by Kay Camden
Sloane does the squished fingers pointing at her mouth sign. It’s too much to think about right now while I’m picking through memories to see if they fit my grand revelation. Aaron. Not too busy for me. Not uninterested. Just restricted by our hovering family members. Clamped down.
Aaron says, “Lunch?”
She nods.
Right, that’s what that sign means. He must know it too. “How come you never told me you know sign language?”
“You never asked. And I don’t, really. Just a little to get by.”
He makes me replace the two bandages I removed from my face so we can eat out in public without people fainting. On my way out the door, I hand Sloane my phone for her to keep up with what we’re saying. Her thanks is a smile that I look away from fast when that spot on my arm where Aaron jabbed me comes alive with warning. Don’t stare, Rex, it’s embarrassing.
We walk down the road to a diner because I’m not getting in Aaron’s car. It’s not that I don’t trust him. I just don’t want to be forcibly taken to Roanoke, and being strapped into his car is a big step in that direction. After we order, Aaron slides an envelope across the table toward Sloane, telling her, “This way you’re not reliant on this twerp for money.” She reads the words on my phone then checks inside, finds it’s a big stack of money, and tries to give it back.
“You can pay me back when you’re finished destroying my whole family,” he says to her.
Somehow she picks up on that subtle humor that no one else in my family recognizes in Aaron but me. She can’t even hear the tone of his voice and she gets it. How well do they know each other?
While we eat, Aaron explains how to order and pay for food at different types of restaurants, when to tip, how to fuel up a car, and how to drive on public roads while Sloane surfs the internet on my phone. I’m trying to pay attention to Aaron because I need the info but my dipshit brain has a big issue with Sloane sitting in the booth next to Aaron instead of me. Why that matters, I have no idea.
She abruptly straightens her back, eyeing the screen like something has surprised her. She hands my phone across the table to me and starts signing as soon as her hands are free.
“She’s sorry,” Aaron says. “Accident—something she did with the phone?”
On the screen is an open email message. I check the timestamp—just sent. She probably opened it accidentally when it popped up.
To: DruidKing
Subject: Blood Tower User Forum - Group Chat Transcript
Chat session begin.
lady_mantis: you losers ready for this?
Skulldaddy999: haven’t heard from druidking
Skulldaddy999: he’s showing offline for days
Demonbutter: dude what? is he dead?
princemagicpants: emailing him now, will email yall when he responds
Chat session has ended.
Another new email message pops in.
Yo Druidking did you get the new IP I sent? Server is set up with BT4. Where are you dude? Our stats suck without you, get the hell back.
I hit reply and type, Sorry, been dealing with some shit. No access to my gaming machine right now and prob gonna be a while. Tell lady and the guys I suck. Kill some demons for me.
My finger hovers over the Send because all this will do is make them wonder what’s up. Is it better to make them think I’m dead? No, because even though I’ve never met them in real life they’re the only friends I have, and I’ll need them when all this is over. So I hit Send and hand the phone back to Sloane, ducking my head because now she has another piece of me, and I don’t want to see what she thinks of it.
Regret crashes hard—why didn’t I lie and tell them my gaming machine fried? That would’ve been a perfect out, and would’ve bought me time needed to build a new one. They don’t know how rich I am.
“Everything okay?” Aaron asks.
Not at all. I’m missing some epic stuff right now, and I seriously complicated things when a simple fib would’ve fixed it. “All good.”
His gaze lingers longer than needed. He can see through all my lies. I’ve always known that yet I keep doing it. My milkshake has turned to paste, and I’d really like to put my fist through something right now.
“So why the hell do you know sign language again? Just a little to get by when you’re hanging with Bevan trash? It just amazes me with how busy you are that you have time to learn it, that’s all.” Too late I catch myself, because Sloane has already opened up that speaking app and she’s caught it all due to the big eyes she’s giving me. Well, too bad.
“Rex.” Aaron’s warning voice. Like he’s my fucking dad or something.
