Page 8 of Endlessly Yours (The Wilder Brothers #10)

CHAPTER FOUR

RORY

H ow could the world end and rebuild so many times in only a month?

Time lied.

Grief lied.

And those who said grief could calm after time lied.

It was as if grief were the slow movements of a clock. As if each tick of the minute hand, each swipe of the hour hand would forever slow to a crawl because you were the one who wanted it to move.

Those people had never found themselves a caretaker to two children who wanted nothing to do with you.

Because time didn’t slow to a crawl. It slapped you in the face with reality, wondering where the hell you had been this entire time. Then, it would freeze in place. It didn’t even have the decency to crawl.

It had been a month since my world had rocked on its axis one more time. And I didn’t think I had anything left in me for it to rock again.

One month since my sister and brother-in-law had died. One month since I had dropped everything to pick up the girls from the only home they had ever known and ripped them away from it.

One month since I’d only had one option when it came to those girls: take them home, away from the community that wanted nothing to do with them now that their parents were gone, and never ask for more.

One month, and I didn’t even know if grief had a name because I was too busy drowning in everything else.

“I hate it here. You can’t make me stay here.”

I didn’t say anything. Didn’t nod or explain to the child in front of me that yelling wasn’t going to accomplish anything. In fact, the only thing that yelling did was give me a headache. And I wasn’t even allowed to yell back.

Part of me wanted to go back in time and apologize to my parents for every time I had rolled my eyes, sneered, and told my parents I hated them.

Because I had been a brat. Maybe not as much of a brat as others were, but I hadn’t cared for my parents as much as I had needed to, especially in the face of a twelve-year-old’s inarguable hatred.

“I don’t know why we couldn’t have stayed home. Then I could be with my friends. Not here with you. Mom didn’t even like you. Where were you all these years?”

Cameron, my beautiful, ferocious, and brilliant twelve-year-old niece continued to lob insults at me as if she weren’t cutting me with a blade with each and every spoken word.

“I hate it here. There’s nothing to do. It’s all brown and gross, and I don’t have any friends here. I hate it here. And I hate you.”

“Cameron. I’m so sorry that we had to move here. That everything has changed so quickly. I know it’s not easy, but I’m doing everything in my power to make sure the transition is at least something we can bear together.”

I wasn’t good with words. I drew pictures having to do with books and other people’s words. How was I supposed to find a way to aid Cameron’s grief when I couldn’t even focus on what would make sense. What would help.

Cameron might be twelve years old, but she was nearly as tall as me.

My sister had always been tall, it hadn’t mattered that we were twins, we were fraternal.

Meaning though we looked identical in our facial features, she had sprouted four inches compared to me.

And my brother-in-law was well over six feet.

In fact, he was about the size of a Wilder.

I pushed the idea that I would use a Wilder as a comparison from my mind.

Because while the Wilders had dropped everything to help me, I couldn’t focus on them right then.

I had to focus on the little girl who was breaking in front of me.

“I hate you,” Cameron spat again.

“That’s fine. You can hate me right now, but I can’t change certain things. I want to. I want to go back in time and fix this, but I can’t. But we’re all in this together, Cameron. You’re not alone. You’re going to start school soon, and you can find new people.”

“I don’t want new friends. I had them. Until you took me away.”

How was I supposed to tell her that if I hadn’t, I would’ve had some form of a custody battle on my hands?

It didn’t matter that I was the one in the will; the community had far-reaching lawyers and friends themselves.

I had done what I thought was best, and that was bringing them to my family that I had created with Ava and the others.

I was even in Brooks’s spare home. Because somehow he had had a space for me when I hadn’t had any space for these little girls.

Cameron pulled back her shoulder-length blonde hair and tugged on it. “I just want to go home.”

“We are home now, dummy,” Alice said from my side.

Her bright strawberry-blonde hair fell to the middle of her back in glorious curls.

She had freckles on her nose and probably would never be as tall as Cameron.

No, she had gotten her height from my side of the family, specifically my mother’s.

She also had rosy cheeks and looked like a little angel.

