Almost Innocent

by Carina Adams

  “Dec?” I heard the desperation in my voice, and I was terrified that whatever he was thinking about would put a wall back up between us.

  “That was a shit night that I’d like to forget,” he snarled, surprising me. “It was the night everything changed.”

  Chapter Ten

  Declan

  I didn’t need prompting from her to remember that night because it was burned into my memory. I couldn’t forget it if I wanted to. Believe me, I’d tried. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to make those memories disappear.

  All through freshman year, I’d held on to the knowledge that Dustin would be gone in the fall. I only had to deal with his shit for one more year. Once he was gone, Gabby and I would finally have our chance.

  Shit, I practically was counting down the days. Hell, who was I kidding? More than once, I’d actually pulled out a calendar and calculated how much time was left until my freedom arrived.

  Then, fucking Dusty being the douche canoe he was, he barely held the grades he needed to graduate. By some fucking miracle, and probably lots of bribes from my dad, his teachers didn’t fail him. He was able to graduate with the rest of his class.

  He couldn’t get into any decent college though. My parents had always been clear about one thing—we did not come from a family of uneducated losers. We were to go to college and get our degrees, or they’d cut us off.

  To me, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to inherit the business, Dustin was, so I had big plans to make millions of my own. I didn’t need their money, and I sure as hell didn’t want it.

  Dustin was the polar opposite though. He relished in his “oldest son of the oldest son” bullshit luck and was giddy about the idea that he would run the empire one day. Power-hungry dick. He never made a back-up plan because he knew he didn’t need one. But if he got cut off, he wouldn’t be able to survive.

  For all I knew, my brother may have been brilliant. Maybe his grades were simply a reflection of his carelessness and laziness instead of his inability to understand the subject material. He’d been told all his life that he was the “next in charge,” so maybe he figured he didn’t need to live up to the rest of his potential. God knew I’d looked at him more than once and wondered if he’d been dropped on his head as an infant, or ingested lead paint as a toddler. Something, anything really, to explain the absence of my big brother’s brain.

  My father had an Ivy League education and had been chosen to be a Rhodes scholar. He was told he would be a great leader one day. Unfortunately, life got in the way, and my dad had to leave school before he wanted. Spend five minutes with him though, and you understood what it was like to be in the presence of a genius.

  My mother may not have gone to Harvard or Yale, but she was just as brilliant in her own right. Everyone who claimed my father would make the perfect politician had obviously not met his wife. Cunning, ruthlessness, and intelligence wrapped in a beautiful package that hid her viciousness and made people gravitate toward her. She often downplayed it, but unless she was with my father, she was usually the smartest person in the room.

  When you got Fi talking about science or archeology, she became another person—she transformed before your eyes into a walking encyclopedia. I swear that woman could recite every article about ancient ruins that National Geographic ever published. Verbatim.

  And me? Well, I’d been called a prodigy since kindergarten when I was enrolled in the gifted and talented program at school—after I passed tests designed for sixth graders. My father started teaching me Latin before I could talk—probably with the hopes that I’d grow up to be a lawyer. But by ten, I was taking a calculus class designed for high schoolers and having in-depth conversations with my father about the economy because the Keynesian theory made sense to me and I didn’t understand why others disagreed.

  In a family with brains like ours, Dustin had to have more than average intelligence. Yet he barely pulled in Cs. My parents fought the school, telling them their child was bored, that he needed to be challenged. Nothing worked. Dustin hated being trapped in those four walls every day. So he coped the only way he knew how—my brother became a popular jock.

  In a family like ours, where most of us would rather read about the Roman Olympics than sit on a couch and watch the current ones, Dustin was the odd man out.

  His hatred of education aside, Dustin knew the only way to take over the company was to get his degree, and he enrolled in a local community college because it was the only school that would accept him. However, that meant that he stayed home. The break from him I so desperately needed never came.

  And my hatred for the brother I’d once idolized began to spread.

  Gabby’s face was scrunched in confusion, and she was staring into my eyes as if she would see something that would clarify everything for her. I didn’t know what to tell her. I couldn’t begin to describe what that night had been like for me.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I stood in the dark corner of the living room, fuming, glaring at my brother as he shoved his hands down the jeans of the nameless whore grinding against him. His goddamn girlfriend was there, somewhere, and could walk in at any minute.

  Dustin didn’t fucking care. He’d probably laugh and invite her to join them. Dirtbag.

  He acted as though he was hot shit, the big man on campus still. He wasn’t. Yeah, half the people who had invaded my house went to school with him, but they were there for free booze and a good time. They didn’t give a shit who he was. These people weren’t his friends. They didn’t idolize him.

  They were using community college as a stepping stone. Next year, they’d be off at real schools and he’d be here, hosting his bullshit parties. Every year, the crowd would get younger and younger until he was the old creepy dude too stupid to know that everyone was just using him.

  The girl letting him finger her in the middle of a crowded room was only doing it because he’d promised to get her high afterward. She was, even if she didn’t know it, a prostitute. Selling herself for payment.

  My stomach churned in disgust.

  Gabby deserved better than this shit. I would give her more. I could give her everything she wanted and needed. She should be mine.

