“I’m so glad we no longer live in the same house,” I muttered, shooting my best scowl his way. Slade feigned that he was hurt. “You’re an even bigger dick than you were when you were eighteen. A few hours in close quarters with you is quite enough.”
Slade smirked. “Can’t control yourself, huh?” He balled up the paper from his straw and tossed it straight into my ginger ale cup, then laughed. “Yeah, I have that effect on women. You’re just gonna have to get used to it, sweetheart.”
“Please don’t call me that,” I groused, fishing the paper ball out of my cup with my nails. By the time I’d removed it, he’d balled up the wrapper for his crackers and tossed that at me, too. This time, it went straight down the front of my shirt.
“Want me to get that?” Slade asked, leaning closer over the empty seat between us. “Sweetheart?”
He reached over and I slapped his hand. “Asshole!”
Slade grabbed my fingers and looked into my eyes. The heat of his palm was scorching, and when his fingertips brushed my knuckles, my pulse pounded so loud in my ears I could barely hear what he was saying.
“You didn’t say no.”
I wrinkled my nose as his free hand darted past the neckline of my blouse, delving into my cleavage to pluck the wrapper from its depths. I let out a startled shriek and Slade laughed, settling back into his seat while everyone else stared at me as if I’d grown a second head. I hate you, I thought.
“They’re a little bigger than I remember,” Slade said. “Only a little, though.”
The tops of my breasts still tingled from his touch. I turned again to the window, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing the conflict and embarrassment on my face. “Go away.”
“ ‘Go away’? Holy shit, sis. Is that the best you’ve got?”
“I don’t want to do this with you right now,” I gritted, buttoning one more button on my blouse. “Or ever, actually. We’re not kids anymore, Slade. Can you at least pretend to be an adult?”
“If you didn’t want to do this, then you shouldn’t have dragged my ass onto a plane,” Slade countered, leaning his chin on his hand. “Look before you leap, you know?”
I closed my eyes, shaking my head. “Jesus Christ, I can’t wait to be rid of you in a few hours.”
“Rid of me?” He cocked a brow. “Who said anything about you getting rid of me, sweetheart?” When I didn’t reply, he grinned. “Wait a minute. You didn’t actually think you were just gonna drop me off at Dad and Evelyn’s door and let me do all the legwork myself, did you? Are you insane? No way in hell I’d stay with them, even if they wanted me to. Which I’m pretty damn sure they don’t, considering our… history.”
My blood froze in my veins. Shit. Slade had a point, and one I hadn’t thought all the way through. Obviously our parents wouldn’t want him in their house, even if I wasn’t there for him to screw, and obviously I didn’t even want them to know he was here—it was better for everyone this way. Not that I was planning on screwing Slade, even if I was there. Shit. He had me so flustered…
“So you’ll get a hotel,” I said, folding my arms to keep as much of my body away from Slade’s lascivious, predatory gaze as I could. “You’re practically Dr. House, M.D., right? You can afford it.”
Slade thought about it for a minute, then grinned. “Yeah. You know what? I think a hotel will suit me just fine. Now all I have to do is get Mandy’s number. Thanks, sis.” He winked at me. “For a minute there, I thought I was going to have to stay with you.”
I let that sink in for a minute. A hotel was the reasonable solution. The perfect solution, really. With Slade the way he was, I didn’t want to spend a single minute in his company that I didn’t have to. But Slade being the way he was also meant that in a hotel room, left to his own devices, he’d probably spend the next several days fucking everything with a pussy and a pulse instead of looking for Kellan—who honestly, he didn’t seem all that concerned about.
Slade needed supervision. From someone responsible. Someone who wouldn’t shoot him on sight after having known him for any length of time, if anyone like that even existed.
Shit. It was going to have to be me.
“Forget the hotel,” I said, waving my hand dismissively. “You’ll stay with me. Which also means you can forget about getting Mandy’s number and focus on what you’re flying into town for, which is to find Kellan and get him back on the straight and narrow.”
