Worth Fighting For (Fighting to Be Free 2)

wasn’t hungry, either.”

I could sympathize with her there. “How’s she holding up?”

Nana didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to; her teary eyes said it all. Kelsey wasn’t holding up very well at all.

I gulped, glancing toward the stairs, steeling myself to go up and see my little sister, offer some words of comfort that I was hoping were going to magically come to me because right now I had nothing. There were simply no words that were ever going to make this better. “I’ll, um, go see her, tell her I’m here and see if she wants to come downstairs.”

Stacey cleared her throat. “I’m going to go, let you get settled.” She smiled awkwardly. “If you need anything, then call me, all right? I can take you to the hospital later if you want,” she offered, stepping forward and wrapping her long, slender arms around me, pulling me tight against her body.

“Thanks,” I muttered, hugging her back tightly, clinging to her, not really wanting her to leave. She pulled back and smiled sadly before turning and walking out the front door.

Silence filled the hallway again. Deafening, awful, mind-whirling silence.

Nana sniffed loudly, raising her chin and pulling back her shoulders. “I’m going to fix you a plate. I know you said you’re not hungry, but you might want it when you come down.”

I forced a smile and nodded, knowing she just needed to do something, to feel like she was looking after us. “Okay, thank you.” I shrugged out of my jacket, hanging it on the rack before glancing back up the stairs, wondering if I had the energy to make it up the thirteen steps. My body now felt heavy, uncoordinated, and weak. All I wanted to do was curl into a ball and cry, but instead I took a deep breath and forced my legs to work, taking the steps one at a time.

I stopped outside Kelsey’s bedroom door, listening for any sounds of life from inside, but there was nothing. I raised my hand and knocked—no answer.

“Kelsey?” I knocked again, still to no response. Frowning, I reached down and gripped the handle, turning it and cracking the door open, peeking inside. Kelsey was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling, a pair of red Beats headphones covering her ears and an iPhone resting on her belly.

My eyes widened as I looked at her. She was so tall, her body so much longer in her bed than when I’d left. Her brown hair, the exact shade of our father’s, cascaded over her shoulders and halfway down her arm. Her body was perfectly proportioned, her breasts already prominent and easily the same size as mine even though she was only thirteen. The skin on her face had a few teenage pimples that she’d covered with concealer that was one shade too light for her, making them stand out more than if she’d left them alone.

I swallowed awkwardly around the lump that had rapidly formed in my throat. I’d missed so much of her growing up. This young lady in front of me was nothing like the little girl I’d said good-bye to. I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting to see; it actually shocked me that this wasn’t the ten-year-old who followed me around and sang One Direction songs way too loudly, the girl who jumped on my bed and applied my lipstick and deodorant when I wasn’t looking.

“Kelsey?” I said, pushing the door open wider and peering in.

She started, her head whipping to face me as her hand shot up to the phone, catching it as it fell off her tummy and onto the bed.

I smiled weakly, not knowing where to start. “Hey. Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

She didn’t smile back; her lips pressed into a thin hard line as she reached up and pulled the headphones from her ears, letting them rest around her neck. Her eyes wandered over me as she sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “You’re here, then.” There was something off about her voice, a hard edge that made my spine straighten.

“Yeah, Stacey just dropped me off.” I bit my lip, willing the words to come to me, some words of wisdom that would somehow take her pain away.

“Nice of you to bother,” she huffed, standing up and ripping her headphones from her neck, carelessly dropping them and her phone onto the bed.

I recoiled at her tone, unsure why she sounded so angry. I wasn’t expecting anger, hadn’t prepared for it one bit. “I came as soon as I could,” I replied, my eyebrows pinching together in confusion.

She made a scoffing noise in the back of her throat and crossed her arms over her chest, raising one eyebrow in challenge. “You came as soon as you could? Not good enough.”

“Kelsey, what?” I mumbled, frowning, unmoving, my whole body frozen against the doorframe by her steely glare. “I got the first available flight. I’ve just come up to see if you’re okay.”

Her top lip turned up into a sneer, a look I had never seen on my loving, sweet little sister before. “You came to see if I was okay? Of course I’m not fucking okay!” Her f-bomb shocked me, and I blinked rapidly, taking in her words. She shook her head forcefully. “It’s just too little too late, Ellie. You should have been here—you should have been here for Mom, for me, for Dad. You should have been here when the police officer brought the news, you should have been here for the hour-long drive in the police car to the hospital from Nana’s, you should have been here when they took Mom into surgery. You should have been here when Nana had to go in and formally identify Dad’s body. You should have been here when she broke down crying and then passed out from the pressure of it all. We needed you, and you weren’t here! Instead, you were off swanning around in another country without a care in the world while my world was falling apart!” she all but screamed.

The lump in my throat seemed to swell, emotion bubbling up inside me, her hurtful words cutting and full of acid. The guilt at not being here like she said, it was crushing. “It’s not like that,” I croaked, my eyes filling with tears.

She raised her chin, her eyes hard as she walked the six or seven steps over to me. “You should have been here, but you weren’t. If you think turning up after so long is going to make everything okay, then you’re dead wrong.” She grasped the door, swinging it forward forcefully and slamming it in my face.

CHAPTER 6

FOR A COUPLE of seconds I just stood there, my mouth agape, staring at the white painted grains in the wood that was less than two inches from my face, my mind not really responding to what had just happened.

What had just happened?

I recoiled, my heart aching, my lungs too tight to draw in anything other than a short, sharp breath. I gulped. The force of her words, the anger, the acid and purposeful hurtfulness to them. She’d meant every word.

A tear escaped, trickling down my cheek as I blinked a couple of times, the guilt and grief overwhelming. My knees weakened and I reached out, placing one hand on the wall for support as I thought of my poor nana having to identify her son’s body, of her frail body not being able to cope with the pressure, of Kelsey being alone, her father dead, her mother in surgery, her nana blacking out at the hospital. It was all too much, too much sadness, too much to take in at once.

I leaned forward and placed my forehead against the cold wood of Kelsey’s door, closing my eyes, taking deep breaths to try to calm my raging inner storm of emotions. All I wanted to do was stagger to my bedroom, fall face-first onto my bed, and cry into my pillow. Her words hit me hard, and I suddenly realized she was right. Me simply turning up here wasn’t enough; I needed to make up for it, starting right now. Crying on my bed was not an option.

I sucked in a deep breath and pulled back, reaching up to dry my tearstained face with the back of my hand before turning for the stairs, deciding to leave Kelsey to calm down for a little while. I’d try again in a little while and see if she was ready to talk. Maybe she just needed a bit of space.

As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I followed the sound of dishes clinking and the delicious scent of chili wafting out of the kitchen. Nana was standing by the stove, stirring an enormous pot with a wooden spoon. I stood silently. Watching her cook was something I had always enjoyed; she was a whiz in the kitchen. When I was younger and

would stay over at her house, she would let me help her make dinner; we’d bake cakes and cookies almost every visit.

“How’d it go?”

I jumped, startled by her words. I had been purposefully quiet when I entered and hadn’t realized she’d known I was here. She smiled sadly over her shoulder as she picked up a bowl and scooped a ladleful of chili into it.