by Tiffany Sala
It was hard not to recoil when he leaned over to kiss my cheek. It didn’t feel like the sort of kiss a man would offer his daughter, not that I knew anything about that… but I knew a little bit about the sort of kisses that led to a man wanting to put his mouth everywhere else as well.
“I’ll be in touch,” I told him. I had to be. I was going to find a way to get my sister out.
By the time I was walking onto campus grounds almost everyone else was walking out. Steven’s car was not in its usual parking spot. Callie’s wasn’t parked in the main student carpark, either.
It took Callie a while to answer when I called her, and she sounded frazzled. “I’m on the road, Tamara…”
“What, right this minute?”
She groaned. “Don’t you start getting clever with me.” As if I was supposed to know what she might be capable of doing.
“Sorry. Look, I just really wanted to know Steven’s address, and I figured you’d either know it or be able to ask Lucas quickly.”
Callie was silent for a moment. “Do I need to stage an intervention, Tamara?”
“What, I—”
“Look, I was there, I saw what he was doing to you. Lucas still isn’t talking to him really. It bothers me that you want to know where he lives… I can’t imagine any good reason you’d need that information.”
“Are you going to give it to me, or are you going to make me…” I tried to work out the worst possible way I could get the information. “…Are you going to make me break into the school database to get that information?”
“Jeez, woman,” said Callie. There was some muttering I couldn’t quite hear, and then she gave me Steven’s address.
It took me about an hour to get home with Ryan and then back out to Steven’s address. I hoped that wasn’t an hour in which he’d have a chance to see me coming, but I had a feeling Callie wouldn’t be about to tell on me.
I didn’t see his car anywhere when I arrived, so I made a cautious approach to the front door. The woman who opened it after I knocked a few times gaped at me like she was seeing a ghost.
“Sorry to bother you,” I said, “is this Steven’s house?” I didn’t really need to ask, because one look at that woman’s face told me the only way I’d gotten it wrong was if Steven’s parents had thrown him out recently.
“What do you want him for?” she asked.
That seemed to answer the question of whether she was aware of his issue with J.M. “I’m not here for any trouble, I just need to talk to him.”
“He’s not home from school yet…”
“I’ll wait out here,” I told her.
She shook her head, grimacing. “No, you should come in.”
Not exactly the welcome into someone else’s home you wanted, but I had a feeling it wasn’t me specifically who was the issue here. Still, I tried to keep myself small and non-threatening. I couldn’t help noticing Steven’s house as I walked into it, but there was nothing there that reminded me of him specifically, which made it easier. It was just some strange woman’s place.
“Tea?” I couldn’t make sense of what Steven’s mother was asking at first, until she followed that first word with, “Or coffee?”
I shook my head. “No, thanks. I’m sure Steven will be here soon and then I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Well if you’re sure of anything with him, you’re doing better than most of us.” She jumped a little, like something had bitten her. “Oh, I suppose I shouldn’t be talking like this… Are you sure there’s not anything I can do for you, before he gets here? If it’s money you want, we don’t—”
“I’m not pregnant,” I blurted out, too stunned by the turn things had taken to be diplomatic. I could tell right away from her face that wasn’t where she’d been going with this, and that made it worse, because I couldn’t figure out what else there could be.
Then the door we’d just walked through came open with a bang, and Steven stepped in. His uniform was soaked with sweat and he was ducking his head a little like he was trying to sneak, but this being Steven, there was not much that was subtle about how he was moving.
He stopped when he saw me, and squinted like he couldn’t quite work out if I was real. The answering throb in my heart nearly took my breath away. I wasn’t smart enough to see through a guy’s bullshit after all. Even when he’d told me from the start what he was, once he decided he wanted me, he just let me handle the telling myself lies. And even with my life in tatters thanks to his interference, all I really wanted was to be able to go back and hide away with him and show him all over again just how bad I was at video games.
And that was why, against all logic, I was coming to him when I needed help. Somehow, what I wished he could be was far more important to my mind than all of what he really was.
“Hi, Steven.” I took the initiative before something could screw it all up. “Can we talk privately?”
He glanced at his mother, who was scowling. “Steven, you—”
“It’s not really relevant, Mum, is it?”
She gave me that same helpless look she had when I’d made the apparent mistake of telling her I was sure about Steven. “Well you tell me, right?”
Steven just shook his head. “Come to my room, Tamara.”
I hesitated too long and he stiffened. “Well if you’re going to be like that then why the fuck are you bothering me?”
It was so frustrating. He had to see it was hard for me, after what he’d done last time.
But at the same time… I’d come to him. I’d already decided I needed to get the whole story from him, not just enough for things to look bad without my being sure. Letting things stay unsaid was what had gotten me in trouble already.
And if I wanted the truth about Steven, I knew I had to be willing to follow him when he led me somewhere that seemed dangerous and frightening. Even if everybody else, including his own mum, thought what I was doing was crazy. It was time to stop fighting it, stop fighting him.
