I wonder if she could say the same thing now.
As a brother to a sister, you were given one task; to protect her at all costs. What happened the moment you couldn’t?
What came after that?
Who would you become?
I drag my hand beneath my nose. “I need to go see Mom.”
I pop open the driver's side door and pull myself in, slamming it closed with enough force to take down the rest of the glass clinging to the frame.
I roar the engine to life and release the handbrake, moving on autopilot, when Harlen shouts, “You gonna be alright?”
I nod, but before I can move, Skinner’s inked forearms are at my open window, his razored head bending through.
“Chase, I gotta tell you something…” he starts.
I glance to my side, and raise my eyes, feeling my pupils shake. I fist the steering wheel. It was all I could do to keep myself from dissociating and blacking out.
Skinner looks away before swallowing and I turn my eyes on Harlen whose brows are furrowed, Rusty’s too.
Skinner brings his gaze back to me. “Paid your piece of shit father a visit after you told me what he did to your sister.” He clicks his tongue, then he spits toward the ground.
And something in my stomach twists at that. It feels like hope, hope that maybe Skinner had dealt withmyproblem for me. I knew he wouldn’t have though; you didn’t take from another man what he needed most.
Rusty blasts off behind him. “Great, that’s just fucking great.”
I block him out, because it kind of is…great.
“He still breathing?” I ask.
Skinner nods.
“Good.” My voice comes out hollow when I press on the gas.
Agust of wind curls around the nape of my neck, leaving a path of prickled sweat.
I rub it away, focus on opening the front door.
The buzz of the fading porch light and the rustling and creaking of branches and leaves is all I hear when I crack it open, gingerly stepping in.
I snap it closed behind me, and the sound of nature's cries are quickly replaced by my mother’s. They are shallow and guttural. They rip me in two.
I step toward them, following the swollen wailing through the blacked-out hall. And it feels as if every wall stands on edge, each corner sharpened, all trusses straightened, awaiting my return.
My heart shivers inside my chest because aside from my mother’s tapered cries, and the big, empty gaping hole Jade’s murder had left behind, the house was too quiet.
I bridge the doorway of the kitchen expecting to find her, only to hear her cries coming from further down the hall, seeping through Jade’s bedroom door.
I step back at the same time I hear a click and then a whooshing, as if something is spinning, round and round like a carousel.
Paralysis snatches me.
Takes a kick to my knees.
I glance over my shoulder, back into the kitchen, squinting my eyes, trying to make out something, anything through the darkness.
That’s when I see him.
