I had planned on telling him I wouldn’t go spilling his secret to anyone else, but I got the feeling he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It reminded me of the things I didn’t want to talk about.
The expression that had flitted across his face mirrored the way I’d felt way too many times. All the guilt and remorse oozing off him made me shiver with a strange kind of kinship with Sarah’s brother.
I guess experiencing sexual contact with a woman you didn’t want affected a guy pretty much the same way, whether she was paying you for it or she was your mom forcing you into it.
Huddling deeper into my hoodie, I shivered again and hurried inside after him.
He and Reese were already in my room with the door closed. I paced the hall, just outside, hoping Mason hadn’t lied when he’d told me he didn’t blame Sarah for anything and hoping even harder that Sarah would forgive me for ousting her.
I was a hypocrite, I knew. If I’d confided in her, I never would’ve wanted her to spread it to anyone else. Yet here I was, hoping she was okay with me doing it to her. Damn, who was I kidding? She was never going to talk to me again.
I began to sweat and bite my thumbnail, pacing a little faster.
Finally, Colton appeared in the opening of the hall. “What’re you doing?”
“Nothing! Go away.”
“Hey, lay off.” Noel appeared beside him, frowning at me. “He’s right. You’re acting weird. What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I repeated through gritted teeth. “I’m fi—”
My bedroom door came open, and I whirled around, forgetting my brothers. I held my breath in anticipation before Mason appeared in the entrance. His face was absolutely unreadable, which made my stomach churn with worry. Then he stepped aside and there was Sarah in her wheelchair and her suitcase clutched in her lap.
I sucked in a sharp breath. This was it, then. She was so pissed at me for blabbing she was leaving me.
Cold immediately set into my bones. I was a split second from dropping to my knees and begging for forgiveness when she looked up at me and smiled. She rolled straight to me and then lifted her arms, opening them for a hug.
I just stood there, confused. “What?”
“Thank you for doing what I couldn’t,” she said. “Now hug me already; I can’t hold my arms like this all day.”
Rushing forward, I gave her an awkward hug over the top of her suitcase, but it was still the best hug I’d ever gotten. We clung to each other until I whispered into her ear, “I was so sure you’d be pissed at me and never forgive me.”
“Oh, don’t worry.” She tapped my arm with a playful punch. “I’m never confiding in you again, that’s for sure.”
I pulled away and looked into her eyes, totally not believing her claim. “You know I never would’ve said anything unless I’d known for sure he’d make it right with you.”
When she shrugged but her lips tightened as if she was trying to hide a smile, I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t hate me. You can’t hate me.” Because I could never hate her.
Finally, she sighed in defeat. “Well, it’d be nice if I could. You owe me big time for this.”
With that, I knew everything between us would be okay. Her mother might still be gone, it was going to take time for her to heal, and she would probably still cling to her guilt for a while, but I knew she’d get there eventually, because she’d forgiven me, and since she’d allowed me to stay in her life, I would do everything in my power to help her through this.
BRANDT
AGE 16
After Sarah left my house to live with Mason and Reese, things changed. I have no idea what she’d done to me, but I missed her like crazy. I missed her living in my house. I missed her sleeping in my bed. I missed her just being there, to talk to whenever I wanted.
Somewhere between drying her tears each night and helping her brush her hair each morning, I’d become dependent on taking care of her.
Sometimes I’d tell Noel I was going to the park to play ball with the guys when really I was going to her house instead. Not sure why I lied, maybe because I was afraid he’d tell me I was spending too much time with her. No matter what, I wasn’t going to spend any less time with her.
Then, in the evenings, after Mason told me I needed to head home, I’d sneak around to her window as soon as I walked out the front door, so I could crawl in through there and spend more time with her. It wasn’t as if we did anything wrong. We just hung out, watched movies, made fun of posts on Facebook together, boring regular friend stuff.
More often than not, I used her window. We just figured it raised fewer questions this way, especially since I usually ended up falling asleep with her.
We had a feeling her brother would have a hard time buying that our relationship was purely platonic if he ever discovered me spooned up behind her in bed some night. So we typically just bypassed letting anyone else know about every visit I made.