Missi just shakes her head and sinks down to her tiny bed. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “It happens almost nightly. Anyhow, thanks again...for the ride home. And, uh, don't worry about me. I won't bother you or River…Hudson, I won't bother you guys again."
I take another look around the dank room my little sister calls her home and make up my mind. There’s absolutely no way I’m leaving her here to live in this. "Get your shit. All of it. You're done here."
“I am NOT going back to your house. Have you lost your damn mind? This is my house. Get out, leave me alone!”
That's when the gunshot rings out.
I snatch her up. “Get your shit, now. You don't have to come home with me but you're not staying here. I'll take you to a hotel.”
She's starting to shake again. I can't blame her. This has been one of the most insane nights of my life and I'm just a bit-player in this whole scenario. She goes to the bathroom and comes back with a black backpack that she stows her laptop and headphones in.
“Okay,” I say, “we'll come back for the rest tomorrow.”
She looks around the bare room before flicking off the lamp. “It doesn’t really matter. I don’t have anything that’s really important.”
I pull her into my arms and give her a gentle squeeze because although she might pretend to be talking about possessions, I know in my heart she means more.
17
RIVER ENTERS THE CHATROOM
River: I’m so glad you’re here. I need you today.
Raven: I’m always here for you. What’s wrong?
River: I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to talk to you.
Raven: I’m here, whatever you need.
River: See, that’s the irony. I have the means to provide for all my physical needs and then some, but I can’t have you. Not really.
Raven: You have me.
River: Here. It’s not the same.
Raven: Just say the word, River, and I’ll be anywhere you want me to be.
River: I can’t do that to you.
Raven: Why don’t you let me make my own judgments on what you can and can’t do to me?
River: I won’t do that to you. It has nothing to do with your judgment and everything to do with me not wanting to hurt you.
Raven: I hurt when I know you’re hurting.
River: Ah little bird. You might be the sweetest person I’ve ever come across.
Raven: Trust me, I’m not that sweet.
River: In my mind, you’re beautiful.
Raven: I wasn’t talking about the outside.
River: Neither was I.
18
MISSI
I think I'm in shock. I'm numb and in pain at the same time. Is that shock? I'm not even sure where I am. I tried to get Flint to take me a motel by the freeway, but he just snorted and kept driving downtown. Now I'm in some glass tower hotel, perched so high above the city I'd feel like Rapunzel if I had longer hair.
Flint came up to the room with me and I hear him on the phone ordering room service while I stare back at my reflection in the darkened window. I push at the window but it won't open. Well, there's that idea gone. I shake my head. No thinking in that direction.
Flint's still on the phone and I hear him murmuring "how is he?” He must be talking to Red now. I want to know how Hudson is too, but I’m not going to ask Flint.
I turn away from the reflection in the window and wander around the elegant room, pushing open the door to the bathroom and flicking on the light. It's bright white with touches of bamboo and plush, intricately folded towels hanging from gleaming racks. Toiletries in glass bottles are arranged stylishly at one side of the sink. I flick another switch to see what it is and step back in surprise when I feel the tiles warming up beneath my feet, shaking my head at the ridiculous luxury.
I perch on the edge of the bath, not seeing the opulence around me anymore. All I see is River’s face. Hudson's face. River. Hudson. I can’t get it straight in my head. Whatever name I think of him by, it can't remove the look of pure disgust I saw on his face when he realized who I was. All those words we shared scattered in the wind. He was repulsed by me.
When the night started, all I’d wanted was one night, one chance with River. One opportunity to soothe our pain, to make each other feel good. One time to ease whatever was tormenting his soul. All I wanted was one perfect and pure memory to carry with me when I have to move on, but look what happened. I pushed myself on him and shoved my way into his life and now he has to add fucking his foster sister to the list of bad shit that’s eating at him. No perfect memory for me either. Images from his bedroom flick through my mind like an old-fashioned movie reel and I remember how amazing it felt to be in his arms.
