Page 1 of The Last Call Home
Prologue
Malerick
There aremoments in our lives that mold us into who we become.
I’ve had a few.
One of them is carved so deep it thrums beneath my skin, close to my heart like a pulse.I don’t talk about it.I try fucking hard not to breathe life into it, because every time I do, it reminds me what I’m capable of.
The night I almost killed my father.
I was seventeen.Not quite a boy anymore, but far too soon to think I was a man.I was just a raw nerve in a too-small body, brittle with anger I didn’t know how to name.Yep, I was at that strange, unraveling age when your skin feels too tight for who you’re becoming—when everything inside you feels too much, too loud, too close to the surface.
It was a Birchwood Springs night that felt like it wanted to swallow us whole.The cold didn’t just sting—it crawled.Slid under doors and into your chest like it was looking for something to break.Frost covered the windows, snow stacked so high it blurred the world outside.The wind howled like it had a score to settle, probably with the Timberbridge family.
None of that scared me.
The real storm existed within our home—as it always had.
I heard the yelling before I hit the bottom stair.A crash—a bottle?A chair?—followed by Keir’s voice, that familiar tight rasp he got when he was trying to keep things from shattering.He always tried.He shielded and never ran.
I hated that he thought it had to be him.He believed absorbing our father’s fury was some kind of twisted birthright.
I should’ve stopped him sooner.Should’ve gotten off my ass and done something before he had to.
The family room lights stung when I walked in.Too bright, too angry, too ready to see a fight—see blood.Our father stood in the center, reveling in the wreckage.Swaying.Shoulders coiled, fists half-curled.His face was blotched red, whiskey sweat gleaming down his temple.Eyes small and cruel.He looked as if he was ready to fight God.
Keir was right there between him and the hallway.Not moving.Not blinking.Already bracing.
Ledger, Hopper, and Atlas were gone.Which meant Keir had already gotten them out.Of course he had.
“You think hiding them makes you a man?”our father spat, voice slurred but venom-precise.“You think you’re better than me?”
Keir didn’t respond.Didn’t move.
I stepped in between them.
“Get out of here, Mal,” Keir warned.His voice was barely above a whisper.A plea I’d heard too many times.
“No.”My voice came out low, clipped.Almost calm.“You go check on the others.Make sure they’re safe.It’s too fucking cold.”I looked at our father and let the words drop like bricks.“I’ll deal with him.”
That got the old man’s attention.
He turned toward me, slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, like he’d been waiting for this.His grin twisted, mean and pleased with itself.It made my stomach pull tight in that way it always did when he smiled like that—like pain was a game he couldn’t wait to play.
“Look who finally grew a pair.”
Then he lunged at Keir.My body moved before my brain caught up.I shoved forward, arm out like instinct.My hand closed around the fire poker by the hearth as if it had been waiting for me.There was a split second—just one—where everything slowed.
Keir’s eyes flicked to mine, wide and unreadable.Our father stumbling, already mid-motion, already too far gone.My fingers tightening on the handle.
“Leave.Go and check on the others,” I repeated the order because I had no idea what would happen at that moment.I just needed him to be with the young ones.
Something inside me cracked open.I wasn’t thinking.I was done thinking.This wasn’t about being brave, heroic, or even doing what was right.
This was survival.
This was seventeen years of swallowed words and bruised silences and pretending that this—our father regularly beating the shit out of us—was normal.
