“I don’t really like to be around people.”
“You don’t say?” She hummed, licking her fingers adorably after stealing another garlic breadstick from the dwindling pile. We were only a few miles out of town, but a million miles away. Just short of the Devil’s Tooth, a treacherous pass that connected two mountain peaks, we’d found a secluded spot at the shoreline of Devil’s Bluff Lake. “Your anti-social attitude is charming. In a Heathcliff kinda way.”
“Don’t even start with that shit again.” I laughed, thinking there were a helluva lot worse things she could call me than her version of always-grumpy Heathcliff. “Ya know why I like you, mouse. You’re the kind of girl that finds romance in darkness. There aren’t many of us; it’s good we stick together.”
“Because picnics by hidden lakes aren’t romantic at all.” She grinned as I peppered kisses down her jawline. I felt her shiver against me, the breeze coming off of the water warmer than usual, which made me glad to know that she had the same sort of visceral reaction to me that I did her.
“Mm.” I made my way down her torso, nipping softly at the outline of her breast before slipping my head quickly under her skirt and nipping at the edge of her elastic panties. “Little mouse, romance never tasted as good as when it’s on your lips.”
She squealed as I licked through her cotton panties, her bucking hips meeting my mouth as I held her against me, licking, nipping, and pulling away. Not enough to get her too stirred up, but just enough to see that sweet cherry blush warm up her cheeks. “Not here, Kyler.”
I whispered against her tender pussy. “Yes, here. This place is abandoned.”
Her fingers threaded into my hair, a tiny groan falling off her lips. “Kyler, but really, this place is busy all the time in the summer.”
“I know, I know,” I husked, placing one last kiss at the top of her sweet warmth before patting her skirt back into place. “There, all put back together again.”
I grinned back at her, feeling pulses of stubborn happiness push through my veins. I threw myself back on the blanket beneath us, crossing my ankles and tucking my hands behind my head. Clouds passed in marshmallow puffs and birds sang so loudly it sounded like we’d been plopped in a fairytale.
“This is the most peaceful place I have ever seen, which makes it my favorite.” I hooked her pinky finger with mine. “Until I saw you, of course.”
“You’re pretty smooth when you want to be, Sinclair,” she said, a pink blush forming on her creamy skin as she fidgeted with a strand of her hair. “I was thinking about how to best say what I promised I’d tell you earlier…”
She didn’t reply, her gaze only watching the wind send the leaves rustling above our heads.
“The candy thing…” I worked the metal in my lip back and forth. “I trusted someone who hurt me when I was young. I was ten, and it was the first hard lesson I had to learn. Never take candy from a stranger, right? Well, what if it’s not a stranger? What if it’s someone you trust?”
I registered her breathing pick up at my side, the soft twitch of her pinky against mine.
“I knew the guy since I was born, ya know. Pierce Black.” I spat out his name, after years, like toxic venom I’d been holding inside too long. “My father’s best friend. Someone that was at birthday parties and Christmas dinners. He was my fucking godfather. He took an oath to protect me.” I took a deep breath, feeling lighter by telling her something that I hadn’t told anyone else. As I kept talking I felt the fear and freedom circle each other in my gut, doing a dance, both trying to get control or lose it.
“Kyler.” Maddy whispered. I hated hearing the pity in her voice.
“Don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t you dare, Maddy. This is why I didn’t want to tell you. He’s dead now. I was happy when Monica told me. The day I found out Pierce Black was dead, I wanted to throw a party. Instead, I blacked out, drunk.”
Madison bolted to her feet then, eyes casting around the picnic blanket as if she’d been stung by an invisible source. “I, I think, I forgot something and I should go.”
“What?” I stood, reaching for her elbow, but she jerked out of my reach. Her hands were trembling. How long had her hands been trembling like that? “Maddy, what the fuck?”
“Jesus, Kyler, please just take me home!” Wild tears were rushing down her cheeks now. A part of me wanted to kiss them away, to beg her to tell me what was wrong, but another part felt only rage. I’d just divulged my worst nightmare and she was running from me, now? After everything?
“Fine. It would be my pleasure,” I spat, yanking the blanket into my arms and causing all of our takeout to dump out on the grass. I huffed, gathering everything in my arms and stomping to the back of my motorcycle to shove it all in the storage box. “Well, come on then. You want to throw a tantrum, let’s go then, I have better things to do than play games with little girls.”
Her eyes flared, fists clenching with a rage I hadn’t seen her channel before. “I’ll be walking home, thank you very much.”
“Maddy, look, it’s two and a half miles back home. I’ll drop you off, and then you never have to see my face again.”
Her eyes flared once before she set off down the path into Devil’s Bluff Lake. I walked my bike silently behind her, unwilling to leave her alone but totally un-fucking-sure how we’d taken this turn so abruptly.
“Look, Maddy--”
“No, Kyler. Just no.” She whipped her head around, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Now I need a beat, okay?”
My heart cracked wide as she used my own words against me.
