They give me a blanket, but it’s scratchy on my legs.
I have an apple juice box and a sugar donut and an apple. I don’t like apple juice, because it tastes like metal, but I’m thirsty, so I drink it anyway.
The policewoman asks me questions that make my tummy hurt.
I throw up the donut, and that makes me cry even more.
Mommy tells me it’s going to be okay, but I don’t feel like it is.
Finally they stop asking questions. I’m glad because I don’t like them. Then someone takes pictures of all of my bruises. I don’t really know how I got them all. Daddy is angry, and Mommy tries to hide how sad she is.
I’m glad when they finally say we can go home.
Daddy carries me out to the car, and Mommy sits in the back seat with me. I snuggle into her hair, breathing in her shampoo, trying not to let the memories or the smells come back. I want to put on my favorite pajamas and hug my stuffed beaver and never leave my house again.
I want to feel safe.
Daddy carries me upstairs, and Mommy starts a bath for me. Daddy sets me on the stool beside the bathtub and kneels in front of me. I only have one shoe on. I don’t know what happened to the other one.
My dress is filthy, covered in smudges of dirt. Kodiak’s hoodie has a tear on one side, and there’s crusty brown stuff all over the sleeves. I start to cry again, because everything is too much. I dig my nails into my palms, so I don’t make any noise.
“Hey, hey, hey.” Mommy pries my hands open. My palms are crusted in dried blood, and fresh blood wells in the cuts I’ve opened up. “Lavender, honey, who did this?”
“He said if I made a sound, I’d never see you again, so I screamed into my skin.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetie. We’ll never let anything bad happen to you ever again.”
“What if he comes back?” I whisper. “What if he takes me again?”
“He won’t, honey. I promise that’s not going to happen.”
I want to believe her, but the memories are still there—like a bad dream that doesn’t go away. He lives in my head now, the biggest monster in there.
Later, after I’m all cleaned up and in fresh pajamas, Mommy makes me a snack. But I’m not hungry, and all I want is my bed and to make sure River is okay. I want to tell him it wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t keep hold of me.
I want everything to be the same as it was before.
But it isn’t.
And I don’t think it ever will be.
Chapter One
First Day Fuckery
Lavender
Present day, age 19
“HEY, LAV!” MY brother’s fist slams against the bathroom door, and half a second later it flies open, scaring the living shit out of me as it bashes into the wall.
I jab myself in the eye with my mascara wand, and coffee sloshes down the front of my white tank. I was attempting to multitask. I should know better. “Ow! What the hell, Mav!” I cover my burning eye with my palm and drop my mug in the sink. The handle breaks off. “Goddammit! That was my favorite freaking mug. And I could’ve been naked!”
Maverick makes a gagging sound. “I just ate breakfast. Don’t say things like that if you don’t want me to hurl.”
“Screw you, fuckboy.” I try to close the door on him, but it’s useless, since he’s a damn giant and standing in the middle of the doorway. “And looking at your face makes me lose my appetite.”
Much to my parents’ dismay, Maverick is a certified manwhore. A monogamous one, but a manwhore nonetheless. Based on what I’ve learned from the girls who like to stop by our house—there are many—he hangs out with the same girl for exactly four weeks. And by “hang out,” I mean, bones as often as possible.
My brother is not an ogre—far from it. Maverick looks like a damn supermodel with his wavy dark hair and ridiculously chiseled features. Girls and women fawn all over him. It’s annoying.
“What are you doing busting into my bathroom at seven freaking thirty in the damn morning? I’m trying to get ready for class.” Even though I’m a sophomore, it’s my first day at a new school, and I’d like to start my second year of college on a positive note. Poking myself in the eye with my mascara wand is not very positive.
“Riv has to be at football practice, and I need to be at the arena in like, twenty. Have you seen my car keys?”
“Why would I know where your car keys are?” I drop my palm and glance at my reflection in the mirror. Awesome. Now it looks like I’m part raccoon with the mascara smeared around my eye.
“Mav, we gotta roll out or we’re gonna be late,” my twin brother, River, yells from somewhere in the house.
Maverick runs his hand through his hair. It falls back into place as though it’s made of perfectly obedient soldiers. “Where are your keys?”
“You can’t take my car.” I prop my fist on my hip. “Take River’s.”
“Some chick puked in the back seat last night, and it needs to be detailed.” Mav taps on the doorframe, impatient.
“And that’s my fault, how?” I do not want to know the how and why regarding the puking girl. River isn’t quite as bad as Maverick, but he still has a ridiculous number of girls fawning all over him at any given time—and that’s even with his less-than-glowing personality. Or possibly because of it.
Maverick glances to the right, just outside the bathroom door, and a sly smile turns up the corner of his mouth. He snatches my keys from my dresser and dangles them from his finger. “We’ll owe you one, sis.”
I jump up, trying to grab them back, but my brother is over six feet, and I’m five one and a quarter—that quarter is very important to me—so there is absolutely zero chance I can reach my keys when he’s holding them over his head. “You can’t leave me without my car!”
“You can walk in a straight line, Lav. You’ll be fine.” He strolls down the hall, and I scale his back in an attempt to reclaim my keys, but my contact lens is burning. It’s distracting and means I can only hold on to my brother with one arm while I press my palm against my watering eye. He hits the first flight of stairs and takes them at a jog, bumping me around on his back.
I somehow manage to jam my big toe into one of his belt loops, and it gets stuck there.
He drags me along like an awkward sloth he can’t shake. “My class is all the way across campus. It’s a half-hour walk, and it starts at eight thirty!”
“It’s not that far. You’ll be fine.”
The doorbell rings as we pass through the living room.
River stands in the kitchen, shoving half a bagel slathered in cream cheese into his mouth while texting. He frowns—this is his most common facial expression—and glances from the door to Maverick to me still hanging off his back. He crosses the room in two angry strides and throws the door open. He spins around, pinning our older brother with a disgusted look and thumbs over his shoulder. “This asshole has to sit in the back seat so I don’t have to look at his face.”
Standing in the doorway is Kodiak Bowman, more commonly referred to as Kody by everyone other than me. We all grew up together, basically, and probably know one another better than we should. Like the place he was conceived, Kodiak possesses a rare kind of arctic beauty. His hair is almost black, his eyes a pale green that doesn’t look quite natural, and his features hover between severe and exotic. But when he smiles, there’s a dimple in his left cheek that makes him look boyish and melts the panties of anyone with double X chromosomes. And a lot of XYs as well.