by Beck, J. L.
All we need her to do is change her statement. My father and Brett assured her they wouldn’t press charges, and the police say that as long as Brett is okay with the outcome, the state won’t charge her for making a wrong statement either.
After the police are finally gone, Willow and I are left alone in her room again. Part of me wants to hold her all day while the other wants to go to my family’s estate and wait for any news regarding my brother. When my phone starts to ping every five seconds with emails, calls, and texts from my mom and dad, I finally decide it’s time to go.
As if Willow can read my mind, she stirs on my chest, where she’s been sprawled out for a good while. The last thing I want to do is leave right now, but I have to.
“I need to go, Willow. I hate to leave you, but I really need to go.”
“I know,” she murmurs softly. Through her thick lashes, she peeks up at me, her eyes still swollen and red from all the crying she did this morning.
“Are you going to be okay here?” I don’t know why I even ask. That’s such a stupid question. After the shit with Nate yesterday, his confession to raping Ashton, and the fact the police have zero leads on where he is, I doubt she’s anywhere close to being okay.
Of course, despite all of that, she gives me a nod. “I’ll be fine.”
She rolls to the side, so her body is lying on the bed and not on top of me. I miss her body the moment we lose touch. Leaning over, I kiss her on the forehead and get up to put my shoes on. I can’t believe how quickly our relationship has changed. How quickly she went from hating me to needing me. Or maybe she always needed me, but she is just now ready to admit it.
“I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Okay, I’m going to try to reach my father and see if he can take me to Ashton.”
“Maybe you can ask Alice to drive you instead?” After I saw her father almost hit her yesterday, I’d rather she not be alone with him today, or ever. Willow nods in agreement, obviously, I don’t have to give her an explanation.
“I’ll call Alice,” she confirms, grabbing her phone.
I slip out of the room while Willow makes the call to her friend. I have to force my legs to move, taking each step further away from her. I am torn between wanting to stay with her and wanting to go home. My head says to go home, but the rest of my body wants to stay.
My phone pings again, as if to give me another sign that I need to leave. Checking my messages, I read the words I’ve so long hoped to read.
Dad: She confessed everything. Brett was released.
On the way to my parents’ house, I break every speed limit there is. Pulling into the driveway thirty minutes later, I come to a halt with my tires squealing. I kill the engine and open the door at the same time. There are two cars I don’t recognize parked out front, and I wonder who all is here.
I half run toward the front door. When my foot touches the first step of the porch, the door flies open. I look up, expecting either one of my parents to be there ready to yell at me for not coming earlier. Instead, I find a large body filling out the door frame. All the pressure on my shoulders, the anger, and hate, it fades to the background.
In all his glory, my brother stands before me with a huge smile on his face, one so similar to mine.
“It’s about time, little brother,” Brett grins, only looking a little different since the last time I saw him. The words have barely left his lips before I’m lunging myself at him. Our chests clash together, his body weight knocking the air out of me.
“Brett, you’re home,” I tell my brother, who I haven’t been able to hug for two years. Every broken piece of my life seems to be mending itself back together. I can breathe without being weighed down by my rage.
“I am, and I’m so fucking happy to see you, brother!” He exclaims, releasing me and moving out of the doorway so that I can come inside. As soon as I’m in the house, I spot my parents sitting in the huge family area. I’ve never seen either of them smiling so big. Next to them are sitting two men in suits. I remember them from the trial, they were Brett’s lawyers.
“Here is my other son,” Dad gets up from the couch and walks over to me. He slaps a hand onto my shoulder, squeezing it tightly. I’m still a little pissy over the way he treated Willow last night, but I let it pass. I don’t want to ruin Brett’s homecoming.
“I heard you’re the reason I’m out…” Brett snickers, “Dad has only said ten thousand times how proud of you he is.”
Proud of me? “I didn’t do anything,” I mumble, not really. Nate squealing to Willow is what saved Brett. Which reminds me, I need to find that fucker and rearrange his face.
