“Oh,” I murmured, slumping back into my seat. Shit.
Her mom had figured out what was going on between the two of us? We weren’t even sure what was going on between the two of us. Claire had wanted to talk, and it wasn’t like I was putting it off or anything, but I wasn’t going to be the one to start that conversation, because I was still worried about how it would go.
Especially if she decided to start it after this talk with her mom. She would definitely say we have to stop again, and I wasn’t ready.
“Well, since we don’t have anything else to do here, would you like to leave?” I asked to distract her.
She met my gaze again, slightly frowning. “Should we really leave just like that? We don’t have to go inside, but we could at least check on how he’s doing, right? Or find a nurse or doctor and they could tell us what happened after we left the room this morning.”
“If it’s all right with you, I would rather not,” I said honestly.
Claire’s gaze on me turned sad, and it was too much for me for a moment, so I looked away. But I looked back, because I needed a distraction for her, to cheer her up.
“If anything really important happens, your mom wouldn’t just keep it from us, right? We both at least trust that much, right?”
She was reluctant, but she nodded.
“Then we can leave for now. We can come back tomorrow or some other time. If you’re not up for it, you could let me drive?”
“Okay,” she murmured, pulling the keys out of her purse and handing them over to me.
We left the cafeteria and worked our way through the hospital corridors to get to the elevator. Claire was silent the whole time, and I kept glancing at her. I wasn’t usually against the silences between us, but when she had such a droopy expression on her face, it worried me what could be going through her head.
She had been trying to look for work through the internet, and as far as I knew, she hadn't had much luck yet. I thought it was still too soon for her to be getting depressed over that, but I tried not to let her think too much on it, just in case. I already knew Claire was a strong woman, mentally, but a lot of worry could get to anybody, and Claire certainly had a lot to worry about.
The elevator doors closed with us inside, alone, and she just stared at the closed doors with a dazed expression on her face.
“Things will work themselves out, Claire,” I murmured, moving closer to hug her from behind. She didn’t try to move away from me, and that relaxed me greatly. “I know everything is pretty up in the air right now, but it’s not all bad, right? Everything will be fine.”
I said the words, but immediately after, I frowned at my expression. The inside of the elevator was reflective and I could see a perfect image of myself. I looked like I was trying to convince myself of those words, more than I was trying to convince Claire. Then again, I did have quite a lot to lose if things didn’t go well.
“You don’t need to be so worried,” Claire said, looking at my reflection with a small smile. She had clearly noticed.
She didn’t look like she believed a word I’d said, though.
“Why don’t I take you out for ice cream?” I said, a brilliant idea occurring to me. I pulled my arms from her and held her by the shoulders, turning her around so she could face me. “It always made you feel better when you were younger, right?”
She had driven me to the hospital several times, and when I had nothing to do in the car, I usually looked around outside. I’d seen an ice cream parlor several times on our way. I’d actually thought of stopping by there before, so this worked out just fine for everybody.
Claire looked at me with a surprised expression, finally waking up out of her daze.
“How did you know?” she asked, sounding startled.
“Hmm,” I murmured, looking to the side with a frown. “You know, I’m not really sure where I heard it from, but I definitely heard it from somewhere. Probably one of our parents mentioned it at some point and I just remembered. Would you like to go?”
The look she gave me was inscrutable, and I frowned back at her, because why the look? Did I say something wrong without realizing? But then she was suddenly smiling at me, and I was left stumped as to why.
She pulled my hands from my shoulders, keeping one of them held in her own, as she turned us to face the elevator doors.
“Sure,” she said. “I’d like to go for ice cream. Only if you’re buying, though.”
My jaw dropped in disbelief. “No way, Claire. You know I’m not earning a salary, I didn’t even check how much I still had on my damn card. I know how much you love ice cream so I don’t know if my funds can take it.”
She snorted, squeezing my hand. “Don’t talk as if I’m going to gorge myself on the stuff. Besides, you’ve actually been behaving with your money, so you should have enough left over. Besides, more should be going into your account soon.”
Right. I remembered she told me the account would get topped up at the end of each month.
I had spent a month out of prison.
Somehow, in that time, I hadn’t done anything to get me thrown back in.
It felt like a fucking miracle.
“You know what, you’re right,” I said, suddenly full of confidence. “I’ve actually been behaving myself, so we can both relax for a bit. Let’s get lots of ice cream to take home with us.”
Claire chuckled. “Don’t get so ahead of yourself, mister. Wasting all your funds on ice cream would be pretty shameful compared to anything else you could have wasted it on.”
I smiled, not minding the jab because at least she had laughed, even if it was something small. Now that I thought about it, Claire smiled plenty, but when was the last time she actually laughed? We were all trying to put on strong fronts, but it was clearly only that, a front. No matter how happy we all were with things going well with Dad’s treatments, we all still held worried of the future ahead.
Please don’t let anything bad happen, I pleaded in my mind.
If things could just keep progressing the way they were, we would all be a bit less shy about really feeling happy. About believing that things really were okay, because at the moment, we were all pretty cautious.
