She takes my report card, flicks it open, scans down.
Stops.
She looks at me over the top of the paper, her mouth pursing, brows raised.
“What’s this A minus in Calculus?” Her jaw tightens. “I expected better from you, Blake.”
I just stare.
Fuck. I came home with my goddamn best, and it’s still not good enough.
Holt’s smirking.
Dead at me, all that ugliness under his pretty boy face, and as I dart my gaze between her and Holt, just trying to figure out what to do, what to feel, he says it.
“Mama’s boy,” he mouths, mocking and exaggerated.
I explode, launching myself at him with almost eighteen years of pent-up bullshit exploding out of me, while Sally thrusts herself away with a little scream.
And just like that, we’re at it again.
Sometimes he’s the one who throws the first punch.
Sometimes it’s me.
But somehow, even as Sally scatters, Ma never stops us.
She just folds her arms over her chest, my report card fluttering from her fingers to the floor, and a glint of evil pleasure shining in her eyes.
She watches her boys tear each other apart.
* * *
Present
I don’t know how I wound up at the cemetery.
Thinking and driving too much, maybe. Remembering.
God, I’d been on such a hair-trigger back then.
That’s what Ma trained us to do. Just hold things in, repress and repress and repress till it explodes like a cannon, and that’s who I turn into again around Holt.
I hate it.
Hate who I am around him.
Hate who I am when I think of him.
And I can’t go home as that guy.
So somehow I end up outside the cemetery gates, letting myself out to step beneath the iron arch into this world of snowy tombstones and tired statues draped with dead vines and leaves.
My boots crunch in the old leaves under the snow, making my way through the markers on a familiar path.
Until I find that one gravestone.
ABIGAIL SILVERTON.
And those dates.
Goddamn, she hadn’t even been forty when she died.
Nobody should check out that young.
There are fresh flowers on her grave, though.
Purple, wrapped up with a black ribbon.
I don’t even have to guess to know it was Andrea.
And I wonder how often she’s been sneaking out here, without me ever knowing.
Considering the dead scattered petals and dirty, faded, tattered bits of ribbon buried in the snow around the tombstone…
A lot.
I sink down in a crouch, pushing a hand through my hair.
“Fuck, Abby,” I whisper. “I have no idea what I’m doing. I didn’t know what I was doing with you. I don’t know what to do without you. I don’t know what to do with Andrea, and I hate that I can’t help her with how much she misses you…” I swallow back sandpaper.
“And I hate that I don’t miss you at all. Feels like I’m doing something damn wrong with that, too. I still get sad. So fucking sad when I think about you. I wish you were alive, even if I don’t wish you were with me. But I don’t miss you. Just mourn you. I think…I think I’m finally starting to figure out the goddamn difference, you know? And it took this bright-eyed girl to show me, but I don’t know what I’m doing with her either, and I just—fuck.”
I stop, breathing hard, halting the bleed of words.
I don’t even know what I’m saying, what I’m doing, why I’m really here.
For the second time tonight, my eyes are a mess. I’m struggling for every icy breath that cuts into my lungs and then comes out of me in a puffing cloud.
There’s no answer from the silent headstone.
But there’s a crackle of noise behind me that says I’m not alone.
I stiffen, rising sharply to my feet.
Footsteps. They’re moving through the tombstones.
Then a dark silhouette.
Nobody should be here at this time, yours truly exempted.
Shit. Is the arsonist back?
Coming to defile Jenna Ford’s grave some more?
I don’t hesitate.
This time I let that headstrong bullishness send me running through the headstones, ducking low so I don’t draw attention, but not trying to hide myself, either.
That shape is tall, lean, rangy, moving with a sort of gangliness that makes me think of how Peace described the asshole who chased her.
I tense, growling, ready to tackle him—
Until I realize I’m staring at my idiot brother.
Holt’s wrapped himself up in a proper suit coat and a leather jacket, snow dotting his jet-black hair.
He’s not even trying to be secretive about his movements as he winds through the headstones with a bouquet of fresh flowers in his hands, winter azaleas he probably plucked off someone’s bushes and wrapped up in tissue paper.
And there’s a sad, haunted look on his face as he stops in front of Jenna’s grave marker, looking down at the snow-strewn stone still dotted with little heaps of ash here and there.
I stop.
Freeze in my tracks, watching him.
Holy damn hell.