I wasn’t him, I reminded myself as I did finally let go, shoving him away at the same time so that the man who was only a few inches taller than me, stumbled back.
He looked terrible too. I could see the staining at his teeth, the gauntness at his cheeks, and the discoloration in his eyes.
This was what I’d avoided. This was what my sisters had missed.
Thank God.Thank God.
I took a step back and stopped only when I bumped into the hard mass of a body that belonged to Ripley. His hands didn’t touch me. He didn’t do anything but stand there.
Hopefully he was at least shooting my cousin that face that I knew damn well made the guys at the shop turn around and walk away.
“I only came here for Grandma Genie,” I told my cousin as calmly as I could, even though I didn’t feel all that calm. “Just leave me alone.”
“Leave you alone?” my cousin snarled as he clutched his arm. “You came here. You knew what the fuck you were doing. We told you not to come back.”
He was right.
It had been a mutual decision in a way.
But it didn’t change the fact that he could have let me walk away.
“I came for the funeral. I don’t want any trouble,” I tried to tell him, but he was already shaking his head before I’d even finished the first sentence. “I’m never going to come back after this.” I almost added “believe me” to the end, but I knew it would be pointless.
Honestly, I had an idea what he was going to say before he said it, and my cousin had never been the brightest or most creative crayon in the box. “You fucking bitch—”
My hand formed into a fist, ready.
But I felt it then. The hands on my shoulders.
I heard it then. The deep grumble from the man behind me.
Then I caught onto everything that came out of Rip’s mouth, the rumbling rattle of each word etching themselves into me for the rest of my life.
“You can shut your fucking mouth.”
Then I held my breath again as I took in the calm within Ripley’s voice.
What I witnessed though was the way my cousin opened his mouth to say something, then he closed it. He made a face that said he didn’t want to do that, but he had, and he took a step back. And another step back, the snarl on his face growing as he backed further and further away.
Keeping his mouth shut the whole time.
It wasn’t until he was at least twenty feet away that the hands on my shoulders fell off them.
Only then did Rip take a step back.
By the time I turned around to look at the bodyguard I’d had to use my one and only favor on, his hands were at the scarf around his neck.
He was tightening it for some reason.
His cheeks were more flushed than any other time I had seen, and the tendons in his hands popped with restraint.
And his gaze… it had been on the ground, his lips thin.
I had made it. I was fine. I was loved. I had a home. I had everything I wanted and needed and more.
Yet knowing all that didn’t stop my body from breaking into a shiver.
Maybe the adrenaline had disappeared and left me feeling shocked at the sight of what had happened to the people who I shared genes with me. Maybe it was at the reminder of what I had left. Of how desperate they had made me feel that I’d left their house at seventeen years old, not knowing what I was going to do, not knowing where I would live. Of how scared I had beenafter. Of how mad.
