The door to her room is open a sliver. She's sitting on the bed, in the dark, her hands wrapped around a silver frame.
That frame used to be on the wall. One of the family pictures. An old one, when we were kids, before everything went wrong.
There are tears running down her cheeks. They're silent, like she doesn't want anyone to know it hurts.
I grab onto the doorknob, but I can't bring myself to push the door open.
What would I say?
I don't have the answers. I don't have a clue how to handle this.
My grip on the knob releases. Better to go to my room, alone. Better to cry, alone, where I won't hurt anyone else.
A few hours pass. I pull my comforter over my head and read one of my Star Wars books. The words don't make an impact. Everything about this house is suffocating.
My dad goes to sleep. The lights go out. Miles joins me on the bed and wraps his arms around me. He goes right for the gold. His hands slide under my cardigan, tracing the outline of my bra.
"We can get this off now," he says.
The heat rushing through my body is the first pleasant thing I've felt all day, but my parents are three doors down. "Not here."
His lips skim my neck. "You're right." He sinks his teeth into my skin. "No way you can stay quiet."
"I can. But you like it when I'm loud."
"Fuck yes." He runs his fingers over my inner thighs. "There's someplace I want to take you."
"Yeah?"
"You'll like it." He pulls me off the bed. "Of course, you'll be coming so hard you'll barely be aware of your surroundings."
I like it already.
Chapter Twenty-Six
We take Pacific Coast Highway south to a long, empty street that cuts through the hills. Everything is dark except for the stars and the moon.
I rest my eyes. It's late, and this day stretched on forever. Miles has my head spinning. I don't know which way is up or down. That's enough to drive me mad, but the house, my parents… it's like my sister never existed.
The car slows to a stop. We're at a red light. Miles has that same determined expression. He knows where we're going. He knows what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's getting out of this relationship.
He turns onto a steep, winding road. There's some kind of lab at the top of the hill. We stop just short of it to pull onto a large patch of dirt. It's a makeshift vista point.
Miles turns off the car. "Take a look."
We make our way to the edge of the hill. The quiet suburbs go on forever, this mass of twinkling lights. The black sky is dotted with stars I've never seen before.
"This was the closest thing we had to a make-out spot in high school," he says.
Miles lived in Irvine for a while. It’s only twenty minutes from here. Hell, UCI is barely fifteen minutes from my parents’ house.
It would make sense to go to school there. It would save me time, money, effort.
But it would hurt too.
I clear my throat. "Did you… come here a lot?"
"Yeah. But I was always alone."