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  Sarah wasn’t stupid. She was actually one of the smartest people I knew. She’d figure out something else was going on here if I didn’t watch myself.

  “I, uh...he’s just been having nightmares is all,” I answered vaguely.

  “About?”

  I ground my teeth and reluctantly admitted, “Our mom.”

  The second of silence that followed made my gut churn with nerves. It felt as if an eternity passed where she’d guessed everything that had happened to me before she said, “It must’ve been really bad there with her to still bother him a year later.”

  Hell, yes, it had been bad.

  I cleared my throat and tried to press the last part of the sticker I’d just scratched off back on. “Uh...yeah. It sucked there, but I’m worried his nightmares are about...more.”

  “More how?” I could almost hear her frowning in confusion.

  Glancing up at the ceiling, I tried to figure out what to say, even as I spoke. “I’m not sure. Daisy sometimes came home with guys, or alcohol... drugs. She usually kept all that shit in her room, but I don’t know...what if she dragged Colton in there one day, and you know, did something that scarred him?”

  “Well.” Sarah blew out a hard breath. “That isn’t a pleasant thought.”

  I rolled my eyes. She had no idea.

  “It’s scary that you’re even thinking something like that might have happened to him.”

  I knew, but I couldn’t stop worrying. Biting my lip, I asked, “So what do I do?”

  “Ask him,” she said airily.

  With a snort, I shook my head. “You make it sound so easy.”

  “It is that easy.”

  Actually, it wasn’t. If someone cornered me and asked me if my mother had ever touched me in the bad way, I’d deny it through my teeth. I was sure Colton would do the same.

  To Sarah, however, I mumbled, “Yeah. All right. I’ll think about it.” And just because I felt the pressing need to change the subject, I said, “I think Caroline’s seeing a new guy.”

  “Really?” Interest laced her voice. She was such a sucker for romantic stories and juicy gossip. “Why’s that?”

  “Well...she’s been dawdling in the shower. I mean, seriously hogging up more time than ever before. And then, late last night, Colton tried to crawl into bed with her after one of his nightmares, and she wasn’t home yet. When he asked her about it this morning, she was way too elusive, totally trying to hide something.”

  “So you automatically assume new guy?”

  “Hell yes. I know my sister. She’s definitely in her new-guy daze. But I’m not sure if I should be happy that she’s finally moved on from the asshole who hurt her last year, or worried because she feels the need to hide this guy.”

  “Yeah, that is strange that she’s keeping him a secret. Unless...”

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Remember when Aspen and Noel got married and I told you how she and the best man kept checking each other out?”

  I laughed. “Ten? You think Caroline is sneaking off with Ten? No way. That’s whack.”

  “It would make sense why she’d keep it a secret. I mean, Mason is always telling Reese how Noel warns Ten to stay away from Caroline.”

  “Yeah, but that’s just Noel being Noel. You really think Ten and Caroline are hooking up? I just can’t see it.”

  “That’s because you’re completely blind to the ways of love.”

  “Okay, now you’re whack.”

  “Hey! Rude much?”

  Laughing, I said, “Fine. Five bucks says Caroline’s mystery man is just some douche she knows we wouldn’t approve of and not Noel’s best friend.”

  “Make it twenty.”

  I wavered. Damn, she sounded so sure of herself. Maybe...but no, not Ten and Caroline.

  I must’ve waited too long to answer because Sarah snickered. “Coward.”

  Unable to back down now, I scowled. “Fine. Twenty bucks.”

  Less than a month later, I lost that twenty dollars, but that was okay because Ten paid me one fifty to keep my trap shut about him and Caroline so Noel wouldn’t find out, even though Noel found out, anyway.

  I never did ask Colton about Mom, though.

  I just couldn’t.

  Eventually, his nightmares went away, with some help from Aspen’s best friend, Felicity. But I still had to wonder if Daisy had gotten to him too.

  Didn’t matter. He seemed better, and I knew I was better.

  Because I had Sarah. She was the one thing I knew I could always rely on.

