Ethan Walker's Road To Wonderland (Road To Wonderland #3)

by L. J. Stock

  “Sucks coming down, I know. But you had fun, right?” Jessica handed me my keys as I swooped my jacket from the floor and held it in both hands between my legs. My fingers were buried so deep in the fabric, my knuckles were white.

  My answering nod was tight as I pushed up and checked the room for anything else that belonged to me. I still couldn’t bring myself to say a word to her, especially not without the edge of anger and frustration that bounced around in my head before manifesting into hatred. I should feel something other than mild disgust. I sure as hell had the night before, if memory served.

  I was uncertain how I felt about anything that had happened. The daunting blackness had created a shroud over the feelings of being alive while the drugs had fully been in my system. Hours of sex and feeling more than I'd felt in a long time just faded into the ether, a distant memory that I longed to cling to. Not for the person I shared it with, obviously, but what could I do to change that?

  With a sigh of resolve, Jess rolled to her knees and shuffled to the edge of the bed. Her hands twisted her hair over her shoulder before she reached for me, like I should have been grateful for what we'd shared. I wanted to shrink away, to escape the room and the awkwardness I felt settling in from being in her company too long.

  Even so, I couldn’t move forward, even as she tugged on my arm with a quiet sigh. Eventually she gave up, her hands held out in surrender. I wondered for a second whether I should be feeling guilty, but there was nothing, so I examined the toe of my boot, my mind on finding an exit plan in the next ten seconds before I ran out.

  "Listen, I get that you've got shit going on in your life right now, Ethan. I know it's fucking hard. That's why..." She paused and leaned over the bed, pulling up a little bag I hadn't even noticed her carrying the night before. She pulled out a smaller clear bag and dangled it in front of me. "I'm giving you these."

  "Don't need them, Jess."

  "Need and want are two completely different things, Walker." She placed the bag in the pocket of my coat as I pulled it on. Sliding from the bed, I saw her bare skin was full of blemishes from sex, and my stomach rolled when I thought about how I'd gone to town on her of all people. I had to keep reminding myself she was human and had feelings so I wouldn't gag at the sight of her naked. She didn't have a bad body. She was all curves and fair skin. It was the person inside it that repulsed me.

  "I don't need or want it, Jessica," I said, digging into my pocket to hand it back to her. My finger had barely glanced off the plastic when she put her hand on mine and smiled up at me.

  "Keep it. You don't have to use it, but it’s there if you want it. It's got me through a couple of hard times in the past. Maybe it can help you, too."

  I nodded, an empty gesture brought on because I wanted out of there as soon as humanly possible. I could flush that shit when I got home if necessary. If this was what the aftermath was like, I didn't need it. I felt impossibly worse than I had the day before, the emotions completely unattainable. The rawness of them was biting around the edges of my consciousness.

  I spun almost fast enough to lose my balance and didn’t stop to offer her a farewell. My body was so close to rebelling that I needed air that wasn’t marred with the smell of her and sex. I flung open the door and almost tripped over a snoring body spread out in the middle of the hall. I stumbled, my hand reaching out to steady myself against the wall as I heard the last thing I wanted to.

  “It was better than I imagined it would be, Walker,” Jess called out after me. The sound trailed off as I practically sprinted down the hall, stalling when I suddenly realised that I’d come with Scott and had no cash for a taxi.

  The house stank of alcohol, piss, and vomit as I stumbled over bodies. It wasn’t that big of a house, and I knew Scott wouldn’t have left without me. I just had to dig through all this shit to find him. If he’d managed to get some, he could be behind any locked door in the house. Stumbling in on people fucking like rabbits wasn’t appealing at all. Less appealing was seeing my best mate, balls deep in some lass, when I was fucking desperate to get the fuck out of there. I honestly didn’t put it past myself to ask for the fucking keys.

  By some divine intervention, I found Scott in a bedroom with an open door. He and the lass were on the bed, his arm around her neck, her hand on his, thankfully covered, dick. That was my first challenge completed, but now I had to make it over the sea of bodies to the bed and get him the fuck up without waking everyone else in the room.