Fuck, Hudson is River. My River. My Hudson. My brother.
Goddammit. Why does this shit happen to me? Everywhere I go, everything I do, is tainted. Donnie, my fucking asshole foster father got a lot of shit wrong, but he was right about one thing. I fuck everything up. Everything I touch turns bad.
I can’t stop the tears that stream down my cheeks. I can’t hold in the sobs, and the more that my body is wracked by them, the angrier I get. I can’t do this anymore; I don’t want to hurt and break and bleed. That’s not for me anymore.
I jump up and swipe my arm across the counter, sending the tiny expensive lotions and shampoos shattering to the floor. I snatch at anything in my reach and throw them at my image in the mirror, wordless screams rising and falling, gasping for air around my sobs. I savage the entire bathroom, ripping at the pretty towels to try to smother my pain. I snatch the pristine shower curtain, tearing holes in the white cotton when I rip it from the hooks. The anger is so violent inside me but nothing is helping.
“Missi, honey, no,” I hear Flint say, and that’s when it breaks, the final crack in the damn bursts open and I crumple to the warm floor, shower curtain wrapped around my arms, and cry in great rasping sobs that heave my body up and down and send pain shooting through my lungs and throat.
Flint picks me up, gathers me tightly into his strong arms, and smooths my hair away from my face. “Shhh, shhhh,” he murmurs and starts to rock me, soothing me the same way he comforted me when I was a child. He moves into the other room and settles onto the sofa with me still in his arms. I cry so much that my eyes are almost swollen shut and my tears dry up. I whimper and tuck further into his warmth, letting him rock me, and allowing his comfort to ease into my body. When he kisses the top of my head, I relax even more. Then he starts to hum. His voice is low and sweet and the song is familiar. Hudson used to sing it to us when we were little and were scared. When the adult voices got louder downstairs he’d try to drown them out. Hudson would gather all of us in his and Flint’s room and shove the dresser in front of his door and we’d huddle together in his bed while he sang “Many Rivers to Cross”. That’s what Flint is humming to me now and I feel the years peel away. Suddenly I’m six again, safe and snug in between my brothers. I whisper along softly “And I merely survive because of my will...” thinking that sentence just sums up my life.
It takes time for me to feel peaceful and when I do I tell Flint to go, but he doesn’t.
He doesn’t want to leave me. He cleans up the bathroom, sweeping the broken bottles up the best he can, and brings me a wet cloth to wipe the tears and mascara off my face. He turns his back while I shuck my clothes and change into the fluffy hotel robe. He tells me to get into the bed and pulls the crisp sheets up over me, tucking them around me tightly. He does everything like he and Hudson used to do when I was a little girl.
I feel the mattress dip when he sits on the edge.
“You should go home, Flint," I say. “I'm fine here.”
“Are you really?” he asks.
“I will be,” I say and push deeper into the pillows. “Go home and check on Hudson.” He stands, slipping his hands in his pockets. He stares at the wall, takes a deep breath, and looks back at me with troubled eyes.
&nbs
p; “Missi, how do you feel about what happened…with you and Hudson?”
“Not now, Flint.”
“I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
“I don't want to talk about it now. I’ve been through worse, okay. Hurt is nothing new to me. Burying hurt where I can’t feel it is nothing new. This is nothing. Just go home, please?” I turn over and face the other direction hoping that he’ll go. Once I feel safe I’ll head back to my apartment, toss my few belongings in a bag and disappear again. It’s not a new routine for me. Flint and Hudson don’t need someone like me in their lives. It’s better for all of us if I go somewhere that they can’t find me.
Hudson doesn’t want me there anyhow. I can tell. I’ve seen that look plenty of times before, like I’m gum on a shoe someone can’t wait to wipe off. The abandoned baby, the grimy foster kid, the whore in the club. That’s me. Unwanted since birth.
I try to shake off my thoughts before they lead me down a dark path I might not come back from this time. It feels darker now because in the past I’ve always had the image of Hudson holding me in the hospital in my mind. I’ve always had that distant feeling of being loved by someone once, even if it was a long time ago.