  The thought wasn’t a new one, but it hit me before I realized I was thinking about her. Why in the hell wasn’t she my girlfriend? What in the fuck could she possibly have in common with the brainless moron who had now pushed the woman in front of him to her knees?

  Fuck him. If he had gone away to school, I would have made my move. He was home, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t. I’d go find her, tell her how I felt, then she could get out of this hellhole with me.

  I just needed a shot or two for liquid courage. Screw shots. I knew where my dad hid his best whiskey. Ignoring everyone and everything, I strode to his study.

  And drank the whole fucking bottle.

  Someone slapped me across the face, hard. I shoved at whoever it was, still half drunk and desperate to get them away from me.

  “Wake up, you little shit,” my brother snapped before I was bitch-slapped again, this time harder.

  I forced my eyes open, not sure what in the hell was happening. “Wha—”

  “Do not speak,” Dustin ordered, his voice unlike anything I’d ever heard from him. “Get your ass up, but you do not say one fucking word to me.”

  I forced myself to sit up, pushing away the hands gripping my shirt, realizing I wasn’t in my dad’s office but instead in the solarium. Pain sliced through my brain. When had I come in here?

  “What the fuck is your problem?” I asked, my voice breaking pathetically and making me feel even worse, as I scrambled to remember my night.

  He laughed, but it was off. Something was wrong. “My problem?” he asked, almost too calm. “Well, little brother”—his eyes widened excitedly, and an eerie smile formed on his lips—“my problem is that I was supposed to be a single man right now.”

  I stopped squirming and watched him,
not understanding his words. Single. That meant he was breaking up with Gabs. “What?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Gabby is a kid and a fucking prude. I’m tired of wasting my time with her. Especially when so many others want to take her place.”

  My mouth was dry, but I couldn’t tell if it was from all the alcohol I’d forced into myself earlier, or if it was because I knew that whatever he was going to say, I wouldn’t like it.

  “Then a little birdie”—my eyes followed his as he glanced over his shoulder, and I realized we weren’t alone. Both Mark and Jason, Dustin’s best friend, were lingering across the room—“told me what happened outside.”

  What? I moved my gaze back to my brother, but my brain was so foggy, I couldn’t figure out what in the hell he was talking about. “What in the hell are you talking about?” I ran my tongue across my lips, desperate for a glass of water.

  Dustin laughed. “You’re such a fucking loser.” He sighed, crossed his arms, and looked down at me as if I was nothing more that a piece of dog shit on his shoe. “You went after my girl.”

  My stomach knotted in dread, and I had to force myself not to puke on him. No, I didn’t. I’d planned on it, but I hadn’t actually done it. I swallowed, my throat grinding against itself as if it were made of sandpaper.

  “You actually think she’d want you?” He scoffed, obviously disgusted at the idea. “She won’t fuck me, but you think she’s gonna spread her legs for a fat geek like you?”

  Jason snorted as if it was the best insult he’d ever heard.

  “Never gonna happen. So after I heard about what happened, it made me reevaluate. Things became crystal clear.” His hands spread across the space in front of his face. “I had to look at her with new eyes. Gabby is fucking hot—I can understand why you’d want her.”

  “She doesn’t nag. She lets me do whatever the fuck I want with whoever the fuck I want. She’s the motherfucking bomb. I realized how fucking wrong I was. I don’t want to dump her.” He ticked off each attribute with the flick of a finger.

  Then he turned toward our audience and nodded. Jason rushed across the room and grabbed me before I could put up a fight, hauling me off the chair I’d been on and holding my arms behind my back. The first punch, right in my gut, was a surprise, and if Jason wasn’t holding me, I would have doubled over in pain.

  I’d had physical fights with Dustin before. We’d beat the shit out of each other on numerous occasions. But it had been just the two of us. This was not one of those times.

  The blow to my cheek made my head flop to the side as I saw stars. Literally saw stars. I thought that was just in the movies, but it was real. And combined with the raging headache I already had, I knew I would be hurting tomorrow.

  My brother took a fistful of my hair, forcing my head back, so I had to look at him. Suddenly the obnoxiousness of girls pulling each other’s hair made sense—that shit fucking hurt. I glared at him, hoping he could feel how much I hated him.

  Dustin only smirked, as if asking me what I was going to do about how he was treating me, and leaned close, his nose almost touching mine. “Nah, I’m going to keep her. You want my girlfriend, but I’m going to fuck her raw. Hard and long, so you’ll hear her screaming my name for hours.”

  The image infuriated me, and I struggled against him.

  He only laughed before landing another blow to my stomach. “You’re a weak, pathetic little piece of shit, but she does love you, doesn’t she? Not the way you want her to, of course. No girl wastes a second of their time on you, do they?” He laughed, an evil sound echoing around the room. “But for some reason, my girl does love you. Know that I’m going to be so goddamn amazing that she can’t help but love me too. I’m going to own every piece of her, claim every hole whether she wants me to or not.”

  Punch after punch thundered into my body, over and over. None of them hurt as much as the idea of him hurting her. When Dusty was done, Jason dropped my arms and I fell to the floor, a pile of exhausted, bloodied, and beaten flesh.

