Snowflakes & Fire Escapes (7 page)

Put him on …

“Hello?” I say quietly, silently cursing the sound of that meek voice. I wait, the second of silence that follows absolute torture, before I’m put out of my misery by the wrong voice greeting me.

Disappointment is a son of a bitch.

***

My father walked me home from school every day.

Every. Fucking. Day.

Every afternoon when I stepped out those doors, he stood there, in the same spot, waiting for me. He probably thought it would thwart me from seeing Cody, but the fact was he couldn’t watch over me every hour of every day.

Thank God.

I breathed a sigh of relief one Friday after dismissal when I didn’t find him standing there. He said he wouldn’t be. He said he was going out of town with Cormac. Usually I hated being left alone during his trips, but after his recent bout of hovering, I was grateful for a reprieve.

It was cold, so cold I could see my cloud of breath. Even bundled up and wearing thick black tights, I was still shivering. I walked fast, trying to make it home quickly, but my footsteps stalled when I neared my apartment building.

Cody was there.

He was wearing jeans and his black hoodie, his hands in the pockets and the hood up over his head. A brown paper grocery bag sat at his feet as he leaned against the old brick by the entrance.

I smiled as I approached him, calling out his name, but my expression fell when he looked over at me. His eyes were bloodshot, part of his face swelling, a deep reddish hue covering the left side of his face, the darkest of it along his cheekbone.

“Cody? Are you okay?”

Rushing forward, I reached for him, cupping his cheek and lightly stroking the bruised skin. He grabbed my wrist, pulling my hand away, as a smile touched his lips. It was sullen, not the happy smile that made my knees weak. “I’m good, Gracie.”

“You don’t
look
good.”

“But I am.” Pulling my hand up, he lightly kissed the back of it. “I’m always good when I’m with you.”

I stared at him, studying his face. The bruise was fresh, the edges of it still framed with pink, not even old enough to turn purple yet, but it would. It was going to be a doozy.

“What happened?” I asked. “Did you get in another fight or something?”

“You could say that,” he said. “Not a big deal, though. Looks worse than it is. Asshole just sucker punched me.”

“Who did?”

“Doesn’t matter.” He sighed, dropping my hand to pick up the grocery bag. “I heard from a reliable source that the old man was out of town, though, so I was hoping we could hang out for a bit. I could use the company.”

Before I could even ask what was in the bag, he tilted it so I could see inside, bottles clanking as he did. A six-pack of Guinness. I wasn’t sure if this was a celebration or a pity part, but I wasn’t going to deny him either way. Cody was usually the one comforting me. Anytime he needed it in return, I would be his.

“Do you want to come up to the apartment?”

“Sure.” There was no hesitation this time. He didn’t need ten seconds to think about it. “Do you want me to take the fire escape?”

“No need,” I said. “You can use the stairs.”

For the first time ever, I let someone through the front door of the apartment, someone who didn’t have a warrant to enter. Before I might have been skirting rules and twisting words, but this was blatant disregarding, and I didn’t feel a stitch of regret about it. Cody walked over and plopped down on the couch, setting the bag on the floor by his feet. Without hesitation, he pulled out a beer. “You wouldn’t happen to have a bottle opener around here, would you?”

“Of course,” I said, heading into the kitchen to grab the bottle opener from the drawer. I brought it out to him, watching as he popped the top. “Do you want me to put the rest of them in the fridge?”

“Nah, don’t bother.” He grabbed my arm and yanked me onto the couch beside him. I laughed, relaxing as he put one arm around me before taking a long pull from the bottle, grimacing. “It tastes like shit, whether it’s warm or cold. This way we won’t have to keep getting up.”

“If it’s disgusting, why do you drink it?”

“Why do you drink coffee?”

“Because I like it.”

“Well, I like Guinness,” he said. “I drink it for the feeling, not the flavor.”

I snuggled up against him as he drank. He offered me a sip and I took it, confirming what he said:
disgusting
. I wanted to ask him more about what happened, who he got into a fight with, what happened to his face, but I didn’t want to push him for answers.

