Risk: A Military Stepbrother Bad Boy Romance (16 page)

DAMIEN

I woke up to Harry’s voice the next morning, which was just about the last fucking thing I wanted to hear.

“Sarah, Maria and I saw one of your teachers while we were out last night—he said you haven’t been in school for the last two weeks? What the hell is going on?”

My eyes flashed open. I was still naked. Sarah was still naked. She was wrapped around me, her head leaning on my chest, still snoozing softly. Fuck.

I didn’t have any clothes in here. Somehow, Harry hadn’t noticed the clothes scattered in the living room. But he was bound to notice this.

I heard Harry stomp down the hall way. His steps stopped in front of Sarah’s door.

“Sarah…” he began again, and the door opened.

Part of me wanted to hide. Part of me wanted to run. Part of me wanted to jump out of the window.

But that wasn’t who I am. Those parts of me—the parts that wanted to run and hide, those parts just didn’t amount to a whole hell of a love.

Harry’s red, bloated face turned even redder and more bloated as he saw us, eyes widened, practically bulging out of his head.

“What… What…” he stuttered. I made a face, somewhere between a frown and a smile, as if to say: “Well, looks like this is it.”

Sarah’s eyes finally fluttered open. Like her father’s, her eyes too widened as she realized what exactly was going on.

“D-d-dad!” she squealed, turning to see that I was still there, still in bed with her.

“What the hell is going on here?” Harry demanded, storming in, tearing the quilt off of us. It was a chilly morning and I would have appreciated if he had kept it on. Sarah tried to cover herself but Harry grabbed her arm, shaking her hard.

“Sarah Madison Logan…” he roared. “What the fuck have you done?”

I reacted without thinking. My right hand collided hard with his jaw. It wasn’t the prettiest punch in the world, but it got the job done. Harry went back a few feet, grabbing his face.

“Son of a bitch…”

“That’s your wife you’re talking about there,” I growled.

“How long has this been going on? I take you into my house, I feed you, I clothe you…” he demanded, staggering to his feet.

“Let’s get a few things straight,” I said coldly. “You’ve never bought me anything. I live here, I eat the food, but I didn’t ask for this. I’ve got my own money. I’ve got a car. I’ve got a career waiting for me back in the Corps. You’re nothing to me and you never were.”

“Oh, go to hell, you ungrateful piece of Italian shit…” Harry growled. “And as for you—oh, I don’t even know what I’m going to do to you.”

He jerked his thumb at Sarah, who paled.

“Daddy, no, please… I…”

Her eyes met mine. Pearls of water, little tears, dribbled down her cheeks.

“What? He can’t save you now,” Harry yelled. “This is a crime, an abomination! You’ll go to jail, both of you. I’ll see to it. I’ll prosecute you myself if I have to. I’ll have myself made a goddamned prosecutor just so I can see you rot in a jail cell for the rest of your natural life.”

He was manic, delusional. This was why he was dangerous, I decided.

“We’re not related by blood,” I pointed out, as coolly and rationally as a naked man could. I grabbed a towel, left over from our shower last night, and wrapped it around my waist. “And even if you were, if you think that a jury would give us a life sentence for something like incest… You’re dumber than you look.”

Harry let out a scream of rage and lunged at me. It was a rookie mistake: all vigor and force, but no finesse, no skill. He was bigger than me, but I was in far better shape, and I was far more used to hurting people than he was. Well, maybe I wasn’t…

I threw a left hook, turning out of the way of his lunge. My fist sent him sprawling again, this time into Sarah’s desk.

“Daddy, Damien, stop it!” she screamed.

I glowered at her.

“I’m defending myself here. I’m defending you. It’s up to him to stop it.”

“Fucking hell…” Harry growled, forcing himself to stand back up.

“And another thing,” I continued. “You only involve yourself in your daughters’ lives when they piss you off. Maybe you’d have an easier time of it if, you know, you were actually a half-way decent father to them, instead of being an ungodly fucking cunt.”

Once more, he came charging at me. I grabbed him by the lapel of his blazer and turned with his body, throwing him effortlessly into the wall behind me.

“Just fucking stop,” I scowled. “You’re pathetic.”

“Damien, don’t hurt him. He’s terrible but he is my father.”

I turned to see Sarah’s tear streaked face, her pleading eyes, her quivering lip. I scowled. I was done with this—done with this family.

“If you want to let him treat you like this, fine. I’m done with this bullshit.”

“Get… Out…” Harry groaned.

“Gladly.”

I stormed out of the room, to Sarah’s sobs and Harry’s groans. I packed as quickly as I could, throwing my few worldly possessions and clothes into my duffel bag and grabbing my guitar. As I was about to leave, my mother met me in the hall.

“Sorry things didn’t work out this time, ma,” I mumbled. She hugged me close, kissed me.

“I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry he’s a-so terrible…”

“Why do you hang around?” I scowled.

She rubbed her fingers and thumb together, a gesture that all Italians knew. Money.