  SARAH

  AGE 15

  I didn’t hate my mother. But I couldn’t say I loved her.

  She’d killed any affection I might’ve felt for her when I’d watched her sell my brother off to the wicked neighbor lady.

  It had happened years ago, back when we’d been living in Florida. But it still haunted me to this day.

  We’d been a couple months behind on the rent, so Mrs. Garrison had come to collect it since she owned the house we lived in. She and Mom had gone a few rounds, Mrs. Garrison threatening eviction, and Mom begging for leniency.

  “Patricia, please. There has to be something I can do to convince you to give me just a little more time. Our next check from the state comes in this—”

  “I’m sorry, Dawn.” Mrs. Garrison lifted her hands to cut Mom off. “But I’ve already allowed you to get this far behind. I’m not running a charity case here. You can’t just—”

  This time, she cut herself off when Mason entered the kitchen in his car wash uniform. It wasn’t much of a job. He doled out change, scrubbed tires, refilled vending machines, and kept the place clean. But Mason took pride in any job he did. He looked nice in his outfit, and Mrs. Garrison noticed.

  Pausing uncertainly in the doorway when he saw that we had company and he was interrupting something, he glanced between Mom and Mrs. Garrison before whipping off his ball cap and murmuring, “Sorry. Excuse me. I was just going to grab a bottle of water before I headed off to work.”

  Mrs. Garrison smiled widely at him. “Why, by all means, don’t let us stop you.” She waved for him to pass, even though it was our kitchen and not hers. “It’s nice to see you again, Mason. Having a nice summer?”

  He seemed leery as he glanced at her. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

  Then he darted by her and yanked open the refrigerator to retrieve his drink. Pointedly ignoring the landlady, though she openly watched him, he glanced at Mom before telling her goodbye. When he finally turned my way, his smile warmed and his shoulders relaxed.

  “Be good, squirt.” He teasingly tugged on a piece of my hair before ambling out the back door.

  Mrs. Garrison continued to watch the door before she licked her lips and turned to my mother. “My goodness, he’s certainly grown up nice this last year.”

  Mom had the grace to scowl at the totally inappropriate comment, but she didn’t say a word in rebuke.

  Rubbing her hands together, the landlady gave a delighted sigh. “I’ll tell you what, Dawn. Why don’t you take a little trip this Saturday, leave your boy home alone, and maybe then, if my day goes well, I’ll consider giving you a bit longer of a grace period.”

  My mouth fell open. I mean, literally jaw-droppingly open. I couldn’t believe the woman had just said that. To my mom. She was so totally off her rocker.

  I expected Mom to ream her up one wall and down the other to stay away from her son. I waited for her to throw the bitch out on her ass. But my mother only pinched up her lips tight with disapproval, narrowed her eyes but then regretfully answered, “Fine.”

  I whirled to gape at her, certain I’d misheard her, but no. No, she’d said fine, clear as day.

  Mrs. Garrison smiled her approval before clasping her hands to her chest and murmuring, “Good. We’ll talk again on Sunday.” Then she’d strolled out the door like the regal wicked witch she was.

  After watching the door click shut, I spun to Mom, hoping to hear some ulteri
or plan she had to pay the bills, one that didn’t involve Mason at all.

  Sadly, she said nothing. She didn’t even look at me as she went about fixing us supper. It was as if she’d forgotten I was sitting right freaking there and had heard everything that had just been said.

  For a second, I wondered if maybe she didn’t understand what Mrs. Garrison had meant. But hell, I’d only been ten or eleven at the time, and I’d understood. She’d flat-out sold her own son for rent money. So I figured she hadn’t realized I understood what had just happened, which only made me more upset.

  Because if I’d been old enough to understand, then I’d been old enough to stop it.

  Except I didn’t.

  I never warned Mason. I tried to convince myself that whatever Mason had done that Saturday we’d left him home alone had been his own decision. If Mom had consented to it, planned for it behind his back without even giving him fair warning, then it couldn’t have been as bad as I’d imagined. But deep down, I knew it had been.

