The question tilts my insides, and with a breath I can barely chase, I shake my head, my chin pressing to my chest. My hands are trembling; I don’t know what to do with them.
I flick my eyes up, meeting Rusty’s hazy-blue ones.
And when he asks the question again, I can hardly find enough voice to say, “The girl I used to know died last night.”
My words grind through my teeth, and I brush my thumb across the entrance of my nose when it drips, cleaning it off on the front of my jeans.
Rusty’s head falls between his shoulders, and after pushing his curls back behind his ears, reaches for my shoulder. We don’t look at each other when he grabs me, squeezing my bones tightly before stepping away, cussing beneath his breath.
Silence wraps like barbed wire around the four of us.
No one speaks again, not until Skinner moves in beside me, hitting his blunt, offering it over.
I’m still trembling when I reach for it, placing it between my cracked lips.
And when my chest fills, Skinner turns, kicking at the wheel lightly while exhaling a stream of smoke through his slightly crooked nose.
“Gonna find out who did this to your sister.” His voice is low.
I turn my head, meet his light blue eyes, see the promise in them. In every line, every scar cut across his face.
He sucks on his front teeth and shakes his head, speaking again, “He’ll know exactly how she felt.”
My skin prickles at that, fierce and sharp.
I drop my chin, take another hard pull from the blunt.
I knew Skinner meant what he said, because Skinner didn’t talk shit, he dealt withtheshit.
I raise my gaze, take it to Skinner, then to Rusty, then back again. “Thanks for staying withher.”
I press my eyes closed, exhale through my nose.
Harlen had told me on the drive over here that both Rusty and Skinner hadn’t left Devil’s Tunnel until a crime scene was established. They stayed with Jade, even though she was long gone.
I owed them my life for that.
Rusty steps forward, pulls my forehead to his. Our skulls grind together. “I wish we hadn’t been too late, son.” He holds me a moment longer before stepping away.
I shiver, take another hit of the blunt, then I dart it to the ground, grinding it out.Same here.
Laiken’s broken voice echoes in the back of my head.“He broke her legs, her arms, then he r-raped…”
I flex my knuckles.
“He raped her, you know, my sixteen-year-old sister, he fucking raped her,” I growl, turning and throwing my fist into the back window of my truck when rage and guilt and disgust burns through my every vein.
Splintered glass shatters, glittering at my feet.
I shake my fist out, sucking on my front teeth.
“Then he just snapped her neck, and there was nothing I could fucking do about it,” I seethe out every word, and each is more painful than the last.Because I was the bitch that got drugged, because I was the bitch that got beaten, because I was the bitch who didn’t keep them close enough.
I wanted to shout every word at the top of my lungs, but instead I swallow them down.
No one needed to hear my excuses.
When I was four, my mother had told me that excuses were crafted by people who were too weak to take accountability for their actions, or yet too afraid. She had laid her soft palms against my cheeks, pressed her lips to my forehead and whispered,“My son isn’t weak. My son is brave.”