My whole life is in that house—my gaming machine, my books, my custom-designed stereo. I only know how to exist inside that fence. I can fake it outside but for how long? It’s getting old. That motel bed is a torture device, and Sloane Bevan is a pain to be around. I want to sit in the kitchen at home and eat breakfast with Emily. I want to train in the puddle of light surrounded by the dark of the basement. I want to sit by the lake and close my eyes. It’s all lost though, as dead as Emily. Even if I grow the balls to go back there it will never be the same.
Aaron slaps a hand on the table to snap me out of it. “A dheartháir.”
I need to tell him to stop calling me ‘brother.’ We’re too different to be brothers. But I can’t right now. I need to settle my head first. “Cén t-am é?”
He frowns like he normally does when I ask for the time. To him it’s random and irrelevant, a nuisance question asked too often. I’ve never had the guts to explain how wildly out of control I feel unless I know. He’s always acted like I’m using it to change the subject, just like he is now. “Where’s your watch?”
“In the woods somewhere.” And needing the time for no real reason pisses me off like it never has. Kind of like the mention of that stupid watch and all the things that go along with it. I snatch my phone away from Sloane and check the screen.
“Okay, Rex, you need to walk it off. I need to talk to her alone anyway, so why don’t you head back to the room and we’ll meet you there after we’re done?”
“Sounds good to me, a dheartháir.” With that last word I lean into his face, wishing in the darkest way he’d take it like the affront it is and fight me.
Sloane catches my glass and hers before they topple, and I realize how hard I just shoved the table toward them. Between me and the door are dozens of gawking faces. Most of them look away when I raise my middle finger. The ones who don’t I take note of, and they see me taking note, and they look away too.
Outside is a wreck of noise. Cars screech by on the road beside me. Trucks clatter and roar. I stand on the edge of the road and consider walking right out in the middle of it just to stop it all, to get some peace. I fish my earbuds out of my pocket instead and scroll past all the metal and drum and bass for that chillstep album I bought. My earbuds do no justice to the sub-bass hits, but I crank it to brain-melt level and walk toward the Budget Motel where my car and its two twelve-inch subs are parked.
Chapter 17
Sloane
The license plate on Rex’s car is throwing little beams of reflected sunlight all around. Aaron and I pause in the parking lot to the motel and watch it tremble against the car, its dance synced to the beat I feel in the ground. Rex must have some jams really cranked and maybe that’s what he needs. Music and some alone time.
Aaron heads to the driver’s window and shades his eyes from the sun to see inside the car. Then he’s pulling the door open and leaning in. Past him I see Rex bent at the waist, draped over the passenger seat. Very limp and too still. Aaron checks the pulse in his neck then checks Rex’s hand.
I see a Shit on his lips as he backs out of the car. He hands me his phone, and I check the screen. I thought he was dead. It’s just those stupid pills.
What
pills? I’d love to know what they are.
Those uppers and downers they give him. They like to control when he sleeps and when he wakes up. Looks like he’s taking them whenever he wants to now. He puts a hand over his mouth in the way someone might when facing a decision they’d rather not make.
I type, Can we confiscate? They’re in his pocket and his bag.
Aaron returns to the door of the car and starts prying Rex from the seat. Probably not a good idea to cut him off cold turkey, as much as I’d love to. He gets enough of Rex’s upper body upright for me to tug him by the arm toward me, allowing Aaron to get a shoulder underneath him. A fireman’s carry all the way back to the room ends with an ungraceful drop onto the bed. It’s a humbling kind of shock to see such a fierce creature become so unthreatening.
Screwing with someone’s circadian rhythm is a special kind of torture, Aaron says, standing over him. But at least he’s getting sleep right now. I think he needed it.
