Jay could imagine it—that was the worst part. How easy it would be to take off her clothes for him, as she had so many times before. To do what he told her to do.
All their lives, their relationship had been tainted by their respective need to prove to one another that they were more than their parents, even as they fell into that selfsame cycle of dominance and capitulation. If he wanted her to meet him halfway, it had to start from a place of mutual respect and not because she was convenient or biddable.
Nicholas needed to understand that if he really wanted to love her, he couldn’t bully her into submission every time she did something he didn’t like.
She might have actually believed it, too, if she weren’t currently saving his photo to her phone.
Goodnight, Nick, she wrote.Don’t stay up too late.
It went to ‘read’ immediately. And though she waited, there was no response.
Chapter Five
???????
After Damon came onto her at the resort, Jay had avoided coming home as much as possible. College had been great for that but the dorms shut down for the holidays, forcing students to vacate, and so she had been forced to endure several Thanksgivings and Christmases at home, which she spent barricaded in her room with the door locked and a chair wedged under the doorknob just in case.
They pretended to be a normal family at their so-called family dinners. It was as if there were cameras embedded in the walls, zooming in on her mother’s forced happiness, while Damon bragged over her about his latest business conquests, and Nick just sat there in silence watching everyone else with an expression of complete indifference.
He stayed away, too, but unlike her, he had a big group of friends, courtesy of his father. The phone was always ringing off the hook from people who weren’t important enough to have his cell phone number, and Nick was more than happy to let the maid get it.
“Why don’t you answer your own phone calls?” Jay had said once. “They’re your friends.”
“Them?” He’d looked at the phone with a scoff. “They’re nothing.”
Which had angered her more than it should have, because she often felt the same way about herself. That nothing she did would ever be good enough by any order of magnitude because nothing was still nothing regardless of what you multiplied it with.
As soon as she felt like she safely could, Jay fled to her room, aware of her stepfather’s leaded gaze boring into her back.Youfucked up, his eyes seemed to say.You should have chosen me.
You’re nothing.
When she heard the heavy knock on her door, Jay’s first horrified thought was that it was him.
That he was going toforceher to choose him.
“W-who is it?” she had asked, in a high, wavering voice, and Nick had responded through the door, in a tone of deep disdain: “Me.”
She almost didn’t lethimin, either, but it was Nick. She had known him since he was a boy and except for that awful day at the beach, he had never tried to do anything to her that would warrant a fear response like this. He was her brother, for god’s sake. Well, almost.
It’s just Nick.
Jay opened the door and he brushed past her, giving her a whiff of citrus aftershave as he swung into her computer chair backwards like it was his, leaning his ropy forearms over the top so he could prop his chin on them. He was wearing a white undershirt beneath a green-checked button-down and had recently started gelling his hair. Jay thought that he looked like he belonged on TRL, but he pulled it off anyway. Confidence, she supposed, could make anything look good.
“What do you want?” She leaned against the wall by her door, keeping an ear out for the sounds of their parents’ footsteps. She didn’t want Damon catching her with Nick in her room.
“To get away fromthat.” His eyes flicked past her, towards the door. “What else?”
“You have your own room,” she pointed out. “It’s even larger than mine. You’re always telling me so. Remember?”
His dark eyebrows shot up and the look he gave her made her walk across the room to fetch her old Berkeley hoodie. “What’s with you?” he asked, sounding distracted.
You tried to kiss me. She zipped the sweatshirt all the way up over her thin white V-neck.Don’t you remember?
“What?” Jay tried to keep her voice light. “You’re the only one allowed to be in a bad mood?”
“You don’t have bad moods. You’re the perfect one.”
Jay bit her lip. After her slip-up with Angie about the whole stripper thing, she’d learned to bury her real feelings and playact the grateful rags-to-riches princess they all wanted her to be. But hearing that from Nick—hurt. He, of all people, should know her better than anyone.
