By not coming forward about the molestation rumors, I’m choosing to hate Jonathan over defending my brother. I never thought that was the case. I always thought that keeping quiet meant that I finally, finally stopped protecting a monster, stopped helping him cover his tracks.
I’m just like my mother.
I’m turning into her, trying to hurt Jonathan every way I can, and in the end, the people I care about are hit in the crossfire.
All this fucking time…Samantha Calloway had been right. She accused me of the same thing, back in Daisy’s room. And I refused to hear her out. To believe her. I’m becoming someone I don’t want to be, and I thought I was running far away from that person.
I exhale, my chest tight. “I love you, you know that,” I tell him, patting his leg.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I don’t know, Lo,” I say. “I want to. I want to so fucking badly, but it’s not as easy as wishing for that kind of peace. I hate him for things he did to me, for the things he does to you.”
Lo shakes his head and sits up. He wipes his face with his shirt and his eyes turn cold again. “Jesus Christ,” he laughs a bitter fucking laugh. “You don’t get it. I deserved every word he said to me. You didn’t know me in prep school, Ryke. I was a fucking shit. I was terrible.”
I glower. “Don’t ever fucking tell me that you deserved it. No one deserves to be beat down every fucking day.”
He takes deep breaths, his muscles starting to relax. He looks up at me and says, “He’s never touched me.”
He knows that’s not what this is about. I don’t want to do this with him. We argue about this all the time. But I have to get it through his thick fucking skull. I lean forward and grab his face between both my hands. “Stop defending him. Not to me, okay?”
There are some things we will never agree on. No matter how hard he fucking tries to convince me. No matter how many times we end up on the ground.
He pulls away and I pull back, tension breaking between us. Silence thickens for a moment, and I think maybe he’s waiting for me to apologize or maybe trying to work himself up to it. But then he points to my face.
“That bruise right there, that’s for fucking my girlfriend’s little sister by the way.”
My stomach churns. What?
< 49 >
RYKE MEADOWS
Lo’s face sharpens again, but he flashes a half-smile. “Tabloids caught you making out just outside of Devils Tower.” He grabs his phone out of his pocket and scrolls through it. Then he chucks the cell at me. “The photograph is on every gossip site.” I avoid the tabloids, so I’m not surprised that I missed it. Just that it exists at all.
I stare at the picture with hard eyes.
Daisy is on my shoulders. We were putting a hammock up in the trees, and she tightened the straps on the last trunk. But the picture froze us in time: Her head dipped down, her lips against mine, my hand on her neck, my fingers stained with purple and pink dye. Her hair still wet.
She’s smiling as she kisses me, which pulls her long, deep reddened scar.
Her fucking scar—it’s all over the news. Her parents are going to find out about her face from a fucking tabloid. Dammit! My jaw locks and I throw the phone back to Lo with more aggression than I intended.
“Pissed you got caught?”
I don’t say word. I can’t speak without yelling.
“Please talk to me,” Lo snaps, “because I need to understand what’s going on or I may just punch you again.”
I shake my head, my voice deep and low. “It just happened.”
“It just happened?” Lo shakes his head, as though I always use that excuse. I’m sure I have before. “That’s a really shitty thing to tell me.” The red dirt coats our bodies and has turned Lo’s hair a shade lighter. “You fuck Lily’s little sister, and you say, oh it just fucking happened? What’d you fall on her? Did you add her to your tally of girls? Is it a one-night stand kind of thing?”
“That’s not what I fucking meant.” I grimace at all of those. I try to calm down about the photograph and about the truth reaching her parents before we could tell them. What’d we think, we could live in a fantasy forever? We should have told them about the riot before we left Paris.
“Then what did you mean?” he asks.
I meet his eyes. “It’s serious.”
“So serious that you shared it with everyone.”
“Because I knew you were going to jump down my fucking throat!” Anger catapults me to my fucking feet. He stands with me, both of us breathing heavily again.