  Dustin wasn’t over yet. His point hadn’t been driven home, but I thought he’d leave. Instead, he dropped to his haunches next to me and pinched my chin as he yanked my head off the floor. “You fucking touch her again, you fucking come on to her again, and the beating you took will look like nothing compared to the one I’ll give her. Got it?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer before he strode out of the room, going God knew where. I hoped it wasn’t to her. I didn’t doubt a word he said, and I was scared for her. Tears burned my eyes, caused not by the pain but from the thought of him hurting her. Because of me.

  Something inside me snapped

  I couldn’t stop caring about her just because her psychotic boyfriend told me I had to. I loved her, and that wouldn’t change. But I would leave her alone—for now. For her.

  I could stop caring about him though. In that moment, he wasn’t my big brother anymore. He was a possessive boyfriend who viewed his girlfriend as nothing more than property, and he’d become unhinged and dangerous.

  One day, I vowed, I would protect her from monsters like him. I forced myself off the floor, shuffled down the hall, up the stairs, and into my room, clutching my side. I tried not to take deep breaths and winced with each step. The pain made things clear.

  Dustin may have shared my blood, but he’d declared war. I was just as much a Callaghan as he was. We didn’t take kindly to threats. We held grudges. And we always protected our own.

  “Declan?” Gabby’s worry-filled voice broke through my flashback. “You’re scaring me.”

  I blinked at her, half surprised that she was in front of me. Fucking Dusty—he’d been gone for twelve years, but his ghost was always there, just waiting for the chance to storm in and fuck shit up. I’d been serious the day before when I told her it was worse when she was around.

  That didn’t mean I wanted her gone though. Jesus, I’d gotten to spend maybe four hours with her, and I was already addicted again. She was the piece of me that had been missing for years, even though I’d never wanted to admit that to myself.

  The bags under her eyes were dark black, telling me she hadn’t been sleeping well. What had her so wound up that she was losing sleep? Was it me? I felt a pang of guilt for making her worry about me on top of whatever else was going on.

  I wanted her to tell me everything. I longed to be the one she trusted enough to vent to, to hear about her problems and struggles and help guide her through them. I needed to talk to her about my day, have her tell me I was doing the right thing or yell at me if I was fucking up.

  I’d been so sure when I got out that we would be better off staying away from each other, but I’d been wrong. Moira may have demanded I keep away, but my mother wasn’t in charge of anything anymore. I needed to do what was best for Gabby and me, and tell everyone else to go to hell.

  We had years of baggage to overcome. Miles and miles of shit to wade through. A past to come to terms with. It wouldn’t be easy. It would be one of the hardest things I could put us through.

  But it would be worth it. If Gabby and I could come out on the other side together, if we could work through our history and remain friends, my life would have meaning again. If she could forgive me for everything and look at me the way she used to, as if I was her everything, maybe she would even love me one day.

  “You need a nap, Little G,” I whispered, running my thumb over the soft-silkiness of her cheek. “Let me come home with you. Let me take care of you tonight.”

  I didn’t realize how lewd it sounded until after I said it, but Gabby only sighed and leaned into my hand. “I am so tired.” As if on cue, she yawned. “I just need to sleep.” She covered my hand with hers. “I don’t want to waste any time with you though. I can sleep when I’m dead.”

  I shook my head. We needed to both have clear heads for the talk we had to have. “Go home, Gabs. Get some rest. I’ll finish up here and be over.”

  For once, she didn’t argue. She gave me a
small smile and grabbed her stuff. Within minutes, I was alone in my sister’s house, watching the woman I loved drive away and wondering what in the hell I was doing. This wasn’t the plan.

  When my phone rang and Mark’s name showed on my screen, I hit Ignore. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to him, and I sure as shit wasn’t ready to deal with the rest of my life right now. One thing at a time.

  And Gabby was my priority.

  Chapter Eleven

  Gabby

  Adrenaline was the only thing that kept my eyes open. The excitement that courses through your body when something you never thought would happen actually does: the first time a boy you liked noticed you back, the day you got a letter of acceptance from your number one college choice, or the moment you found out you were pregnant when the doctors told you you’d never carry your own baby. That feeling of wonder and pure amazement, knowing that your dreams are about to come true—that’s the feeling that raced through my veins, touching every part of me, as I drove home.

  Declan was coming to my house. To talk. Something he’d said he wanted to do.

  Declan had looked at me, really looked, and seemed to see me again. Not the woman he hated. Not the woman he’d spent the last twelve years avoiding. But me.

  The way he used to look at me.

  I let Zahira into the backyard while I grabbed a quick bite to eat, then I called her upstairs with me.

  I never napped anymore. When Grady was a baby, I’d sleep when he slept simply because I was mentally exhausted from studying. But that was a long time ago. Now it seemed as if I’d wake up grumpier than I had been, and it wasn’t worth it.

  Today though, I barely made it to the bed before I felt my body shutting down. Just a few minutes, I promised myself. I’d give myself a half hour tops, then I’d go down and start a pot of coffee and wait for Dec to arrive.