My fault.
All my fault.
Forcing myself past the ache, I fold the towels back into the right shapes, unzipping the coat and tucking them in, setting the old ones beside her on the bed, zipping her back up. A knock at the door has fear rocketing through me until I remember asking Mattie to send Mary up. Damn fucking cold, making me extra dumb.
I didn’t need help being dumb, not tonight.
Opening the door, Mary, grandmotherly in a way I’ve never experienced in any blood relative, meets me with a tray full of steaming liquids.
I let her in without saying anything. She knows this house as well as I do. Don’t speak your mind unless you know it’s safe.
Her eyes get big as she takes in Clara on the bed, zipped to the chin in Mattie’s blood-smeared white down coat, shaking with the force of her shivers, rust-crusted towels piled next to her, shredded rose silk on the blue rug. I lean in to explain, taking her by the elbow and directing her to the side table. “Hypothermia.”
She tugs on my sleeve, forcing me to tilt my head down to her. “Did you remember not to warm her too quickly? Dry heat to the core? Keep her horizontal?”
I nod, guilt swamping me as Mary rushes to Clara, taking her temperature with the back of her hand like she always did for me when I was little. She leans down, whispering to Clara, Clara’s full body spasms turning to normal shivers the longer Mary talks to her. Another good sign.
The urge to punch something flares. But that’s what got me into this. That’s what got Clara into this. My goddamn useless temper. A waste of space. Nothing but a dumb brain and big fists.
Returning to the bathroom, I pull off my blood-splattered blazer, kicking it into the corner, then run my mangled hands under icy water. When they’re numb, long after the water runsclear, I pull them out, drying them on the bloodiest of the towels on the vanity. Not sure what else to do, I take two more towels out of the warmer and shove two dirty ones in. Even my father’s perceived generosity runs out of linens eventually.
Bringing the towels to Mary, I let her switch them out, her gaze sliding to mine when she sees how little Clara’s wearing. But we both know that getting her warm was a whole lot more important than preserving her modesty.
And it’s not like I haven’t seen her naked before. Or felt the way she melts when we touch.
I guess my father’s seen that, too.Fuck.
Clara’s barely shivering, now. Mary must think she’s out of the woods enough to sit her up and force some broth into her.
I should help.
But I did this. I wouldn’t want me to touch me if I’d almost killed me.
My brain is short-circuiting.
Clara’s big brown eyes find me halfway between the bed and the bathroom, blinking slowly before closing. Sleep, a good kind, takes her.
Mary sighs, setting the bowl back on the tray. Then she stands, turning to me, pushing me into the bathroom.
She doctors my hands in silence, like she has doctored me so many other nights, wounds self-inflicted or otherwise. Once my cuts have been cleaned and taped, my knuckles prodded and wrapped, she pats my cheek, resignation and sadness written there as clear as if she were speaking to me.Archie, if you fucked shit up, you’ve got to fix it. Otherwise, you’re no better than he is.
She leaves, having said nothing above a whisper.
Chapter 3
RJ
The Westerhouse family has a tight lid on their public image. I’ve been digging for hours, and I haven’t found anything useful. But it’s the kind of not useful that tells me there’s a whole lot hiding out of view.
For example, Trips’ father is on his third wife. The first two died—and there’s no explanation how. Either Trips’ dad is severely unlucky, or being Mrs. Westerhouse is a death sentence.
Then there’s his brother. Trevor Westerhouse looks perfect on paper. The kind of perfect that hides a myriad of sins. The only dirt I’ve found on the guy is decade-old receipts for academic tutors to get him through Princeton. Unlike many other politicians, Trevor didn’t get a law degree before running for office. He only has a scant few years working for a friend of the family—doing what amounts to sitting in a cubicle recovering from a hangover for half the day and golfing the other half—under his belt. How he became the up-and-coming hotshot he is…well, it stinks of connections being pulled.
And maybe money changing hands. But I’d have to get into their bank accounts to figure that out.
Trips’ sister Mattie is the most present online, but as she’s a kid, she’s not going to give me insight into the family. She’s one hell of a fencer apparently, and while that sword art isn’t one I’ve tried, I can attest to her skill from the few videos I watched. She’s going places. Although Trips is worried about her going off the rails, so I guess time will tell if she’s the Olympic hopeful all the articles about her say, or just a ‘could have been’ talked about by the people who helped her train.
The only one of them with any sort of dirt available on the internet is Trips himself. A full-length news article about the assault of the abusive asshat in high school tells me nothing new, besides the fact that his dad wanted Trips’ indiscretions to be public. He wants Trips to be seen as unstable. At sixteen, his dad had already given up on him.