“You know, when we were kids, I used to think you were just fucking with me when you said you didn’t watch television,” he said after a moment as silence enveloped the room. “I mean, who the hell doesn’t watch TV, you know? It still blows my mind.”

My father didn’t own televisions.

He wouldn’t have them in his house.

He said reality was twisted enough … he didn’t need our minds warped with fictionalized accounts of it. I’d seen movies of course, ones I’d snuck into with Cody without my father knowing, but otherwise it was off limits.

Most electronics were, frankly.

No cell phones.

No computers.

I lived in the technological Stone Age.

“It’s not hard to go without when you’ve never had,” I said. “It’s when you get a taste and then you’re denied something that you start to crave it.”

Cody smiled then, the smile I loved, before laughing lightly. “Don’t I know it, baby.”

He drank while we relaxed, talking about everything but nothing of importance. I knocked out my weekend homework while he helped here and there, giving me answers to my math when I stumbled over problems. Cody was smart. If he could only stay out of trouble, school would be a breeze for him.

I was finishing up a worksheet for history when Cody ripped a piece of paper out of one of my notebooks. From the corner of my eye, I saw him fold it into a small triangle before fishing around in my school bag, pulling out a pair of scissors. Smiling, I watched as he started cutting it, randomly making jagged edges and patterns along the sides of it. He unfolded it when he finished, opening it up to reveal an elaborate snowflake.

He made them all the time when we were kids. He’d write along the edges and slip them to me, little presents of love whenever he could tell I was feeling sad. It had been years since he’d made one, though. That was before he began to sneak out at night, back before he learned the art of scaling fire escapes and tapping on windows.

I used to try to return the gesture, try to make him one, but mine were always an utter mess. I accidentally cut them in half most of the time.

Reaching over, Cody grabbed a pen from my bag. I wondered what he was writing, what sort of secret he was spilling along the edges of the paper.

When he was finished, he handed it to me. I took it carefully, regarding him for a moment before glancing down at the snowflake, reading his writing.

I really want to touch your boob
.

Laughter burst from me. I shoved him playfully, and he wrapped his arms around me, knocking my homework onto the floor. The sky outside was starting to darken while in the living room his hands started to roam. He groped and touched me through my clothes, getting exactly what he wanted, before his hand ran beneath the fabric of my skirt, slipping into my underwear.

I didn’t stop him.

His lips met mine, his kiss frenzied. Discarded bottles surrounded us, scattering when I accidentally kicked some trying to take off my tights. I started to fully undress but he stopped me, whispering against my mouth. “Keep the uniform on.”

My cheeks burned from blush, but he didn’t see. It was dark and he was too occupied with other parts of me. He rubbed and rubbed and rubbed between my thighs as he sucked on my neck, teeth nipping the skin. He was going to leave a mark, but I didn’t care.

That was why they invented turtlenecks.

The pressure inside of me built and built, like nothing I’d ever felt before, until it built so much I couldn’t contain it anymore. I cried out when pleasure rushed through me. Before I could even get a grip on what I was feeling, Cody unbuckled his pants and pulled me onto his lap.

Panic seized me for a split second as I slid down on him. It was uncomfortable again, not as much as last time, but I still wasn’t used to the feeling of him being inside of me. I didn’t know what I was doing, so I just moved my hips, hoping he was getting something out of it. His lips parted and he let out a soft sigh as he closed his eyes, leaning his head back on the couch.

“Just like that, Gracie,” he whispered. “Fucking perfect.”

It didn’t take long again until he grunted, gripping my hips tightly and thrusting up a few times, finishing. Afterward, we lay on the couch, me in his arms, as that word echoed through my head.

Perfect.

Fucking
perfect
.

Except … it wasn’t.

Perfect would have been us not having to sneak around. Perfect would have been him without a black eye. Perfect would have been my wish coming true.

“Did you get suspended again?” I asked curiously after a while. We were both dressed, for the most part. “Did they kick you out for fighting?”