Aaron sits on the edge of the bed and bends forward, fingers interlocking behind his head bowed low. I’m not sure what to do so I sit on my own bed. Aaron’s interrogation at the diner left me enveloped in a veil of anxiety I can’t seem to shed. It’s crippling, limiting both thoughts and actions, fogging my head so I can’t work myself free. Aaron is no stranger—I’ve known him my whole life. But as soon as Rex stalked away from the table, all those people around us turned from passive scenery to prying eyes and moving mouths trying to be discreet but ending up more obvious than if they’d just openly discussed us. I can’t blame them. Rex caused a real scene. I can blame myself for caring so much. For building simple curiosity into a personal witch hunt. For not allowing Aaron’s questions to be the perfect distraction that they were. For feeling unworthy of his concern instead of grateful. And for dwelling on the discomfort from those strangers in the unfamiliar place long after it’s passed.
The world outside my mountain land beside the river only stopped being a fright for me a couple years ago. Like anything strong enough to need banishing it often resurfaces just to test. Rex makes it all easier, somehow. When I’m with him it’s not the Deaf girl they’re looking at. It’s the glaring guy in camo and combat boots, the hostile not-a-soldier-but-possibly-a-wacko who speaks whole wordless paragraphs with how straight he holds his shoulders and how tightly he holds your eye. Or maybe it’s none of that at all. Maybe he just settles me. Maybe I’m calmed by all that firepower. His presence speaks to me in silence, makes me feel right.
Because I’ve told Aaron I won’t be swayed from my plan, that I promise to keep myself safe and take care of his little brother, and that the only way I’ll agree to go home is after I’ve exhausted all efforts to cure the Moores, he gets up to leave. We take a selfie on his phone—Marcas demanded he send one, he says—and I see him out after a hug that feels way more final than it should.
Rex sleeps a few more hours just like Aaron said he would. His phone vibrates with incoming email, but I don’t look after I see the first one’s from the same screen name on that other message I saw accidentally. After three more come in back to back, there’s a lull, so I take his phone to check my own email.
He wakes up fast, the upward motion of his body kicking in my reflexes so I’m up and braced for a fight before his eyes have fully opened. Somehow he’s torn a bandage loose and reopened a wound. Fresh blood trickles from the cut on his forehead.
I get some gauze out of our kit and hand it to him, pointing at the source of the blood he’s just noticed and smeared across the back of his hand. He’s swung his legs over the side of the bed, so I sit facing him on mine then pick up his phone and tell him what Aaron wanted me to tell him.
Aaron trusts you’ll do the right thing.
Holding the gauze against his head, he snorts. That’s well-rehearsed indifference, but after that scene in the diner, I recognize more layers: the baggage and history and hurt, and a visible, active killing of hope. His skill at this is unmatched; he’s had lots of practice in whittling down hope to keep any future disappointment in check. The bloat of it travels into me—a positive thought converted by him into something negative is now inside me.
I have to sit up straighter to allow room for my breath to expand, so I don’t suffocate under the weight of it joining that dark mass I already hold. We’ve locked eyes. I see the carefully guarded surprise in his, but I can’t look away. We won’t be this easily overcome. Aaron’s trust is something to keep and hold on to, not squash into dust. Even if we disappoint him. Even if he disappoints us. We’ll cling to it until either of those things happens because that’s what normal people do. The Moores abused Rex but it’s not going to take place on my watch.
I sign, I trust you too, even though Aaron specifically told me not to, because “Rex is damaged and will never be right.”
Rex’s face makes no change. Being honest, it’s set in an evil glare. It’s such a front though. I don’t buy it, not a bit. I remember how fast and powerful he is. How muscular and dangerous. And how he looked when Aaron dropped him on the bed—all strength sucked out, just a useless frame with the power cut off. A trained fighter tired of fighting alone.
I sign again, I trust you, emphasizing the I and the you. Then I fingerspell it. Trust.
If I could offer him more than trust, I would. I wish I knew a magic powerful enough to fix him for good, to undo all that damage and make him right again. A unified effort might pull it off, but I don’t know any of our kind who would help. The only person is me.
