Page 64 of Hell to Pay

She shook her head. “It just… it just didn’t seem to matter.”

“It didn’tmatter?” He threw his backpack on the ground like the burden was suddenly too much to bear, paced a few feet away from her, then paced back until he was a couple feet in front of her. Across the street, a group of kids didn’t bother trying not to stare as they walked home from school. “Whywouldn’tit matter?”

She took a deep breath. “Because it doesn’t. It’s a complicated situation, okay? But I needed somewhere to go and they gave me that.”

Matt glared. “Oh, I bet they did.”

I squeezed my fists at my sides. Matt was a good kid, a nice kid. He was just upset. But that didn’t mean I didn’t feel like punching something — even if it wasn’t his face — at his disrespect toward Lilah.

Lilah’s cheeks flamed. “Stop it. Just… stop it.”

“So you’re not sleeping with one of them?” Matt threw the question down like a gauntlet.

Lilah’s cheeks turned pinker. Matt was so naive it wouldn’t even occur to him that his sister was sleeping with two of us, that the only reason I wasn’t lucky enough to be included was because I was a fucking asshole who couldn’t manage to say two simple words.

“That’s none of your business,” Lilah said. “Just… please… come back to the house so we can talk.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Matt said. “Mom’s right. You’re lost to the devil. You disgust me.”

“Hey!” I marched toward him without thinking. “You’re allowed to be pissed, but be pissed at me. At us. Your sister doesn’t deserve this shit. What happened in high school — what we did — happenedtoher. I don’t want to overstep, but I can’t let you talk to her like that in front of me.”

I didn’t say the rest of it: that I was seeing red, that I was in danger of losing my shit on this kid who didn’t really deserve it, who was understandably confused.

“Whatever,” Matt said, picking up his bag. He stared at Lilah. “God still loves you. You can still come home to him. I’ll be praying for you.”

She stood there, watching him walk away. He was almost to the end of the block when she called after him.

“I’ll still come, Matt! I’ll always come if you call!”

He disappeared around the corner.

I put my hand on her shoulder, but she shook me off and started back toward the car.

41

LILAH

I couldn’t even lookat Rafe on the way home.

Didn’t want to.

Matt’s words rang in my ears:you disgust me.

They were the words that hurt the most. I’d been away from my mom for too long to be brainwashed by her religious fanaticism, her belief that any human being who didn’t live according to her values was lost to the devil.

But hearing Matt say I disgusted him, hearing the conviction in his voice, it almost broke me. It hit the core of my shame, the belief that I was broken.

Dirty.

Up until the last couple months, there had been exactly one person in the world whose opinion had mattered to me, and that had been my brother.

And I disgusted him.

Rafe pulled the Jeep into the underground garage and turned off the engine. “Are you okay?”

All that was left was the truth. “Not really.”

I got out of the car and climbed the steps leading to the house, then continued up the staircase to my room. I was glad Nolan and Jude weren’t home, glad I wouldn’t have to worry about either of them — or both of them — knocking on my door to check on me. It was nice, the way they worried, but I didn’t want to explain what had happened and I didn’t have the energy to reassure them that I was okay.

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