I step forward and take hold of her, picking her up off Aiden’s lap and tossing her over my shoulder. I step back and pick up a poker from the stand next to the fireplace.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I tell them. “But I’m doing this for Teddy. And for you. This is fucked up. Even for us. We have to grieve like normal people. We have to move on.”
Aiden and Leo both look at me with that eerie calm they both inherited and I didn’t. It used to be a kind of two on two sometimes. Me and Teddy against these two older brothers who thought they knew fucking everything. I miss Teddy so much it feels like my physical body is being ripped apart by sadness. If he was here, none of this would be happening.
“You’re making a mistake,” Aiden says.
“Let him make it,” Leo responds.
I carry Ella out of the house. I take one of the cars and I drive her to my place. I have an apartment in the city in the same building as Leo. We thought living away from home would bring real independence. We were only half right. Being a Levin is a lifelong sentence. There’s only one way out.
“I need to have a shower,” I tell her. “I’m sorry I look crazy. I’ve been through… well. I need a shower.”
“You were fighting,” she says, sitting neatly in the passenger seat. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing that matters,” I reply. “Nothing you need to worry about, I mean.”
I grabbed a coat from the rack before we left, and I put it around her to give her some sense of modesty. The way Aiden treated her as if she were nothing more than a toy for his pleasure was so wrong. Even if she did seem to enjoy it, how could she possibly have wanted it?
I take her up to my apartment, and get her settled. “There’re snacks in the fridge. I think. Maybe,” I say. “Or not. I’m sorry. I don’t often have people here and I mostly eat out of the house or protein bars and shakes.”
“It’s okay,” she says. “I’m not hungry.”
“Okay. I’m going to have a shower. There’s a guest bath if you want one too, and I guess you can raid my dresser for clothes if you want… I don’t have women’s clothing. I could call down to the desk and see if someone will bring some. What do you want? Some bat-themed tights maybe?”
She looks at me, then bursts out laughing. “Bat-themed tights? Sure.”
“Okay. Get whatever you want. Do whatever you want. I’ll be back in five.”
I have the quickest shower you can have while still getting all the dried blood from scuffling with your older brother off you. Then I dress in a tight white shirt and black jeans that are soft as hell.
When I come out, she’s not had a shower. She’s still sitting on the couch wearing the coat I snatched from the foyer when we left the house. She looks small and scared. She could have run away, but she’s not wearing shoes.
“What size feet do you have? Not in like a fetish kind of way, but I want to get things for you.”
“You don’t need to do that. You could just let me go home.”
“I could. Actually, let’s go there. Let’s go and get your things.”
“Go and get my things? You’re not letting me go?”
“I can’t,” I tell her. “Not now that Aiden has said he wants you. He’s going to keep taking you back. Over and over until you just give in and do what he wants. He’s ruthless that way. The only person he ever allowed any real freedom was Teddy, and I don’t think he’s going to make that mistake again.”
“He really is ruthless,” she says. There’s a quaver in her voice that indicates a whole world of hurt and humiliation, I am sure.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I say, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “I know you’re grieving, just like we are. It makes people do weird things.”
She looks at me with those big doe eyes, and I have the satisfaction of knowing I have saved her from something truly terrible. Aiden’s ministrations, and then Leo’s… if she were subjected to the two of them on and on, soon enough there would be nothing left.
“Thank you,” she says. “Ever since he passed, one day has been worse than the next. It’s like living in a nightmare…”
“I know,” I say. “He was a really good guy.”
“He was,” she says, her breath hitching as she tries not to cry. “And I did love him. But that was the worst thing I could have done for him.”
“I know,” I tell her. “I believe you.”
She lifts tearful eyes to me. “You do?”
