Page 16 of My Fault

What the hell was the deal with these people?

“You brought her here?” my stepbrother asked him calmly.

Zack hesitated and then nodded. He didn’t break eye contact with Nicholas, but I could tell he was scared.

Before I knew it, Nicholas had punched Zack in the stomach so hard he bent over in pain.

I shouted, afraid for him, with that same pain in my chest I always felt whenever I witnessed any type of violence.

“Don’t you dare do that again,” I said to Nicholas.

He turned around, grabbed by arm, and started dragging me toward the door.

I didn’t have the strength to protest. When we got there, he stopped. He took his cell phone out of his pocket, cursed under his breath, and waited for whomever he was calling to answer.

“Wait for me here,” he said, looking for a place where the noise from the people and the music wouldn’t bother him. He ended up just past the stairs leading up to the porch. He could see me perfectly, so there was no point in running.

“You okay?” some guy asked me.

“Honestly, no.” I was a wreck. I leaned against the window, unable to avoid certain memories that I’d kept buried in the depths of my mind and that were now resurfacing to torment me just then. “I feel faint.”

“Here, have a drink,” he said, handing me a cup.

I took it without even looking. My throat was so dry, it didn’t matter what it was. I closed my eyes and opened them once the cup was empty, only to see Nicholas flying up the stairs.

“What the hell are you doing?” he said, tearing the cup out of my hands.

I was going to respond, but he was already looking away from me toward the guy who’d given it to me. He grabbed him by his shirt and nearly lifted him off the ground.

“What the fuck did you give her?” he asked, shaking him around.

I looked with horror at the cup.

“Shit!”

6

Nick

“Shit!”

“What the hell did you give her?” I asked the dickhead I was holding by the collar.

I could see the terror in his eyes.

“Answer me!” I shouted, cursing the day I’d ever met my stepsister, cursing that moron Zack Rogers for bringing her to a party like this.

“Jesus, dude!” The guy’s eyes were like saucers. “Burundanga, okay!” he admitted when I slammed him into the wall.

Jesus. A date rape drug. It was colorless and odorless and easy to slip into a drink without a person realizing it.

Just thinking about what could have happened clouded my mind, and I couldn’t control myself. What kind of dirtbag would do that to a girl? When I finished with him, you wouldn’t be able to identify him from his license photo. My hands were going to look like hamburger by the time the night was over.

I lost count of how many times I hit him.

“Nicholas, stop!” a voice behind me shouted. I stopped my hand before it slammed back into that bastard’s face.

“Bring that shit to another one of my parties and this is going to look compassionate compared to what happens next time,” I threatened him, making sure he’d heard every word. “Understand?”