The Other Brother (Snow and Ash Book 3) (22 page)

“You’ll forgive me if I ask you ladies to get the hell out?” Nico’s grin takes in Mom and Janice, but neither moves.

Reeds in the dunes. I scratch my cheek. There are reeds. Not green, not brown, but feathery on top and—

“So I guess you’re not happy to see me?” Nico tosses a checker in the air and places it back on the board in the wrong place.

I stare at the game and pick at my lips, and I wish to God the ocean was real.

“Look,” he says, scooching down and trying to catch my gaze. “I just thought I’d drop by and say hello. No big deal or anything.”

The spider scampers across the floor and under the useless fridge. I feel it in my hair.

“You will look at me when I talk to you!”

Mom moves between Nico and me and crosses her arms over her chest. “She doesn’t have to do anything.”

He flashes her a glare. “Was I talking to you, Mason?”

Mom folds in on herself, and Nico pushes her aside. “What’s done is done. Nothing good can come of talking to Kent about the past. You leave him alone, hear me?”

I flick Mom a glance, shift back to my hands, and nod, almost imperceptibly.

“Good. We have the territories to think about. Territory. You seem to be fine—”

—it starts in the middle of my shoulder blades—

“—and Kent’s moved on. He’s married Ayden, just like he was always meant to and—”

—Ayden, long, silky auburn hair and eyes green like emeralds, and she stabs me with white-tipped metal, and Kent wraps his arms around her and tells her he can’t ever be without her…

He’s still talking, but I can’t listen.

I shake my head, close my eyes, and go somewhere else. My lips move. “Somewhere the sun is out and the leaves tell their secrets. They whisper it to the wildflowers, but I hear it. I hear them. I’m supposed to stay in the shadow, but they whisper, and they—”

My head snaps back as he slaps my face. Both Mom and Janet gasp.

“I don’t care who you are, get out of my house!” hisses Janice.

Nico ignores her. “If you can’t agree, well, we have your mother, now don’t we?”

His voice, it’s so harsh. He almost sounds like Kent. I don’t raise my head, but I flick a glance to my mother. Her face is pale, and she stares at Nico like he’s pointing a gun. She’s afraid of him, as she should be.

As I’ve been. I slide him a narrow-eyed look. “I know you.”

He cocks his head and frowns.

I edge closer. I want him to trust me, trust me for now, so I let my hands hang at my sides. He thinks he’s got me but I already see him bathed in death. The metallic taste of his blood fills my mouth as though I’ve already taken it. I don’t hold back my sneer. “You think I don’t know you, but I do.”

Still frowning, he shakes his head. “What the fuck?”

I blink, and I’m there again, wide, jagged slashes seeping blood and burning, burning, burning. His boot shoves me back, farther into my crate. I blink again. “I hate dogs.”

Nico looks me up and down, and furrows his brow. “I don’t know what you think—”

“I hate you!” I fly at him. I have no weapons, but I clutch my legs around his waist and I scratch my nails down both sides of his face. I bite his ear, and I don’t let go until his flesh gives.

“Get her off me.” His fear-laden voice thrills my blood, and he makes a grab for my hair.

I have no hair, and I bite down on his neck. He screams.

It takes both of them, Janice’s two sons, to haul me off him.

“You goddamn bitch!” He presses his hand to his ear, where I’ve bitten off the entire lobe, and when it comes back bloody, he points a shaking finger at me. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

The brothers are hauling me back toward the bedrooms, and I fight them with everything I’ve got. “I hate dogs! I hate dogs!”

“You’re certifiable! You belong in a garbage bag and tossed in a ditch!”

“Die!” I put every savage blade of hate I have into that one word. My body rocks with it. “Die!”

~ ~ ~

Mom hasn’t been here in a week. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out it’s because I attacked Nico. They know my mother is the only reason I have to draw breath. I shouldn’t have done it. Nico and Ayden need to pay for what they did to Tish and me; Kent does too. But I’m not the person to do it. I can’t fight people like them. Let them crush someone else from now on.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like your eggs?” Janice frowns her worry.

She frowns a lot these days, so I lift the corners of my lips. “They’re fine. I’m just not very hungry.”

“You didn’t eat dinner,” she reminds me.

Or lunch. Or breakfast. The words hang in the air, unsaid.

