Page 91 of The Worst Kind of Promise
“Is that why you’re home so early?” I ask, sympathy tugging at my heartstrings, nurturing that ever-present need I have to protect him.
He shuffles over to me at a snail’s pace, hair wet with sweat and scattered in all kinds of directions, his shirt inside out and hanging off one broad shoulder in an unruly manner. But even smelling like a ripe locker room, he still looks as gorgeous as the day I met him.
“I just needed to see you. And I know I smell like shit, and I haven’t showered yet, but I just wanted to—”
I rise from the bed and onto my tiptoes, tilting my face up to kiss him, our lips colliding with each other’s in a cosmos of passion and a light show of bold colors—hues of red that I didn’t even know existed; degrees of love that I could never receive from my friends or family members. He deepens the kiss, reacquainting our tongues in a sloppy caress before biting lightly on my bottom lip and pulling. His sinful mouth has a direct line all the way to my throbbing pussy, where arousal already begins to lubricate the gusset of my panties.
“You did a number on my back,” he rumbles against my lips, hands sliding down to the curve of my ass.
I laugh, and his grip tightens. “Want me to do it again?”
I thought I knew what it felt like to have my whole world fall apart. I’d convinced myself that after the assault, I’d never be whole again. And when it happened, even my strongest defenses came crashing down, not merely breaking butshattering. In such a state of disrepair that I couldn’t imagine spending a life building them all back up again. My self-love, my forgiveness, my compassion, my vulnerability—it was all stolen from me. Rubble dust that caked my palms like blood. I looked down at my hands and saw myself as my own destructor.
I blamed myself.
So when my world seemed bound to fall apart for a second time, I expected the same succession of events. The collapsing, the crumbling, the entire earth falling away from underneath me, immersing me in eternal oblivion. But it didn’t happen like that. There was no abrupt catastrophe; no moments leading up to natural disaster.
Instead, I find myself slowly sinking into quicksand, so I canwatchas my world tears itself to pieces.
“What the fuck?”
I break away from Kit instantly, turning my head to see Hayes standing in the doorway, shock and hurt ripping across his face, twisting his lips and crumpling his brow. A storm clouds his blue eyes, leaving no trace of the brother I remember from my adolescence—the brother who ate ice cream with me every time I got broken up with, the brother who made me laugh whenever I was feeling down, the brother who took me under his care after our father abandoned us.
I may never know that version of my brother again.
I feel myself begin to shake, unspilt tears wallowing in my eyes. “Hayes, I can explain.”
A warning growl that infiltrates my skin and travels bone deep. “How long has this been going on.”
It’s not a question.
Kit steps between us, shielding me from my brother’s disappointment, redirecting the blame to himself.Protecting me.Like he always promised to do.
“It isn’t her fault,” Kit says, holding his arms out cautiously, as if that’ll act as any sort of security against Hayes’ wrath.
“You’re right. This isyourfault,” Hayes snaps, stepping all the way into the room and coming chest to chest with Kit. He’s a few inches shorter, but Kit’s the one who looks small right now. Terrified, with fear or regret or both icing over in his eyes.
My skin is bedewed with tears now, whatever rehearsed bullshit I had prepared refusing to be vocalized. I knew this would happen eventually, and now that it has, I can’t act innocent. I knew the risk, and I took it anyways.
It’s like there’s a fishing line caught in my throat, and every time I try to say something, the hook digs deeper. “Please let me explain,” I plead, trying to get around Kit, trying to reach my brother.
He’s so disgusted that he can’t evenlookat me. “I don’t want to hear it, Faye. I can’t deal with you right now.”
The upper muscles in Kit’s back undulate, tension budding in the hold of his shoulders, and his dominant arm twitches. There’s a snarl forming on his lips as his eyes simmer with enough anger to match my brother’s. “Don’t talk to her like that. You have no idea what she’s been going through.”
“No idea?No idea?I’m her fuckingbrother, Kit. I know exactly what she’s been through, and whatever shit she wants to blame it on doesn’t exempt her from the fact that she’s been hiding this from me the whole summer.”
Hayes shoves Kit in the chest, causing him to stagger backwards. “You’vebeen hiding this from me the whole summer!”
Even with flexed tendons and forked veins, Kit doesn’t move. He doesn’t fight back. He could. He could overpower Hayes if he wanted to, but he won’t. And my heart feels like it’s been torn from my chest by guilt’s ironclad fist.
I don’t know what to do. I’m powerless in this situation. The two people I care about most in the world are practically at each other’s throats, and I can’t do anything about it. They’re going to rip each other apart.
I feel like I’m sitting on that gas station curb again, in the dead of night, waiting to be rescued. I’malwayswaiting to be rescued.
“There were so many times I wanted to tell you,” Kit whispers, now an arm’s length away from Hayes and choosing to remain there, his tone stained with profuse remorse.
The hurt in my brother’s eyes augments the same hurt branching through every inch of me, shutting down my muscles, filling my head with dissonance. Flashes from the summer resurface despite me subconsciously trying to push them down. The hotel room. The bookstore. The boat. The rink. All memories that are a part of me now and betray my brother by simply existing.
