Five Brothers, page 20
“So, was it him, then?” she presses. “On the couch? It was Iron?”
I fill a glass with ice and make myself a drink. “Could’ve been. I never asked him, and it was good, but…I don’t think it was, honestly.”
A blush warms my cheeks after admitting that to her. I don’t want to feel ashamed, but Clay’s only slept with one person. I don’t know why it matters that I’ve slept with more, but it matters to some people, and that matters to me. What’s Liv thinking about all this?
“I don’t know.” I take a drink, leaning down onto the bar again. “I’m getting more confused. Maybe I’m remembering a feeling or a scent that night that wasn’t really there to begin with. Maybe I’m remembering it as more than it was.”
I was in such a hard mood that night, and maybe it felt better than it otherwise would have.
But it wasn’t just about what I was feeling. It was what he was doing.
“Whoever it was,” I tell her, lowering my voice, “it was like he was talking to me without saying anything.”
It was fucking. But he was intimate.
“Shit.” Clay breathes out.
I nod. “Yeah.”
Exactly.
“Well, then,” she says. “You have to find him.”
I smile, and she smiles back, and I make another round of drinks.
* * *
—
Marymount Academy dismissed at noon today, but there are students still lingering in the parking lot. A few drift through the halls. Thanksgiving is in two days, and has always been my favorite holiday, a sentiment no one around me ever shared. There’s no stress to look a certain way, like on Halloween, or pressure to shop, like on Christmas. It’s just staying at home with a houseful of people and some really good food. This year will be a shitshow with my family falling apart, but I’ll try to make sure the kids can’t tell. We’re supposed to go to my grandparents’ house, but the invitation wasn’t extended to my mother. I’m sure my father will stay away so he doesn’t have to face us.
“Krisjen, hey!” someone calls out.
I look up, spotting Cate Laurel, Emaline Truax, and Antoinette Viega, juniors last year when I was a senior. They walk toward me, down the hallway.
Cate comes in for a hug. “What’ve you been doing? We miss you.”
We never hung out.
I glance at the girls’ locker room behind them, hoping my former coach is still in there.
“Oh, just working.” I smile, thankful I put on some lipstick. My clothes look like shit, though. “Waitressing.”
Toni’s face falls. “Why?”
I chuckle to myself. “What are you all up to?” I ask instead.
They’re out of uniform, with fresh makeup on. Definitely not going home.
But Cate cocks her head. “Are you still hooking up with Trace Jaeger?”
I lift my eyebrows.
“Where will they be tonight?” she pries.
I hesitate, feeling the wind blow through the corridor from the open double doors at the entrance. “At home, I guess. There’s a storm coming.”
She grins, the two others’ faces lighting up.
Oh no.
I mean, I get it. I invaded the Bay last year, too, but…
I let my eyes fall to Emaline’s exposed stomach, Cate’s short-shorts.
I know the Bay now. It’s different.
“Don’t cross the tracks,” I warn them.
“Can’t make any promises.” Cate starts to back up, the others following. “We’re bored. You understand.”
“We’ll stay away from Trace,” Emaline says. “But the rest are fair game.”
“Which one’s the single father?” Antoinette asks her friends. “I want him.”
She doesn’t even know his name.
Laughter fills the hall as they spin around and rush out the door.
Shaking my head, I walk to the locker room door and yank it open.
Let them come if they want. The guys can take care of themselves. I’m not even going over there tonight. I finished my shift.
I step inside the locker room, the smell of basketball leather permeating the air, which is still thick from the showers the students took today. There’s no one around, the rows empty except for the odd towel or shoe left lying around.
I kind of miss it here. In high school. There was no pressure to be anyone yet.
But that’s about all I miss.
I head down to the coach’s office, because even though I wasn’t a great lacrosse player, I was reliable. I showed up, gave it my all, and Reva Coomer agreed to write me a recommendation for college if I ever needed one. I emailed last week to take her up on that offer. I’m still not feeling much interest in school, but it might be my only means of escape. It can even be somewhere semi-local so I can still be close to Paisleigh and Mars.
But as I approach the coach’s office and look through the window, I see it’s empty. Turning the knob, I open the door. It’s not locked. She must still be here. I’d texted to tell her I’d pick up the letter by three.
She could’ve emailed it, but I wanted to say hi. I’d hated her lessons the least.
Crossing the office, I open the door on the opposite side, peering into the corridor that only the coaches use. Across it lie the head coaches’ offices for the boys’ sports, and their locker room beyond.
Milo sits in Coach Davenport’s office, Ana Moreno straddling his lap. She’s a junior.
I watch as they lock hands and she moves over his mouth, deep and slow. Gross.
How old is she? Sixteen? I pull out my phone and hold it up, walking to the window and zooming in like I’m filming. Which I’m not because she’s a minor.
Milo’s dumb, though.
Ana sees me and quickly hops off him, backing up with her fists balled at her side.
Milo looks back at me and says something to her, sending her out the opposite door. I try to hold back my smile as I slip my phone in my pocket.