“I don’t want to get deported…” she sighed, turning her gaze back to Sarah’s room. Harry was yelling, practically incomprehensibly, at his daughter, who just sobbed.

“Yeah, try to take care of her.”

“She’s a good girl. I understand, why you like her. In a different world…”

“Yeah, well, we live in this world, ma,” I said brusquely, pushing past her. I made it downstairs to the living room, when I found Dakota blocking my way.

“So, you’re leaving us?”

She had bags under her eyes and her hair was mussed up, but she seemed sober. Good for her, I supposed.

“That’s right. You can hear the fall out happening right now.”

“Do you have a place to stay?”

“I’ve got some money. I can get a place at a motel while I figure things out.”

She whipped out her phone and tapped a few things into the touch screen.

“I just sent you our sister’s address and phone number. She’ll give you a couch to sleep on. I bet you she hates dad even more than you do right now.”

I grinned.

“I don’t know about that, but we’ll see. Thanks, kiddo.”

And then, to my utter astonishment, Dakota leaned in and gave me a hug.

“Take care of yourself. Please.”

I found myself wrapping my arms around her, hugging her close, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“You too. Don’t let Harry knock your sister around. And don’t let anyone else do that to you, either.”

“I’m… working on it,” she said with a tiny smile. “I can see why Sarah likes you. You give good hugs.”

She seemed so much like a child now; the resemblance to Jenna was fading.

“Thanks, I’ll put that on my resume.”

And with that, I was out of the house and on my way to see Christina.

SARAH

My father yelled at me for something like an hour, but it felt way longer. Finally, he yelled himself hoarse, and even complained that he had thrown out his back. How the hell does someone throw out their back from yelling?

The worst part for me, though, wasn’t the yelling. It wasn’t the ugly names he called me. It was the moment when I heard the front door slam shut, and the car in the driveway roar to life. It was the moment when I knew that Damien was gone, out of the house and out of my life.

How had I ever thought that this might turn out differently? How could I have imagined that we might be together, that we might even have a life together? In my most private fantasies, I dreamt of Damien getting a job wherever I went to college. We would live together, be boyfriend and girlfriend, and no one would ever have to know that we were technically brother and sister. How would anyone know?

We could even… God, the thought was so seductive, even though it was so bad. We could even get married. My birth certificate and his birth certificate didn’t have any of the same people on them, after all.

But no. No chance of that now. Damien was out of my life and there was no way I would be allowed to see him, at least not while we were in Laramie.

I hated myself for not going with him. I hated myself for not walking out on my dad too, for not getting out of the house where I had been so miserable for so many years.

But in the moment when I could have gone… I didn’t. I was paralyzed. Paralyzed by the thoughts of the unknown that plagued my mind, that seemed to hold me still. I couldn’t move.

And somewhere, deep inside, I felt a sick love for my father that made me ache for him when I saw him bleed. It made no sense. I supposed it was biological—I hadn’t had a mother for years and he was all I had left. And it hurt to see him hurt, even though he was… who he was.

Even though he called me ugly names and even though he grabbed me by the hair and slapped me hard, till my nose bled and my cheeks were welted and swollen.

Now, I lay alone in my room, still naked, tears still falling. I heard my door open. I expected it to be my dad, ready for another round of abuse, another round of contempt and admonition.

But no. It was Dakota. I couldn’t remember the last time she had come in my room. Probably not since before mom died.

“I sent Damien to Christina’s. I figured she would take him in. Considering.”

“We actually met her last night,” I said, my voice shaky, but happy, at least, that I knew where Damien was.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked, closing the door and sitting down on my bed. She started to stroke my leg but then she must have realized I was naked, decided that was weird, and stopped.

“I… I don’t know. I have no idea, Dakota. It hurts so bad.”

She sighed.

“What did you two expect would happen?”

It was the question that plagued me, that hurt me, bodily, emotionally, spiritually. What, after all, had we expected out of all of this? There was nothing, nothing else that we could have seen coming—nothing but this dull, aching pain of regret. I hated myself: hated myself for leading Damien into this, and hated myself for believing, for allowing myself to be seduced by the idea that maybe, just maybe, it would work out.

“God, I feel like a fool,” I sighed, my voice becoming choked once more with sobs.

“No, I don’t think you should. I mean, I think instead, you should focus on the future,” Dakota said, little emotion in her voice as she looked out the window onto the street below: out onto Laramie, this cursed town.

“What future? If this gets out…”

“Dad doesn’t want it to get out. He makes a lot of threats, but he doesn’t go through with them. I mean, except for hitting you. But if you can stand that, he’s actually pretty harmless.”

She paused for a second and then allowed herself a small smile.

“I mean, how do you think I get away with everything I do? I’ve done way worse stuff than this.”

“You’re only fourteen. I really don’t want to think about that.”

“You should give him a call,” Dakota said, changing the subject abruptly. “I think dad is heading into the office anyway, so you can have some privacy. No chance of him storming in on you.”

