Tara
That kiss. That stupid, aggressive, intense, uninvited, freaking kiss.
I can’t get it out of my head. Even after a bottle of wine and some very intense knitting and one ill-advised session of self-gratification in the shower that involved even more detailed daydreaming about Kellen’s hands on my body and his fist in my hair and that thick, hard thing between his legs and still I keep thinking about his lips against mine.
What is wrong with me? How could I have loved that so much when he practically shoved me against him, nearly ripped my hair out, and forced his tongue into my mouth?
And yet I’m still ringing with his touch. I feel the ghost of his lips on mine and his taste lingers in my mouth. I can’t stop thinking about his arms and his smell and what he said, over and over. Mine. Claim.
Crap.
I decide to head into the garden. It’s just before dark, but the sky is clear and there’s enough light illuminating the path to see by. I head out to finish planting the flowers I started earlier in the day before Kellen came and tongued me into submission and left my brain a stupid soggy mess filled with horrible dirty fantasies of him bending me over, spanking me raw, and fucking me until I scream. And again, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but something clearly is.
Because I hate him. Right? I have to keep reminding myself or else I’ll forget and give in.
I hate Kellen. I hate all the Hayles, every last one of them, for what they did to Cait back then. Their neglect and their myopia. With them, it’s always been more about the family than any one person in particular, and it was like Cait drowned in their world unable to keep her head above the water. If they’d been able to see beyond their own petty wants, they might’ve noticed her deep and horrible pain, the pain that became more and more obvious as the years progressed, but instead she sank deeper into her addiction and covered the pain with drugs and anything that numbed her.
The sweet, lovely, beautiful, amazing, hilarious girl I knew turned into a zombie.
I find the spade I threw into the bushes still laced with Kellen’s blood and start digging.
I still think about how she was at the end, when we were at the bottom of our mutual addiction and pushing each other to spiral more and more. She was an absolute fucking wreck. Skinny, strung out, not caring about anything at all. We’d go to school high and come home and get high again. People would make comments in the halls, talk about how skinny she’s getting and how weird she’s been acting, but none of it mattered. She could barely make it through the day without sweating and shaking. The teachers all knew, our friends could all see it, but she was Cait Hayle. What could they do?
Nothing at all.
Nobody said a damn thing.
She’d laugh after plunging the heroin into her veins. By then we were shooting up, no more pills for us, the pills were too expensive and we couldn’t keep stealing that much cash without drawing too much unwanted attention. We switched to the cheaper stuff and never looked back. I felt like I was chasing after Cait while she was chasing after some elusive feeling she’d never catch—some love, some acceptance, some sense of inner peace that was always out of reach, but at least the screaming voice in her head that was desperate for a better world went quiet when she was too stoned to think.
And I can remember her then, all her flaws and horrors, but I can’t let myself remember how I was exactly the same. Just as strung out, just as detached.
Just as bad.
You know what I want to be one day?Cait asked one night while we sat in her room and listening to records, plunging the needle into her arm as I held the band tight around her bicep. Older. She laughed like it was a joke, but she never got what she wanted.
I wonder all the time if she did it on purpose. If she took too much just to make everything stop or if she fucked up somehow. We were inexperienced and stupid teenage girls and we barely knew what we were doing, but I thought we were being careful. I obsessively researched this stuff and Cait said she did too, but I don’t know if that’s true. We followed online tutorials, the sort of horrible shit you find when you really go looking, and the internet was full of that stuff back then. Maybe it was just a mistake, or maybe that joke wasn’t a joke, more like a cry for help.
A cry I didn’t hear.
Because I was too high.
I’m crying now as I dig a hole. Dig, dig, dig, hard enough that I get dirt under my nails, and my fingers start to bleed.
“Are you trying to bury a dead body or are you looking to murder all those flowers?”
I stand, breathing fast, and look over at Hugh. He’s lingering nearby in sweats with a glass of brandy in one hand and a cigar in the other. It’s pungent, the smell of burning dark tobacco, and I don’t know how I didn’t notice until now.
Stuck in the past. Always stuck in it.
“I know why you’re here.”
“Do you?” He smiles at me like that’s amusing. “I wasn’t sure myself.”
“Kellen told you to leave me alone but now you can’t. It’s like a compulsion, isn’t it?”
He chuckles and shrugs. “I suppose so. I like to imagine it’s more that I want to retain what I’ve taken over the years, but maybe I do just like knocking down the privileged older son one more peg.”
“I almost feel sorry for you.” I shake my head, gripping the spade tightly.