Flawed (22 page)

“After he forces himself on you?” He glares at me, the intensity in his eyes an ugly thunderstorm black. “I know you’ve been lying about the kisses. How do you know that’s not next?”

“He would
never
force me!”

Even as the words spill from my lips, I have my doubts. Last night was the first time he’d forced me to do anything against my will and it was a fluke. Too much alcohol, too many drugs. That’s all.

I’m lying to myself.

I feel it taking over, the panic that’s been clawing at the edges of my mind for years. It wraps sticky black tendrils around me that tighten, tighten, tighten until I can’t breathe from the pressure. I claw at my shirt and back toward the door.

“He’ll never let you go.”

I know he won’t.
“I have to try.”

“I love you.” He reaches for me. “Please don’t do this.”

Strong boys like Sam Donavon should never have to beg. Should never have to reach for the scarred hands of a girl who isn’t worth his love and beg her to love him back.

“I’m so, so sorry,” I whisper, and run from his room.

Forty-eight

After sitting in the park for God knows how many hours trying to get my thoughts in order, I drag myself home and up the driveway. I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life, and as the sun sets on our quiet little town, I’m just now seeing how big of a mistake it was. There’s no way James will agree to the conditions I made up on the walk over—conditions he’ll have to abide by if he wants me to stay. No more fighting, no drugs, and no gun top the list.

I should’ve stayed with Sam.

But I didn’t. And now I have to face my decision.

Even if James’s truck hadn’t been parked in our father’s spot, I’d know he’s home. Our bedroom light is on, and Godsmack pours from our window at its usual ear-blistering volume. Taking a shaky breath, I open the door.

The door encounters resistance almost immediately. I frown and push a little harder. Plastic grates against linoleum. Poking my head through the foot-wide gap in the door, I squint into the dark foyer. Whatever it is isn’t too big. I should be able to move it. I push against the door a little harder, forcing whatever is in the way to give a little, and slip inside.

I’ve only made it another two steps when I trip over something hard and heavy. Wincing, I rub my shin with one hand and feel around for whatever the thing is with the other. Wood. A table. What the hell? Did someone break in and trash the place? Panic grips my throat. If someone broke in, James might be hurt. After everything that’s happened, finding my brother dead on the floor would kill me.

I stagger forward, thoughts of Sam and my mistake forgotten, and nearly twist my ankle tripping over something small. I fumble along the wall for the light switch in the living room. Before I find it, the room floods with light.

James is sitting in our father’s orange chair, but I hardly see him. I’m trying too hard to absorb the mess of broken furniture and shredded clothes scattered around him on the floor. My clothes. Our father’s clothes. The bookshelf from the living room is on the floor, crushed into several large pieces. The scratchy, beige couch is slashed. Newspaper and books, torn up. Unable to breathe, I force myself to look at James. I need to know he’s okay if there’s any hope of me keeping it together.

He’s staring at me from his place in our father’s chair, unscathed and perfectly calm, with the gun resting on his left leg. The fury in his eyes betrays his calm facade. I stop, frozen.

He picks up the gun and studies the barrel. “So, I followed you this morning.”

What’s left of my blood feels like it’s sucked from my body, leaving me cold and trembling. “It’s not what you think.”

“Really? I know you and Sam hang out in the forest during the week whenever you’re not at that flower store, and that you went swimming in the middle of the night when we were camping. I know his sweatshirt is buried in the back of your underwear drawer and that you haven’t been to the library in months.” He cocks the trigger. Releases it. “Did you know they don’t have cookbooks at the library?”

This is bad. This is very, very bad. Before I can pull myself together enough to scream at him for stalking me, he tightens his grip on the gun and stands up. “After everything I’ve done for you, after all the shit I’ve taken and how much I’ve loved you, this is how you repay me? Fucking my best friend and then having the gall to
lie
about it?”

“I knew you’d be mad. I didn’t want you to be mad.”