Slade leaned back in his seat, that unflappable smile still glued to his face. “Inviting me back to your apartment, huh? I knew you still wanted me.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath. Maybe that was true, in regards to some mostly-repressed part of me, but I could control myself—I hoped. There was too much on the line for me not to.
Dammit, Kellan, I thought, looking down over the distant earth. Where are you?
~ SIX ~
Slade
“I got a call from a friend of mine,” Iris said when we finally managed to get to her place after the long drive from the airport. I’d gotten a rental and followed her to her apartment—no way was I going to be stuck without a way to get around in this shitty town. “She said that she saw Kellan over at an old foreclosure down by Baxter Street in Hawthorne Grove.”
“There are probably a lot of foreclosed houses over there,” I said snidely, setting my bag down by her couch. “Hawthorne Grove is like this town’s shitty version of the projects. What the hell was your friend doing in that part of town, anyway? Did she at least give you an address?”
Iris shot me a glare, apparently not at all enjoying my sarcastic tone. I’d been around Hawthorne Grove when I was younger, and it was no wonder Kellan had gone there on his bender. The few junkies in town all flocked to that dump, clustering inside the many abandoned and condemned houses that dotted the neighborhood, and since they were “squatters,” they couldn’t be evicted.
“She works for a realtor that was looking into picking up some of these properties. Hopefully that means someone is going to start cleaning up that part of town. But yeah, there’s an address,” she said as she pulled out her phone. “We’re going in a few minutes, once I—”
“You’re not going anywhere,” I interrupted, shaking my head. “Especially not to a place like that. Hawthorne Grove is a shit-hole, and it’s not safe. I’m going by myself.”
Iris raised her eyebrows at me. “So, now you want to be the big honorable hero?” she asked, her hands on her hips. “Well, this is new. Why the sudden change?”
“You act like I don’t have a heart or something, Iris,” I said, feigning a wound over my heart. “Come on. I may be a dick, but I’m not about to let you go somewhere dangerous.”
“Then you’re going to give me your cell phone number,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “If you get hurt and can’t call me, I’m going to be so angry, Slade.”
“Fine, whatever,” I said, handing over my phone for her to punch her number into my contacts. “Not like I can’t handle a bunch of strung-out junkies.”
“That’s not the point,” Iris shot back, handing me my phone once again. “I expect you to call me as soon as you get there. Okay?”
“Yeah, all right,” I said, laughing off her concern as I headed toward the door. I called her phone to automatically input my number into her recent call history, then hung up. “Christ, I’ve been here ten minutes and you’re already jonesing for my number.” I ignored her withering look. “Just text me the address. If everything goes well, I’ll have Kellan home before the day’s over.”
“It’s not going to be that simple, Slade,” she said softly, but I turned my back on her. She was right, obviously, but women didn’t always need to know that—especially not a girl as stubborn and pigheaded as Iris Walker.
Hawthorne Grove was every bit of the rat’s nest it had been when I had left seven years ago, maybe even worse. I couldn’t even remember how many foreclosure and condemned notices I’d passed on my way in. I felt bad f
or the people who did still live here, especially since you’d hardly ever catch a cop anywhere near their neighborhood—it was too dangerous to send officers down there on patrols. There were no kids playing out in the yards, no neighbors mowing lawns or washing cars. Anyone you did see outside were the people you usually wanted to avoid, for better or worse.
I pulled up into the cracked and uneven driveway of 204 Baxter Street around five o’clock in the afternoon, and from what I could tell from my car, the place was completely deserted. Every window was boarded up tight with a glaring red notice posted right on the peeling, white front door. It probably would have fooled the casual observer, but Iris’ friend was sure that she’d seen Kellan going inside.
Fucking junkies, I thought as I pushed open the door to my rental car and stepped out into the late afternoon sun. I could almost smell the human garbage the moment I breached the open air, drawing my lip into a sneer of disgust. How could my brother have sunk so low?