“Lead the way,” I told him. The face he showed me then was even more frightening, because it reminded me of the way he’d looked at me when we were together at Ashleigh’s place. Surely there was no way I could let myself get tangled up like that with him again.
But I wanted to. I wondered if it was inevitable, even. And that scared me more than anything ever had before.
He gestured towards a door. “Steven,” his mum spoke up again.
“Please,” he said, “just give us a moment, okay? This is important. I’m sure she can scream if she needs your help.”
Along with him, I slumped a little in relief when she nodded and let us past.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Steven
“She thinks you’re going to do… what you did to that other girl, doesn’t she?” I could see in the slightly twisted reflection from a mirror hung up in our hallway that Tamara was keeping her head down, but her mind was definitely going.
My mind was going, too. I would never have expected her to come to my house. She had plenty of courage, but I’d been pretty rough on her. I knew she was good at hiding things, but at the moment she seemed less scared than I felt, bringing her into a space where she was unable to get away from me. I knew, and Mum probably knew, that I could keep her from screaming if I really needed to. Keep her from escaping until I was ready.
I also knew Mum was too scared to interfere right now. By the time anyone did anything, it would be too damn late for Tamara.
I tried to remind myself this was not the same as the situation with Julia. Tamara was coming into my space of her own free will—and she seemed to have a plan.
“Yes,” I said. I let her step through the doorway to my room ahead of me, and then I closed the door behind us. “She has to be thinking about that right now.”
Tamara was shaking a little as I turned to face her, but she continued. “What I need to know is, how were you suddenly so certain that—that he was… What did you find out?”
This was the only chance I
would get to protect her and Para. I looked her directly in the eyes, trying not to feel the way they widened like a kick in the nuts. If only I could just be a regular asshole, who could hold her and touch her and be alone with her the way I wanted.
“I realised I know who your sister is. I’ve known her for years, I play a game with her online. So I know…” I could already see from her face that this would be exactly as bad as I’d expected. “She told me some things, once. So I know what that fucker is really like.”
Her face suddenly flushed pink. “You know Jess? Did you—Is she—”
When I realised what she was asking, I wanted to turn away and throw up. “No, I didn’t—She’s a fucking kid, Tamara. I’ve never been in the same room as her, I never touched her. I didn’t even know her fucking real name until this moment.” In the real world, Para was a kid called Jess, who might even look a bit like a girl I really fucking liked, but couldn’t have without fucking her up. I could hardly believe it.
“Okay,” Tamara said. Her voice was gentle. It made me hot hearing her talk like that, like a different sort of animal to usual. It was like the sweat in my pits was going to boil right off my body. “What did she tell you?”
I shook my head. I was clear on this, at least. “She told me what she told me in confidence. If she wants you to know the details, she’ll tell you.”
Tamara nodded. She started looking around my room, acting like she was just a bit curious, no big deal… but I could tell she was just afraid to ask all she needed to. So I tried not to focus on how fucking embarrassing it was to have a girl in my room when my bed was an absolute nest and I had dirty clothes chucked everywhere. Wasn’t like she was going to remember much about me when all of this sank in.
“What I think I can tell you? What I should tell you?” I had to think about that a bit myself. “The really fucked-up shit isn’t happening on a regular basis. Like it happened, and I think he knows he needs to knock it off, that he’ll get in trouble… but I don’t think he will forever. I think at the moment he’s trying to break her down, convince her she’s got no choice but to stick with him for the long haul. If she’s an adult it’s fucked-up but she’s consenting, right?”
She just wilted, collapsing onto my mess of a bed and barely even making it. “I tried to get her to expose him, to come with me. She didn’t think I’d be able to protect her… and the thing is, I feel like she might be right.”
“You actually met her already.” Even after my last conversation with Para, it hadn’t really come together for me as a possibility yet.
“He brought her out with him. I think he knew she would get my guard down.”
I wanted to ask her so many questions about Para—I didn’t even know what she fucking looked like—but it had to wait.
“I always promised her I wouldn’t try to butt into her life—like I didn’t know where she lived anyway, but she said she had it under control and I just had to trust her. Now…”
“Please…” Tamara made a very cute frustrated noise. “I don’t even know what I’m asking for. I…”
“You know I’m capable of doing very bad things,” I said, “and you’re hoping I’ll have one more in me right now.”
“I know what you’re capable of,” Tamara agreed. “But…” She looked away, just for a second, then brought her eyes firmly back to mine. “I’m just wondering if maybe what I missed is how far you need to be pushed.”
This was it. I’d blown her off once before, but she was giving me another chance to account for myself.
I was fucking terrified, but I also knew how much courage it had taken her to do this. It deserved a show of balls in return.
One thing I knew: I wasn’t going to be able to do it standing up. I moved over to my bed and made the best effort of straightening part of it out I could before gesturing her to sit a little closer to me. Now she’d recovered from her initial shock she was perched dainty on the edge, back straight. I loved that little queen attitude about her. I loved the thought of everything I could do to her to leave that attitude in tatters.
