Page 3 of The Same Backward as Forward
Fix him.I kept my heart rate even and my face carefully blank. The worst of Rory’s injuries—that I could see—was a deep cut on his cheekbone, maybe two inches long. It wasn’t the type of injury that people in my mother’s line of work typically concerned themselves with. I’d seen one of my uncles dig a bullet out of a guy’s shoulder with aspoon.
This was clearly a test.
I was a nursingstudent, but I was deep into my clinical hours, and I’d buried myself in internships almost from the moment I’d started. What my mother wanted was within my capabilities, but the test wasn’t what Icoulddo. The test was whether I would push back, and the one thing I knew for certain was that if I did, I’d never be invisible to Eden Rooney—or the Rooney family—again.
“Supplies?” My voice was muted, unemotional. I knew how tomake myself disappear even when she was staring right at me.No weakness. No rebellion. No emotion at all.
Wordlessly, my mother dropped a black pouch on my bed. I unrolled it. Inside, there was a rudimentary surgery kit—scissors, scalpel, forceps, needle, suture thread.
“I suggest you make yourself useful, Hannah.”
I heard what my mother didn’t say:I let you go because it suited my purposes to do so, but you’re still mine, body and soul. You always were.
All I said out loud was: “There’s no anesthetic.”
“He doesn’t need it.” My mother’s diamond-hard gaze traveled from me to Rory. “Just like I didn’t need this little asshole getting himself injured in a bar fight tonight of all nights.”
Bar fight.My mind went immediately to a preppy boy with a dark aura, to green eyes and sharp cheekbones cast in shadow, to a glass placed precariously on a pool table’s edge.
“I need to wash my hands.” I bought myself some time going to the kitchen sink—but not much, just enough to focus on the fact that my mother apparently wasn’t doing this just to teachmea lesson. She was using me to teach Rory one.
He had five years and at least a hundred pounds on me, but he would sit there while I dug a needle into his face over and over again without anesthetic, because the alternative was doubtlessly worse.
I turned off the faucet and made my way back. I didn’t want to do this. If anyone found out, I’d get kicked out of my program. And, possibly worse, I would be complicit in whatever the family had going on right now that made Rory’s choice to get into a fighttonightof all nights that much more objectionable to my mother.
But if I didn’t do this, she might, and that would be so much worse for Rory. My cousin looked like he wanted to spit on me and vomit, in that order.
“Sit,” I told him. I had to hope that if I could do this without faltering, without showing a hint of weakness or rebellion, that might pacify her into forgetting me again—or, if notforgettingprecisely, at least putting me on the back burner for a while.
Long enough for me to finish school. Long enough for me to find a way to get Kaylie out.
Rory sat. I tilted his chin back. Buying myself one last reprieve, I went into the bathroom and grabbed some antiseptic. I applied it, then opened the needle and the thread. At least they were pre-sterilized.
“Get on with it.” My mother took a single step toward me.
Do it, I told myself, but getting started was made harder by the lengths Rory was going tonotto flinch. Lifting the needle, I didn’t bother telling him to relax and opted for distraction instead.
“Which one?” I said.
“Huh?” Rory was not, by any measure, the smartest of my cousins.
“The rich boys slumming it at the bar tonight,” I clarified. “Which of the three of them did this?” The question commandeered enough of his attention that I was able to start.
The needle was just a needle. Skin was just skin. My hands were steady.
“Doesn’t matter.” Rory spoke in a low voice, his face barely moving. “I’m gonna kill all three of the little bastards.”
In my family, statements like that weren’t always just for show.
“Hannah? Stop.” My mother’s voice ricocheted through theroom like a bullet. But all I could think was:Do no harm.I finished the stitch, andthenI stopped.
My mother bent until her eyes were even with Rory’s. She pressed her thumb into the flesh of his cheek, right below the partial line of stitches. “Do you have any idea who those boys are?” When Rory didn’t answer, my mother snorted. “Didn’t think so.”
She pressed her thumb into his face a little harder, then slid her gaze to mine.
“Let’s see if Hannah here can work it out. Rich boys in Rockaway Watch. Heads up their asses and looking to commission a boat in the morning. Who are they?” The last stitch I’d done popped, tearing through Rory’s skin.
I forced myself to focus.A boat.There was only one place close enough to serve as a destination from Rockaway Watch, a private island owned by a billionaire.Hawthorne Island.