I brush a breadcrumb from the tabletop and sigh. I try to eat, but I gag on everything. It’s hard to get food down when your throat wants to shoot it back out.

The knocker taps against the front door, and Janice looks to the ceiling and shakes her head. “I’ll be back.”

The air pressure changes, hums to life, and I know before she says anything who stands at the door. I bow my head. He’s here because of Nico, to tell me I’m through and I can either behave or swallow a bullet. He’s here to tell me to snap out of it or I’ll get what’s coming to me.

“She’s in the kitchen.” Janice takes several steps back to let him pass. “She won’t eat.” She says this softly like she thinks I won’t hear her. Like I’m not just a few feet away.

I squeeze the bridge of my nose, and I hate myself for the pulse in my stomach, the way my muscles coil because it’s him. He’s the positive to my negative, and electricity flows between us. I rest my elbow on the table and shield my face with my hand. I feel the cord tighten, and the closer he gets, the more I shake. If there was food in my stomach, I think I’d throw it up. I tense for the attack.

He rests a hand on the crown of my head and strokes my hair—so ugly and so short. I cringe. But he’s gentle, like I’m a wild hare, one that might panic and flee. He smooths the hair back from my face, and my whole scalp tingles. He pulls my hand from my face, tucks it between his, and sits beside me.

“Your hands are cold.”

My breath hitches and I nod. I am cold. I’m always cold. I keep my eyes focused on a random grain in the wood; to look at him would destroy me.

He rubs my hand between his, sending warmth to my breast, and my resolve weakens. I didn’t know how badly I needed his touch until this moment, and now I think I’ll disappear forever if he stops. I blink. I try to breathe slower. I focus on not shaking. Much.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

Am I all right? He’s asking if I’m all right? Now I do look at him. I’m doing great. I nod.

He smiles slightly, like he knows what I’m thinking.

This is just cruel. The higher he brings me, the lower I’ll fall. I fix him with a stare. “I bit Nico.”

Kent takes a breath and nods. “Why?”

“He deserved it.”

He widens his eyes, but then the corners of his lips lift. Even his burn scars tighten. He’s not faking. “I’m not going to ask.”

He’s not going to ask? He can’t figure it out? I pull my hand from his and tuck each hand under the opposite arm. The ache starts like a tiny pinprick and quickly fills my chest. I’m tired. I’m just so tired.

“You’re not eating.” It’s not a question.

I moisten my lips.

“Bianca?”

“It makes me sick.” I wait for him to tell me I’m crazy.

“Are you pregnant?”

Is he serious?

He holds his hands up. “It was just a question.”

But now I want to cry. Damn him. Why can’t he just let me fade? Why does he have to make me feel?

I suck in my lips. I hold my breath and turn away. I will not let him see me cry. But the shaking doesn’t stop. I almost ask him where his wife is, but I don’t want him to know how badly he’s hurt me, that I bleed from the knife he’s driven into my back.

“Put your hands on the table.”

I ignore him.

“Bianca.” He waits until, reluctantly, I turn to him. “Put your hands on the table.”

My fingers twitch, and I look away. I put my hands on the table. I don’t know why.

“Look at me.”

I shake, my face burns, and it’s the last thing I want to do, but I shift my gaze to his scars. It’s a mistake, though, because it’s the most personal thing I could have done. It’s what tells me he knows what pain is. It’s what tells me he’s a monster.

I squeeze my eyes shut and jerk my face away. I swallow. When I open my eyes again, the chef on the wall still clutches his loaf of bread.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Kent curl his hands into fists, but a moment later he pulls the plate in front of him.

“Look at me.” The voice he uses isn’t military. It’s not crisp. It’s a caress.

I try to be impassive, but the minute our gazes meet, I’m lost. I can’t find the hate, though I dig deep for it. I can’t hold on to the rage, even though a moment ago I swam in it. I’m his. Just like I’ve always been.

Kent carefully scoops a forkful of the eggs and holds it before my lips. “Open.”

I do.

He slides it in my mouth, and I close my lips around the fork. He pulls it out clean. “Eat it, Bianca. Swallow.”

I try. I gag twice before I manage to get it down, and my eyes tear up from the effort.

“That’s good,” he says. He scoops up another and holds it out to me. Again I take it. Again I gag, and I think it’s going to come back up, but I force it down.