If anyone else tried to fuck with her like that, I’d destroy them. If fucking Brad Chalmers had done anything to her that had made her realise what he was about, I’d…
I couldn’t think about that either right now. What happened immediately following had to be on Tamara’s terms: I had to give her what she needed so I could help her. And even if I was the wrong damn asshole to be doing this, I was going to do it.
I couldn’t help saying a bit of what was on my mind, though. “Brave little girl, stepping into the monster’s den…” When I put my hand over hers, I felt her fingers quiver. “Just walks right in like she’s going to ask for a cup of tea.”
“Your mother did offer me a drink,” Tamara said. “I don’t think I can choke anything down until I feel like I know what I’m going to do.”
Come to think of it, even though I was parched after my run I didn’t know if I could get anything down my throat right now. “Well… I’m the one who can do something about this, right?”
I picked up her hand entirely and pulled it into my lap. She stared wide-eyed, but didn’t pull away. “Okay. Listen.”
“I was a fucking idiot when I met Julia,” I told her. “I couldn’t get over this really pretty girl being into me and not Lucas. I don’t even know how she was at that party, she was talking a lot about her cousin that night so maybe she tagged along, or maybe she just heard it was going on and walked in. It was just around the corner from her house, but nobody there seemed to know who she was. She was a real mystery, you know? I was sunk right away.”
I couldn’t look at Tamara when I was talking, but I took a peek while I tried to figure out what to say next. I’d wondered if she would be feeling jealous, hearing me talk this way about another girl, but her frown was more curious. It was like she was trying to make sense of all the details—and that put it back in my mind, no matter what terrible shit had happened in her past, she wasn’t the same as the cynical, smug girls in my usual circle of friends, the girls that usually went to those parties. She was nothing like Julia, but she was her own thing entirely.
“I don’t think Luc was too interested in her, he usually likes a girl he thinks he can get one over, so he found another ride home when I went off with her, probably didn’t think too much about it after that. Probably assumed we had a nice time and I never saw her again… but she asked for my number, said she’d call. So long as I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut and not brag to my stupid friends about her—she really said it something like that, no joke. She said she’d know if I did, so I shouldn’t fuck around with her. So I thought even then she was a bit crazy, but… in a good way, you know?”
Tamara exhaled and leaned back a little like she’d just completed some really difficult puzzle.
“It took me a while to figure it out, but suddenly I was in this relationship with a girl who might as well be a ghost as far as everyone else in my life knew. I wasn’t allowed to even mention her name to my parents. She wouldn’t take me to meet hers. Sometimes I’d head over to her house—I figured out where it was, though she wouldn’t tell me—and I’d look through the gates up the driveway. Where she lived, it was a fucking mansion, like you’ve never seen anything like this shit.”
“Like Ashleigh’s house?”
I didn’t want to embarrass her by laughing, but I couldn’t completely hold it in. “Oh, Ashleigh wishes she had a house like this. Julia’s parents were fucking millionaires ten times over, I don’t know what they did and I think I’m happy not knowing because nobody gets a place that nice by playing nice. That’s something I learned from her too. People who have a lot of money, power, stuff… they’re just not good people. No matter what they do or don’t do to get that money.”
She fired up, like I’d mostly expected her to. “It’s funny hearing you say that when your best friend is someone like Lucas Starling… and those other guys? Mic? Axel? They’re not poor either.”
It was ridiculous, how much I loved her firing up on me like that, calling me out. I loved that we were still having any sort of a conversation… but, of course, then I remembered it was all about to go wrong.
I couldn’t resist explaining myself to her, though. “Yeah, and they’re not good guys. I’m not a hypocrite, Tamara. Lots of other things, sure… but I see shit through. If I believe in something, I believe in it all the way. I know I’m not a ‘good guy’ either… but at least if I’m around people like that, I can get other things that matter. I can start to mean something.”
Tamara grimaced. “I’m not sure that anything that matters in that way is worth having.”
“Maybe not. But when you’re not shit your whole life you start to want…” She might take what I was about to say badly, but was there really much difference between her starting to hate me for offending her, or because she realised I was a genuine menace? “You’re kind of on that end of things too, aren’t you? Don’t you feel it?”
She shook her head. “Callie does.” The least fucking insightful observation ever. “I mean, not to say she and Lucas aren’t real or anything, I think they’ve always had something since way back. But Callie knows Lucas is going places, and that matters to her.”
“Julia is the same, in her own way,” I said. “I mean, she has her own money, piles of it, she doesn’t need any man to step in and throw his card at her problems.” Tamara’s face said she didn’t appreciate my suggesting Callie needed that… well, strange as it was, she might be right about that. It was funny how she’d come all this way from lurking around a corner waiting to jump in where not asked. “But she always had this attitude like she was expecting anyone who was with her to reach certain levels before they could have everything: the public relationship, the—”
I shouldn’t care, and I had no reason to think she really cared, but now it came down to it I didn’t actually want to go into the details with her. “Well, there were a lot of things where she said the situation could be very different if I could just get myself together. Pull myself up to the standard of other men she could attract with all her fucking money.”