It sounds like such a lame excuse now and I wonder how I ever convinced myself lying to James was the right thing to do. He keeps coming at me, the hatred dark blue in his normally sky-blue eyes. Just like our father’s. Stumbling over a ripped pair of jeans and a pile of books, I crash backward into the wall.

“Of course I’m mad,” he says in a deceptively calm voice that oozes malice. “You lied to me. All our lives, you’ve been lying. You said you wouldn’t leave, and you are. You said I’m enough for you, but I’m not. You said you love me as much as I love you, and you don’t.” He stops right in front of me, so close I can taste the anger rolling off him. “You’ve been fucking Sam, and you’re supposed to be
mine!
”

He backhands me with the fist holding the gun. The lights flicker and I have to fight the blackness trying to take me. The blood seeping into my mouth from somewhere tastes like the dirty pennies we used to suck on when we were little. I cower away, desperate to disappear into the wall that’s keeping me too close to him. He
hit
me.
Me
. I press my sleeve against my mouth and look at the big splotch of blood left behind when I pull it away.

James has gone whiter than a ghost, looking at my mouth and his hand and the gun and me, completely dumbfounded. Seeing the first tear streak down my cheek is enough to snap him out of it. He shoves the gun into the front of his jeans and yanks me against his chest.

“Oh, fuck, Sarah. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” He smoothes my hair away from my forehead and kisses the bruised skin slick with cold sweat and fear. “I get so mad and this was the maddest I’ve ever been…”

Dazed, I don’t pull away. His body heat is as familiar to me as my own, more familiar to me than Sam, and comforts me even though he’s the reason I’m losing myself. I just stand there limply and let him hold me against his body.

“If you tell me you’re not with him, I’ll believe you. Just tell me.”

I shake my head. “I’m not with him.”
Not anymore.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he touches my cheek, caresses my arm, runs his fingertips down my spine. Gentle. Tender. “Good,” he murmurs. “We’ll have to move somewhere Dad’ll never find you. We can change our names, and then you can get a job working with flowers or go to college or do whatever you want. I’ll do anything if it’ll make you happy. Just tell me what to do.”

I hate that James’s touch feels so good, that it’s always felt so good. I lean into him and close my eyes needing more of it and more of him. Being in his arms takes me back to every time he stumbled into our room, battered and broken and bloody, looking to me for comfort and love. I gave it so freely, just like he gave himself so freely to keep me alive. Safety and love—that’s what James has always been to me and I begged him for all of it.

And God, how I want what he’s offering. Somewhere else. Away from the ghosts in this house. Away from all the memories. That’s what Sam offered, too. What I plan to give myself.

“If we change our names, we don’t have to be brother and sister anymore,” he continues. “We could be together and no one would get mad because they won’t know.”

When his touching shifts, turning needy and heated, I shudder and pull away. James is right there with me, though, and backs me up against the wall. One hand skims my chest while the other seeks out the bare skin where my shirt has ridden up above my jeans.

“Please don’t do this,” I say, my voice breaking. “You’re ruining everything.”

“You want the same thing I do,” he breathes into my hair. “Let me give it to you.”

I wedge my arms between us, giving me maybe an inch of breathing room. It’s nowhere near enough. “I don’t want this. You’re sick, James. You need help.”

“Bullshit.” James backs away, his expression a frightening combination of disbelief and fury. “I’m not the one begging to be touched and kissed in the middle of the night. Every time we sleep in the same bed, I have to pry you off me, so don’t you
dare
tell me I’m the sick one.”

My mouth opens and shuts as I flounder beneath the implications of his words. The nightmares…if they were real, the hard body crushing mine was James and not just a horrific figment of my imagination. And then the nights I thought the person caressing me was Sam and I begged him to give me more…

My stomach lurches.

“So you
do
remember.”

Everything inside of me goes numb when he smiles and presses his body against mine again. I want to cry over how familiar this feels, for the hope on his face, for how perfect some of those dreams felt when they should have been repulsive, but the gun tucked in his waistband bites into the soft flesh of my stomach and keeps me still.