  Tip toeing around the party's casualties, I finally made it to the bed and smacked his toes. “Scott.”

  “Fuck off, E. It’s too early, mate.”

  Too early, too late, it was all a matter of opinion. I wasn’t sure if Scott was hoping for round two when people started to move the fuck out of there, but I wasn’t in the mood to wait around. My spirit was dwindling with every inhale of the noxious, poisonous air I was dragging in. With an angry grunt, I knocked his foot again, not holding back my annoyance.

  “That’s great. Give me your fucking keys then. I ain’t staying in this shithole.”

  I don’t know if it was what I said, the way I said it, or the context behind the words, but Scott’s eyes flickered open. He blinked a couple of times before pushing the girl off his body and rolling from the mattress, stepping on some poor bastard’s hand when he did. Backtracking from the room, I didn’t stop to wait for him to catch up. I jogged down the stairs and took a wrong turn, finding myself in the kitchen. There were only two people in there, spread out on the counters, their limbs hanging. If they fell, I could imagine it would be a hard landing, but that wasn’t my problem.

  With my mouth feeling like I’d eaten half the sand in the Sahara, I pulled open the fridge and grabbed for the milk, popping the top and groaning at the stench that emanated from it. I slipped it back inside and grabbed the orange juice, not bothering to stop as the first drop hit my lips. It was like bloody ambrosia, every little receptor fluttering around in my body as though attempting to flare to life.

  When a hand caught my elbow and pulled me around, the box moved from my mouth but never tipped upright, sending the sticky orange shit down my front while my eyes rolled slowly to my best mate.

  “You look like shit, E.”

  “You don’t look much better yourself, you scruffy bastard.”

  “Don’t fucking fob this off with a joke, Ethan.” He stopped and looked around the kitchen at the drunks and the puddle of orange juice that had gathered at my feet. My best mate was worried, and he was going to interrogate me, but that wasn’t going to happen here.

  It didn’t mean he was going to be patient, though. The minute we were outside the door, he shoved my arm and pushed me away from the house as I peeled off my sticky coat, dropping it over my arm.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  “Orange juice. You’re the bastard that spilled it.”

  “Not the fucking stain, and you know it!”

  I nodded in agreement. I wasn’t that stupid. I knew he wasn’t talking about the orange juice. It just so happened it was what I was thinking about when I suddenly decided I didn’t want to talk about it. In fact, I’d been thinking about burning my clothes the minute I got home and then taking the hottest shower I could to scrub at least ten layers of skin from my body. I felt tainted and rank.

  We were both quiet as we walked to the car, the calm peacefulness of Scott's bird victory wrapping around us both, giving me a reprieve from the internal berating I'd been giving myself since I'd woken up with coyote ugly. Hell, I had nothing to be chuffed about. I'd just done two things I'd sworn to myself I would never do - Jessica and drugs - and I felt stained from the effort. Not the orange juice down the front kind of sullied, but a tainting that ran down to my very soul. I just wanted to bury myself and not resurface.

  "What the fuck happened?" Scott asked again as we climbed into the car, both of us reaching for the volume on the radio as it blared out.

  I retrieved my hand and pulled on my s
eatbelt, not wanting to relive the night but realizing I didn't have much of a choice. Scott had already figured out there was something not quite right with me. Not talking would only make him push harder. I didn’t have it in me to hold out, and to be frank, I was worried what I would blurt out if I was pushed too hard.

  "Jessica fucking Gregory happened," I ground out, the name leaving a nasty taste on my tongue.

  "You didn't?" Scott gawped, his mouth hanging open before he caught himself and snapped it shut.

  "Didn't have much of a choice to be honest. She decided I needed a little pick-me-up and gave me ecstasy.”

  "You took ecstasy?" Scott asked, his tone full of accusation and consternation.

