It was the indecision of the last few weeks that was hardest to handle. Now, I knew what I was facing, and I had a plan of attack. It wouldn’t make the things that lie ahead any less difficult, but at least I had a direction and I’d made a choice.
“No, we wouldn’t want that to happen.” I forced a smile and kissed my mother on her forehead. She looked happy. Tired, but happy. I savored this moment, knowing that it was going to get a lot worse before it got any better.
I left them alone in the living room and made my way upstairs. The good thing about having Eva back in her chair was that she wouldn’t be able to move up and down the stairs without being heard.
I bypassed my room and slipped into hers. She hardly spent any time in this room a few months ago, but these days she was here more and more. If there was any hard evidence of what she was up to or her state of mind, it would be in here. I looked around the room for a moment. It looked like a model from a furniture store. Everything in its place. Not too many personal effects, but just enough to tell you who lives there. Her certificates and awards were hung neatly, as were a few cute pictures from days gone by. It would have been easy to think that the girl who lived here was happy and vibrant.
I closed my eyes and forced myself to look at it differently. If I were an angry, insecure girl, where would I hide my secrets? What secrets would I be hiding?
I opened random drawers and discovered two things. First, there were a thousand shades of pink and Eva owned a lip gloss in every one of them. And second, that even her drawers were meticulously maintained. There was no junk drawer, nowhere where she would throw whatever was at the bottom of her purse or in her pockets at the end of the day. I realized why her façade was so thorough. Even her underwear drawer was an exercise in military style order and precision.
I moved to her closet and threw open the doors. Only one thing caught my eye. A plain box sitting on the floor in the corner, pressed right against the back. I was tempted to ignore it, but ignoring things was how we got here in the first place.
It was a run of the mill shipping box; the kind you get when you order things online. I picked it up and gave it a slight shake. It wasn’t heavy, but it was obviously full.
The way the flaps were folded down told me that it had already been opened. Some part of me began to pray that the contents were a late birthday gift from our Aunt or something just as innocent. But, once again, a sense of dread built in my chest as I held the box in my hands. I sat on her bed, took a deep breath, and pulled it open.
The box was full to the brim with diuretics, laxatives, and ipecac syrup. There was nothing special about any of those things. You could buy all of them at the drug store. Mom kept a supply of ipecac in the kitchen. What shocked me was the volume.
Unless Eva had decided to open her own poison control clinic, there was no reason for her to have this much. Never mind the fact that I couldn’t wrap my head around why she would have any of this tucked away in her closet in the first place. If anything, it was proof that – once again – my sister was up to something.
I took a short video, showing the label and the box, as well as some of the half-used blister packs of laxatives. I sent the video to Anna, and then put everything back the way I found it, and left Eva’s room, gently and carefully closing the door behind me.
Like a thief in my own house, I kept my footsteps light as I made my way to my room. Once inside, I flopped down on my bed. My entire forehead was damp with the sweat of anxiety and my heart was pounding a million miles a minute in my chest. I started laughing, though there was not a damn thing in any of this to find humorous. I felt like maybe I was the one who was going mad.
My phone buzzed and I checked it out of habit.
Anna.
That killed my laughter almost immediately.
Is she eating regular meals? Is she losing weight?
Her question confused me but, the sad truth was, I didn’t have good answers for either of those questions. Most of Eva’s clothes these days were loose fitting and comfortable and I wasn’t home for most meals. I told Anna the truth and asked why it mattered. Then I waited for her reply.
She sent me two links to websites about eating disorders. One of them seemed to be pretty pro-anorexia. The other was for families of people with eating disorders. My stomach twisted into knots again as I scrolled through the pages and looked at the photos of the young girls half-starved bodies and vacant smiles.
I sent her a reply.
What do I do?
It took a few minutes for her to reply. Every second that ticked by felt like walking a mile through hell. Some part of me wanted to shift the blame for this situation to Anna. It was easier to blame her than to face the truth. The same had been true for the accident. It was easier to believe that she had been driving, and might have even wanted Eva to be hurt, than to accept the fact that some pieces of the puzzle didn’t fit.
I tried not to panic and reminded myself that if Anna hadn’t trusted me to get dirt on Eva in the first place, I would never have known. Finally, after an excruciating five minutes, my phone buzzed again. I read the message and nearly broke into tears.
Just be her brother.
Chapter 35
NOW
The video disturbed me. I knew right away what I was looking at. Once again, I began to wonder how long Eva had been that way without anybody noticing. I knew she was always picky about her food and her looks, but this was next level.
Eva was the kind of girl who had been on a low-carb diet since she was in elementary school. She didn’t chat it up like other girls, sharing diet secrets and going to spin classes, but it was always a part of her life. She brought her lunch from home more often than not. She didn’t often splurge on pizza or sodas. She didn’t pinch her arms and legs complaining about her nonexistent fat.
