The bartender begins to make his drink, setting ice in a glass.
“Ryke,” I snap, forcing his gaze towards mine. A purplish bruise mars his cheekbone, from when Daisy slapped him while she was having a night terror.
“What?” His jaw is hard. His eyes never softening. He reminds me of our dad. And it makes this more difficult. It makes it worse.
I inhale a strained breath, the oxygen never meeting my lungs. In my peripheral, I see the bartender grabbing the whiskey. “Let’s go.”
“I told you. I want a fucking drink.”
Why is he doing this? I tug at the collar of my shirt and turn back around, setting my forearms against the cold bar. Ryke has been sober for nine years.
Nine goddamn years.
Why would he even toy with the idea of breaking that? For me? My stomach roils, the alcohol making me more nauseous than anything.
“Refill?” the bartender asks me.
I shake my head. “No, I’m good.” I hate him. I hate that he’s pushing me this hard. I hate that he won’t leave me alone. I hate that he expects more out of me than I can ever give.
I am falling.
Beneath every sentiment I expel.
“Cheers.” Ryke raises his glass, pausing for a brief second, giving me an out. Telling me to stop him.
Stop him.
Stop him.
The rim hits his lips.
I am rigid. I am screaming at myself to move. To be a goddamn decent human being. To be worth this life that I’ve been given. And yet, I watch him, with deadness inside of me.
He drinks alcohol.
And I think: now we’re even.
For having the better life. For knowing about me for so long and doing nothing. For not standing up for me in the media and ending this torment.
It’s a thought that twists my face with brutal guilt.
He licks his lips, disappointment flashing in his eyes. Why does he have to be so goddamn good?
“I hope you enjoyed that,” he says angrily.
“Which part?” I snap on impulse. “Me drinking or watching you do it?”
Hit me. His muscles flex, a vein pulsing in his neck. And instead of raising his fist, he grabs the glass, about to drink more.
My lungs explode, and I pry it from his fingers quickly and hand it to the bartender. “He’s done.” I start to slide off the barstool as I say, “If you’re this big of an asshole sober, I can’t imagine what kind of asshole you are drunk.”
Before I leave, he grabs my arm. “You can’t do this shit.” Stop. Talking. “You’re supposed to call me if you have a craving to drink. I could have talked you out of it.”
“Maybe I don’t want to talk to you!” I scream. I climb off the barstool, and he follows suit, standing one inch taller. Face to face. Both wearing scowls so dark that you’d think we were mortal enemies, not brothers.
There is so much he’s never told me about his past. And I keep waiting to hear it. I never push. That’s not something I’d ever do to him. But the longer he stays quiet, the harder it’s become for both of us. We’ve hit a roadblock in our relationship, and I’m banging my head against brick while he watches me bleed.
“Then call Lily,” he says, “your fucking fiancée, who would be in tears if she saw you right now. Did you fucking think about her when you drank? Did you consider what this would do to her?”
No. I can’t think about her when I drink. It hurts too much. “I’m done with this shit,” I say. I try to walk away from this.
He grabs my arm.
Let me go. Please.
“You can’t run from your fucking problems. They’re there twenty-four-seven. You have to deal.”
“Don’t talk about dealing. You won’t even text Dad back. You’re ignoring him like he’s not even alive.” I shake my head. “You’re doing the same thing to him that you did to me. So why don’t you just do what you do best and pretend that I don’t fucking exist.”
I watch the pain take ahold of his features. I stabbed him the only way I know how, and then I just push right on by.
I just leave.
Wishing that I was someone else.
{ 54 }
2 years : 01 month
September
LOREN HALE
Outside of the pub, Daisy howls at the stars, standing on the sidewalk. “We’re in the land of tall people!”
My brother starts talking to her. He’s smiling.
I shift my dead gaze to the night sky. I want to be happy that Daisy isn’t as sullen as when we first arrived, though she looks frail and sleepless circles shadow her eyes. But she’s laughing.