“No, this didn’t happen at school.”

“Oh, so school is still going okay?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I haven’t been.”

I pulled back to look at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I stopped going.”

I gaped at him. “But you’re so close to graduating. How are you going to find another school to take you now?”

“I’m not,” he said. “There’s no point. A degree isn’t going to do shit for me in these streets, Gracie.”

“But you didn’t want—”

“I know,” he said, cutting me off. I didn’t have to finish because he knew what I was thinking. “But sometimes we have to make choices we fucking hate to get what we want out of life. A little compromise never hurt anybody.”

As he said that, all I could do was stare at his battered face. Whatever this compromise was, it certainly hurt him. I was trying to wrap my head around it, trying to makes sense of what he was saying. I was trying to think of the words to explain what I was feeling, but I never got a chance.

Because my dreams?

They went right up in flames.

It started when I heard a key in the door, the lock turning, the clicking echoing through the living room.

Cody heard it, too.

He was on his feet instantly.

Panicked, I jumped up, trying to clean up the empty beer bottles but there wasn’t enough time.

“Get out of here,” I hissed, pushing Cody toward the window. He shoved it open, and I cringed at the loud groan of old wood. The sound was deafening. He was slipping out, the metal banging when he scaled the fire escape, just as the last lock clicked and the door shoved open.

My father appeared.

He looked right at me as I stood in front of the open window, visibly trembling, with an empty beer bottle in my hand that I was trying to conceal. It only took him a second to put the pieces together as his eyes swept along the living room.

Before I knew it, he was running, disappearing back out the door.
Shit
. I hoped Cody made it, that he was gone before he could get caught, and climbed out onto the fire escape to try to warn him before it was too late.

My breath caught as I look down.
Busted
.

Cormac Moran stood on the sidewalk near his town car. Cody was beside his father, shivering his ass off in the cold evening air. He wasn’t wearing his hoodie. My gaze darted behind me, toward the couch in the apartment. His hoodie was still on the floor along with some other discarded clothes.

Oh God.

Oh no.

My knees went weak.

I had to grip onto the railing.

I watched down below as my father burst outside, his voice booming like thunder as he lunged right for Cody. “You little son of a bitch! You think you can come into my house? You think you can violate my daughter? You think you can do that and
get away with it
?”

Cormac intervened before my father could throw any punches, stepping between the two of them. I couldn’t hear what the man said, but whatever it was silenced my father … at least temporarily. The men talked heatedly for a minute before my father turned away from them and stormed back inside. I watched, frozen, as Cormac roughly grabbed Cody by his shirt, throwing him against the passenger side of the town car, so hard it left a dent. Cody raised his hands in a sign of surrender as Cormac verbally laid into him. After shoving him back against it again, Cormac finally let go to walk around to the driver’s side.

Cody paused briefly, glancing up at me on the fire escape, before getting in the car.

They hadn’t even yet pulled away from the curb when my father returned to the apartment. I heard the front door close and heard his footsteps along the wooden floor. I braced myself for his rage. I was prepared for disgust, even ready to feel the man’s hatred.

What I got was far, far worse.

“I’m disappointed in you, Grace Callaghan,” he said, his voice laced with dejection. “I thought you were better than this.”

***

“Grace.” My father’s voice is always gruff, like he’s constantly fighting to keep his emotions in check, but I know that’s just his natural tone. “It’s great to hear your voice again.”

Closing my eyes, I swallow thickly. “Dad.”

I love my father.

I do.

But he made this bed that I’m forced to lie in, day in and day out, all alone in this ironic little town, so it’s hard not to feel some resentment. He gave me life, sure, but I also blame him for taking my life away. I always knew he did bad things, always knew he hung around bad people, but I never knew the scope of it until the day Holden let me read the thirty-page indictment against him.

My father was linked to a body count higher than Ted Bundy’s.

It’s hard to reconcile that fact with the man who raised me.

My father was Dr. Jekyll.

The man on the phone is the evil Mr. Hyde.

Connor Callaghan.

He got to keep his last name.