Page 94 of Missed Steps
The dirt road widens and Ronan pulls in. I tear my gaze away from the card. The headlights illuminate a decrepit sign covered in vines and crowded by branches. The image of a man with hiking gear stands out on the sign, black against the white background.
“A trail?” I ask.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Ronan opens my door.
I stare at him, my leg aching worse at the mere thought of having to move it. I physically can’t walk. It hurts so much and I’m not moving it. But telling him that? There’s not a hint of sympathy in his cold eyes.
“I can’t,” I say. “My leg won’t take weight.”
“Get out or I’m dragging you out,” Ronan warns.
Oh god. There’s no good answer here. No painless way forward. “Okay. Okay, I’m coming.” Scooting over, I try not to move my leg and pretend I can’t feel it. My skin goes hot again, then cold. “Can I have more of the painkillers?”
Ronan takes a fistful of my shirt and waistcoat, and yanks.
“Wait!” I fall out the door, feet getting stuck inside the car as Ronan drags me out. I throw out my palms, twist as best I can so it’s my right knee that strikes the ground first. Ronan lets me drop. I tremble on the ground, rolling onto my side to pull my feet free of the car.
Ronan crouches next to me and fixes me with a glare. “Stop being so fucking annoying unless you want a boot in the face. We’re hiking, and you better keep the fuck up.”
How Chris and Ronan share the same genes is unbelievable to me.
“Got it,” I force out.
Ronan stands and I don’t wait for him to deliver a kick; I know that he will. I use the Jeep to support myself and though I don’t believe I can stand, I do. And though I don’t believe I can walk without collapsing into a sobbing heap, with one glare from Ronan, I do. My knee throbs badly, but I force myself into an uneven, pitching limp right behind Ronan.
Ronan digs out a torch from his pocket and he illuminates a path that, though the sign to it is almost torn down, looks maintained. Ronan turns, blinding me with the light. “Keep up,” he warns.
The chances of that aren’t high, but I nod. Ronan takes the lead down the path, leaving me to follow. I don’t panic; somehow I’m too tired for that, and too sore to be scared. Ronan wants to talk to Chris, so at some point, Chris is coming. I’m going to be fine. Chris would never let anything happen to me.
I can’t help but think of Eddie. I hope he’s okay. I hope it’s only a small scratch, and that he doesn’t have so much as a headache. I try to remember where he was when he left, but I can’t recall the moment. I must have been too out of it in pain.
“You ruined my life,” Ronan says.
Chris would never let anything happen to me; but Chris isn’t here yet. I want to point out that whatever went wrong in Ronan’s life is his own responsibility; and that the only part I played in his story was that of a punching bag. Thinking about that makes me angry. It wasn’t even about standing up for myself back then; I was so anxious and stressed that I couldn’t even leave my room. Never mind act how Ronan told me I should, and just get over it.
“Do you think Chris would have stuck around?” I ask him. “If I ‘got over it’, and went to school? Because I don’t think so.”
Ronan whirls around, blinding me again. “What the hell are you saying?”
Provoking a clearly unstable man in the middle of the woods is plain stupid. I know that. But I’m not feeling all that smart or reasonable right now. Rather, I’m cold, sore, and am sure half my wits are drowned out in exhaustion. “He never spent time with you anyway,” I say. “He was out exploring the world, living life, chasing his dreams. He only came home for Christmas.”
“We would talk on the phone,” Ronan says, his tone sharp and defensive.
“Because you called.”
My eyes adjust to the light, and I see his jaw tense.
“Chris didn’t like our family,” I say. And I remember this now; memories that I never really thought about. “He thought our parents were miserable and negative, and were always looking for things to criticise. He thought you and our other brothers were crude and disgusting. He was embarrassed. That’s why he never came home. Never invited his friends over and never invited anyone to come see him.”
“And what do you think he thought ofyou?” Ronan asks, face twisting into an ugly sneer.
After Chris took me away from everyone, he became my entire family. Before that? “I don’t think he did at all, really,” I say. Chris was always the only brother I liked. The one who would ask about school and homework. Ask what I liked doing. Listen to me when I spoke. And he would remember my birthday. I used to love listening to Chris talk about his climbs, about his mentors and what it was like being up in the mountains. I probably craved having someone to listen to that didn’t have a negative view of the entire world.
But to him I’m sure I was just a quiet kid, and it was his sense of responsibility that had him take me away from the house, not anything like fondness or attachment.
“I probably grew on him after we left,” I say. Chris put in a lot of time and effort into getting me comfortable going to school again; he worked so that I felt safe. Until I felt more than fear and crippling anxiety whenever I even thoughtI had to leave the house.
