Hannah wondered if she’d ever feel that kind of love again. She missed Wyatt with every last cell in her body, sometimes felt like she was going to shrivel up, become a husk of herself.
They exchanged emails. Long newsy letters and sometimes just I miss you. It had been on the tip of her tongue to tell Julia, but she didn’t want to let Wyatt down. Couldn’t let him down.
She didn’t tell Tracy and Beth either. Just kept him to herself like her own delicious secret.
She turned fifteen on June 1, and she was counting down the months. Fifteen sounded so much better than fourteen. Surely they’d go public then?
She had a cell phone, a cheap flip phone, and he’d call her late at night.
“I got my license,” he whispered. She’d closed her bedroom door and was curled under the blankets in her bed, listening to his voice. Her mother was working, Wes was passed out on the sofa, and Julia was watching television in her room, the volume turned up loud. Hannah was blessedly alone. She remembered this exact scenario in the spring, before she’d met Wyatt. Everyone had scattered like dandelion seeds, and she’d felt hopelessly lonely. Then, “Let me come see you.” His voice was hoarse.
“Really? Why?”
“I just want to kiss you again. I can’t wait nine months. Just one time, sneak me in.”
“It’s a three-hour drive,” Hannah protested, the danger pulsing under her breastbone. What if Wes let himself into her room and found Wyatt? He’d only done that once all winter and spring. Then Wyatt would know about what he had done. What would he possibly think of her?
“So what? I’ll bring my dad’s car. The off-season is hard on him. He sleeps a lot.”
They planned it, talking every night until the day of. She bought a hook-and-eye lock for her door at the hardware store and installed it herself. She’d always been afraid to install a lock. That her mother would question her or, the biggest fear, that Wes would punish her mother for it. But for one night, she could risk it to keep Wyatt safe.
Hannah could hardly concentrate in school, could hardly pay attention to Beth and Tracy until they waved a hand in front of her face: “Yoo-hoo, is anyone home?” She raced home, changed her clothes, bra, and underwear no less than three times, and sat on her bed and just waited.
At nine, Trina left for the bar, and Wes snored softly on the sofa. Julia had gone out with a friend—to the library, she’d said, but Hannah knew that was bullshit. Her sister was filled to the brim with secrets too.
Hannah’s cell phone rang once, twice, then stopped. His signal. She crept downstairs to the front door and flicked the porch light.
When she opened the front door, his smile took her breath away. He kissed her right there on the porch, so eager their teeth clashed together, and they both laughed. She shut the door softly and tiptoed right past Wes, who hadn’t moved, his eyes still closed, The X-Files playing on mute in the background.
She hadn’t thought ahead to this part: to Wyatt seeing Wes, her little dump of a half-double house in Plymouth. Wes, his gross mouth open and the stink of his feet on her ratty plaid couch. Wyatt didn’t even flinch, just nudged her and grinned shyly. It made her blood rush.
In her bedroom, Hannah jumped on Wyatt, her body suddenly, virulently on fire, a pulse between her legs, her hands running along his back, his backside, his legs. Hannah had never wanted so much in her life. He laughed at her, sweetly, his fingertips skimming her cheek, the nape of her neck. Innocent places that frustrated Hannah. Their kisses grew from giggly to deep to frantic.
“I didn’t come here to get laid,” he gasped into her neck. Hannah didn’t even feel like she could talk. No one had ever done anything like this for her. Three hours in, three hours back, just for her? Trina complained she had to do it twice a summer. The simple kindness made her hormonal. Crazy for him. What she was doing to his body made her crazy for him. “Han, I don’t even have a condom.” He had taken her wrists in one hand and held them down, bent over to take a few calming breaths.
“I can get one,” she said automatically. She knew her mother kept them in her bedside table. She couldn’t think about her mother that way—especially with Wes—but she’d seen them in there before.
She jerked her hands out of his grip and, with a coy smile, pressed her palms against the bulge in his jeans, worked it through the fabric. He groaned, “Jesus, Hannah,” before kissing her again, tongue skimming her lips. “Okay, yes. Go.”
In the hallway she scooted past Julia’s empty room, her footsteps silent. The door to her mother’s room was wide open, and the bedside table was closest to the door. She inched open the drawer and saw the foil squares, four in a strip. She eased out the whole strip—why not?—and slowly pushed the drawer back in.
“What the fuck?” The voice came from the doorway. Hannah jumped back, her heartbeat wild. Wes stood in front of her, shirtless, barefoot, and Hannah looked down at his toenails, long and yellow. “Look at me. Are you stealing condoms from me?”
“No. I was . . .” She couldn’t think. Wes barely spoke to either Hannah or Julia, rarely yelled at them. In fact, he scarcely acknowledged their existence, aside from his bedroom visits. Behind him in the hall, she saw Wyatt, eyes wide with fear.
“You’re what? Sixteen?” She realized then that he was too drunk to know which sister she was. He covered the gap between them in a second and stood over her. He was taller than she remembered, probably over six feet. Hannah straightened her spine, met his gaze. “You’re a whore like your mother.”
He said it quietly, which was why it came as a shock when he backhanded her in the face.
Her jaw cracked, and she saw bursts of light. She dropped the strip of condoms and collapsed on the floor, on her knees. She heard a noise, a low keening that she realized was her own voice.
Wyatt rushed at Wes, landed a right hook to his cheek. Wes stumbled once, his body cracked against the railing of the steps, and he fell to the ground unconscious.
The rest of the night passed in a blur: Wyatt made her call Trina at work, who came home within the hour, mumbling about being docked pay, but stared at Wes’s limp form in the hall with a sneered lip. He hadn’t woken up.
Wyatt had retreated to her bedroom, and Hannah claimed the punch. She even held her hand a bit for effect. It would help no one to have Wyatt discovered, Hannah reasoned to herself. Trina had enough on her plate. She doubted Wes would remember anything, and if he did and insisted that an unknown boy had hit him, Hannah would just play dumb. It wouldn’t be hard to make Wes look delusional. It would piss him off, though. Hannah bit her thumbnail.
“What were you doing?” Trina asked Hannah, her eyes narrowed. By this time Julia had come home, and she watched the whole exchange with incredulity and horror.
“I was looking for nail clippers.” The lie came out smooth and easy. Julia held ice to her sister’s cheek and let the tears fall down her own cheeks without wiping them away.
“I should have been here,” Julia whispered. Hannah almost told her then. Almost confessed. To everything. Wes and his nighttime visits. Wyatt hiding in the bedroom.
Wyatt wouldn’t leave until he was sure Hannah was okay. Hannah made every excuse she could think of to try to leave. She took ibuprofen. Let Julia fuss over her, blotting up the blood from her nose with a pile of tissues. Finally she pretended to be falling asleep on Julia’s bed, and Julia let her go.