That’s good.
Connor keeps a hand on my shoulder. I think if he takes it off I’m going to fall. He says something, but I barely register his words.
Sports fans in jerseys parade across the street in dead-stop traffic. The game must’ve ended.
I hate what I’ve done tonight.
It’s rushing back to me tenfold. Not enough liquor to numb this onslaught. A couple guys start screaming beside the curb, and I rest my hands on my head.
“Lo,” Connor breathes.
I turn to him, but Ryke suddenly sidles up to us. Connor takes a step back so I can speak to my brother. And my eyes cloud with tears. “You shouldn’t have had that whiskey,” I say, the apology stuck in my throat.
Say it.
I can’t. I pinch my eyes.
“One glass isn’t going to make me fucking addicted, Lo.”
I let out a weak laugh. “Lucky you.” I cringe.
“We should go back to the hotel—” He suddenly careens forward, someone knocking into him from behind. I barely notice two beefy guys throwing punches.
And then a pair of knuckles decks my temple. I stagger to the side, almost tripping, my fingers scraping the pavement. The horrific screams bleed my ears, and in one instant, it’s like a hurricane of people, arms flying, shoving—bodies slamming into each other.
My panic has shot up to a new level.
The end of an intense rugby match has brought the beginning of a riot. Ryke reaches out and grabs my arm. We lock eyes for an instant, exchanging a look like: don’t leave me.
And then another fist pounds into the side of my face. The pain welling instantly. I grip his shirt, anything, and sock him in the gut, just so he’ll get off me.
When I turn around, Ryke is being dragged backwards by his leather jacket. I try to sprint towards him, but someone clutches my shoulders and forcefully slams me to the ground.
A boot nails me in the ribcage, and my adrenaline drowns out the intensity of the pain. I elbow someone’s shins, and I try to stand, but the boot side-swipes my head.
Fuck. Black dots burst in my vision.
“LOREN!” Connor yells.
Blood drips from my nose and to my lips. I taste the bitter iron. The screaming. Never ends. Glass shatters. Heat from fires blaze, but I can’t see where they originate.
It’s just pure chaos.
“LOREN!”
Another kick to the stomach, and I fall to my hands again. Get up. You stupid bastard. I punch back, meeting flesh. And I rise to my feet the same time that Connor reaches me with an unreadable expression, masking his alarm. Barely a bruise on his face.
“Where’s Ryke?” My voice is filled with fear. I look around. “We have to find—” Jesus. Christ. Someone nailed me with something in the side. I cough roughly, and Connor is basically guiding me away from everything.
“Stop,” I cough, my feet instinctively following his. I hold my ribs. “Connor, wait!” I scream.
“We have to go,” Connor says, his eyes wide to tell me now.
“Ryke is out there!” I yell. I turn back around. Daisy. And I try to tear into the street, but Connor grabs my waist, two inches taller than me. And stronger. In almost every way.
He forces me back on the sidewalk, not the street where everyone has gone mad. Sirens blare in the distance, growing closer and closer.
&nb
sp; “We have to leave!” Connor yells at me.
“I can’t…” I can’t leave them. I spin back to face Connor and shove him in the chest. “You would leave them?!” Tears wet my cheeks. I feel like I just put my brother to rest. And Daisy is gone with him.
“No,” Connor says, his usually emotionless expression slowly unraveling. “I would save you.”
Why.
I shake my head.
“He’s strong,” he reminds me. “He’ll find Daisy, and we’ll meet up with him.”
He’s strong.
It’s hard to say no to someone like Connor. With his hand on my back, we push through the crowds, away from the fight.
Away from people who matter.
* * *
We walked for ten minutes before slipping into a drug store. I vaguely pay attention to Connor who disappears down an aisle. The cashier says something to me in English, about the riot. I think. I open my mouth to answer, but air catches in my lungs. I can’t breathe.
