I’m twelve again, creeping down the creaky foster home stairs in the dark, every groan of the wood like a gunshot.
The kitchen smells like overcooked stew and bleach. I clutch a chipped bowl so tight my fingers ache. Greasy broth with a few limp carrot slices. It might as well be a five-star meal.
Nick waits at the bottom of the stairs, small and hunched in the shadows, arms wrapped around his knees. Eleven, all sharp edges and bruises. His lip is split and puffed, courtesy of our foster father’s “discipline.” Tear tracks have dried on his cheeks.
We don’t dare turn on a light.
I cross the hallway on bare feet, the linoleum icy under my toes. I sink down in front of him, heart thudding.
“Here,” I whisper, scooping a spoonful and bringing it to his mouth. “Eat.”
He hesitates—he always does, like he’s waiting for the trap—but the smell is too much. His cracked lips part. I slide the spoon in and watch his throat work as he swallows. His eyes flutter closed; a tiny sound, almost a sigh, slips out.
Warmth blooms in my chest, bigger than the thin blanket on my bed, bigger than the whole shitty house. For once, I made something better.
We’re halfway through before we hear it—the heavy tread above us. Floorboards groaning. He stiffens. My heart slams into my rib cage.
“Come on,” I hiss, grabbing his hand.
We bolt for the back, wrestling our feet into boots with shaking fingers before slipping out the back door into the night. The door clicks shut just as the footsteps hit the top of the stairs. From this side I hear our foster dad calling out into the dark.
“Sugarplum, that you?”
Outside, everything is still. Snow blankets the yard and the old pine by the porch, muting the world. Our breath puffs white into the freezing air. We drop onto the back steps, my bony hip pressed to his, the bowl forgotten beside us.
“I’m sorry,” he chokes suddenly. Not for anything he did. For the bruises, the screaming, the way I always end up in trouble because I won’t stop stepping between him and the blows. His voice breaks; something in my chest does, too.
“Shh, it’s okay,” I murmur, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, pulling him into my side. His face buries against my shirt, hot tears soaking through the thin cotton. “Look,” I whisper after a moment, nodding past the yard.
Beyond the fence, across a stretch of snow-blanketed field, the cabin sits half-hidden in the trees. Dark. Quiet. Its windows catch the moonlight so it looks lit from within. Once, I saw the orange glow of a truck’s taillights there, exhaust curling up like breath while a girl’s thin cries carried across the snow. I never told him about that night.
“One day we’ll have a place like that,” I tell him instead, weaving the lie smooth. “A cabin just for us. No one to hurt us. Just warm fires and…peace.”
He lifts his head, eyes reflecting the stitch of moonlight. The bruises on his face look even darker out here. “Just us?” he whispers. He sounds so hopeful and so completely wrecked that my heart physically hurts.
“Just us,” I say firmly, pressing a quick kiss to his hair. “As long as we have each other, we’re safe.”
He nods and leans in closer. We sit there until the cold gnaws through clothes and skin, clinging to that fantasy until even my teeth are chattering. Only then do we sneak back inside.
“Meredith?”
My name snaps me back so hard I sway.
I hadn’t realized my eyes were closed. A single tear tracks down my cheek. Before I can turn away, Nick’s thumb is there, catching it. He wipes it away like it physically hurts him to see it.
For a heartbeat, it’s him. The boy. Bruised and skinny and looking at me like I’m the only thing keeping his world from collapsing.
My chest twists.
I hate that I still recognize him under the man who zip-tied my wrists. I hate that some traitorous, half-starved part of me aches for him.
“Don’t touch me,” I snap, jerking my face from his hand.
The softness vanishes. His jaw tightens; the muscle there ticks as he inhales once, twice, like he’s counting.
“Meredith,” he says finally, quieter, voice threaded with something frayed. “Why do you have to make everything so difficult?”
He sets the spoon back in the bowl with a soft clink and stands. The sudden movement makes me flinch back into the chair. Firelight throws half his face into shadow, sharpening the angles, turning his eyes into dark pits.
