“I’ll miss you too.”
I take a slow breath as he smiles at me, and for a second, pride pushes everything else aside. After everything life threw at us, I got him out. Out of Boulder Flats. Into the University of Wyoming. Into a future.
“Bye, kid. Call me if you need anything.”
“Bye, Rocket.”
The door clicks shut behind me, and the second it does, my smile falls.
He doesn’t need to know the truth.
That I’m not living in my own apartment. That I’m still stuck in that trailer for at least another month, trying to scrape together enough money for a down payment. Mason thinks I already moved in. I made sure of it. Pictures from online, careful angles on FaceTime, always checking what shows behind me.
With his classes and football, he hasn’t had time to visit.
And honestly, I’m grateful.
I had the money saved. Every last dollar. I was supposed to move the same day he did.
But my mother went to the bank with forged papers and a signature that looked close enough to mine for someone not to question it.
She drained everything.
I found out standing at the counter, trying to pay the down payment, my account showing zero.
I never told Mason. I never will. He would drop everything to help me, and I didn’t fight this hard for him to throw his future away for me.
The truth of how we got here sits heavy in my bones.
The first ten years of my life were good. Safe. A small house with a yard, a dad who worked at the pharmacy, a mom at the hospital, and Mason, this tiny, wrinkly baby who wrapped his hand around my finger like he already knew I would never let go.
Then came the night everything broke.
My father was killed in an armed robbery when I was ten. Three minutes was all it took to shatter everything we had.
Mom sold the house. We moved into a trailer for a little while.
A little while turned into forever.
Russel came not long after. Harley. Leather. Tattoos. Flowers when she cried. I was eleven and desperate for her to be happy again, so I ignored the unease crawling up my spine every time he looked at us too long.
She married him within a year.
By the time she found out he was sleeping with half the women in his motorcycle club, Black Nemesis, it was already too late. The first time he hit her, she didn’t leave. She numbedherself instead, pills first, then alcohol, until the woman who used to laugh in our kitchen faded into something hollow.
By twelve, I was packing Mason’s lunches, getting him to school, reading to him at night. I learned how to make myself small when Russel brought his club brothers home. I perfected being quiet. Invisible.
But silence doesn’t protect you.
At fourteen, I forgot to lock the door.
I woke up to one of Russel’s buddies in my room, drunk, his hand on my thigh. I didn’t think. I grabbed the baseball bat from under my bed and swung until he dropped.
Russel hit me for it, hard enough to snap my head to the side. Then he leaned in close and whispered,
“Next time you fight back, you will disappear. And your brother ends up in an orphanage.”
And I believed him.