She thought I was disgusting and she was right.
I was.
Why would anyone as perfect as her want to be with damaged goods?
Her words stung like knives and I had no reply.
Chapter 27
“If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave.” ― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
Madison
“So...what happened between you and my brother?” Tammy asked, not so quietly, throwing her book on the table and resting on her elbows.
“Can you please keep your voice down?” Miss Richards, the librarian, said in a loud hushed tone. I always wondered how librarians did that, said what they needed to say in a forceful way but never really seemed louder than a whisper.
Tammy looked to her, mouthing sorry before turning her topaz eyes on me. “So what happened with you and my brother?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit, Maddy. He went from being a complete asshole to somewhat tolerable, to complete asshole again. The only time the fucker was even a bit happy was when he was with you. So what happened?” She sat down in the wooden chair, leaning back, her arms crossed at her chest.
“Tammy, I really need to study.” I dismissed her.
“Yes, my brother keeps making excuses too.”
“Maybe because it’s none of your business,” I said, probably a little too loudly, which was reinforced by a glare from Miss Richards.
I grabbed my book and headed out of the library. Tammy jumped up and followed. We garnered many looks from passersby as she grabbed my arm just outside the library doors, forcing me to turn and look at her.
“Can you please let go of my arm?” I asked, trying to stay calm. Kyler had many behavior issues because of the abuse he suffered, I wasn’t sure if Tammy did too. Usually abusers didn’t stick to just one kid and both of them were around the same age. I felt so defeated at that and wanted to scream. I was the product of a man that had ruined the lives of children; that had ruined the life of my own mother. I just wanted to run away and hide. Bury my head so deep and never come out. I couldn’t even look Tammy in the eye. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye.
“Sorry,” Tammy whispered, dropping her hand and backing a few steps away from me. “He’s just been harder to deal with, much harder than before you. I love my brother and I don’t know what to do.”
“Just tell him you love hi
m and that no matter what, you will always be there.” The words poured out of me, they were words that I desperately wanted to say to him myself, but if Kyler knew the truth, how could he even stand to look at me. He would hate me, so I left before he could. “I just can’t be the one to help him. Not now.”
“Maddy, you’re the only one that’s ever been able to get to him,” she said, hanging her head down, her shoulders slumped, completely defeated.
“He won’t want me,” I whispered, before turning and walking away.
Chapter 28
“The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day.” ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Kyler
Another glass shattered on the wall, bursting in tiny fragments and scattering on the floor. Crystal. Breaking the dishes in the pool house was showing me exactly how to differentiate between glass and crystal. Glass breaks into large chunks; glass can be glued back together. It wouldn’t be perfect but you could use it again if you wanted to. But crystal, crystal shatters into hundreds of tiny pieces with no way of putting that mess back together again. I kept wondering if Maddy and I were crystal or glass.
My phone flashed, twenty ignored texts, not one from the only person I wanted to hear from. It was as if Maddy was a mirage, a figment of my damn imagination. I’d lived in darkness since I was ten-years-old. I was used to it, it was all I knew and I’d become comfortable with it. Then she had to come into my life and fuck everything up.
I didn’t want to deal with anyone or anything. The only person I wanted in my orbit thought I was disgusting and wanted nothing to do with me. The worst part is that she’d changed me. I was used to walking around the world oblivious, fine with stepping on anyone that got in my way. Now I was holed up in my place like a little bitch, pining over a girl that shouldn’t have been worth my time. But she was worth everything. I was a pussy now, a pathetic pussy. I glanced at the floor; it was a collage of shattered crystal. It felt like my fucking heart was bleeding out on the floor along with it.
A loud knock interrupted my thoughts.
“Go away!” I shouted, lying on the sofa surrounded by pizza boxes and bottle after bottle of vodka and rum, scattered around the polished hardwood floors. It looked like a depressed junkie living in a dark cave.
“Kyler, enough is enough. Damn it, let me in.” My sister’s voice came from the other side of the front door. “Kyler, I swear to fucking god, if you don’t open this damn door right now, I’m gonna blast my way through it.”
“I think I’d like to see that,” I yelled, picking up a bottle of alcohol and drinking back the small amount that was left in it. “Just go away, Tammy.”
“Kyler, I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, Ky. Please don’t do this,” she begged, her voice defeated. I hated that I’d made her feel like that. Tammy was the only person that I cared about aside from Maddy, and here I was fuckin’ her up too.
“Tammy. I promise I’ll be fine. Just go away.”
“Let me see you,” she demanded.
I got up, staring at the tornado in front of me. I knew that if I opened the door and she saw all of this, she would be horrified, but at that point, I just wanted her to see that I wasn’t dead so she would just go away.
I flung the door open. “There, you saw me. Can you go away now?”
She pushed her way through, her eyes wandering the disaster zone. “What the actual fuck, Ky?” she said, bending down and picking up the chaos on the floor. “What happened?”