Even if I was essentially lying to myself, I wasn’t going to go looking for answers if no one was going to just come out and tell me. I didn’t think they would keep it hidden if anything was really wrong, but I wanted to feel for just a bit longer that Dad was going to be okay.
Claire and I left the hospital and headed for her car. I pulled my arm from her hand to wrap it around her shoulder, holding onto her tightly. She wrapped her own arm around my waist, holding me just as tightly, and we went to have our ice cream.
Who knew what the future would bring, but for once in my fucking life it wasn`t so fucking dark. It started to become clearer and that made me feel as if everything was going to be alright.
Chapter Twenty-six
Claire
I let out a groan of frustration as I threw myself back into the couch. I was at home in my living room, with my laptop open in front of me on the low coffee table. I’d been looking online for jobs, and a while back I found a good lead, and applied. I just got back a reply.
It was a bit soon to be getting a reply. If it took a couple weeks to a month, I would feel better about my chances of getting the job. When I saw I’d gotten a reply already, I knew it was bad before I opened it, and sure enough, it was a rejection.
“Fuck,” I muttered to myself. “What am I going to do?”
It was a bit early to be getting too panicked over this, but I couldn’t not worry about it, either. I’d gotten my paycheck for my last month of work at the company. I didn’t miss how I didn’t get any commission out of the job I had been working on with Simon, even though I’d done considerable work on it. I at least got paid for all the overtime I’d pulled. I couldn’t go back there and complain or they’d just slap me with a lawsuit.
I did have some savings, so it wasn
’t like I was going to be immediately bankrupt, but the longer it took for me to find a new job, the worse it would be for me. I bought my apartment at the right time, and got a good deal for it. I’d been paying it off by not overspending for the last four years, so the money I had in savings was only so much. I could keep feeding Rogue and myself for a while, so it wasn’t an immediate problem, but it made me antsy not to have work. Not to mention, there were plenty of other bills to take care of each month. I gave it a few months before it became a real strain.
That’s only an estimate, though. Of course it’s an immediate problem, if I’m not careful, Rogue and I might end up going hungry before too long.
There was always Mom. I knew she wouldn’t mind helping us with funds if we really needed it, but I didn’t feel right about it. Especially when she still had Richard to worry about. Insurance was covering for his treatments, but money hadn't been coming in since she didn’t work, and it kept being used up since Richard stopped working.
“Things…are looking bad,” I muttered to myself, staring at my ceiling.
I blinked, then rolled my head on the couch to look at the table. My phone lay there next to the computer. I thought about reaching for it, but didn’t have anyone to call. Rogue was in his room, and Mom didn’t want to speak to me. And, I obviously didn’t have friends. I was trying to save face about the problems I was facing, but there was no one to do it for, so I couldn’t even pretend to have any sort of confidence.
When was the last time we visited Richard? A week ago? Two?
Something was going on, and Mom was keeping quiet about it. Every time I called, she refused to allow us to go and visit Richard. Of course, it wasn’t like we needed her permission or anything. Especially Rogue, because he was the man’s son in the first place. But we were all going along with what she wanted, even though it didn’t make much sense.
As I stared at it, my phone started to ring and I scrambled for it, almost dropping it onto the floor by accident. I answered quickly and put it to my ear.
“Hello?” I said breathlessly. I listened in anticipation, only for it to die quickly as I cut off the call. “Fucking telemarketer,” I growled in frustration, tossing myself back onto the couch.
I’d thought it was a reply, but it was just another disappointment.
Then I heard a door open up in the apartment, and I froze, then raised my head up to look over the back of the couch.
Rogue had come out of his room at last. He was in an old pair of cotton track pants and a t-shirt, his hair sticking up in all directions as he scratched his fingers through it. He’d obviously just pulled himself from bed, and I wondered if he’d been sleeping all this time.
“Hey,” I called tentatively.
He glanced over at me, though I wondered if he was even looking at me. His lips quirked up in a tiny smile, then he looked away as he walked into the kitchen.
“Hey, Claire,” he called behind him, his voice listless. “What do you want to have for lunch?”
“Whatever’s available,” I said cautiously, getting up to go join him in the kitchen. “Food stock in the house has gotten really low, so I’ll be heading out to the supermarket in the next few days, maybe.”
Rogue hummed, but didn’t say a thing. It was sort of expected, though.
Since Mom started refusing to let us see Richard, it felt to me as if Rogue was withdrawing into himself. When I first got out of work, he was almost ecstatic, even though he tried to hide it. He spent every day in my room with me when we were at home, and we slept together every night.
At some point, though, he’d started going to his own room and not coming out, and besides calling him out to cook, nothing I said would catch his attention. It wasn’t like I didn’t know how to cook myself, I’d been living alone for a while, so of course I knew how to look after myself, but if it got him out of his room, then I was going to give it to him.
“Have you talked to your mom yet?” Rogue asked, standing at the counter, cutting up some ingredients.