I pulled out my phone and shot Iris a quick text telling her I’d arrived. Calling felt like a little too much, like we’d already gotten close again. A text was easy, impersonal, cold. I needed to keep my distance from her, despite what my “lower brain” wanted.
I walked up the drive and over the lopsided pavers that led the way to the front door. The closer I got, however, the less convincing the house’s foreclosed status became. The notice had been taken down and stuck back on so many times that it was barely legible anymore, and the lock on the door was completely smashed in—probably from when they’d first invaded the house.
I reached for the knob, grasping the rusty metal and trying to turn it without any luck, but as I let go, the door slowly swung inward. Beyond, the hallway was almost completely black, save for the swath of light that cut through the entryway.
If I thought it had smelled bad outside, I was completely unprepared for the stench that greeted me now. Everything from the smell of human bodies all crammed into one space to the mixed scents of shit and piss all assaulted my nose all at once. My only saving grace was the fact that I had smelled a lot worse working in an emergency room for the last few years, otherwise that smell might have taken me off of my feet.
As I stepped over the threshold, I turned on my phone’s flashlight app, illuminating a path as I picked my way through the bottle-, needle-, and garbage-littered floor.
It didn’t take me long to find my first junkie, sprawled out in a corner on a ratty-looking floor mat, a loose tourniquet dangling from his upper arm. I moved past him without the sorry piece of garbage even stirring one bit. It didn’t even occur to me until that very moment that he might have been dead.
The rest of the house didn’t look much better, and the farther in I went, the worse it became. There were more and more junkies strewn across the floor and what little furniture remained in the house was soiled and stained. Disgust welled inside me as I watched two of the squatters start shooting up in a corner, closing their eyes as their drugs of choice washed over them and carried them into a heavenly stupor.
“Kellan?” I called out, scanning the bright white light of my cellphone over the sprawled out meth-heads and heroin addicts. “Kellan, are you here?”
As I cast my light around the room I began to hear groans and complaints from the prostrated junkies as they tried to cover their eyes, grumbling for me to keep it down. Naturally, I didn’t listen to a damn thing any of them said.
“Kellan! Come on, it’s Slade,” I said, hoping that would encourage him to answer. At first I didn’t get a reply, just a few more snarls and gripes—and even a few slurred curses—when someone screamed for me to shut off the light.
But then it started paying off.
“Slade?”
I almost didn’t recognize the voice, it was raw, hoarse, like he’d been gargling razor blades. I turned around, the sounds of rustling drawing my attention to the threadbare couch sitting against the far wall.
Kellan looked like he’d been through Hell and back. His face was dirty, along with the rest of him, and he looked even paler than he had when I’d left. That dark hair of his was longer, his locks matted together with dirt and sweat and God knows what else. He blinked at me for a few moments before he finally managed to pull himself up from the couch and stumble over.
“What do you want?” he asked, his bloodshot eyes narrowed at me. His lips curled into a sneer as he looked me up and down. “Well, shit. Looks like you’re doin’ pretty well for yourself. Big important doctor, right? You don’t belong here with us.”
Us. Kellan made these sad excuses for human beings sound his like family. Christ, was he that far gone?
“You need to come home,” I said, ignoring what I knew would be a dicey conversation if I let him draw me in. “Your mom and dad are worried—”
“Don’t fucking talk to me about them,” he snapped, glaring up into my face. Kellan was still shorter than me by at least four inches, but that didn’t stop him from puffing up like a pit bull ready to charge. “I’m not going back to them, not after everything that happened.”
“Kellan,” I said in an attempt to calm him down, taking a step back as he clenched his fists. His shoulders were tight, hackles raised. Over the repugnant odor of everything else in the room, I could smell trouble. “Listen, let’s just talk this out, okay?”
“Like how you talked Iris onto your dick, you fucking rapist?!”
Rapist?