“I don’t know if I can talk to Damien right now.”

“Sure, but how do you think that makes him feel?”

“Everyone feels like shit right now. How is my calling him going to change anything?”

“You two need a plan,” Dakota said, her soft voice firm. “If you want one, I guess. Like, if you want to stay together.”

Stay together? Was that what I wanted? Was that what Damien wanted?

Dakota left and I reached for my cell phone with trembling fingers. I knew I didn’t deserve him now, not after I had betrayed him—had I really betrayed him? I don’t know, but it sure felt like that. And I sure as hell felt like I couldn’t ask him to make a plan for us to somehow be together, to somehow—I don’t know, run away together, go to college together, all these girlish fantasies of mine that I knew were just fantasies.

Nonetheless, I called him. It rang four times before Damien finally answered.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

A pause. Silence.

“How are you doing?”

“Pretty shitty,” I replied. “But I’m alive. How about you?”

“I’m at a café waiting for Christina to wake up so I can crash on her couch. So, exactly how I wanted to be spending my Sunday morning.”

“Yeah, I bet. We could have gone out for breakfast and everything,” I said, trying to make him laugh, trying to make myself laugh. It didn’t work for either of us.

“Damien, what are we going to do?” I said finally.

“Is there anything for us to do? Honestly, Sarah, what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to keep this thing going?” he asked.

“What thing?” I replied, knowing full well what he meant but wanting, needing to hear him say it.

“Us. You and me. Do you want us to… I don’t know.”

“Do you love me?” I asked, out of nowhere. I can’t imagine asking those words ever bodes well, but there, there we were. He didn’t answer for several seconds.

“Honestly, I… I don’t know, Sarah. I don’t know.”

I bit my lip.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

“The fact is, I want to love you,” he said, his voice going low, as if it were growing dark. “I do. But I’ve been hurt before. I know that sounds lame. But I’m not interested in something that’s… provisional. I’m not interested in something that you can’t commit to. That I can’t commit to. I was in a toxic relationship once before and I can’t do it again.”

“What about our relationship is toxic?” I demanded, all but yelling, in spite of myself.

“Your father, for instance,” Damien said coolly. “Why were you defending him?”

“Damien, I just didn’t want you to get arrested for assault!” I shrieked. “It was as simple as that.”

“You were crying over him. Over the man that beats you, insults you…”

“Damien… He’s all I have. He’s the only father I have. The only parent I have.”

“I guess Maria doesn’t count?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I think she’s been more of a mother to you than Harry has been a father to you. Ask anyone and I think they’d agree.”

“God, Damien, don’t ask me to choose.”

“Who said anything about choosing? The way I see it, you don’t have a choice.”

“I guess I don’t.”

“Fine. I guess this is goodbye, then?”

My eyes widened as he said that. My lips quivered and I opened and closed my mouth a few times, forming no words but mostly making the kind of sound that a wounded animal might make.

“Yeah, I guess it is, then…” I whispered, my voice cracking and my heart pounding, aching in my chest.

“Well, then, take care of yourself, I guess. Nice knowing you.”

“You too,” I whispered, my voice coming out more like a strangled hiss as I hung up.

I sank down onto my bed, buried my head in my hands, and bawled. I wanted to go to him, to run to him, to be with him, to be his. But I couldn’t—this house, this town, this family was a prison.

And as far as I could tell, there was only one way out of the prison. That’s what Mitch had known. He had seen things as they really were. He knew what to do.

He knew.

Mitch, I’m sorry, I cried silently to myself, the tears streaming down my cheeks as I stumbled down the hallway, into the bathroom.

Maria had a prescription for sleeping pills. She barely ever used them, though, and the pill bottle was mostly full. I cracked it open and took a handful, the little auburn cylinders standing out dully in the dim light of the bathroom. I threw them back, down my throat. I cupped my hands under the faucet, filled them with water, and swallowed.

And then I did it again, with another handful. And then another. Until the pills were gone.

Once this was done, I stumbled downstairs. I was already feeling woozy. Lights were already starting to appear at the edges of my vision and every step I took make my head spin.

I made my way to daddy’s liquor cabinet. He never locked it.

I found a bottle of bourbon, already opened. I started to uncork it until I decided, no—if I was going to do this, I was going to use something nice. I dug around until I found a beautiful, unopened bottle of 15-year old aged single malt whisky. I couldn’t read the name of the distiller—my vision was already too far gone at that point.

But I still had enough sense to open the bottle, hurl the cork across the room, and lift the tip to my lips.

Just as I had kissed Damien so many times before, now I kissed my own vial of poison. I leaned my head back and let the booze dribble down my throat. God, but it burned like hell.

I took one big swig, filling my cheeks with it until I couldn’t swallow any more, and then gave myself a moment, gasping, to catch my breath. Then, I took another swig. And another, and another. And yet another.

Somewhere in there, I went crashing into the dining room table, slamming my skull on the edge of disappearing from the world.

Damien…