Page 115 of Riot Rules
DASH
FORTY-EIGHT HOURS LATER
“Don’t worry. She’s just sleeping.”
The voice makes me jump. I was so fixated on Carrie’s small, fragile frame beneath the thin hospital sheets that I didn’t notice the man standing by the window. Now that I’ve seen him, he’s kind of hard to miss, though. He isn’t Alderman. He’s white, for starters, his hair a sandy brown, or a very dark blond, depending on how the light hits him. He’s wearing a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and a pair of faded grey jeans that were undoubtedly once black. He’s my height, but there’s a larger-than-life energy rolling off him that makes him seem so much taller. He smiles when he turns away from the window and faces me, though. No aggression or hostility on his face.
“My cousin warned me about you,” he says.
“Oh?”
The stranger nods. “Said there’d be an English kid with a stick shoved up his ass hanging around Carrie’s room—”
“I’m not leaving.” The words lack defiance. They are simply fact.
The stranger smiles. “He said that I had to be nice to you until he arrived. And that I should shake your hand for saving her life. Apparently, you donated a shit load of your own blood? Without you, Carrie would have died.”
He offers out his hand, waiting patiently for me to shake it while I stare dumbly at him, trying to piece together what exactly is happening. After I fail to learn anything from studying the lines of the guy’s face, I put my hand in his, hesitantly pumping it up and down. “I’m sorry. Who’s your cousin again? Are you…Carrie’sfather?”
The guy laughs. “You know my cousin as Alderman, I think. I’m Jamie. And no, I’m not Carrie’s father. Didn’t think I looked old enough to have a seventeen-year-old kid, but thanks forthat. Turns out, she and I actuallysharean old man.”
“Wait…so…you’re herbrother?”
He shrugs, his eyebrows lifting in a stunned way that suggests this news is just as surprising to him as it is to me. “My father liked to screw around. A fancy name and a fancy title can get a guy a lot of pussy, am I right?”
I just look at him. Really? He expects me to relate to that? “If you’re suggesting that I’ve used my ‘fancy name’ to screw Carrie, then you can go fuck yourself,” I snap. “My father disowned me last month. I’m just Dashiell Lovett now.”
Jamie, Carina’s long-lost older brother, laughs easily. He leans across Carrie’s hospital bed, winking at me. “Dashiell Lovett’s still a fancy name, idiot. I always wanted a sister growing up. Now that I’ve suddenly got one, I have eighteen years’ worth of overprotectiveness to get out of my system. Make sure you don’t do anything to hurt her, or—”
“You’ll spank my spoiled, titled ass until I cry for my mum?”
Jamie laughs. “No, dipshit. I’ll pull out all of your fingernails first. Then I’ll give you a bleach enema.Then, I’ll take you out into the desert and bury you in sand up to your neck and let the buzzard’s pluck out your fucking eyeballs.” He says it all so pleasantly, like he’s reeling off the itinerary of a three-day European river boat cruise. “Do we understand each other?”
“Perfectly.”
“Great. I’m gonna go get us all some coffee. Tell her I’m sorry for scaring her when she stops pretending to be asleep.” He strolls out of the hospital room like he hasn’t got a care in the world. The moment the door snicks closed behind him, Carrie’s eyes snap open.
She sees me and immediately bursts into tears.
This is not how this was supposed to go. “Fuck.” She’s so pale, her skin the color of ash, her cheeks sallow, dark circles under her eyes. The crying brings a little color to her cheeks but doesn’t help her overall look. I step closer, automatically going to hold her hand, but then stopping myself. She probably doesn’t want me holding her hand.
“I’m sorry,Stella,” I whisper. “I’m so fucking sorry. I should…” I stagger back a step from the bed. “I should go.”
No sooner is the word out of my mouth, than she’s reaching out and grabbing hold of me, closing her hand around my wrist in a surprisingly strong grip. “No! No, I—I don’t—please don’t go,” she croaks. “I was just—I was afraid. I didn’t know who he was. I could only see his back. I thought—I thought he was Kevin.” She has trouble getting the name out.
“It’s okay,Stella.” I stroke a rogue curl, crunchy with dried blood, out of her face. “Kevin’s dead.”
She flinches away from my hand, eyes wide. “You—you don’t know about—”
God, where thefuckis Alderman? Why the hell isn’t he here for this? This whole thing would be a sight easier if he were present to account for his sins. I take a deep breath and tear off the Band-Aid. “Idoknow about Kevin. I’ve known about him for a long time. Alderman came and saw me months ago. He told me everything—”
Carinahiccups. Stunned. Horrified. Can’t tell. She looks like she’s both, and a thousand other things, too. She closes her eyes, and tears race down over her temples, running into her hair. “You weren’t supposed to find out,” she whispers.
“And how wasthatgoing to work, Carrie?” There’s a bite to my tone, but I can’t help it. I’m frustrated, not to mention angry. “The future we talked about. College. Coming to England. How were we supposed to build a life together when you didn’t even give me a chance to meet the real you? How were we supposed to create or build anything together when there were so many fucking secrets between us? Did you think I was going to blame you? Think you were some kind of monster for defending yourself?” It’s preposterous that she could ever have believed that. Her fractured expression confirms that this is what she believed, though.
“You don’t understand. I’ve been soscared. Every day of my life for the past ten years. I’ve lived in a perpetual state of terror since the day my mother brought Jason home with her. I watched him beat her. I watched him rape her. Then he started beatingme, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he started raping me, too. Then came Kevin and the needle. And then I was running. I’ve been running ever since. All of this time at the academy, with my friends, with you…I was still running. Running in place. Hiding from the past… petrified of the future. You have…no idea what…that was like.” She fights to speak, pulling down just enough air to get each word out before she has to gasp for more.
Christ, I’ve never experienced hurt like this before. I’ve never wanted to heal someone else so much that it’s caused me physical pain. “You should have trusted me. I would have burned down the fucking world to protect you, Stella.”