“It’s okay. You’re doing it.” His tone is soft. He caresses the side of my face, and it’s almost more than I can bear. My heartbeat slows, and the only thing that exists for me is this sad little hypnotic exchange. He holds out the fork; I accept it. I swallow. He tells me how good I am, and my heart swells with love. Then he holds out the fork again, and the circle goes around and around.

“Thank you,” he says when I’ve swallowed the last bite. I’m lost. I’m so desperately enthralled, and I just want to crawl inside him and be.

He brushes imaginary strands of hair from my eyes and gets to his feet.

The spell is broken, and immediately the hole rips open. I turn my face to the wall and hug myself, like that’ll do anything.

I hear him talk to Janice, but they keep their voices hushed and I can’t hear them. I’m too busy anyway, trying my best not to fall apart.

He disappears down the hall for a few minutes. When he comes back, he runs his hand over my hair again, the hair that I hate. The hair that fills me with shame. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” he says. But he doesn’t look at me. It’s like he’s deliberately trying not to. He presses his lips together, and if I didn’t know him better, I’d swear his eyes were shiny. With one last pat on my shoulder—one that says good dog rather than how soft you are, my love, he turns and leaves.

For the remainder of the day, I curl up on the couch and pretend to read. But I’m not reading. I’m reliving every moment, over and over, until I have the entire sequence memorized. I hold it, and then I bury it deep inside me.

When I try to eat dinner, I can’t force down the food, and I put my head in my hands and cry. Janice wraps her arm around my waist and helps me to the bathroom, where I wash my face, brush my teeth with a damp old toothbrush, and use the composting toilet one final time.

When we get to the bedroom, I stop. I stare, and I wonder if I’ve lost myself in another one of my fantasies. They’ve been fading lately, but I still have them, and this one is frighteningly real.

On the corner of my bed, laid out with military precision, is a clean tank top and flannel bottoms.

My knees fail, and I sink down onto the mattress. I pick up the pile and hold it to my nose, but all I smell is soap. I fold. I bury my face in their softness. He’s been here. He’s touched me. I’ll always have that.

He holds me, and the sun is shining. There's a cat and she's with her kittens so the rabbit is safe. And the tree caresses the wind.

My mother shucks her coat and hangs it in the closet. Her presence has to be Kent’s doing, and I offer him a ping of thanks.

When she hugs me, I burrow my head in her shoulder and I pick up the faint scent of lemongrass.

“Honey. It’s noon. Change your clothes,” she says when she steps back.

I’m still in my jammies, the ones he laid out for me. I feel him all over, and I don’t want to let that go.

“I’m comfortable.”

“I understand Kent told you to wear them.”

I pick at the hem of the tank where a thread has come loose. Otherwise it’s perfect.

Mom takes my chin and makes me look at her. “Don’t you ever forget what he did to you.”

“I won’t.” I’ll never. But I look away because part of me already has.

“Your sister would be here today if it weren’t for him.”

I suck my lips in and nod. She’s right. It hurts, but she’s right. He sent us off to die. I’ve spent the last ten hours hugging myself in a dream, but I have to let it go.

Mom takes me back to my room. “So what do you want to wear today?”

Sweat stabs my pits at the thought of changing. “I don’t care. You pick.”

She sighs. “When you girls were little, Tish was always giving me a rough time. You were the good one. Anything I told you to do, you did. Anything Tish told you to do, you did that too. The trouble she used to cause. I used to wonder, what does Bianca want? I never really knew.”

I cross my arms over my chest. I rock ever so slightly. I chew my lips and focus on the tiny piece of lint on the carpet.

Mom sighs and opens a drawer. A moment later I let her lift the tank over my head and toss it into the hamper.

She hands me underwear. I shuck the flannel bottoms and old panties and pull on the flowery cotton. Without prompting, she hooks my bra in place. I’m too thin now, and it hangs on me. She dresses me in a long-sleeve Henley and a sweater to wear over top. Jeans follow, and finally a thick pair of socks. No shoes; nothing with laces that I could use to hang myself.

She adopts a cheerful smile. “I was thinking maybe you’d like to go for a walk today.”

She eyes me expectantly and I flick a glance at the window. It’s light-time, and it’s an especially bright day. It’s how things used to look, pre-ash, on a cloudy winter day just before a blizzard. Dark, but not so dark you can’t see. Just not light enough for anything to grow. No sun to warm the planet. Outside everything is dead, and I shake my head.