And while Cameron had dove into her grief with hate and finding me a good punching bag, Alice bounced between a million different emotions at once.

She was only seven, but the mind behind those dewy gray eyes was of at least a 40-year-old.

When she wasn’t calling her sister names, she was off in her own little world of make-believe, constantly following me around the large home that didn’t feel like my own.

Cameron had resorted to ice and building a wall for herself.

While Alice had become a stage-five clinger, who wouldn’t let me out of her sight. Thankfully, I worked from home, but even then, I knew we would have to nip this in the bud at some point.

She didn’t cling to the others who visited, as the Wilder women had been by daily to make sure that we had help, but Alice only left my sight if she wanted to go to the backyard and play make-believe in stories of her own.

Maybe stories in which her mom and dad were alive, and she wasn’t forced to live with her evil aunt.

Okay, perhaps I was placing Cameron’s visage on my own, but what else was I supposed to think?

It had been a month of constant fighting, tears, and figuring out what we were supposed to do.

And I was failing. Failing to the point that I knew if I didn’t find my feet soon, I was going to lose everything.

My phone buzzed again, and I ignored it. I was a week behind on work, which, in the grand scheme of things, wasn’t too bad, but as my own boss, I needed to get back on track. I had three mouths to feed now, and that meant I couldn’t think about my future the way I had been.

To think, I had been worried about being too close to Brooks, wondering if I was going to be alone until the end of time.

Now I would never be alone. There would be two little girls who constantly needed me, and I had no idea how to do this mom thing.

But I wasn’t a mom. I was an aunt. An aunt who hadn’t been allowed to be near these two their entire lives. And now I was somehow supposed to raise them to be good people. I was already failing.

“Cameron. I know you don’t like it here. I know everything is terrible. But you can’t yell at me like that.”

Again, I didn’t know how to do this parenting thing.

I knew I shouldn’t allow her to yell at me, to scream, to call me names, or say that she hated me.

But I wasn’t sure how to be the disciplinarian.

I didn’t even know this girl. She was nothing like the gap-toothed child that I had last seen.

I still couldn’t come to terms with the fact that my sister had taken them from me.

Had joined her not-quite-a-cult and had ripped them from my life.

But wishes and thinking of the past weren’t going to help anything.

Especially not now.

“And Alice, don’t call your sister names.”

“I’m sorry,” Alice said quickly, her eyes filling with tears. She wrapped her arm around my waist, and I held her close, running my hand through those soft, nearly pink curls.

“Oh, I see how it is. You love her more than me. Why? Because she looks more like you? And I look more like my mom? My mom that you didn’t even love.”

I nearly staggered back at the venom in her tone. Because nothing of what she said was correct. I had loved my sister. I still did. Even when I hated what she had done and would never understand the why of it. I loved her.

And, considering my sister and I were twins, the only thing that had been different was our heights. Her saying that I looked like Alice versus her made no sense.

But the preteen was trying to find things to hate about me, and now she was reaching for anything she could.

I was already so tired, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do now.

“Cameron. School starts soon, and I know that we have all of the paperwork and lists, thanks to Miss Alexis. Why don’t we go through those and then we can go shopping for what you need.”

“I don’t want to go to school. Not in some hick town.”

I nearly crossed my eyes because although we were in a small town, we were right at the edge of the district where she would be going to a larger school than she had at her old home. But explaining that once again would only lead to more tantrums. And I didn’t know if I had that in me.

“Cameron. We need to pick out the rest of your school things.”

She would be starting seventh grade, and in this area, at least, that was still middle school. Sixth through eighth went to one school, and then ninth would be in high school.

“I’m not going to know anybody there, and everyone will be friends from when they were kids. I’m going to hate it.”

I shook my head, running my hand up and down Alice’s back.

“We’re surrounded by military bases, and in this district especially, there are students whose parents are in the military. Meaning they’ll be just as new as you. In fact, some will even come into school in the middle of the school year. And by then you will be the one who will seem local.”

“I’ll never be local here. I don’t want to know some military kid. I want to know my friends.”