“What happened is that she found out how fucking pathetic I am,” I said, leaning against the wall and sliding down until I was sitting on the floor. I buried my head in my hands and started to tug at my hair. “She isn’t good enough for me, anyway.”
“That’s such utter bullshit. You’re both a miserable couple of cowards.”
Tammy’s words gave me some hope. Maddy was miserable? She was miserable and that made me feel a glimmer of happiness. I liked knowing she was as pathetic as I was and hoped that maybe, just maybe, she missed me too.
“Why don’t you just tell her how you feel?”
“I did tell her. I told her more than I have ever told another human being in a long time.”
“No, dummy, did you tell her that you love her?” Tamlin asked, sitting down beside me.
“She knows.”
“Tell her, Kyler. Actually tell her. Because you and I both know that you love the girl. Now help me clean this fucking mess. You’re disgusting.” She got up, offering her hands to me and helping me on my feet.
“Tam, I love you,” I said, wrapping my little sister in my arms.
“I love you too, you big dummy.”
Chapter 29
“You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.” ― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Madison
It’d been weeks since I’d seen any of the Sinclairs. After my encounter with Tamlin at the library, I even avoided her like the plague. My heart already felt heavy, I couldn’t deal with anything else.
“You’ve got a package, it’s in your room,” my mom yelled as I entered the front door.
“Thanks,” I said, and headed to my room. I glanced at my nightstand and there was a USB. I took it over to the computer and loaded it. It was a music. When I read the title, I felt a tear escape my eyes; a tear that I didn’t even know was there.
Kyler loves Maddy
I hit play. The first song was Falling Slowly by Glen Hansard. His haunting voice interlaced with the longing of a man and a woman who want each other but can’t really manage to say exactly the words that will connect them, before building a relationship and finding true connection with each other, finding peace. Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol started playing. I closed my eyes and let the music wash over me, listening to the lyrics of longing, need, forgiveness and passion. I went to the next song. Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. A sweet song that still had some sad undertones. I couldn’t help thinking how appropriate it was for this whole situation. The tears drenched my face and fell down with sorrow, regret, and most of all anger. I was so angry that this was happening. But I knew it would be better for Kyler to hate me for being the girl that broke his heart than to find out that he fell in love with his predator's biological child.
“Sweetie,” my mom said, as she gently knocked on my bedroom door. I turned to look at her and she rushed towards me. “Maddy, what’s wrong?”
“I broke up with Kyler,” I said, almost crawling into my mother’s arms. I longed to be small again, where the only thing that I needed to feel better was her arms wrapped around me, and a gentle peck on my head.
“I didn’t even know you and Kyler were a thing,” my mom said, holding me and swaying us back and forth, the motion calming me. “He’s got some demons, that one.”
“Mom, is Pierce Black my father?” I blurted while wiping at my tears.
My mom pulled back from me, holding her arms out so she could see my face. Then one lonely tear fell down her face. “No, honey, Michael Evans is your father. But you wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Pierce Black. I’m sorry, Maddy; I never wanted you to find out. I never wanted to come back here, I wanted to leave it all behind me but then Monica offered me this job. I thought the money and the opportunities it would bring you would be worth the risk. But I was wrong, it's not worth it.”
“I’m sorry. I am so sorry that any of this happened to you,” I said, throwing my arms around her. “I am so sorry you had to be reminded of him--of that night--my entire life.”
“So, for eighteen years,” she said, wiping away my tears, “you were born of love. You were wanted, and you were loved. Not one day did I ever look at you and think anything other than that’s my daughter and I love her more than my own
life. Nothing that man did was your fault.” She pulled back so we were face to face, so I could look into her eyes and she could look into mine. “You know that, right?” she asked, and as much as I wanted to say I knew, I still felt that pang of guilt. So I did the one thing I could, I threw my arms around her.
“I love you, Mom.”
“So, what happened between you and Kyler?” she whispered in my ear, and her hand gently soothed my hair back, something she had done my whole life.
“The past happened. I can’t change the past.”
“Oh, sweetie, you can’t change anything in life. The only thing you can control is yourself and your actions. What others do or have done are no reflection of the person you are, my love.”
“I’m scared, Mom.”
“One thing I know, anything in life worth having should scare you.” She kissed the top of my head, “I’m heading to the Sinclairs. I think you should join me.” And with that, my mom left my room, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
Chapter 30
“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.” ― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Madison
“Mom, I don’t think I can do this.” I breathed, just as we stepped over the threshold of the big house, Monica’s cheery face ducking out from the dining room and welcoming us with a smile and a wave.
“Come in, come in, Edward is joining us tonight, aren’t we the luckiest?”
I stepped around the corner, my eyes first falling on the patriarch of the Sinclair family, before casting to Kyler’s rigid frame across the table from him. I wanted to melt into the floor and die. He looked so sad. A part of me felt horrible that I was the cause of it, but I also knew this was a mess I couldn’t fix even if I tried.
Ruthless: Black Mountain Academy Page 12