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I start toward him, saying, “At some point, you need to stop telling me what to do.”
Staying silent, he waits for me to get in the passenger’s seat and buckle up before closing my door. We’ve barely made it a minute downthe road before my phone rings. Dad’s face flashes on the screen, and I answer it quickly, begrudgingly. “Hey, Dad.”
“He showed up to your work?” he almost yells.
I tap my head against the window. “How did you know?”
“Jace told me.”
My eyes snap to Jace, sitting behind the wheel, looking clueless as always. “How does he even have your number?” I shake my head. “Doesn’t matter. Did he also tell you he chased him away with a baseball bat?”
“Be grateful it wasn’t me with a shotgun.”
“Dad…”
“Dad,nothing, Harlow.Youshould’ve been the one to tell me! Not Jace! Christian is a grown-ass man going after?—”
“Dad!” I snap, cutting him off. The only sound in the car is the road noise from outside, and the way Dad’s yelling, I have no doubt Jace can hear every word he’s saying. “We’ll talk about it later.” I hang up, my anger brewing, and let the awkward silence fill the space around me until we pull up to my house.
I’m quick to get out, to take my first full breath out in the open. Jace doesn’t leave, though. Instead, he follows a step behind me, backpack in one hand, baseball bat in the other. He follows me all the way to my front door, and I unlock it but don’t push it open. When I turn to him, he shrugs. “Your dad asked me to make sure that fucker didn’t break in while you were at work.”
“He’s acheater, not a criminal.”
“Last I checked, pedophilia is a crime, Harlow,” he deadpans.
I scoff at the thought. “I’m not a hopelesschild. I was seventeen, legal age of consent in the state of Texas FYI. And in case you’re unaware, it takes two to do what we did. He didn’t just trip and have his dick land in the abyss. My legs were right there, spread open for him.”
No reaction. No emotion. Not even disgust. “He took advantage of you.”
“Again,not a child.”
His voice kicks up a notch, lacing his words with anger. “He took advantage ofyour grief, Harlow. You’d just lost your brother, and heknew that. He found you at your weakest and played you for it, over and over. And I’m sorry if you don’t want to hear that, but it’s the truth. You were nothing more than his prey. Hisvictim.”
I’m not sure when I stopped breathing. Stopped thinking or defending, and startedlistening. At no point during or since Christian had I ever thought of myself as avictim, and I still don’t. I was there too, not really lucid thanks to grief, drugs and alcohol, but still. I was there, and I participated in the chaos, knowing damn well I had nothing to lose, and what little I had wasn’t worth clinging to. There were times, though, when I’d wake up in the middle of the night, and the only thought that consumed me waswhat if Harley could see me now?
I wondered if that’s why I was so adamant on losing control—so that my big brother could show up and save me like he’d done in the past. Like he always did. But Harley was dead, his body buried six feet under. He’d never cloak me in his jacket again, never tell me I was better than the way I acted. And yet, I continued to chase that feeling, those moments in time when I actually believed him.
My throat closes as a single tear falls from my lashes, and I’m quick to swipe it away, to hide my emotions and bury them deep. Instead, I push open the door, step to the side, and murmur, “You’re messing with my head, Jace.”
He enters my house, the bat held at his side. “Trust me,” he says, “the feeling’s mutual.”
19
Harlow
I lead Jace through the entire house, flicking on every light possible just to appease him and my dad. He walks around, on guard, baseball bat at the ready. I know he won’t find anything, so I’m not worried. Like I said, Christian is a cheater, not a criminal. Breaking marriage oaths is as bad as it gets with him. Breaking into houses? Absolutely not.
The last room of the house I allow Jace into is mine. For…reasons. There’s nothing wrong or embarrassing about the room. It’s a typical teenage girl’s bedroom. My dad made sure of it. He spent days painting it the exact gray I wanted and even took me shopping to buy new decor.
String lights hang above my bed, centered against a wall, and opposite, a hanging chair takes up one corner while a TV takes up another, and between them is a desk beneath the window—the window now covered up with cardboard.
I watch Jace as his eyes trail to it, his brow dipping in confusion. He turns to me, his jaw set, but he doesn’t say anything, just shakes his head slightly before continuing his check of the room, going as far as pushing the shower curtain aside and checking under my bed.
I heave out a sigh while he’s down there, laid flat on his stomach, and say, “I’ll tell my dad you did a stellar job. Are we good now?”
Jace gets to his feet and nods once before exiting the room. I follow downstairs and out of the house, expecting him to leave. Instead, he stops on the porch steps, where he parks his ass, unzips the backpack he left there, and pulls out his gaming console.
“No.” It’s the only thing I can think to say.