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“You’re my sister, and you don’t understand what I’m going through,” he complains, but that is my breaking point.

“I don’t understand?!” I practically screech.

“No, you don’t.”

Blinding red-hot anger boils over. “You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to be held against my will for weeks.”

He turns toward me, but I keep speaking.

“But I know what it’s like to have a man kick in my door because my brother owed him money. I know what it’s like to check every parked car outside because I don’t know who you have pissed off. And I know what it’s like to count my money and wonder which bill I can pay late because I have to help you again. I know what it’s like to be beaten because you didn’t end up paying that bill. And don’t forget I was kidnapped, too, but I managed to get away.”

I press down on the accelerator again, trying to keep myself busy so I don’t cry in front of him.

“I promise it will be different,” Rowan says. “We are family.”

As if I haven’t heard those words so many times before, all lies and broken promises.

A gas station comes up and I pull in. Rowan braces one hand against the dashboard when I stop too quickly and the tires crunch over the loose gravel, the car locking up beneath us.

“What the fuck?” he snaps.

The gas station looks deserted, but I don’t care. I put the car in park and turn to Rowan and really look at him. He has our dad’s mouth and his mother’s nose. He looks like the brother I once had, but time has changed him. His hair is now too long and greasy, and there are shadows beneath his eyes. Some things are reminders of the good times, like the scar above his eyebrow, which he got from falling out of a tree in our backyard. I remember sitting beside him while Mom cleaned the blood from his face. He squeezed my fingers and told me not to look because it was gross. I remember him holding my hand at our parents’ funeral, and the promises he made after we lost them, that we only had each other. I believed him, and he lied.

“You don’t get to keep using that.”

His brows furrow. “Using what?”

“That we are family.”

“I am your family.”

I scoff at him and undo my seat belt so I can lean across and undo his. “No, you’re simply someone I share blood with. Family is supposed to mean more than that.”

He looks away and laughs under his breath. “Oh, fuck off.”

“No.”

His hand reaches for the door, and I lock it, because he isn’t walking away from what I have to say this time. Rowan’s head snaps toward me.

“You’re going to listen,” I tell him.

“I don’t have to listen to shit.”

“You do if you want me to keep driving.”

His nostrils flare, and for a second I see the brother who slapped me when I wouldn’t give him money. My heart beats faster, but I don’t move.

“I was a kid,” I say. “Do you understand that?” He looks down at the door handle instead of at me. “Mom and Dad died, yet somehow you were the only one allowed to fall apart. You got to be angry and disappear. You would drink and use whatever you could get your hands on, wasting every chance anyone gave you.”

“You think I wanted that?!”

“I think you stopped caring what it cost the rest of us.” Tears roll down my face, and I don’t bother hiding them.

He lifts his head and looks at me. “That’s bullshit.”

“I gave up everything for you,” I cry.

“I never asked you to.” His words hit like a fist to the gut. Rowan’s expression changed when he saw my first tears fall. Regret flickered, but it was gone almost as quickly as it appeared. Now he shifts against his seat and looks out at the pumps.