Page 42 of Van Cort
“We’re in Portland. She’d like you to know she’s enjoyed your company. Apart from the bathroom thing, which was the best bit.”
“What? What have you done?”
“I think she might be claustrophobic. She called your name repeatedly. Begged.” She looks at me from the table, smiling her lips around a glass of wine. “And she cried. I liked that. Youwould have done, too. Wouldn’t suck my dick, though. Pissed me off.”
He sighs. “West-”
“Goodbye, brother.” I end the call.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BEFORE
RHETT – AGE THIRTEEN
It wasn’t until Rhett saw the car pull out of the drive and up the hill that he finally let his breath out. They were alone again. Their father was gone for a week or so. Business in Europe.
He watched as the light snow immediately began to cover the tracks left from the vehicle and couldn’t help wishing that somehow the same could happen to his skin. The bruiseswould go eventually, but he knew, full well, that they wouldn’t disappear completely before the next round landed on his body. They were normal now. It was his own fault. For years he’d chosen to put himself in the way, chosen to make amends for that time he failed to get them away from this place. West wouldn’t get hurt again. Ever.
At least he had Lara now.
Life had become more interesting with her around over the last few years. She told them things about school, and socialising, and making friends, or trying to. And she had a different view of the world because she was poor. Rhett didn’t really understand why she said that. It seemed to his thirteen-year-old mind like she had a good life. Her parents were both there for her every day, her mother worked in town, and he was pretty sure the cottage was tied into the job her father had. So they must have money. Van Cort must pay well.
She didn’t seem to like anyone at school, but she liked them. Rhett liked her, too. He liked her a lot. Something had changed in his thoughts about her over the last six months or so. He could remember her in the late summer in a swimsuit. She smiled and laughed, and he wanted to touch her in places he probably shouldn’t have thought about wanting to touch. He ached when he thought like that. Sometimes it really hurt, and he’d have to touch himself to deal with that kind of pain. It worked, too. He stopped feeling tense and aggravated after the wet stuff came out. But then he wanted that again, so he let himself get angsty again.
He should talk to West about it.
She was confusing. She seemed moody and snappy some days, and she made arguments out of nothing. Neither he nor West understood why. She particularly liked winding Rhett up, poking him sometimes and then backing away, as if she wanted chasing. He didn’t know whether to chase her or not. Chasingwith West ended up in fighting, and he didn’t think that was right, but he did know that he was beginning to understand the feelings of jealousy that kept flaring inside him. He didn’t like her alone with West, and he didn’t like her knowing that either. She did, though. She’d smirk about it and sneak around corners with West, leaving him behind on purpose to make him feel bad. It almost made him as angry as his father did. So he was moody back, and sometimes nasty.
Turning back towards the house, he stamped the snow from his boots and went through the halls and corridors until he arrived at the music room. He could hear her singing while West played the piano. She didn’t sound like she behaved at all. She had a sweet voice. It was what Rhett imagined his mother sounded like when she was young. And Lara always looked so pretty when she sang. She’d sway back and forth, and somehow, in those moments, he didn’t see the tomboy who poked and goaded him, maybe trying to be one of them. No, he saw something he wanted, and someone he thought wanted him, too.
The music abruptly stopped, and he heard laughter from them both. They whispered between the snorts and giggles, and then he heard footsteps chasing each other around the hardwood floors.
“No, West! Stop!” she screamed.
More laughter came, and then more whispered, hushed words.
Rhett shoved the door wide open, irritated that they were having fun without him. They both whipped their faces towards him, which were less than a foot from each other.
“What’s going on?” Rhett demanded. Lara backed up a few steps and held the really expensive violin up that he couldn’t see in her grip before.
“He says no one’s allowed to touch it.” She cocked her hip out and glared at them both. “Why not, Rhett? Is that another one of your strange rules?”
Rhett walked over to her and tried grabbing it, sure that his father would kill one of them if anything happened to it. Mrs Avery had already explained it was a hundred years old – one of the best she had ever seen, and that they shouldn’t play with it.
Lara snatched it away and lifted the bow to the strings, spinning around a few times so Rhett couldn’t get to it.
“Give me it,” he snarled.
“Oh, let her play with it,” West cut in. “You’re being boring. Why are you being so weird lately?”
“I’m not being weird. She’ll break it.”
“And?” West sat at the piano and shrugged. “We’ll buy another one. Or the asshole father will. You don’t even like the violin.”
“I do.”
“You do not. You’re just being a dick.”
