“Fucking Koen,” I mutter.
Maddox smiles slyly my way before his eyes rake over my soaking body. “Want to use my shower?” he asks, and I can’t tell whether it’s because he wants me there or because he knows there’s no way I can take this hoodie off in front of my brothers to walk upstairs—bra or no bra.
Because my entire body is covered with his claim.
“Ah… don’t really have much of a choice there,” I say nervously.
"That's right, beautiful," he says in a low voice, his lip smugly drawing behind his teeth as he tosses the pan in the sink.
My heart flutters at the memory of last night, and I know he's thinking the same thing when our eyes meet.
Reed, Kamden, and Koen already have their shirts and shorts off, leaving themselves in only their boxers as they hose down beneath the outdoor shower.
“Feels like we never grew up,” Maddox says, peering outside to the three brothers.
I smile over my shoulder at them, recalling how much I had wanted to protect them when we were younger. I remember the loud music in the basement and trying to do anything to distract them from what was happening upstairs with my mother.
Maddox’s hand lays over mine when he steps to the other side of the glass, and I clench my teeth.
“You did everything you could, Andi,” he says softly.
Emotion swells behind my eyes. My mother’s face comes into focus, and with it, a pain rises in my chest from all the times I thought she would get better.
“Reed was two years old the first time he asked me who the crazy lady was who came to steal me away on the weekends, and he wanted to know why he couldn’t go,” I say as I watch my younger brother towel himself off and joke around. “He was so fucking innocent about it. He just wanted to be where I was.”
I shift on my feet as Maddox continues to watch me. As if he remembers the first time he met my mother, Alice, as well.
“I don’t want to go,” I say to my mother, standing in the foyer. “Dad… He said he’ll be back soon. He just went to the store.”
I don’t want to go.
Your boyfriend is a creep.
You’ll ignore me all weekend and get high in the next bedroom.
You’ll forget I’m there.
You never have any food in the house.
The couch smells like piss from the dog you don’t take care of—
Is what I should have said.
Alice shakes her head and pulls my arm. “I don’t have time for this, Andersyn.”
The blaring car horn is an echo against the rain.
I tug out of her grasp.
“Reed is upstairs,” I argue, on the verge of tears. “Kamden, too. I can’t leave them. They’re too young. We have to wait—”
“Oh, please, what is the boy now? Seven? Eight? He’s fine on his own.” She grabs me again as her boyfriend shouts from the car. “We’re coming!” she shouts back. “Let’s go, Andersyn,” she tells me, her voice rising. “I don’t have all day.”
“She said she doesn’t want to go,” comes a young voice from the dining room.
Alice’s eyes narrow on Maddox—the bright red lip, the scrape on his face, his hair matted to his head from the rain. Recognition rises in her gaze, and her lips split into a taunting grin.
“You’re Darren Keynes’s boy, aren’t you?” she asks. “I see he finally made it home from Harry’s,” she says, referring to the local bar. “Bastard’s been drunk there most of the day. Still had enough sense to punish you for running off yesterday, though, didn’t he? You scared him.”