“Oh, stop, Parker, you know if it wasn’t for you and your antics with the youngest Bradford girl, that we wouldn’t have gotten your brother out. Your commitment to making that girl understand her place in our world is what saved him.” He chuckles, his attention drifting to my brother.
I can’t believe my ears. Is he insinuating that I made Nate attack Willow? Before I can think more about it, he continues.
“You should have been at the gala. The dress he put her in. I don’t think there was one person in that banquet hall that didn’t assume she was a whore. Your brother made a complete sideshow out of her. It was glorious, and the look on her father’s face when he saw her was even better.”
“You’re with Willow?” My brother asks, his eyebrows puckering together in confusion. I open my mouth to speak, but what the hell do I tell him. Yes? No? I mean, we aren’t official; I really don’t know what we are at all. I don’t know what the hell is going to happen now, but I don’t think I’ll be able to let her walk away, not after everything that’s happened between us. She’s mine.
“Of course, he’s not with her. He was using her; he wouldn’t make a stupid choice like that.” My father speaks for me, and his words sting against my skin. I was using Willow, and she was using me, but now, now we’re even, or at least I hope we are.
Brett’s eyes darken, and I wait for him to give me the whole treat others the way you want to be treated talk, but he doesn’t say anything else.
“Ashton confessed to having had consensual sex with Brett that day. She told the police that it was Nate who raped and beat her after Brett left. They’re currently looking for him. Are you sure that you don’t want to press charges against her? You have a right, son? Two years of your life lost, for something you didn’t do. The lawyers are still here, it’s not too late.”
The air in my lungs stills. Fuck. I promised Willow nothing would happen to her sister. If Brett presses charges… Damnit. This is all a fucked-up mess. I want to tell Brett not to do anything but would understand completely if he did.
Seconds feel like hours as my parents and I stare up at Brett, waiting for his response.
“Enough has happened already. Ashton has been hurt plenty, and while I was wrongfully accused, I’m free now, and that’s all that matters.”
I damn near sag to the floor with relief. It never bothered me before, the thought of hurting Willow. It was a thrill, a funny little game, but now it’s like her heart is an extension of my own, her feelings are mine. If something hurts her, it hurts me.
Dad grits his teeth, his eyes bleeding into Brett’s. I can see how pissed off he is over his choice. He wants to bring the Bradfords down, and that means Willow too. Would I be able to stand by and watch them do that?
“Whatever you want, son,” our father tsks, but something tells me, it will never be whatever we want. It never has been whatever we want, and now that Brett is free, I’ll be forced to make a decision. I have to choose between Willow and my father.
The question is. Do I want Willow for more than revenge?
19
Willow
The room still smells like Parker, even hours after he’s left. Or maybe his scent is just permanently ingrained into my mind now. I don’t know. What I do know is that having his smell around me soothes the ache surging throughout my chest.
I can’t believe the last twenty-four hours are real.
Everything seems like a dream, a nightmare really. I’m still trying to make sense of it all, to line up the puzzle pieces in my head. Ashton swore it was Brett, she looked me straight in the eyes and swore to me. Had I known it wasn’t him…
Guilt eats away at my insides, and that sick feeling I’ve had all day intensifies.
She’s never lied to me. Truth is, when we were little, every time she tried to lie to me, I knew. She’s a terrible liar. The worst, so how did I not see it, that time? And why lie in the first place? She could have told me. It wouldn’t have changed anything at all. I wasn’t the enemy in all of this, and I’m still not.
Holding my head in my hands, I try to calm myself down. It feels like the room is spinning all around me.
Since the moment Parker left, I’ve been trying to call her at the facility, since Alice didn’t pick up, but each time I call, they tell me she can’t come to the phone right now. And as much as I hate our father, I even resorted to calling him, but strangely, my calls have been going straight to voicemail.
What the hell is going on?