He rounds the desk and opens the door to the corridor, and I hold my hand behind me, ready to grab the knob to Coomer’s office and bolt if I have to.
He stops, leaning into the doorframe and folding his arms over his chest. “What are you up to?”
“Why are you here?” I blurt out.
“I’ve been helping the football and basketball coaches.”
“They’re letting you around high school girls?”
He literally finished his senior year from home last spring, and while no formal charges were brought, everyone knew why.
But his smile spreads behind his closed lips. “Mmm.” He nods. “And nothing’s really changed with them, either.” He looks me up and down, because once upon a time I was that naïve, too. “Other than that, there are no Bay kids like last year,” he points out.
Liv Jaeger was the only Bay kid who ever went here.
“You know half the parents here have interests in seeing that shithole torn down,” Milo tells me. “They’re all wondering how the Jaegers are able to keep the developers off their backs.”
“Do they know?”
He grins. “They do now.”
What does that mean? I haven’t told anyone about the cameras at Fox Hill. Did they find some?
And then it hits me. Cate, Emaline, and Antoinette aren’t the only ones heading for the Bay tonight.
“It’ll be lockdown,” I remind him. “The cops will pull those little shits over even before they get across the tracks.”
The canals flood in a big storm. Curfew will be in effect.
“Those little shits,” he replies, “used to be your classmates. You think you’re a Jaeger now?”
If Macon has cameras on our turf, is it possible that Saints have cameras in the Bay? St. Carmen wants trouble there tonight. They’re coming over to cause trouble. On purpose.
“The local news should be entertaining tomorrow,” Milo says.
“Why are you warning me that there’s something going down tonight? You know I’ll tell them.”
He backs into the office. “The more the merrier.” And he shuts the door, heading into the men’s locker room.
Son of a bitch.
Whipping around, I dig out my phone, forgetting all about Coomer.
Clay picks up, but I’m already speaking before she has a chance to say hi.
“Is Liv in town?”
Clay takes a second, but then replies. “Just got in. Why?”
Fuck. I’d rather she wasn’t here for this, but it’s almost the holiday. Of course she was coming back.
“I need your help tonight,” I say. “And I need you both to trust me.”
12
Army
God, I don’t want to go home.
He’s there. He’s always fucking there, and he never leaves anymore. It’s like being in a room that’s on fire. You’re constantly aware of it. Never not aware of how much time you have until it reaches you.
I pull off my shirt, using it to wipe off the sweat on my back and forehead before tossing it into the cab of the truck. Clouds block out the sun, while the wind cools my skin.
“I think she’d pay me,” Trace pipes up.
I follow his gaze, seeing Elaine Bertrand and her perfect timing as she walks to her pool that we just cleaned, behind hedges we just trimmed, in her white bikini. She casts us a glance that lingers just long enough that there’s no mistake what she wants. Daniel Bertrand’s young wife wouldn’t be a chore.
I tighten the strap, securing the equipment. “I’d get more.”
“Is that a bet?”
He stares down at me from where he stands in the bed of the truck, his eyebrows raised.
“Oh, shut the fuck up.” I shake my head. “If you do anything like that for money, we’re both dead.”
Macon will kill me, too.
Dallas throws trash bags filled with clippings into the truck as Trace jumps down, sweat matting his hair to his temples. “But you have already, haven’t you?”
I stop, gaping at him. “How many rumors are flying around about Macon and me exactly?”
“No, that one’s just about you.”
I grumble, “Great.”
I grab the cooler off the driveway and slide it onto the floor in the back seat.
Trace follows me. “You know, I wouldn’t care,” he tells me. “You were my age when you and Macon had a houseful of kids to take care of. And that doesn’t even count the people you guys took care of in the Bay. If you did what you had to, then…”
I don’t look at him, every muscle inside of me tensing. “Then what?”
“Then I’m glad,” he says. “I mean, not glad glad. I would wish you didn’t have to do it, but I’m grateful. I never would’ve been able to do whatever it took to take care of us.”
I didn’t do whatever it took. I never had to.
I draw in a breath. “When you’re tested, you find out exactly what you’re capable of.” I drop my voice to a whisper. “And what you’re not.”
“So, then you did—”
“I didn’t fuck for money,” I blurt out. “Dipshit.”
He smiles, and I roll my eyes. Trace never asks questions. Usually.
I know they all know the rumors about what Macon and I did to pay bills. Some of it’s true, some of it’s not, but none of it I care to relive. Iron’s old enough to remember some things, so he knows better than to ask. Dallas doesn’t get personal, and Liv doesn’t want to know, because it would hurt her to learn how much we put ourselves through for them. What’s done is done.
Who knew Trace would be the brave one?
“Well, I know what I’m capable of,” Dallas chimes in, walking up. “I might be able to put up with getting paid to get laid.”
I throw him a look. “Macon is looking for a reason to kill you.”