I don’t fight him when he cups my jaw in one of his hot palms, tilting my face up to his. “No one is gonna love you as much as me. Not Sam or anyone else. You’re mine.”

When he kisses me, I hardly notice. It’s a quick press of his ruined lips against mine before he searches my eyes for some sort of reaction. I have no reaction. I stare back at him, hollow, vacant.

Fresh blood on his lips, James frowns and kisses me again, longer this time.
When he tries to work my mouth open, his tongue sliding across my bloody lip, I turn away.

“Please…” He mirrors my every move, following as I turn my face right and left so our mouths are never more than a couple inches apart. “I love you. Let me love you.”

Sam said the same thing, but this time the words have the opposite effect. I shake my head harder but he’s right there, keeping my body melded to his.

He dips his head and presses his mouth against mine so hard, the split in my lip our father gave me rips back open. The pain snaps me out of my numbness.

“No!” I try to twist away, but everywhere I go, he’s there forcing me to accept his kiss, his hands on my body, and my fate. I fight harder. “I’ll never be with you!”

The door flies open, slamming into the wall less than two feet from my head.

“Get your fucking hands off of her!”

Forty-nine

One look at his former best friend, bruised eyes seething with hate, sends James backpedaling into the living room. When Sam rushes toward me, I burst into tears.

“I’m so sorry,” I sob. “I should’ve listened to you. I shouldn’t have come back.”

He cups my cheeks in his hands and shushes me, his hard gaze returning again and again to my bottom lip, which has swollen even more under the onslaught of James’s kisses. “It doesn’t matter,” he tells me gently. “You’re safe now. Okay?”

His words trigger another wave of panic. My heart flutters and the room tilts dangerously. When I grab Sam’s shirt, he squeezes me tight, kisses the side of my mouth that isn’t bleeding.

“We’ll be okay,” he whispers and smiles.

All the hell I’ve endured drains away and I press myself as close to him as I can get, trying to ignore how with each second that passes, his body tenses even more beneath my hands. The room is silent except for his labored breathing and my sniffles, but I know James is still here. Still watching and waiting. I don’t want Sam to face him and there’s no way I’ll be able to stop it from happening.

Slowly, as if he’s afraid of spooking my brother, Sam turns around and moves me behind him. “James,” he says.

I peek around his broad shoulder at my battered brother, standing in the middle of the living room with blood-smeared lips, paler than I’ve ever seen him. His eyes sway slowly from Sam to me, back and forth and back again. He looks unsteady and I have the urge to go to him, even after everything that’s happened. As if Sam senses this, he puts his arm out to keep me back.

James still hasn’t said anything. Sam moves closer, his hands raised slightly. That’s when I realize the gun isn’t in James’s pants anymore—it’s in his hand.

“Give me the gun,” Sam says evenly. “You don’t want to hurt Sarah any more than I do. If you want to fight some more, let’s take this out back.”

I gasp. “No!”

Sam reaches behind him for my hand and squeezes, but I’m not reassured.

“Let’s just leave,” I plead. “We can come back after James calms down. Please!”

James shakes himself out of his trance and stares hard at Sam. “Stay away from her.”

Dropping my hand, Sam takes a step closer to James, away from me. I want to scream at him to stop because James looks exactly like our father the second before he snaps.

“You know I can’t,” Sam says.

James lifts the gun and shoots.

Blood sprays everywhere and for a second, I think James shot me instead of Sam. When Sam falls to his knees, I feel the pain explode in my chest. I scream, dive the three feet between us, and barely catch him before he topples to the ground.

“Sam?” I cry. “Oh, God, no. Talk to me, Sam. Please!”

When I lay him down, the hole where the bullet ripped into his chest gushes blood. I try to cover the wound with my hands to stop the bleeding but it seeps past my fingers and dribbles onto the living room carpet. I grab the nearest shredded shirt off the floor, my favorite pink cotton one, and press it to the ugly hole that shouldn’t be there. He groans and closes his eyes.

