Chapter 1
Kent
The sound of a deadbolt sliding home is a specific kind of finality. It’s the sound of a period at the end of a sentence you didn’t know you were finished speaking.
I stood there, staring at the white-painted wood of the door, rain already soaking through the shoulders of my hoodie. At my feet sat two garbage bags and a cardboard box that was rapidly losing its structural integrity.
“Brittany!” I hammered my fist against the door, ignoring the pain flaring in my wrist. “Open the damn door. This is ridiculous.”
Nothing. No movement behind the peephole. No muffled cursing. Just the silence of a woman who had finally and meticulously decided she was done with my shit.
“I paid for the rent this month!” I shouted, aiming for the neighbors to hear. If I was going down, I was taking her reputation with me. “You can’t just kick me out in the rain, you psycho!”
The lock didn’t budge.
I kicked the bottom of the door, a sharp, violent thud that sent a shockwave up my shin, but it was a hollow victory. The door remained shut. The rain picked up, cold and biting, distinctto late September in Seattle. It washed over the driveway, mixing with the oil stains on the concrete and swirling around my boots. My toe started to throb where it had struck the door.
“Fine!” I yelled, grabbing the neck of the nearest garbage bag. “Keep the damn toaster! I didn’t want it, anyway!”
I hauled what was left of my life toward my truck. The Silverado was parked at the curb, a massive, brooding beast of a vehicle that was currently the only thing in the world that didn’t hate me. I tossed the bags into the bed uncovered, because of course I hadn’t put the tarp on. I didn’t expect my girlfriend to kick me out of my apartment when I got home from work. I yanked open the door next, shoving the soggy cardboard box into the cab.
I climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed the door, shutting out the sound of the rain. The silence inside the cab was deafening. It smelled like stale fast food and my gym bag that I’d forgotten to bring in for washing last week.
I gripped the steering wheel, squeezing until the leather creaked, my knuckles turning white.
She’s crazy,I told myself.She’s completely unhinged.
So I missed a dinner with her parents. So I didn’t text her back for six hours because I was at work and then the gym. That wasn’t a crime. It wasn’t grounds for eviction. She’d been looking for a fight for weeks, picking at me like a scab.
You’re emotionally stunted, Kent. You’re hollow. It’s like talking to a wall that sometimes tries to screw me. Why don’t I ever come first in your life? Fuck, why don’t I get to come at all? I’m tired of you taking and never giving back, Kent.
Whatever. I didn’t need her. I didn’t need the nagging, the constant demands for “connection,” whatever the hell that meant. I was twenty-six years old, made good money in construction management, and I was in the prime of my life. I didn’t need to be told how to feel by a barista with a liberal artsdegree who had a jackhammer in the bedside table that I could never compete with.
I jammed the keys into the ignition, turning the engine over just to get the heater running. I needed a plan.
I pulled my phone out. The screen glowed harsh and bright in the dim cab. As I pulled up my contacts list, I scrolled toBrittanywithout hesitating. Blocked. Done.
When I got toMark, I stopped, my thumb hovering. Mark was good for a beer, maybe a couch for a night. But Mark had a wife who looked at me like I was a contagion, and a six-month-old baby that cried if you breathed too loudly. I couldn’t deal with a crying baby tonight. I’d lose my mind.
I kept scrolling.
Jason.No. I owed Jason five hundred bucks from that poker game three months ago, and avoiding him had become a part-time job.
Dad and Stacey.
I stared at the entry. If I called my father and his wife, I’d have to explain why I was homeless on a Tuesday night. I’d have to listen to my father’s disappointed sigh—the one that sounded like air leaking out of a tire—and my stepmother’s frantic, suffocating questions.Did you lose your temper, Kent? Did you drink too much? Why can’t you just settle down? You should be having kids by now, not going to the gym so much.
But I wasn’t desperate enough for the lecture. Not yet.
I scrolled further down, past old flings, past guys I worked with but didn’t actually like, past numbers I didn’t even recognize. My social circle, I was realizing with a sinking feeling in my gut, was remarkably wide and terrifyingly shallow. I knew a hundred people, and I couldn’t call a single one of them to sayI have nowhere to go.
And then, my thumb stopped.
James.
I stared at the name. It sat there innocuously betweenJack (Plumber)andJerry (Gym).
James. My stepbrother.