“Um, no,” I murmured.
Even when I called, she didn’t pick up. I knew phones weren’t allowed at the hospital, so that was a no-brainer. But when I called her early in the morning, or late at night, or at lunch, whenever I called, she didn’t seem to have time. Sometimes I got lucky, sometimes not, so besides communicating via text that took ages for her to reply, we hadn't actually talked in some time.
“Oh,” Rogue said, then kept quiet.
Time passed like that, with him cooking, and me watching him cook. He obviously didn’t want to talk, and I didn’t know how to converse with this cold, reserved side of him, so the air between us often got awkward just like this lately.
I would think of something to say, and he would give a short reply, then we’d be quiet for a length of time before one of us thought of something to say. Or, no one thought of anything, and he finished cooking.
Once he’d finished cooking, Rogue served himself, then left to go back to his room for me to serve my own food. This time, when he was about to leave the kitchen, I spoke up.
“Why don’t we eat together at the dining table today?” I asked. “I hope you don’t mind keeping me company?”
My voice was hopeful, but I didn’t actually think he would say yes. He stopped long enough to look at me, a distracted smile on his face.
“It’s fine. I’d like to be alone for a while.”
Then he took his food and left.
I almost cursed behind him, but decided to keep my mouth shut.
Shit.
Things were falling apart rather quickly. A little too quickly.
With a sigh, I went and served my own plate. If there was one thing I couldn’t complain about, it was the fact that Rogue really was a good cook. Even with how distracted he looked lately, the flavor of anything he made never fell flat. I kind of envied him for that, because when I wasn’t paying enough attention when I cooked, I could make a mess. Sometimes, even when paying full attention, I couldn’t get the same results.
I just wished he wasn’t still ignoring me.
I ate alone at my dining table, and it reminded me so much of when I was still living on my own. It made me feel like a sad kind of person, to not even have friends. There had been people I could still call before, but they were now my former work colleagues. They would all still be at work at this time on a weekday, and they wouldn’t associate with me now, anyway, after I’d left work. I’d spent too much time on work to build any other longstanding relationships. Even the friends I’d had back in high school, then college, had all moved on and I never talked to them after graduation.
There was Rogue, but he was clearly keeping his feelings to himself. Even when I tried to have a conversation between us, he wouldn’t take the bait.
It was a family of four, down to three with Richard in the hospital, but no one was talking to each other about what was really going on.
Thinking it through, it was just like when I was a kid, when Dad was still around and everything wasn’t okay, and it was easy to tell because the atmosphere at home was just too fake. We all said nothing, then it was just me and Mom, and we moved on like nothing had happened at all.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Rogue
We woke up in the middle of the night or it could have been the early hours of the morning. Who knew? Claire had nothing in her apartment to tell the time, or even to make it comforting. So, I was at a complete loss, with an aching cock and feeling nauseous from not eating. The thumping on the door that woke us up became louder. It scared me so fucking much. Maybe Kathleen had found out where Claire lived and decided to send some goons over. Shit, why the fuck I hooked up with her at times was beyond my comprehension. She was nothing like the women I normally hooked up with. At least they were a bit polished. Kathleen could easily have passed for a badly dressed drag queen.
I shook my head at the idea of her knowing where Claire lived or sending guys to beat me up. Then, I thought that may
be something I had done in the past had come back to haunt me and that I had put Claire in danger.
Shit, Claire.
The stepsister that I had always thought was so uptight was completely different to what I had expected. She had completely surrendered herself to me in the bedroom. Her bedroom. I felt like I didn’t know her at all.
I felt her slip from underneath the covers. She didn’t say a word as she darted into the bathroom. I put on the light, and sure enough she came out in a bathrobe and scratched her head. Her hair was all over the place. She tried to straighten it and tied it up with a band. She walked as if she was in a trance. I should have said something, but the noise from the door was too damn loud.
Whoever was thumping on the door was about to find out what Claire had been up to. I was surprised she went out there naked in a robe. Or maybe she was expecting someone? I just knew that I had to get out of her room and try and at least look decent.
“Claire, you there?” a voice said as she opened the door. The room was dark, and the person might not have seen clearly because Claire was semi-hiding behind the door.
I recognized that voice. It was Hannah’s. I saw Claire wave her hand and tell her to come in.
“I tried calling you. Why didn’t you answer?” Hannah asked hysterically as she paced up and down in front of the door.
Claire never said a word as she walked up to the door and shut it. She turned and put the light on. Her eyes were half open. I put on my shirt as I walked out of the bedroom. I was wondering what all the commotion was about, and foremost, why wasn’t she with Dad?
I didn’t get to ask that question because the next thing that came out of Hannah’s mouth was, “Richard’s dead.” She wailed it so loudly that neither Claire nor I had to ask her what she had said.
I should have known that was the problem. The tone of her voice. The way she was running around the place like a crazy person. Questions like, was it the cancer that killed him or something else?
These are the things that I should have said.
Bad Apple_A Stepbrother Romance Page 12