I’d always admired that about her. She was particular about her looks, and took way more time and energy to get dressed every morning than I’d spend in a week, but she was chilled about it. Now I was forced to wonder if she’d been this way all along. Maybe that was why the breakup with Damon hit her so hard. Despite years of working hard to be the perfect sister, daughter, student, and girlfriend, her best efforts had ended in disaster. No matter how thin, pretty, or smart she was, she still couldn’t get the things she wanted the most.
I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for her. It must have sucked to be that amazing and still so insecure. She must have felt so alone. I was beginning to understand why she was clinging to Adam so desperately.
People like me were easy to read. When I was hurt or confused it was easy to see. I shared my feelings comfortably. At least, I used to, until the whole world became my enemy. But for somebody like Eva, who worked her whole life to be the kind of girl that others would envy, who could she turn to when she needed a hug? Who would see if she was suffering? Even her mother’s unwillingness to admit that Eva had a problem must have made her feel so lonely. It was a load that she couldn’t dare to put down and couldn’t truly carry any longer.
I became more convinced that we were doing the right thing. Nobody should have to live like that. Not even Eva Randt.
Just be her brother.
That was the best advice I could give him. Maybe what she really needed right now was her “big brother”. I thought back to the day that I “caught” Adam in the infirmary with Charlene.
I’d been looking for him all day. We seemed to keep missing each other and he wasn’t responding to any of my texts or messages. Finally, I’d caught up with Eva in one of my classes.
“Hey, is Adam sick?” I’d asked.
I remember Eva looking slightly annoyed for a second but didn’t she let her smile slip. Eva was always smiling, no matter how happy she wasn’t.
“No, why?”
“I’ve been trying to catch up with him all day and he’s not replying to my messages.”
She shrugged and shook her head.
“If I run into him, I’ll tel
l him to find you, but I know he came to school today.”
Adam and Eva always came to school together. Sometimes I envied their closeness. Being an only child had its perks, but there were times when it could get lonely. Also, in a fight against your parents, you were always outnumbered unless you had a kick-ass grandmother who could pull rank.
It was in the following period that Mya came running up to me. We weren’t in the same class, but she was one of those girls who knew everybody and who everybody knew. She slipped into my lab class before the teacher arrived and grabbed my hands, her eyes wild.
“Did you break up with Adam?”
“What? No! Why?”
“Because he was walking in the hall with his arms around her like they were a new thing.”
“What?” I’d jumped up out of my seat.
“I know, right! So disrespectful! He could at least wait until school was over,” Mya had said, flinging the end of her ponytail over her shoulder and clicking her acrylic nails against the marble table top.
“WHO?”
“Oh,” she stopped short and giggled stupidly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t give you all of the details. Charlene. That tall girl. What’s her last name?” She started humming and clicking her fingers as if it would summon the right answer to her mind.
“They were hugging?”
“Girl,” she sat down and crossed her legs. “They were in the hall, arms around each other. They were booed up like it was cold outside.”
“Oh.”
Even then, I had known better than to believe everything that Mya said. She was good at telling everybody what she knew. Unfortunately, what she knew was usually not much. I also knew better than to give her any more fuel for her fire.
“I know, you’re shocked. Listen I gotta go, but I’ll find you after class. We’ll confront him together!” She’d hopped down off of the chair and slipped out of the classroom just as the bell rang.
I was distracted all during that period, wondering what had happened to Adam and why he was with Charlene. Even now I wondered why I never suspected anything to be amiss between them. If they were together, even hugging, there was a reason. I was sure of it.
At the end of the period it was Eva, not Mya who finally found me in the halls.
“Hey, I heard Adam is in the infirmary,” she’s said.
“The infirmary? Is he okay?”
“I don’t know, could you go and check on him for me. Just text me and let me know what’s going on.” Looking back on it, she’d probably set the whole thing up. But at that time, I was so trusting. I trusted Adam absolutely and I never even suspected that behind Eva’s eternal smile was an angry, insecure, lonely girl trying her best to get her brother back.
At the time, I only thought about getting to Adam and making sure he was okay. I ran through the halls and burst into the infirmary dramatically. There I saw a shirtless Adam standing over Charlene who had the top buttons missing from her shirt. Her skirt was bundled up around her thighs and her face flushed, emphasizing the sheen of sweat on her brow.
“Are you okay?”
Adam looked at me like I was speaking Japanese.
“Are you guys okay?”
Charlene gasped and curled into herself. All of the blood drained from her face as a painful spasm ripped through her body and she bit her bottom lip to keep from crying out.
“I called for the nurse, but nobody seems to be able to find her,” Adam said. His eyes were wide with fear as he watched her writhe in pain. “Maybe we should call her mom.”
“You stay here, I’ll go and get some help. She looks like she needs an ambulance.”
I spun around and ran out of the infirmary, nearly knocking over two freshmen as I raced to the front office. Twenty minutes later, I watched as paramedics loaded Charlene into the back of the ambulance.