I try to inhale.
I can’t breathe. No bruise or welt amounts to this agony that pounds into me. I push through the doors, the cold night air blanketing me. And I gasp heavily, my hands on my thighs.
I puke on the curb.
Cop and ambulance sirens scream.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, blood smearing from my nose.
“Lo,” Connor says, appearing outside. He rests a hand on my back. His button-down is ripped by the collar. “Come on.” He guides me along the sidewalk. It takes us more time to find a taxi, but when we do, we both climb in the backseat, the traffic horrendous. In French, Connor tells the driver our destination, and I zone out, patting my pockets.
“My phone.” It must’ve fallen.
“Someone stepped on it back at the pub,” he explains, digging in a paper bag. I stare at the headrest, slammed with tonight’s events. With my brother being dragged by the jacket, away from me. I rewind to screaming at him—saying that I wish he never existed in my life.
I rewind further to forcing him to drink alcohol.
“Connor,” I whisper, hot liquid pools in my eyes. What have I done? Connor holds the back of my head, but I can’t stop these raging feelings. I can’t stop the remorse or the fear of what’s happened. He forces my gaze on his. “Please…” My chest falls heavily. “I can’t…”
I can’t deal with it anymore.
I don’t want any of it.
Tears pour out of me, and I try to breathe—sharp pains stab my ribs with each one. My head floats from a lack of oxygen, and all I think is: kill me.
I am miles away from the one person who can talk me down from this edge. From the one person who has been with me every step of my life. Who has shared memories and moments that no one else will ever see. If I give up, she is gone.
I destroy this bond that transcends love, taking her soul with me.
It is the only thing that keeps me breathing.
I watch Connor bite a pill in half with his front teeth. His eyes flicker to mine, full of uncharacteristic concern that he rarely shows anyone.
“Are you putting me to sleep?” I ask.
“Not in the way you’d like,” he says softly. He passes me half of the pill. “I can’t take your pain away, no matter how much I want to.” He pauses. “This is the best I can do for now.”
Every moment of my life has been a mountain that I struggle to climb.
{ 55 }
2 years : 01 month
September
LILY CALLOWAY
“Lo,” I say the minute Connor hands him the phone. He told me that Lo took a sleeping pill, so I only have a few minutes with him. Tears already stream down my cheeks, picturing them swept up in the Paris riot, footage on almost every news station. Rose and I didn’t know that our sister and the guys were tangled up in it until we called Connor.
I sit on my bed with the comforter pulled up to my chest. Rose has left the room to tell Poppy that Daisy’s in the hospital. Connor, Ryke, and Lo are in the waiting room, unsure of how badly her injuries are.
Rose and I already checked flights and threw clothes into carry-ons.
“Lily,” he chokes. I hear the torment in his voice. I don’t have to ask where it’s from. The origins are most likely many, vast places.
My throat tightens, and I collect myself for him as much as I can. “I love you,” is the next thing I say.
I can practically picture him pinching his eyes to dam the waterworks, his breathing sharper than usual. “I fucked up,” he says.
“No,” I tell him, as sternly as I can. “You didn’t.”
“You don’t know what I did.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I wish I could hug him. Why do we have to be so far apart?
And then he says with a broken voice, “I’m never going to defeat this.”
“Lo,” I breathe, licking my dry lips. “You’re forgetting something.”
He exhales deeply. “What’s that?”
“We’re in Earth-616. This isn’t an alternate universe.” I clutch the phone tighter, tears falling. “We’re going to have our happy ending. It’s just going to take us a little while to get there.”
He told me that once. When I hit a low. Now he just needs to remember his own words.
He breathes out again, like a weight is slowly lifting off his chest.
“Do you believe me?” I whisper.
“Every word,” he says. “I want to hold you.”
I smile and wipe the rest of my tears. “You are.”
“Yeah?” he murmurs. “Lily…”
I wait for him to finish his thought, one of my hands gripping my white comforter.