  I thought Mom would come through and save him, that he’d blow off Mrs. Garrison, that everything would be okay. Except he was never the same again after that Saturday.

  When we arrived home that evening, he’d been in the shower. After he got out, he hadn’t looked Mom in the eye, and she hadn’t looked him in the eye.

  From that night on, he changed. He visited the landlady more, and she got him a new job at the country club. There, he met other women who paid him for stuff. Bad stuff.

  The guilt ate away at my insides because I’d never told him how Mom had set him up, mostly because I didn’t want him to hate me, but also because I didn’t want his affection for Mom to die the way mine had.

  He still thought there was some good left in her. He continued to believe her when she told him she was no longer stealing my medicine and taking it herself. He wanted to think things were getting better.

  But they weren’t.

  When Reese came along to babysit me two years after he’d started selling himself to provide for us, it felt as if all my dreams had been answered. She helped drag Mason out of the hell Mom and Mrs. Garrison had put him in. She sparked to life that part of him that had died so many months before, and when she moved back to Ellamore, Illinois where she was from, she took Mason and me, and Mom with her.

  For a while, it was a fresh start for all of us. Mason and Reese moved in together and started their happily ever after. Though her cousin Eva stayed with them for a few months until she met Pick Ryan, owner of the Forbidden Nightclub, and moved off with him, she never really disturbed their love nest. Mom actually stopped taking prescription drugs. And I met Brandt when he moved to town five months later.

  For a while, life was great.

  But drug addicts had a way of tripping up and falling back off the wagon. When I noticed some of my pills going missing again a few months ago, I knew exactly what had happened. And I knew what would happen if she kept it up. She’d self-destruct.

  Once again, I said nothing.

  A part of me wanted her to pay for what she’d done to Mason. A part of me wanted to hurt her for treating me as if I wasn’t a real human being, and yet another part of me was just too tired to deal.

  I was fifteen years old, for crying out loud, stuck in a wheelchair with a disorder she’d probably caused by her drug use. Mom told everyone I was born premature, and that had caused my cerebral palsy, but I could tell by the look on Mason’s face when she said it that wasn’t true. Since CP came about from complications before, during or after birth, I figured she’d used while she was pregnant with me, or maybe she’d dropped me on my head when I was an infant. Whatever the case, I was just...done with it.

  I knew I should’ve told Mason. But he was finally happy, and I didn’t want him to have to worry. So I tried to hide my medicine from her.

  Except she always found it.

  The day I came home from school and stumbled across her lying dead in bed, I realized I should’ve hidden my medication better, gone to Mason first thing, and not ignored what had been happening around me.

  Twice now, I’d kept quiet and my only two family members had suffered because of it.

  This new wave of guilt plaguing me was absolutely paralyzing. I couldn’t talk to Reese. I couldn’t talk to Mason, let alone look him in the eye. I basically couldn’t talk at all. I just wanted to die right along with Mom. It was my fault she was gone. No matter how crappy of a parent she’d been, she’d still been my freaking mother, and I missed her.

  Yet I’d killed her.

  After the police had come and I’d answered question after question through a few typed words here and there, Mason and Reese took me back to their apartment where they’d let me console myself in their bedroom.

  My CP always acted up more in times of great stress or excitement, so my body went haywire as I tried to pull my knees up to my chest and hug myself into the fetal position. Squeezing my eyes closed, I focused every thought on going still, but muscles continued to tic anyway. Stupid muscles.

  I hoped that if I thought about controlling them hard enough then I wouldn’t have to think about anything else.

  That didn’t work.

  Mason’s angry voice floated down the hall. Every once in a while, I caught a clear word from him, until I realized he was fighting to get custody of me before Social Services stepped in. Until that moment, I hadn’t even thought about what would happen to me. Steeped in so much guilt, I hadn’t even realized how drastically my entire life had just changed.

  My mother was dead. Gone forever. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  Now Mason was fighting for me, and I totally didn’t deserve it. If only he knew how I’d betrayed him, he’d send me away to the farthest institution he could find.