Not knowing what is happening and being forced to sit and wait is killing me. Almost as much as the thought of what I have done. I helped put an innocent man in prison. Two years of his life are gone, and I am partially to blame for that. I don’t know how to deal with it. And even worse, I am in a somewhat relationship with his brother. At least, I think I am. I don’t know what Parker and I are, but we are certainly something.
God, could this get any more complicated. All this time, he was right, he was right about his brother, and I really was a liar. I feel compelled to apologize, to beg for forgiveness. I did this. I was an accomplice. Why did Ashton lie? Why did she tell me it was Brett when it was Nate?
Having all these questions, without a single answer in sight, is making it hard for me to function. The hours pass slowly. All night, I sit in my room, every little sound terrifying me. I wonder if Nate is going to come back. If something bad is going to happen to me? Sleep doesn’t come, and I don’t hear from Parker, or my father, or Ashton, which only makes me worry more.
After a long while, I curl up into a ball and cry until there isn’t a single tear left to cry. I cry for my sister mainly, and for Brett, and for Parker and me because had Ashton not lied things, might have been different between us.
I finally fall asleep but come awake not long after, when my phone starts to ring somewhere in the sheets. It could be my father or Ashton. Panicked, I feel around the bed until my fingers find the phone. I don’t know why, but seeing my father’s name flash across the screen makes me feel like something terrible is going to happen or already has. No. Answer the phone, I tell myself. Shoving the feelings away, I hit the green answer key and bring the phone to my ear.
“Dad, is everything okay? I’ve been calling you all night.” The words rush past my lips.
“Willow, I… I don’t know how to say this…” The dread in his voice, it clings to me through the speaker. My father hasn’t sounded this way since the night of my mother’s passing, so why… falling down on me like acid rain, I gasp into the phone.
“What happened? Is Ashton okay? Please, tell me she is okay? Did they press charges?” Every worry known to mankind pops into my head. All I want to know is that she’s okay and that I can talk to her. Please, god, let her be okay.
“Willow, Ashton is dead.” I can hear the words he’s saying, but I don’t comprehend them. It’s like my brain is refusing to compute.
“What?” I whisper.
“She committed suicide last night. She left a note, but I’m not sure you need to read it right now. I’m in the process of making funeral arrangements. I’ll call you when it’s time for the funeral.” He… I don’t understand. What happened? Committed suicide? How? Why? She was in a facility being monitored by nurses and doctors? How did she kill herself?
“I… I don’t understand…” A coldness sweeps through my bones, and inside my chest, I can feel my heart cracking. Every beat breaking it a little bit more.
“She’s dead, Willow. She is gone, and she’s not coming back. I know it’s hard in the beginning, but this isn’t our first time losing a family member, so I expect us to bounce back from this with ease. We will do the funeral and then carry on with our lives.”
The phone slips out of my hand and lands on the floor with a crack. I don’t move to pick it up, I don’t move at all. I just stand there trying to make sense of the words I just heard. Dead. Suicide. Ashton. Gone. They’re all just words, but the meaning behind them is so powerful and soul-crushing they might as well be grenades. Inside my chest, my heart cracks.
The sound is loud and makes it hard for me to breathe.
Ashton is gone… my sister is dead.
My sister is dead and I… I can’t bring her back. I can’t fix this. Everything I did was for nothing. In the end, I didn’t protect her. I fed her right to the monsters. I’ll never forgive myself, never.
* * *
Three days have passed… or maybe four? The days pass in a blur when you don’t eat and sleep like a normal person. I’m in some hotel a few towns over from Blackthorn. I couldn’t bear seeing or talking to anyone, so I’m hiding out here like the coward I am. I don’t know what I’m going to do anymore, but I do know I can’t go back there right now.
It took me a few hours to really understand when my father told me about Ashton’s death. It took me even longer to grasp what he said after that… this isn’t our first time losing a family member, so I expect us to bounce back from this with ease.
My father is a psychopath, that’s the only explanation for his actions and words. Who is so composed and unaffected by death, by losing their child?