Very softly, he says, “I wouldn’t be here without you.” It is bigger than an I love you. It is a declaration that solidifies what I’ve known for so long.
We aren’t connected by our addictions.
But by our childhood. Souls fused together from the very, very start.
{ 56 }
2 years : 02 months
October
LOREN HALE
Since the hospital four days ago, I haven’t been able to produce a sentimental apology for my brother. Every time I try, something worse comes out of my mouth. Staying quiet has better results, but it also tears my stomach to shreds. I’m beginning to think that I hold back just to punish myself.
I run my hand through my hair before readjusting my baseball cap. I glance over my shoulder at the gas pumps, expecting a bombardment of cameras. It’s quiet, trees rustling in the wind.
“No one is following us,” Ryke reminds me, breaking a layer of tense silence. His eyebrow is stitched, the most severe of his wounds from the riot. I have two broken ribs, but I had to say no to pain pills. It’d be way too easy to rely on them.
Ryke and I stand outside of a gas station in Ohio, a grimy bathroom door in front of us on the side of the building. The road trip began in New York and it’ll end with Ryke climbing a few rock formations in Yosemite, California.
I’ve tried not thinking about that last part. Ryke never wears a rope or a harness. The probability of falling is greater than reaching the top. Connor even told me that. Heavy bricks set on my chest every time I accidentally process that end, the one where I outlive him.
The world is all fucked up if that happens.
“I can’t help it,” I say to Ryke, looking around for cameras just one more time. “I’m always going to be on edge.” The media didn’t have any footage of us in the riot, and we managed to leave the hospital without notice too. We were there for a while because of Daisy—she’s okay. Not that okay. But she’s walking. Breathing. And she quit modeling. Though…she would’ve had to regardless.
Ryke bangs on the bathroom door, the handle broken, which is why we’re standing here, guarding it so no one walks in on her. “You need something, Dais?”
She’s been changing her bandages. I check my watch. For fifteen minutes?
“The tape is stuck to one of my stitches.
” She sounds near tears.
Ryke doesn’t even hesitate or ask, he just pushes through the door. He leaves it ajar so I’ll follow him inside. I do. The space is cramped, and toilet paper is strewn on the damp tiles.
Ryke cups the side of Daisy’s face and inspects the wound on her left cheek, half the bandage off. “Hold still,” he tells her, peeling off the tape that pinches her skin and with it, a series of stitches. Her hands dig into his waist.
“Wait, wait a second,” she winces.
“Dais,” he says softly, his narrowed eyes on her. “This has to come off.” Blood has soaked through the gauze and needs replaced.
I lick my lips. “Just think happy thoughts,” I tell her.
She slowly starts to smile, which pulls at her wound. “Ow.”
Wrong advice. “Think horrible thoughts,” I say and then put a hand on my older brother’s shoulder, “like your knight in shining armor falling off his pony.”
She ends up laughing and touches her cheek, the pain barely reaching her green eyes that glimmer with something bright.
Ryke glares at me. “That’s the best you have?”
“I don’t see you offering anything, bro.”
“Picture me beating the shit out of my brother,” he says roughly, never looking away from me.
“Or the inverse,” I snap back, our jaws locked. How’d we even reach this place? It’s like a river of past history separates us, and I can’t cross it without him.
Daisy’s laughter has died out. “That’s depressing,” she tells us flatly.
Our attention returns to her. “That’s the point,” I say.
Her lips are downturned, and Ryke works on peeling back the tape, stitches still clung to it. Her eyes are already bloodshot at this point, and the signs of pain appear in the way she clutches my brother’s green shirt.
“Are you sure you don’t want your sisters out here?” I say to distract her. Rose and Lily are meeting us in a couple weeks, which’ll be a surprise to Daisy. But they’re adhering to her wishes as much as they can. Daisy just needs time to cope with what’s happened.
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