“No, she works the night shift.” His metal gaze meets mine. “No one will see you with me, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I purse my lips. “Drop the passive-aggressiveness.”
“Whatever do you mean?” He tilts his head to the side. “I’m just stating the facts you demanded.”
I consider saying something but choose not to. It’ll simply hurt my case at this point.
With a grumble, I make a beeline to the door and into the living room.
Even though Stantonville is a shithole, the house…isn’t.
It’s small, sure, but every corner looks like someone actually loves it enough to keep it alive. There are houseplantseverywhere and warm light instead of the flickering fluorescent misery the rest of this town seems to run on.
In the center, there’s a couch that looks too soft for this zip code, with a blanket tossed over the armrest that definitely belongs to his mother, not him. Marcus is many things, but cozy isn’t one of them.
The walls are lined with framed photos, and because I’m here to be nosy, I walk straight to them.
We don’t have framed family photos in our house. I mean, we do, if we count my deceased ancestors glaring down at me. Or the tradition of the soulless family photo that we take every year just to hang in Dad’s office.
I only tolerate them now because Miley loves them, especially if I hold her on my shoulders—something Satan’s lover doesn’t like, so I do it just to piss her off.
Anyway, the family photos here are warmer, full of Marcus and his mother—June. In almost all of them, they’re together. There are a few where he’s alone. Marcus as a teen holding a hockey stick bigger than him in one hand and a trophy in the other. Marcus no older than ten with a missing tooth and a scraped knee.
He…doesn’t smile much in his solo pictures. When he’s with his mom, however, his smiles are more genuine.
One photo stops me.
Marcus, June, and Andrew are in the snow, photographed under a white tree. Marcus is tiny, bundled in a puffy red jacket, his cheeks flushed, looking no older than six or seven. Andrew stands behind him, his hand on his shoulder, his face unreadable. June is grinning wide as she holds Marcus’s gloved hand and stares at the camera.
I take the frame without thinking. There’s something…familiar about his face.
There’s a tug somewhere under my ribs, like déjà vu that just won’t manifest. A memory that I shouldn’t have forgotten.
I put it back as if I’ve been electrocuted.
Strange.
The stairs creak under my feet as I go up. They’re narrow, clean, and have a dark-orange carpet runner. I find the door to his room at the end of the hallway, and it opens into a space that is so…Marcus.
It’s organized. Not military neat—just intentional. Tools on a shelf. Books stacked in straight lines. Several hockey trophies are collecting dust on top of a dresser that’s too small for them.
Now that I’m looking through them, there’s a lot. And I mean alot. About five MVP awards. Most Improved Player award. Top scorer plaques—seriously, highest scorer? I vote fake. Tournament medals. Coach’s award—he bribed him, no doubt. A puck collection. A sportsmanship award. Like how the fuck does he deserve such an award? He obviously holds one hell of a grudge in everything.
He acts so nonchalant at times, I almost fall for the facade, but then he shows his true colors like a perfect sadist.
Asshole.
I sit on his bed, and the mattress dips beneath my weight.
Everything smells like him. The sheets, the pillow. Clean, woodsy soap, and something metallic and warm that shouldn’t make my chest do whatever it’s currently doing.
The room hums with that quiet, lived-in warmth I’ve never had in any of my homes, and my brain probably should be mocking this sentimentality.
I’ve never really had a home.
When my parents were married, I was more plagued by their fights, but maybe that was my home. Because at least atthat time, I was surrounded by both my parents, who doted on me in their own way. Then there was Mom’s house—the one from hell. And then back to Dad’s house.
It was never the same after that. It just…wasn’t.
