Page 8 of Blood Ties

Kai

I stare up at the ceiling and pick at the skin around my fingernails until it bleeds. My music now drowns out the sounds from Knox’s room on the other side of our shared wall, but it can’t erase the memory from my head. I know exactly what I heard, and who’s in there with him.

If only I had the guts — and the knowledge — I could’ve been the one making Riley sound like that.

It doesn’t matter , I tell myself. I barely know the girl. So what if I thought we shared a moment out on the porch? Clearly I was wrong. Or I fucked it up worse than I thought when I pushed her away.

And straight onto my brother’s dick, apparently.

I won’t deny that jealousy is lighting a fire in my chest, but cold dread is enough to douse it. Because I know what happens to the girls my brother likes. I still remember his silent question: Keep her?

I imagine her blue eyes pleading at me from above a duct-taped mouth. Those eyes rolling back in her head as blood runs down her face. Stuck wide-open as she lies on the butcher table—

I groan, roll over, pull my pillow over my head.

That’s not gonna happen. Riley and her friends are going to leave in the morning.

Knox won’t risk doing anything while Dad’s gone.

He knows he’ll be in a fuckload of trouble if the old man realizes he had people here, let alone made another mess for him to deal with.

Anxiety claws at me anyway. I’m tempted to reach for my lighter, to add to the collection of scars on my body and let pain chase away my thoughts.

But if Dad smells smoke in my room, it’ll mean a worse kind of pain.

And if I leave my room, I might run into somebody.

Just thinking about awkwardly encountering Riley makes my stomach roil.

So, like a thousand other times, I drift off to the sound of Radiohead, and pretend that nothing exists beyond the walls of my room.

*

I WAKE UP TO A GUNSHOT .

I’m on the floor before I’m conscious, throwing myself out of the way. It takes me a moment to realize the sound was outside, and another to lurch to my feet.

Knox.

I fling my door open and stumble into the hall, only to come face-to-face with my brother. He’s shirtless and bleary-eyed, and looks as startled as me. We both freeze, eyeing each other.

My breath catches. If it wasn’t Knox, then...

The front door slams open downstairs. Familiar, heavy footsteps thud down the hallway. My stomach sinks lower with each thump of worn boots — and further still as I recognize the sound of something being dragged behind him.

“Boys,” Dad’s voice thunders. “Get down here. Now .”

Knox lurches toward the stairs. We both know he’s only rushing toward pain, but it’ll be even worse if we delay it. Yet when I force myself to take a step forward, my eyes catch on movement, and I pause.

Riley peers through the doorway to Knox’s room. Her clothes are rumpled and her hair a mess, her eyes huge in her pale face. She’s only wearing a crop top and her lacy black panties. “Kai? What’s going on?”

I hesitate, rocking back on my heels. I shouldn’t get involved. It’s too late, way too late, but— “Climb out the window,” I say. “Run.”

She stares at me. “What are you talking about?”

“ Kai !” Dad roars from downstairs, and pure fear licks up my spine. I run down the stairs without another glance back, and hope that Riley is smart enough to follow my advice.

Dad waits in the kitchen. The easiest room to clean , he likes to say.

He’s rigid, his face stone. I’m only an inch shorter than him, but it’s hard to believe sometimes, with the way he fills the room, all broad shoulders and thick beard.

I can feel the anger radiating out of him, see it in the depths of his dark eyes, the way his lip peels back over his crooked, yellowing teeth.

The way he looks at me scares me even more than his shotgun, aimed at one of Riley’s friends. The skinny guy. Caleb. His glasses have been knocked askew and there’s blood running down his temple. He stays on his knees with his hands raised, terrified and disoriented.

Knox stands a few paces away. I come to a stop beside him. Shoulder to shoulder, both facing down Dad’s rage. It doesn’t matter that Knox brought them here. In Dad’s eyes, we’ll both be guilty.

Caleb is babbling apologies. Outside, that blonde girl — May — is screaming. Uncle Frank must be out there with her.

But Knox and I keep our attention locked on Dad. He lifts his gaze from Caleb to me, his grizzled face pulled into a snarl.

“What the fuck is going on here?” he asks, looking from me, to Knox, and back again. It’s hard not to shiver under the weight of his stare. My body is taut with the memory of pain. “What are these kids doing on my property?”

“I didn’t— We just— Our car—” Caleb babbles from the floor. Dad presses the barrel of the shotgun into his forehead, and he falls silent, lip quivering.

“Their car broke down,” Knox says, finally. “We brought ‘em in for the night.”

There was no we involved in that decision, but I stay silent.

Footsteps approach from the living room, and Dad’s gun swings in that direction as the bigger guy, Felix, steps into view. He stops, slowly raising his hands.

“Whoa,” Felix says. “Okay, alright, there’s no need for that.”

Dad spits on the floor between them. “Don’t you tell me what I need, boy. You’re trespassin’ in my house.”

Felix stays surprisingly steady with the gun aimed at him.

“I understand, sir, and I’m real sorry about that.

I think there’s been a misunderstanding.

” His eyes flick to Knox, back to Dad. “Your son invited us in for the night. We weren’t aware we were unwelcome.

” Even now, he’s calm and composed. A stark contrast to his friend blubbering on the floor, or May still shrieking outside.

Dad’s gaze narrows. “Is that so?”

Felix nods. “Maybe now that you’re here, you could take a look at our car? John at the bar said you were the best man for it, and we’re eager to get out of your way, Mr. Duvall.”

Smart, I think. He’s saying the locals have seen him and his friends, and giving Dad an easy out.

Dad lowers the gun, smirking. “Well when you put it that way, it sounds easy, don’t it?”

Felix lowers his hands, mirroring him. “I don’t see why it needs to be anything else, sir.”

Outside, May’s screams go silent.

Everyone except Dad turns towards the door as it swings open.

Uncle Frank lumbers in, bringing a wave of tobacco and sweat stench.

It always strikes me how huge he is, solid as a brick, his eyes small and piggish in his round, simple face.

Dad’s cruel machinations hold this house in an iron grip, but sometimes Frank’s brutish animal violence frightens me even more.

Like now, as he dumps the limp body on the kitchen floor. May’s head lolls at an impossible angle. Her eyes are stuck wide-open, her blonde waves matted with blood and dirt.

Frank doesn’t speak. He never does. He just grins, mouth full of rotten teeth and his beady little eyes glinting in mad delight.

Caleb, half-forgotten on the floor, acts first. He throws himself at Dad’s legs with an incoherent shout, and the surprise takes the much bigger man to the floor. Dad’s gun goes off with a crack that makes Knox and I flinch back, but Felix barrels forward to grab for it.

He and Dad grapple with the gun. It goes off again, shattering a half-empty beer bottle from last night. Frank stumbles back, raising an arm to shield his eyes. One of his boots lands on May’s limp arm with a sickening crunch.

“Do somethin’!” Dad shouts. “You fuckin’ idiots!”

For a moment, Knox and I both freeze. I wonder sometimes if he, like me, ever considers making a break for it. But if so, every time he reaches the same conclusion that I do: if one member of the family goes down, we all go down together. We’ve got too much blood on our hands.

Knox lunges forward and grabs Felix around the middle, shoving him up and away from Dad, who is still struggling with Caleb. The gun goes flying and clatters to the floor between them. My eyes lock on it, forgotten amid all this struggle. I take one step forward. Another.

Then I hear a shout, and whirl around to see Riley charging at me with a knife in hand.

?