  Turning my head to look at him, I narrowed my eyes. As my best mate, he should have known better than to think it had been a decision I would make consciously.

  "She put it in my beer, arsehole. A couple from what I understand. By the time she got me upstairs, I was rolling so bad that I didn't fight the last one. I just feel fucking dirty to be honest. It's not normal. I should have been paying attention."

  "I'm sorry, E. Mate, I can get Beth to kick her arse if you like." I could hear the sympathy in his voice, but sympathy wasn't what I needed. I’d had enough of that to last a lifetime, and I sure as hell didn't need someone to do my dirty work.

  "I don't need your older sister to fight my battles for me, Scott. I just wanna forget it happened. If you tell a soul, I'll-"

  "Not a fucking word, son," he cut me off, his expression backing up his declaration.

  I nodded in agreement, my eyes narrowing at him one last time in warning. I knew he would never say anything to anyone, but it was one of those things that had to be said. A rumor like that would crush me if it ever got out. Ethan Walker would become the kid who was drugged into sex by the school slut. Not something I wanted after my name, even if we hadn't been in school for years, I still had some semblance of a reputation to uphold.

  If anyone said anything, I was going to deny, deny, deny. I was numb, not socially suicidal.

  The girl had a reputation - a bad one. The more I thought about it, the more concerned I became that I hadn't used a damn thing to protect myself. There was so much wrong with that, I wasn't willing to let my head go there just yet. I needed to be completely sober before I could even wrap my head around it.

  The rest of the drive was spent talking about Scott's brunette, and I was glad of the change of subject. I didn't want to revisit every little detail of my sordid interaction. It wasn't up for public consumption, and he just accepted that for what it was and gave me a rundown of his night, a distraction I was starting to need.

  I wasn't feeling even the smallest bit better when Scott dropped me off at the house. The residual high from sucking down the orange juice battered around my skull. I wasn't looking forward to going inside. Even when it took everything in me to drag myself out, it was always so much harder going back.

  I didn't like my job at the music shop. I didn't like being home. I didn't want to go out. I couldn't find a happy medium that gave me incentive to do anything. Most of the time I was stuck in the numbness that consumed me. Yet, being at the house wasn't helping.

  For starters, Dad still wasn't coping well. He went to the pub every night, came home bruised and wept in his room. I would have felt sorry for him had it not been for the glares he gave me, and sometimes Dean, when he was home anyway. There was still that accusatory tone. It hadn't gone away since Mum had died.

  Then there was Dean. He was, at best, somber a lot of the time. He spent almost all day at the garage under the bonnets of cars, came home to change, and was gone again as soon as humanly possible - hanging out with his mates at the local. He showered and slept there. That was it.

  Not that I could blame him.

  I realised I was tired of stumbling through the days. Trying to forget what had happened, while being surrounded by things that perpetually reminded me that she was gone, just made life more difficult. The photos that were on the cabinet had now tripled, and Mum's smiling face shone out from each of them. The crinkle at the corner of her eyes speaking of the years of happiness I couldn't remember without her here.

  Stumbling back from the door, I felt a pull in the opposite direction and wasn't sure I could go in there at all. Feeling nothing was almost worse than feeling the pain, because I knew I should be feeling something. I knew that the sadness that lingered around the edges was only a breath away. That anticipation made it impossible to move some days. Knowing it could all come crashing down was a little more than I was ready to deal with.

  There were days when I felt like everyone was handling this better than I was - days when Dean would actually smile, and all I could do was wonder where the guilt was.

  Forcing myself forward, I pushed my key into the door and reprimanded myself for the ridiculous pity party I was throwing. Shaking off that nefarious darkness that loomed around me, I stepped inside and heard the dishes scraping in the kitchen. To add insult to injury, both of them were home. Sure, it was a Sunday, but it seemed like today was the first time in weeks that they'd both decided to be at home. Regardless of the bloody day.

  "Ethan?" My dad's gruff voice filtered through from the kitchen before I could even shut the door, and I felt my eyes rolling to the back of my skull. I wasn't in the mood to go face to face with him.