“What happened to your shirt?” I pinched Adam’s side.
“She threw up on it,” he said.
“Oh.”
“Were you worried about me?”
I wrapped my arms around his waist and held onto him.
“I heard you were in the infirmary and I haven’t been able to get in touch with you all day. What else was I supposed to think?”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and showed it to me. The screen was smashed.
“I don’t think they have a repair kit for that here,” I teased.
“No, they definitely do not.”
We stood there, holding each other as the ambulance pulled away from the school and the administrators worked to get the small crowd of students that had stopped to watch back into the building.
“Thank you for coming to look for me.”
“Of course!”
“And thank you for trusting me!”
“Hmm?”
He leaned down and kissed my forehead.
“Not everybody would’ve been so cool about finding their boyfriend in a room alone with a half-naked girl.”
“She wasn’t half naked. She was clearly sick, and you wouldn’t do that to me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
He’d tilted my chin up and kissed my lips.
“How sure?”
“Absolutely positive.” I’d pressed myself against him and allowed him to walk me back into the building without another thought. His hands slipped beneath my shirt and his fingertips traced invisible circles on my skin.
My body got hot just recalling the memory. Just last night I got a reminder of what it felt like to be touched by him, but even then, it wasn’t enough. Which is why, in between all of what was going on, it felt like I was spending my free time chasing away memories of his lips on my skin and the smell of his cologne on my body.
“Anna, your friend is here!” There was no reason to guess who my mother was talking about. I only had one friend, and it seemed like he had an open invitation to dinner.
I came out to greet Damon as he took off his shoes at the door. He looked like he’d stopped at home to shower before he came over.
“You’re a little early, Damon. Just give me a few minutes and we can all sit down to eat.” My mother smiled at him the way most adults smile at little kids. He nodded and thanked her like a true gentleman before moving into the living room and plopping himself at the end of the sofa.
“You’re mighty comfortable,” I grumbled, sitting next to him.
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“As a matter of fact, no. You should be weirded out by my mom’s cheerfulness.”
He chuckled. “Why should that make me feel weird?”
“Because it means she doesn’t consider you a threat. That woman in there knows that there is no way in hell that you would impregnate her daughter, so she’s happy to see you,” I said.
He leaned over and looked me in the eye.
“And why would she think something like that?”
I shrugged.
“Other than Adam, she’s never seen me with any other guys. And since our relationship is tragically platonic, she thinks I’m safe.”
“Oh. You told her I was gay,” he said with a shrug.
“No! I didn’t say any such thing.”
“Okay, then you didn’t correct her when she implied that I was gay.”
I took a deep breath and rested my head on his shoulder.
“Busted.”
“That must have been weighing on you, Anna. It’s cool, though.”
“It’s just that you’re so good looking, it’s hard to convince her that you aren’t trying to get into my pants.”
“What if you’re both wrong? What if I’m dying to get into your pants?”
“Stop joking,” I said feebly.
“I’m not joking.” He grabbed my wrist and pressed my hand against his crotch. He was hard and knowing that made my own body respond with frightening speed and intensity. I jerked away from him, my eyes wide in disbelief.
“Okay, I believe you,” I said, swallowing h
ard. The hard, hot, length of his cock against my hand was like a siren. All of the memories I’d buried with my memories of Adam came back hard and fast and I could feel my face get hot. But Adam and I… we weren’t going to happen again. Not for real. As great as last night was, it was also a reminder that not moving on hurt like hell.
Damon moved closer, brushing his nose against mine. “We have to make it through dinner,” he said, “and then we get the hell out of here.”
I scooted down to the other end of the sofa and turned the television up. I stared at the screen without really seeing anything. My mind was racing, and my body was on fire. Was I really going to have sex with Damon?
Agreed, he was good looking. And he was funny, charming, and at least a little physically attracted to me. I wasn’t the kind of girl who had sex with just anyone. I needed more. But, I couldn’t deny that we’d become good friends lately. Maybe that was enough to build something more. The best lovers were usually friends first, right? And Adam and I… Being with him was he only thing I’d ever wanted. And last night…last night was a reminder of just how true that was. But still, there was no way we could truly repair what we’d broken. Sex changes things. I know for a fact that I felt even closer to Adam once we’d gone all the way. Maybe the same could happen with Damon. Maybe. And if not…I could deal with the ‘if not’ when I needed to.
“Okay, dinner is ready!” Mom’s voice interrupted my thoughts.
Damon and I stood up and walked into the dining room like inmates marching to morning roll call. Mom’s cooking wasn’t as disgusting as it could’ve been. She was clearly putting in more effort, trying to give Damon a reason to continue to come and hang out with her hugely unpopular daughter.
We ate dinner like we’d been starved for months, only catching a breath or two between our meal. This was just the beginning of the night, but somehow, it felt like if I didn’t hurry, the day would rush right away from me.
Filthy Pride: Dark Bully Romance Page 22