  The trembling in my body grew worse. I knew that if I let it get bad enough, I’d probably upset my system into having a seizure, so I concentrated on breathing, thinking about nothing but controlling each inhale and exhale.

  I felt cold and alone, but that was kind of how I wanted to feel. It was what I deserved. If only I could’ve died instead of her, justice would’ve been served.

  But things had a way of making a person want to keep going.

  The door behind me opened and a distinctly male shadow fell across the wall where I was staring. Still wanting to avoid Mason and all my guilt, I squeezed my eyes closed, hoping he’d think I was asleep and leave me alone.

  But the voice that whispered, “Sarah?” wasn’t Mason’s.

  “Brandt?” I whipped my head around to find him stepping into my brother’s bedroom with me.

  He stopped a second to take me in. Then a heap of oxygen rushed from his lungs as he rasped, “Jesus,” and strode to me, shoving my wheelchair aside so he could crawl onto the mattress with me.

  Pulling me into his arms, he gathered me against his chest and hugged me tight as he pressed his face into my hair. “I can’t believe this is happening. Are you okay?”

  I laughed out an incredulous sound. “No. Not at all,” I answered, my voice breaking on the last word. And that wasn’t the only thing that broke. As my eyes filled with moisture, my control dissolved. I buried my face in his shirt and sobbed.

  It was the first time I’d cried since finding my mom dead. Until this moment, I’d felt cold and numb, petrified with guilt and fear. But warm and secure in Brandt’s arms, I finally felt safe enough to let go. He absorbed my grief and eased the pain.

  Voices down the hall told me how the apartment was filling with people, coming to pay their respects. Sometimes I’d hear a child’s shout, Reese’s quiet murmur, Noel’s regretful condolences, Mason’s reply. But none of that mattered. I was in my Brandt bubble, and I didn’t want to leave.

  I’m not sure how long I wept, but Brandt was in no hurry to push me away. He didn’t ask questions or try to get me to talk. He was just there, and that was better for me than anything.

  When I settled down enough to blow out a long, exhausted breat
h, he murmured, “Let’s lie down.”

  He helped me onto my side, then he spooned his body up behind mine and curled an arm around my waist. We’d never really hugged before, so it probably should’ve been weird for us to go straight from hugging to cuddling on a bed in just a couple minutes. But it felt strangely perfect. Comfortable, safe, soothingly perfect.

  When he said nothing else, I reached back behind me and caught hold of his shoulder, needing just that much more reassurance that he was there for me. I closed my eyes, knowing I didn’t deserve his friendship but appreciating it anyway.

  “Mason’s trying to get custody of me,” I said.

  I have no idea why I said that. There was so much more I should have told him. Confessed everything, each awful thing I’d ever done, so he’d know what a monster I was, that I was a mother-murderer and a brother-betrayer. But no, I went with something easy and simple that didn’t hurt, that wouldn’t make him want to leave.

  “Good. That’s good,” he said. “It means everything...it’s going to be okay.” He stroked my hair gently. “Living with your big brother isn’t so bad. It’s actually been better for me since I have. You’ll see.”

  I grabbed hold of his shirtsleeve and squeezed it tight. “Please...don’t...leave me.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he assured me. “I’m staying right here with you.”

  “But I don’t want to stay here right now either,” I whispered. “I have to...I want to escape all this.” I wasn’t sure what I could escape, but Brandt seemed to understand anyway.

  “Okay,” he murmured. “It’s okay. I’ll see to it. You don’t have to stay here. Don’t worry.”

  So I closed my eyes and believed him.

  A couple minutes later, he stood, kissed my forehead and left the room, saying he’d be right back.

  An hour after that, I was going home with him and his family, and the relief made me cry some more.

  BRANDT

  AGE 15

  Sarah stayed with us for almost two weeks after her mom overdosed. I took the couch so she could settle in my room, and she slept in my bed every night. She ate in my kitchen when I told her she needed to eat. She rode in our car with us to the funeral home and cemetery when it came time to bury her mother. And when Noel and Mason’s boss got married a week after the funeral to Reese’s cousin, she attended the wedding with my family.