What. The. Fuck.
My stomach turned at even the mention of the word. First there was a hot flash of anger, even rage. I was a lot of things—an asshole, a prick, an arrogant bastard—but there was one thing I wasn’t. I wasn’t a fucking rapist.
But then something else seeped into my bones, something much heavier and colder—dread. Is that how Iris told it? Does she think I raped her?
I felt Kellan’s knuckles colliding with my face before I even had time to register that he’d thrown the damn punch. I stumbled backward, right into another junkie, who had just gotten up to figure out what was going on. I saw stars for a moment. Holy shit. My little brother had learned how to throw a pretty killer punch.
But as I looked back over at him, I noticed that while he might have had the strength, he certainly didn’t have the balance. I regained my composure quickly and rushed Kellan, pushing him back onto the couch from which he’d gotten up. He needed to be off his feet before he hurt himself.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked, stepping back as he looked up at me, his face filled with color and his eyes wild. “I didn’t…”
Had I raped Iris? Did she really want what I’d given her? All the times she and I had fucked, the countless secret rendezvous after our parents had gone to sleep… she’d needed convincing that first time, of course, but I’d never touched her before she’d told me yes. But did she want it?
“You’re a piece of shit,” he said, spitting right in front of where I stood. “I fucking looked up to you. I wanted to be you! And after all that time, I found out all you wanted was my fucking sister! You were my hero, Slade! How could you betray me like that? Betray our family?”
“It was never my family!” I shouted, fists clenched as I felt heat rising in my face. I felt defenseless, exposed—I needed to hurt him back. “I never wanted a new mom! I wanted my old mom! But instead, my dad went and started fucking yours, in her bed! So don’t tell me about betrayal!”
“You’re fucking pathetic,” Kellan laughed, standing up from the couch once again. “I’m surprised anyone would fuck a loser like you, let alone my sister. I wasn’t able to defend her back then, but I can sure as hell do it now!”
Kellan took a swing at me again, but this time I was more than prepared. I leaned back as he threw a hard left hook at my face. I only wished I’d leaned back farther.
I felt Kellan’s knuckle connect right against my mouth, almost knocking me off balance as I tried to step backward. His fist twisted as it met my face, the impact lessened, but the rotation proved enou
gh to tear open a nasty cut on my lower lip.
Behind me I could hear more of the junkies rousing themselves, shouting for me to get the hell out. Out the corner of my eye, I caught the glint of something shiny in the one of their hands. A knife? A needle? Either way, I didn’t want to find out.
Kellan was still disoriented from whatever drugs he’d injected into his arm. As much as I could have, I decided not to press my advantage this time. His fellow addicts had all started to surround me, calling for me to leave, “or else.”
“Forget it,” I said as Kellan regained some of his bearings and readied himself to throw another punch. I wasn’t about to get into a fight with my brother, let alone with about ten other junkies hanging around to watch his back. “This is a waste of fucking time.”
“Good,” he spat, glaring at me in the dim light of the foreclosed home. “No one even wanted you back here in the first place.”
I thought of about a thousand other things to say back, to kick him where I knew he’d be hurting, but I knew that if I pushed him too hard, he’d just want to get high and make it all go away. As angry as I was, I wasn’t going to be the one responsible for him ODing.
I turned and headed back through the house, kicking garbage and bottles out of my way as I went. I wasn’t in a mood to be careful or subtle. In fact, there was only one thing that I wanted.
In situations like this, I applied a tried and true method of relieving the stress and frustration that a life in medicine could accumulate—I found someone to fuck, and that was exactly what I was going to do tonight.
The sun was already dipping down over the roofs of the houses when I slammed the door to the foreclosed crack-house hard, hoping that I’d startle what few junkies weren’t already up from their drug-induced stupors. I was mad, and I wanted—no, needed—someone to take it out on.
I pressed Iris’ contact button, listening to it ring all of once before I heard her putting the cell phone to her ear.
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