All that is gone now.
Flint sighs and gives my foot a quick squeeze through the covers. I listen for the soft snick of the door closing.
19
RAVEN ENTERS THE CHATROOM
Raven: You went again tonight, didn’t you?
River: Why do you care?
Raven: I don’t like it.
River: Little bird, are you jealous?
Raven: No.
River: Then what it is?
Raven: Okay, maybe I am.
River: There’s nothing to be jealous of. I don’t even know their names.
Raven: And that’s supposed to make me feel better.
River: It’s purely physical. There’s no connection, not like there is with you.
Raven: Oh yeah, that really helped.
River: Don’t feel that way, please?
Raven: How am I supposed to feel? You come here and spill your guts to me, let me have all your pain, then you go to some club, meet some stranger and touch her, smell her, get off to her? When I’m here? It could be me, you know.
River: I think about you.
Raven: You do not.
River: Yes, I do. Every time I do it, every time I touch one of them I think about you. Little bird, it’s always you.
20
HUDSON
I'm on my bed, lying on top of the blankets Missi dropped only an hour ago. It seems like a lifetime already. The darkness is deep and silent around me but still my head pounds. Each throb travels through my veins like a heartbeat. I drape my arms over my face, trying to press the pounding away.
Red's gone. I sent him home because I just don't want to talk about it right now. After he saw the shattered vodka bottle he hadn't wanted to leave, but I can be persuasive if I want too. Red's a good boy, always has been. Either that or he didn’t want to put up with drunk Hudson. Drunk Hudson is an asshole. It’s probably the latter.
I shift and roll over into the blankets that are still scented with sex and I keep playing the picture of Missi spread open in front of me over in my mind. Even now, knowing who she is, my cock stirs. I should feel sickened because I know it should never have happened, but I can't deny how incredible she felt wrapped around me. While she was Tink, she was so sexy in her ferocious pursuit of pleasure. I can’t deny my want for her, despite knowing who she is, but how did she wind up in Club Forbidden? How did she know the words to say? Why was she there?
Where has Missi been all these years? And why did she show up now? God knows I spent enough money trying to locate her, so how in the hell did she find me? Did she know it was me? No, I can't think like that. I can’t. There’s no way that she would intentionally set out to fuck her own foster brother.
As soon as the thought passes through my mind a nagging doubt follows it. What if this was Missi’s way of getting revenge? Maybe she felt that we abandoned her all those years ago. I know her life would have been hard. The majority of foster care we experienced was at best neglectful and at worse horrifying. Who knows what kind of family she was put with after we left. In the best-case scenario, she wound up with someone who ignored her and just collected the monthly check for keeping her alive. I don’t even want to think about the worst-case scenario.
Is that why she's trolling clubs looking for strangers to fuck? Does she do it because she needs to feel wanted? Not that I can judge her for that. Look what I do. There’s no difference between us.
Maybe if I’d been around I could have stopped whatever happened to her. If I’d tried harder she could have had a better life.
Fuck, is that it?
Is she the way she is because of me?
Because I didn’t protect her?
For the first time in over a year I feel tears scald my eyes and run in hot tracks over my temples. I scrunch my eyes and scrub furiously at my salty face. I'm a 250-pound quarterback…make that former quarterback. I shouldn't be crying over some little slip of a girl, some little golden-haired pixie who found her way into my bed, no matter who she is.
But, that's the problem. She isn't just anyone. She's Mississippi. My little rebel Tink is the one person I loved more than anyone, aside from Flint. I can almost hear the sounds of her mewling from behind the dumpster. I thought a cat had been abandoned but what I found was so much sadder. There had been blood on her forehead and I thought she’d been hurt. I was too young to know about the mess of birth. Too young to do anything except pick her up and cradle her in my arms.
Does it sound stupid that I felt as though my arms were made to hold her? She fit me perfectly, like a little piece of her found its way into my heart and lodged there. It didn’t matter how much time passed; it never left.