I thought about calling Parker more than once, but I always chickened out. I don’t know where we stand after all of this, but I’m too scared to find out right now, too fragile to face him. I checked my phone yesterday right before it went dead. He texted and called a few times, but I ignored them all. Now I’m kind of regretting that I had.
My dad has sent me only one text message, and that was two days ago. He was letting me know when and where the funeral is going to be. Aside from that, he hasn’t cared to contact me to see if I’m okay.
Because of this, I hate him a little more than I did before. Scratch that, a lot more, more than I ever thought was possible. I don’t see myself ever having a relationship with that man again. If I never see or hear from him again, I’ll be a happier person.
The games, the terror, the fear, the fact that someone died… My eyes fill with tears for the millionth time. I can’t think about this now. Not ever.
The days have ticked by one right after the other, and I’ve counted them down with dread. I know Ashton’s service is tomorrow, but I don’t know if I can bring myself to go. I’d much rather say my goodbyes on my own, and not with a hundred people who didn’t care about her, standing in the room.
I feel so guilty, the shit with Brett, and now my sister’s death. It all lingers over my head, seconds away from crashing down on me. I feel like I’m in one of those old Road Runner cartoons, a large anvil looming over me, ready to squish me like a bug.
My stomach growls, reminding me that I haven’t eaten anything in… way too long. I don’t even remember. I uncurl myself from the fetal position, which I’ve been in for the better part of today. Sitting up, I stretch my aching limbs. Realizing how dry my mouth is, I reach for the water on the nightstand, only to realize it’s empty. Eventually, I’m going to have to piece myself back together again, but that day isn’t going to be today.
I’m reaching for the phone to call room service when a loud knock sounds against the door. My finger grazes the phone. Wait, did I already call and order room service? Or are they just checking on me to make sure I’m not dead yet? Stunted like a deer caught in the headlights of a moving vehicle, I sit there, my eyes on the door.
The knock comes a
gain, this time a little harder than before, and that noise is enough to get me to snap out of it. Slowly crawling out of bed, I walk toward the door. I’m a few feet away when I hear his voice.
“Open the damn door, Willow, or I will kick it in. You might be able to hide from everyone else, but you can’t hide from me.”
In an instant, I’m grabbing the door handle, my heart lunging in my chest, thumping so hard it almost hurts. He came for me. I don’t know why, but that brings me a tiny bit of joy. I shouldn’t be happy about seeing him. He doesn’t deserve me, but more so, I don’t deserve him, or anyone else. But I can’t help but hold on to that tiny bit of glee, the happiness it brings me, that he is here.
Unlocking the deadbolt, I pull the door open to find Parker standing on the other side of it. One arm propped up on the door frame as if he’s been waiting for me to open up for hours instead of seconds. Drinking in his perfect face, I don’t know if I want to slap or hug him. The scowl he gives me is one I’ve seen many times before.
“Why aren’t you answering your phone?” Looking me up and down, his blatant anger melts into concern. The struggle in his eyes tells me he wants to take me into his arms, but something is stopping him. Probably the way I look right now. “You look terrible,” he mumbles as if he could read my mind.
“I feel like shit too.”
“I’m sorry about your sister,” he winces, genuine empathy in his tone. “Do you mind if we come in?”
We?
Without waiting for my answer, he drops his arm and walks into the room. I’m flabbergasted by his presence, and even more by the intense tone of his voice. I mentally prepare myself to respond to him when a shadow appears in the doorway. Something tightens in my chest when my eyes land on Brett’s dark ones.
“Hello, Willow,” he greets, and steps over the threshold.
“Hi,” I whisper, my lips trembling.
“I’m sorry about Ashton.” He frowns, and I nod. I’m not ready to have this conversation, where everyone apologizes and says sorry for your loss. I’d rather they never have to say anything. I’d rather my sister be alive. Too bad, we don’t always get what we want.