Those words he’s speaking aren’t polite. I couldn’t begin to read them because his jaw is too tight and he’s talking too fast. So I pick up the phone and check the screen.
Screw your trust. I know what my brother told you. Don’t act like you’re the shit because you’ve had a perfect childhood and I haven’t. You’re a tool to your family just like I am to mine. Only mine was up front about it. So get over it, and fuck off. Your family sent you here to die.
I type back, I volunteered to come.
Then you’re stupid and a tool.
I can’t dwell on how he’s right about that, or how it burns me a little on the inside. I guess we’re two of a kind then.
The stare-down level ratchets up so high I wonder how I’m ever able to talk to him without sweating through all my clothes. I’m now grateful to him for setting the air conditioner on arctic in here. This has become a game of who’ll crack first, and yeah, he’s the super bully, but I’ve had a lifetime of people staring at me. I’ve built a powerful shield against that heat. So turn it up, jerk. It feels good on my feet.
Even with my eyes locked on the blues of his, I notice the perfect dip in his upper lip. The severe, point-blank slant of eyebrows so fair yet so prominent. That old scar, an off-center chip in his chin now more visible on his clean-shaven face. I sense myself going off the rails, desperate for something to bring it back on track. So I sign again, partially to guide me back to sanity, partially to piss him off. I trust you to the end.
He snatches my hands, a strike so fast and unexpected if he’d meant to hurt me I’d be dead. I block the urge to free myself, but why? It’s crazy not to. What’s also crazy is I’m remembering that kiss, and the racing pulse in his wrist makes me think he is too. One small problem though: his anger is building even more. Because I didn’t counter like he expected, he’s now stuck holding my arms instead of getting the fight he hoped for. And worse, if he releases me, I’ve called his bluff. It’ll prove he doesn’t want to hurt me. That he can’t, and that bothers him.
Well, he can hold onto me all day. I’m done fighting with him. We’re a team, whether he admits it or not.
I see his breathing change as his grip on me loosens by the slightest, enough for me to get one hand free and pick up the gauze he dropped on the bed. His wound still needs pressure, so I stand to better reach him. He doesn’t seem to be paying attention when I apply the gauze. He’s swiveled
my other hand, all his focus on my palm and his thumb that has slid into it like some forbidden move he’s attempting undercover, hoping no one will notice.
Curious where it will lead, I play ignorant. I put all my effort into stopping that leak of blood from his forehead, and now that I’m standing above him he won’t notice my line of sight. His thumb slides further into my palm, hot and calloused, its pressure sending a signal up my arm and into my head. The risk of it makes it sweeter, more forbidden, something to put an end to, something to beg to last forever. It makes me want to do something stupid—
Like remove the gauze and kiss his forehead where the blood has finally sealed. When he doesn’t stop me, I do it again. His thumb remains hot in my palm, planted and permanent. His fingers encircle my wrist. I peel away one side of the bandage on his cheek and kiss that wound too, the heat of his breath on my own cheek, the corner of his lips perilously close to mine. I pull away, and he tugs my hand. His eyes say he wants more.
I shiver despite the heat coursing through me. He runs his hands up my arms, causing another shiver to scatter up to the crown of my head and down to my toes. Now he’s holding onto both my elbows, drawing me in. It’d be a demand if it wasn’t so desperate, and I give a little just to experience the strength in his arms, the force he could unleash if he wanted.
Because he wasn’t ready for me to yield, it brings my knees knocking against his and sliding between. I release my own force—a twist of both arms to free them, a strong step backward and around the corner of the bed. Physical distance seems like a good thing right now. I’ve lost my mind and he never had one to begin with.
He looks away but I don’t. Again with that rough head rub. There must be some perverted reason why he has to dig in so hard. He must like the discomfort in it. Is that normal to him? Is it why he thinks my gentle method is magic?
Either he feels my continued gaze or senses my questions because he looks up abruptly. First at my eyes, then at my hands. He’s remembering, maybe wondering the same thing.