Missi has had my heart since I was seven years old.
No one’s come close. Except…
…Raven?
Raven. I'd almost forgotten about why I'd gone to Club Forbidden. Raven has my heart in a different way. Fearless and vulnerable, confident and uncertain; Raven is a whole bunch of contradictions that have me dependent on her in a way I never expected. There's no denying how I feel about Raven, but it’s not the same. The way I love Missi is fiercer.
Brotherly love. Strong and protective.
I'm getting everything tangled up in my mind. The throbbing in my temple accelerates.
I roll over and peer at the clock on the bedside table. It will be dawn soon; Flint’s been gone with Missi for hours. Where the hell is he? I roll back over and stare at the dark ceiling, trying to get lost in the throbbing so I don’t think of anything. It doesn’t work. I'm still staring when I see the flash of headlights splash across the walls and hear the crunch of tires over the driveway. I wait, listening for the slam of the car door. I stay where I am when I hear the thud of Flint's boots coming up the stairs. I still don't move even when I see him outlined in the door of my room.
I can feel his heavy gaze on me.
“Well,” I ask, “is she okay?”
Flint snorts, “Yeah. No. Yeah, she's safe, if that's what you're asking. Damn, Hudson, you should have seen the dump she's living in. Two blocks from the docks, whores and drug dealers everywhere. I took her to a hotel, so she's physically safe. But okay? I seriously doubt it.”
I sit up quickly and ignore the flash of pain across my eyes. “Why the hell is she living down there?”
“I don't know. She wouldn't talk to me.”
“So, she didn’t say anything to you? Not about why she was here, if she knew who I was?”
“Is that what you think? Trust me, she had no idea it was you.”
“I'm not so sure about that,” I say. Flint stares, waiting for me to finish. “She knew, in the club, she knew the line, she said it first. She came there, looking for a hook-up, and then she rubbed that soft little ass against my cock and let me fall i
nto those sweet eyes and I lost all my willpower. She knew what I did with women on the balcony. If she knew that then she had to know who I was. That's why she was there!”
“I don't think so, Hudson.”
I snort my disbelief.
Flint just shrugs at me. “She saw the photo on the stairs, Hudson. She looked like she wanted to die. And you didn't see her go ape shit on the Belmont Towers hotel bathroom. We'll have to pay for that, by the way.”
“She...ripped apart the bathroom?” I ask in disbelief.
“I swear to god, Hudson, she would have hurt herself if I hadn't been there. She’s a little wildcat, that girl. Remember when we went on that ski trip up to Tahoe a couple years ago and stumbled on that elk on the side of the trail, the one with the broken leg? The noises that thing was making? Nothing compared to sounds coming out of that little girl I just left. She was gone, dude. I've never heard hurt like that. I could feel the pain coming off her.” Flint shakes his head, “Hell, my shirt’s still covered in her tears.”
His words sucker-punch me in the gut. He sounds accusatory, like I'd wanted to hurt her. I didn't. I don’t. The agony from his revelation shoots through my chest, knocking me back onto the bed. “No, man, no. I didn't mean for this to happen. I'd never, fucking hurt Missi! You know that.”
“Hudson, I know,” Flint says quietly.
“You fucking know, you don't fucking know! I. Broke. Her. And there's nothing I can do about it. You think I wanted this? Any of it? All I wanted was…I don’t even fucking know. A physical connection. Something to keep me in the world, and that’s what’s she was looking for too. Someone to love her for just a little while.”
Flint's face turns a murderous red and he slams his hand against the doorway with a loud thwack. “I do fucking know!” he yells at me. “What the hell do think I’ve been doing while I was gone? I spent my night holding her broken pieces together, making sure she was safe, and then I have to come back here and listen to your goddamned pity party? I do know, so fuck you, Hudson. You've only thought about yourself for the past year, so now maybe it's about time you thought about someone else. You broke her, now fix her.”
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