But he just scoffs, cupping his hand under the spout of the cooler and filling it with water. Throwing his head back, he splashes the water over his hair, smoothing it back. “He can barely haul his ass off that stool in the garage. You seen him? He looks like shit lately.”
He’s looked like shit before; they’re just too young to remember. I close the tailgate, ignoring Elaine’s eyes, which I know are still on us.
Macon wouldn’t kill Dallas if he screwed for money that we no longer need. He would just realize it was all for nothing.
Trace looks at me. “Is something going on with him?” he asks.
“No.”
“Would you tell us if there were?”
“No.”
He hits me over the head, and I laugh and jog backward around the truck as he pursues me.
“But just think!” I point out. “If he killed Dallas, it would be one less mouth to feed. And with Iron gone, it would be an extra bedroom. We could move Krisjen in.”
Trace comes at me, but I plant my hand on his head, pushing him away.
“Can’t you just fuck her already,” Dallas yells at me, “so she can move on to Macon, and then she’ll finally leave after she’s made the rounds?”
Trace stops, looking over at Dallas. “Leave her alone.”
“She’s a good kid,” I add, heading back to the driver’s side. “And I’m not going to have sex with her.”
“But you look at her.”
I glance at Trace even though it was Dallas who said it. Iron already went after Krisjen. I raised Trace like a father. It’s different.
“She’s beautiful” is all I say. “I’m a visual person.”
Trace laughs, throwing open the door and dropping into the seat next to me. Dallas climbs in the back.
“It’s okay,” Trace tells me. “I couldn’t take my eyes off her there for a while, either. And she’s a Saint. Something about them is a little more exciting because we can’t have them. Feels forbidden.” He looks over at me. “As you remember.”
I pause, my hand clutching the key in the ignition. “What the fuck’s your problem?”
He knows better than to bring that up.
“She’s good,” he says, not grinning anymore. “Really fucking good. Sorry to say, the best I’ve ever had.”
Sorry because he doesn’t love her and wishes he did.
“When you’re not fucking her,” he goes on, “you’re thinking about fucking her.”
“Don’t talk about her like that.” I turn on the car, hoping that shuts him up.
She works hard; she’s reliable, trustworthy, and cute as hell. And she’s perceptive. More than I like sometimes.
I have no intentions toward Krisjen. She’s a kid. But she’s somebody, and she’s his friend. He shouldn’t be acting like she’s something to use to blow off steam.
“I think you need another Saint,” he says. Before I can tell him to shut up, he looks back at Dallas. “And maybe you need one, too.” He smiles at his brother. “She’s a biter.”
Jesus Christ. “Give me a beer,” I bark back at Dallas.
Trace laughs, diving into his phone as Dallas reaches into the cooler, handing a can to me over the seat. I pop the top and take a gulp, setting it in the drink holder in the console and shifting into Drive.
But then Trace growls, “Ah, son of a bitch!”
And I hit the brakes.
“Goddammit!” he yells, and I look over to see him pull on his seat belt, which he never does.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“That little shit!” He scowls. “A constant pain in my ass!”
“Who?”
“Krisjen!” he says, like he wasn’t just singing her praises. “We gotta go to her damn house.”
“But we’re expecting a storm.”
He holds up his phone, and I’m not sure what I’m seeing, but I know it’s Milo, and I know it’s our sister. Liv and Milo. In the same photo. At Krisjen’s house.
I floor it, not even checking traffic before we skid onto the road, hooking an immediate left.
* * *
—
I tell Trace to text Macon, letting him know we’ll be home later. It’s already getting dark, and Dex needs to be picked up at the sitter’s and fed dinner.
I don’t know what Liv—or Krisjen—is thinking right now.
When we pull up to the house, the gate is wide open, the driveway filled with cars.
Trace sighs. “Fuck…”
Yeah. Something is wrong. Krisjen has never had a party at her house. In the time I’ve known her, anyway.
And I can understand if Milo heard about it and showed up, but she was taking a shot of something with him. In the photo posted two hours ago. Two fucking hours. Who knows what’s happened since then?
Liv was there, too—with Clay—after what he did last spring? It doesn’t make sense.
Krisjen also didn’t invite us. She comes to all of our parties.
I pull around the well-manicured trees in the middle of the driveway and park alongside a black BMW, not caring that I’m blocking them in. We jump out and head to the house, but I veer for the backyard. A couple makes out in the back seat of a convertible, and I do a quick glance around for cops or parents.
Rounding the corner of the house, we slip between two cypresses that make up part of a privacy wall and step onto the back patio.
If you can call it that.
It’s damn near half a football field. Beautiful light-colored stone tile with a pool that almost looks like a Tetris pattern. A square, attached to a rectangle, attached to another square. Trees shade three different seating areas, two of them with firepits. A swarm of partygoers dance and loiter, talking and drinking.
I recognize some faces. Some who graduated with Liv who are back from college for the holiday. Some are even older, and some…way younger.
Krisjen stands waist-deep in the pool, dressed in a yellow bikini, talking to my sister, who leans back into Clay’s arms.