  "Yeah, Dad?" I pushed the door closed and shrugged off my jacket, leaving it on the bottom bannister so I could grab it on my way up. Dragging my feet, I continued toward the kitchen.

  "Where you been?"

  "Party with Scott. Why?"

  My dad looked up at me with his eyes narrowed. It appeared he was choosing now to attempt to act like a parent, and the cynical side of me was curious as to how long it was going to last this time. He only did it when it suited him, which told me he wanted something.

  Pushing the teapot towards me, he slid down in his seat and kicked out a chair, nodding to it as though his word was law. After the amount of times I'd heard "while you're living under my roof..." growing up, you'd think I would have learned my lesson by now.

  Nope.

  "I need a shower, Dad."

  "Sit the fuck down, son."

  I looked between him and Dean, who ducked his head and blinked his eyes from me to the proffered seat, telling me not to argue. Nodding once in response, I flopped into it and pulled the teapot closer, ignoring the fact that my skin felt like it was gritty and filthy. I shuffled around in my chair until Dean met my eyes with curiosity, one shoulder lifting in question - a question I wasn't ever going to be ready to answer.

  I wasn't sure what our old man wanted. I wasn't even sure why I was so hell-bent on believing that he was going to step up and be a father to us. All I knew was I needed a parent, and the fact that the three of us were in the same room at the same time gave me hope.

  I should have known better.

  "Right, now that you're both here, I can get this over with and we don't have to talk about it again. If you're both planning on staying here, you're going to pay your way. You're not gonna freeload from me anymore. Rent is four hundred pound a month. That covers all the bills, too. Don't like it, bugger off. It ain't negotiable."

  Four hundred pounds a month. Each. Each! He had to be fucking joking? That was almost my full pay. That was extortion. Eight hundred pounds a month would almost double what the bills came to.

  Don't get me wrong, I didn't mind paying rent. I even thought it was fair considering Dad had taken a hit with Mum gone, but this was just crazy. Dean and I would be paying the mortgage in full, each. The worst thing was, Dad knew he was just about clearing us out, and he knew we'd pay it because there was nowhere we could get and pay rent and bills by ourselves. Though we could move out together, I knew Dean wasn't ready for that.

  Looking over at my brother, I could see he was just as shocked. His eyes were as big as saucers and his hands were balled under the table. I knew that what he had left of his wages
wouldn't cover the parts for the car he was rebuilding.

  As pissed off as I was, the thing that shocked me was how Dad went about it. There was no father to son moment where he gently told us that with Mum gone we all had to tighten our belts and pull our weight. It was just you're going to do it or you're going to leave. It almost felt like he couldn't have cared less which course we chose; it was only the money he was interested in. Money I was damn sure was going to end up going to his gambling addiction.

  "Da-"

  "Stop right there, you little bastard. I won't hear it. You ain't changing my mind."

  "I wouldn't dare," I grumbled, pushing the mug of tea away.

  "Then go take your shower, kid."

  Once again, I was disappointed in my father to a capacity that blew my mind. Compassion and understanding were clearly not his concern. I think if he could have afforded to live in the house on his own, he would have kicked us out, sons or not, simply to make his life easier. According to Dad, he was doing us a favour. Maybe he was? I just wasn't sure anymore. All I knew was I had the sudden urge to get the hell out of there and not look back. Without Mum, this wasn't a family at all, not in the unified sense. I knew I would always have Dean and vice versa, but we may as well have been orphans for all the love and attention we were getting from our father.

  Pushing the chair back with a scrape of its legs on the linoleum, I made my way upstairs, grabbing my coat as I passed. I was gripping onto the fabric so tightly my knuckles were pale and stretched over the bone. My pounding head was hammering out a beat all of its own, while my mind was a vortex of thoughts of loathing and hatred for the sperm donor that resided in this house with us. He hadn't earned the title of father, let alone Dad. He was a waste of space that should have been sterilised at birth.