“Go the fuck home,” Colson shouts in a slur at his cousin. “I don’t want you here. Never fucking did.”
I make it to the edge of the wall and peek around the corner where I hear the commotion coming from.
“You think I’m going to leave you like this? Spit all your insults at me, be the piece of shit you want to be,” Sebastian barks back. “I’m not bailing on you!”
Colson’s gaze turns to the ceiling for half a second before he brings it back down to Sebastian. But then his eyes flick in my direction, and my cover is blown.
Not that I was hiding exactly. More like finding the perfect moment to interrupt.
His blue gaze pierces into me like a thousand tacks breaking skin. It’s the worst feeling in the world as I watch him bring his tongue over his top teeth in disgust. He stares at me, and his words cut into me deeper than ever. “Why the fuck did you invite her?”
“Because you won’t listen to me.” Sebastian tosses his hands up. “You keep throwing shit around! Breaking furniture. You’re spiraling, man. You need someone to haul your ass back to the surface.”
“You think she’s gonna be the one to do that?”
I take careful steps toward the man my heart breaks for. I don’t know what happened after I left the cemetery or whattranspired from the meeting with his aunt, but…something led him to drink.Somethinghas to be responsible for this.
“Yeah, actually, I do,” Sebastian says, turning to look at me for the first time. His next words are directed toward me. “As you can see?—”
“Don’t fucking talk about me like I’m not in the room.”
Sebastian’s nostrils flair. Colson doesn’t see it, but he does run his hands through his hair and grip the disheveled strands. He tugs at them like he’s outraged. Like he can’t breathe. As if he doesn’t know how he’s going to get through the next five minutes let alone the next day.
He twists on his heel and trudges down the hall.
“What happened?” I mouth quietly.
Sebastian shakes his head. “He found out his mom was married. Kept it a secret. There was a lump sum of money that was supposed to go to Colson. The house, too, but it turns out he doesn’t have a right to any of it because it all belongs to Janie’s husband now.”
“Oh my God.”
“Yep.” He nods back in the direction Colson took off in. “They went to sign everything over and found out then. He’s been like this ever since.”
Talk about a hard pill to swallow.
“That’s not the worst of it.”
I wet my lips, listening intently for Colson, but he’s gone silent. “There’s more?”
“The guy she was married to is a big-time drug dealer in Harrison Heights, according to my parents.”
“Wait, what?” I can barely wrap my mind around what he says. Janie was married to a drug dealer? My mind goes back to Thanksgiving night. Was itthatman? Was Colson’s stepfather in the same house as him without him even knowing?
Fuck, this is bad.
Sebastian glances down the hall and nods. We follow in Colson’s footsteps, on edge ourselves. We make it to the doorframe of his mom’s bedroom. Colson picks up a bottle of amber liquid from the nightstand and guzzles it down like it’s apple juice. I can’t imagine the burn that settles into his throat as he swallows. Maybe he’s had enough at this point that it doesn’t feel all that bad.
Sebastian is brave enough to approach and hold out a hand. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”
“After the day I’ve had? Hardly.”
“Give it to me,” Sebastian says. It’s less of a demand, more of a plea.
Colson glowers back with an angry stare. He points at Sebastian with one finger while the rest curl around the bottle. “Do me a favor…get her ass the fuck out of here.” He sways on his feet, and I hope to God it means he’s done throwing and breaking things. That now that I’m here, he’s ready to calm down. “Fuck, I don’t even care if you use her to keep your virgin dick warm. Just as long as she goes.”
Sharp, impaling arrows.
That’s what his words are as they come out of him. They hit me one after the other, biting into my skin like pesky razors, seesawing back and forth.
