I didn’t need to turn around to know that Willow was nestled between my brother’s legs, and Lucas’s arms were wrapped around her, his chin resting on top of her head. They’d been sitting that way for years—on our family room floor while watching television, in the school hallway during their free periods, and at my football games, under the bleachers, completely oblivious to the world around them. The comfort they found in each other, the ease in which they interacted, was completely foreign to me. I’d never been like that with anyone, not with any girlfriend, not even with my own mother.
“Twinkle, twinkle little bat, how I wonder where you’re at…” Willow trailed off with another yawn. They continued on, each of them murmuring different lines, no longer following any sort of order. Lucas was the last to speak before the room eclipsed into silence. I waited several minutes and was about to roll over when I heard the distinct smack of a kiss, followed closely by the rustling of a sleeping bag.
I went still, hoping they weren’t about to have sex… even as some small, depraved part of me wished they would. Willow couldn’t be quiet if her life depended on it, and the way she always panted during sex, those muffled mewling noises she always made… I was getting hard just thinking about it.
I squeezed my eyes shut and ground my teeth together, trying to think of anyone but Willow. Only my lust-addled brain had become a broken record that kept skipping straight back to her.
It doesn’t mean anything. I was just pent up in more ways than one. It had been years since I’d been with anyone—Willow had been the only girl in my life for so long now, of course it was her I was focusing on. It didn’t actually mean anything—other than I was becoming desperate.
It definitely didn’t mean that Iliked her.
“You know, I used to pray that we’d fallen down a rabbit hole. That none of this was real and someday we’d find our way back home.” Willow’s voice was thick with sleep and heavy with melancholy. “…which is super funny considering how much I hated it there.”
“Aw, come on, Will. Asheville wasn’t all bad.”
“Maybe not for you—Lucky Logan’s little brother.”
My jaw locked at the mention of my old nickname, given to me by my high school football coach. I hadn’t liked it then, and I definitely didn’t like it now.
Lucas chuckled. “Like that mattered. He’s always been better at everything. No one even noticed me.”
“I noticed you.”
“No way. I noticed you first. Everyone noticed you.”
Lucas and Willow hadn’t always been friends, and I never paid her any attention until she’d started hanging around Lucas—but by then she’d been hard to miss. She’d gone from being virtually invisible to the one and only twelve-year-old in town with a nose ring and dressing in anything that would draw attention to her—typically the most flamboyant, ridiculous getups she could find. Lucas quickly followed suit, first with the attention-seeking clothing and then later with the self-mutilation.
Our father’s reaction to Lucas’s lip rings still instilled the same amount of fury in me that it had initially. He’d only laughed at Lucas, called him a few colorful names, and went back to his booze. But if it had been me that had come home with lip rings, they would have been ripped straight from my face, and that would have been the least of it. Lucas liked to make it sound like he’d had it rough, when, in reality, no one had ever expected or demanded a single thing from him. He’d been free from all of our father’s expectations… and condemnations.
“Not in a good way,” Willow replied. “Everyone hated me.”
“I didn’t hate you.”
“You don’t count. You like literally everyone.”
“No. I just don’thateeveryone.”
“I don’t hate everyone. I just don’tlikeeveryone.”
They laughed softly, their laughter eventually fading into comfortable sighs, sounding so goddamn in sync with one another that every muscle in my body tensed with the sudden urge to destroy something. Yet, I remained as I was—stock-still and glaring at the wall and feeling so goddamn empty. Gapingly empty. Like my chest was a cavernous hole. And angry, too—helplessly angry, unsure if I was angry because I felt empty or if I felt empty because all I could seem to feel was angry. Whichever it was, I couldn’t get a handle on it.
Was this how my dad had felt—constantly angry and empty? Were those feelings why he’d never had a kind word for anyone, and why he’d drunk himself into a nightly stupor? A brief pang of pity for the man quickly mutated into a hot, roiling wave of disgust. I would not be wasting a single second pitying that piece of shit and I’d be damned before I allowed any part of his poisonous existence to take root inside me.
I took a deep, shaking breath. I needed to clear my head, and the only way that was going to happen was if I could have some real time for myself—more specifically, time away from Willow. My thoughts spun in circles—this farmhouse was safe enough, wasn’t it? It was definitely the soundest structure we’d come across in months. Maybe I could leave them here to scout ahead for a few days? The more I thought about it, the more attractive the idea became.
It wasn’t as if I hadn’t ever left them on their own before.
And they were adults, after all,right, Willow?