“We’re going to get help, okay? Hang in there.”

Standing in our doorway, a horrified Mr. Espinosa bellows a stream of Spanish to his wife across the yard. “Lydia is calling the police,” he says to me. “Who else?”

“Liz Donavon,” I say in a broken voice. “Tell the police to call Liz Donavon.”

When Mr. Espinosa nods and runs back to his house, the only sound left is Sam’s uneven breathing and the sound of him gulping. James’s Godsmack is conspicuously missing.

I smooth the hair away from Sam’s blood-spattered face and press my forehead to his. “I love you,” I whisper. “Please don’t leave me. Please.”

His eyes are glassy when he opens them. Fixed on me, but not quite seeing. Choking on the burnt stench of gunpowder, I whirl around to scream at James, “Do something!”

James’s face has gone ashen. Dropping the gun, he sways, then drops to his knees.

Sam’s cold hand on my stomach draws my attention back to him. His eyes, the darkest storm cloud gray I’ve seen them yet, are frantic and afraid. “My mom,” he chokes out.

Any hope I’ve been clinging to evaporates the second he tries to swallow and can’t. “They’re calling her. Hold on, okay? She’s going to be so excited when we tell her about our wedding. Think of all the flowers she’ll order.”

He nods almost imperceptibly and closes his eyes. I don’t want his eyes to close. I want to brand their color and intensity into my brain in case I never get to see them again. I fall forward, my forehead pressed to his again, and pray for the first time in my life.

Please God, don’t take him away. His mom needs him. I need him. Please. Take me, but don’t take him.

He sputters again and my heart breaks.

Behind us, James babbles a stream of apologies I don’t want to hear. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Oh, God. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”

“You shot him!” I cry over my shoulder. “What did you think would happen
?
”

He ignores me. “Leslie said it would be fast. No pain, just peace. She’d die in her sleep, just like she wanted.”

I whirl around, horrified. “
You
killed mom?”

“She begged me to!” He hugs his knees to his chest and rocks back and forth, back and forth, his eyes fixed on the gun at his feet. “I was going to kill Dad, too, but I fucked up. I tried to save you like she wanted and fucked that up, too. I fuck
everything
up.”

Turning back to Sam, I gulp back the bile trying to claw its way up my throat. The night before our mother died hadn’t been a dream. I knew it was real, but admitting it to myself before now had felt impossible. I remember her tracing James’s foot through the thin blanket and how he stirred when she touched his jaw.

She’d been saying goodbye.

I bury my face in Sam’s neck, sickened by the sticky blood, and rock softly against him, shushing him like James used to do for me. “I need you, Sam,” I whisper in his ear. “I don’t want to live without you. I love you.”

He tries to say something, but sputters violently. Feeling his struggle, I try to give him space but he grabs my hand. He tugs his father’s bloody chain out from beneath his shirt and wraps my fingers around the dog tags. His eyes are pleading with me. Trying to make me understand what he can’t say. “Love…you.”

The tears I’ve waited too long to shed are like a noose cinched tightly around my throat. I choke before I can breathe in what I’m afraid will be his final words, which makes the tears flow harder and hotter. I
need
those words. Need to hide them somewhere deep inside of myself where no one can steal them away. Those words might be all I have left.

When his chest spasms one last time, I curl over his body in a feeble attempt to keep him warm and try to hum.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…
The sirens screaming in the distance are too late. They’re always too late.

Behind me, James sings the final verse in a shaky voice.

You told me once, dear, you really loved me

And no one else could come between.

But now you’ve left me and love another;

You have shattered all my dreams.

I can’t look at him. Won’t.

Behind me, the gun scrapes across the floor.

Save James,
she had said, but I’m too late. I wait for the shot that will take me to wherever Sam is going. If James ever loved me, he’ll do this one last thing for me. It’s the only way to make everything right.

The gun fires again and thuds, lifeless, to the floor.

I melt into Sam and close my eyes.