Page 45 of Reaching Ryan

But she doesn’t look away.

“Are you gonna cry?” I cut her nasty grin when I say it before looking down to study the twisted ropes and lumpy knots of angry, red scar tissue that cover me. “Henley did, the first time she saw it,” I tell her, lifting my hard glare to meet hers. “She acted like it didn’t bother her but then she went to the bathroom and bawled her eyes out.” What I don’t tell her is that it killed me when it happened. That sitting on the edge of my bed and listening to Hen’s soft, muffled sobs at the sight of what happened to me made me wish it had killed me.

Fury snaps in her light hazel eyes at the shitty things I have to say about my sister. “Don’t be a dick,” she tells me, before lifting her hot, dry-eyed gaze to meet mine. “She’s your sister—of course she’s going to cry.”

“You’re not my sister.”

I know what I’m doing, the second it comes out of my mouth. I’m trying to shove Tess into the Grace-shaped hole lodged in my gut. Trying to make myself want her the way I used to. That way I want to. It doesn’t work.

It never does, no matter how many times I try.

“No, I’m not.” She flops down in one of the chairs I keep by the window and sets the six-pack on the floor at her feet. Pulling a beer free, she twists off its cap and sits back. “Why are you just standing there, O’Connell?” she says, lifting the bottle to take a deep drink. “Get dressed so we can go.”

“Go where?” I smirk at her but there’s no humor in it. “We gonna go to the game room and play checkers?”

“Nope.” Stretching her legs out in front of her, she crosses them at the ankles and gives me a smug smile in return. “We’re gonna go get drunk, so chop-chop, motherfucker. I don’t have all night.”

---