so sorry.”
It took her a while to finally ease back against me, but when she did, I could finally suck in a relieved breath.
I stroked her back as if that could somehow repay her for all the times I hadn’t been here for her.
With a gulp, I glanced over her shoulder, trying to pull myself back together, when I spotted more blood. Fuck, that was a lot of blood.
“Do we need to get you to a hospital?”
She shook her head. “No, I think...I think it’s over now. They said I’d bleed. I just didn’t expect so much.” When her voice broke, I kissed her temple again.
“Does it still hurt?”
Her nod was all I needed to see. “Okay.” I shifted with her until she was sitting on my knees. Then I rose to my feet. “Let’s get you somewhere comfortable, and we’ll see about finding something for the pain.”
I didn’t even bother taking her to one of the two bedrooms. If the boys had been sleeping in the living rooms, I already knew I didn’t want to go back there.
Ten met us at the end of the hall. “Hey, I’m—”
His words broke off abruptly when he saw Caroline.
She looked up at the new voice, and her eyes bugged. “Oh, my God!” Yelping, she clutched me hard and buried her face back into my chest. “Who is he?”
Snuggling my cheek against her hair in reassurance, I said, “That’s just my roommate. Oren Tenning.”
“Hey,” Ten greeted, his voice hoarse. “How you doing?” When I saw the direction of his gaze, fixated on my little sister’s bare legs, I scowled at him. Her oversized T-shirt didn’t fall much past her thighs, giving him an eyeful.
Clearing my throat, I finally got him to tear his attention away from her. When he caught my death-glare, he spun away, putting his back to us. “Uh...the uh...I’m starving, so I was going to take the boys to the closest McDonalds for breakfast. Did you two want anything?”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “Get us some biscuits and gravy, and breakfast burritos, and sandwiches, and shit like that. Let me put her on the couch, and I’ll dig some money out of my wallet to pay.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Ten turned to watch us as I passed him.
“I’m not hungry,” Caroline protested.
“Well, you need to eat something and build your strength back up.” I settled her down and sat next to her as I fussed with the blanket Colton had been sleeping under to cover her legs. “At least try, okay?”
After a reluctant nod, she glanced past me toward my roommate.
Standing awkwardly by the door with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, Ten peered back.
But as soon as their gazes collided, they jerked their glances away.
Blushing madly, Caroline rested her head on the pillow and rolled to bury her face in it.
I stood up, took a deep breath, and turned to my roommate. When I gave him a single nod, he rounded up my brothers, who were more than willing to go get something to eat, and left the trailer house.
As Brandt and Colton sat on the couch, on either side of a pale Caroline, chowing down on all the food Ten had bought them, I stepped outside for a minute to catch some fresh air. My roommate followed me not long after.
He blew out a breath and rested his back against the metal walls of the trailer house as he set his hands on his hips. “What’s that saying? Karma-sutra: fate fucking you in in all kinds of creative ways?”
I barked out a harsh laugh. “Yeah. Sounds about right.”
Ten joined in with a short chuckle, but it didn’t last long. Cursing under his breath, his ran his hand through his hair. “So, what happened in there was...shit, man. Is she going to be okay?”
“I don’t know.” Gazing at the rest of the homes in the trailer park, I sighed. They were all better maintained than ours.
“Where’s your mom?”
I turned to Ten. “Good question.”
He hissed out another curse and pushed away from the wall. “Well, this...this frankly sucks. No wonder you never told me about your home life. Or that your sister was fucking hot.”
“Excuse me?” When I slid him a sharp glance, he lifted his hands as if surrendering.
“What? Whenever you mentioned her, I always pictured some five-year-old in pigtails carrying around a blankie and teddy bear. And...she’s not five.”
“She’s not eighteen either,” I growled. “So back off.”
“Hey, I wasn’t disrespecting. The walls in that place are thin as shit; I heard her tell you what she just went through. I’m just saying, I’m not blind.”
“Well, you’d better turn blind around her.”
“Fine, whatever.” Ten lifted his hands once last time, telling me he was backing off. He let out a long, loud sigh and looked up at the sky. So did I. After a minute of neither of us speaking, he asked, “What’re you going to do about this whole fucked-up mess?”
Kicking at a large rock embedded in the grass, I tried to quell all the rising emotions.
But the more I thought about what I should do, the more I wanted to tear the trailer house apart with my bare hands.
“You know, I always wondered how bad I’d let things here get before I had to give up on Ellamore and come back home.
But shit, this is worse than I imagined. How could I let things get this bad?”
“But if you leave school now—”
“I know,” I snapped, not needing the reminder.
Pressing my hands to either side of my head to try to ease some of the pressure building inside, I closed my eyes.
Except when I did, all I could picture were news reports with Aspen’s face splashed all over the covers of newspapers and screens of televisions with the headline Ellamore Sex Scandal Spreads from the Volleyball Team to Football.
“I can’t do that to Aspen,” I moaned, shaking my head. “I just can’t.”
“Then what’re you going to do?” Ten pressed. “Because you sure as fuck can’t leave those three in there like that.”
“I know that.” I glared at him and growled, flashing my teeth. “But what can I do?”
“Well, what do you want to do?”
“I want to go into that pathetic excuse of a house, scoop up my brothers and sister, and take them back to Ellamore with me. I want to protect everyone I love.”
Ten flashed a sudden grin and dusted his hands off on his thighs. “Well, all right, then. Let’s do it.”
“What?” I blinked and gaped at him. “We can’t do that. They don’t...Their life is here. School. My mother...shit, I don’t have any kind of custody. It’d be considered kidnapping if I—”
“If you got caught.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “But I don’t see your mom anywhere. Do you really think she’d contest it?”
A seed of hope sprouted inside me. It’d be rough...but so worth it.
Shaking my head, I frowned at my roommate for even suggesting the idea. “I can’t bring three underage kids home with me.” Caroline would turn eighteen in two weeks, but still. “Where the hell would we put them in our dinky, two-bedroom apartment?”
Glancing at the dinky, two-bedroom trailer house they were staying in now, he lifted his eyebrows and shot me a look. Okay, so he had a point. Even our shithole apartment was in a hell of a lot better condition than this dump.
“Look, my bed’s bigger than yours. The boys can camp in my room, your sister can take yours, I’ll get the couch, and you can bunk on the floor until we find someplace bigger to rent.”
I just stared at him, unable to believe what I was hearing. “Are you serious?”
He made a face. “Fuck, yeah. I’m certainly not taking the floor.”
With a short laugh, I shook my head. Only Ten could make me smile at a time like this. “I mean, about the whole thing? This is a big deal, Ten. This would fucking save my life, but it’d be a huge change. For you too. Are you sure about them coming back with us?”
He shrugged as if it was nothing. “I mean, they’re going to be squished in my half backseat on the ride there, but hell, why not?”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I covered my face with my hands as the relief nearly buckled my knees. “Thank you. Oh, fuck. Thank you so much, man. I’ll never be able to repay you for this.”