“Listen,” he growled, making his way down the stairs toward me. Maybe I should have been afraid, the narrowed glare in his eyes was predatory and locked onto me. I stood my ground, my heart still racing and my breathing heavy as he drew closer until our bodies were just inches apart. “I’ll give you what you need. You want time out? Fine. Take it. But Kid goes with you because the club still—”
“Owns me,” I snapped, gritting my teeth.
“Has your fucking back.”
The look in his eyes, it almost had me. It almost caught me. Because it wasn’t enough that my fear was destroying me, it was seeing it destroy him too.
That was the level of pain I hadn’t experienced before.
That was new.
“Go,” he ordered, pointing at the open door. His eyes locked on mine, and for the first time ever, it made me second-guess everything. “Go, Avery.”
And as I stumbled out the door, Kid rushed to my side, and I thought I heard something else.
Just come back.
AVERY
“Come on, Avery,” Kid groaned, stomping along behind me. “I’m not prepared for hiking.”
I powered through, like each footstep was a memory, the desert sand shifting beneath my feet as we wound our way up the path. I knew just how deep to dig my feet and where parts of the track were harder than others.
The small hill bordered the edge of our old neighborhood. It was just far enough out so we couldn’t get lost or eaten by coyotes, but close enough that Micah and I could walk there from our house when we were kids.
While most of the local kids used the area for climbing and exploring this particular track we had made ourselves, everyone had known it was ours.
Our special spot.
And the place that now also housed a tiny cross that I dedicated to her.
The path ended, opening into a small round area that had a couple of rocks, just the right height to sit at, our names scribbled over and over and around the red-colored mounds. The little wooden cross jabbed into the ground at the foot of them was on a slight lean, my body instantly sagging to the ground in front of it.
Hey, Mich.
I reached out, straightening the tiny cross, leaning it back against the rocks.
Kid took a seat on the rock beside me, and I leaned my head against his leg. “Tell me about her.”
I instantly smiled. Just the thought of being able to share her beauty, her smarts, and funny jokes with someone new excited me. I wanted everyone to know who she was, what she was like, how just her laughter could light up the world. “Micah was that one girl everyone wanted to be friends with,” I started, seeing my sister’s smiling face in my mind before she rolled her eyes. “She was smart, beautiful, funny…”
“So, basically you?”
I scoffed loudly, shaking my head. “Me? No. Micah always knew what to say. She always knew what to do. She was that one person who held things together when everyone felt like they were falling apart.”
“Also sounding very familiar,” Kid teased, leaning back against the rock wall behind us. “Look, I’m not trying to be an asshole, but we all know that you and Shotgun are you and Shotgu—”
“Kid—”
“You guys are so perfect, so intertwined.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Is it, though?” he countered, the sharpness forcing me to get to my feet.
He followed. “You’re scared, right? Scared of caring about people and then having to give them up? Scared of giving a shit only to find they don’t?”
“In a nutshell,” I muttered under my breath, wondering why it seemed to sound so silly coming from him, but also so real, so painful, and heartbreaking inside my chest. “You think it sounds stupid, don’t you?”
He let out a burst of laughter, hanging his head and shaking it back and forth. “No, quite the opposite. I think I feel it right in my bones. The idea that someone can mean so much to you, but that they could reject you so easily…” He lifted his hand and rubbed at his chest. I opened my mouth, eager to ask him exactly where this was coming from, but he quickly looked up, clearing his throat. “I mean, losing your sister? Just thinking about losing that one person who has always had your back—”
I let out a harsh laugh. “If only losing Micah was it. Micah was stolen from me. Everyone else found the door on their own.”
“What are you doing here?”
I stood in the doorway, the harsh tone in my adoptive mom’s voice almost breaking my heart in two. I swallowed hard past the lump of emotion that had been trying to choke me for the past few days. “It’s my birthday,” I murmured, making it sound slightly like a question in case she’d just forgotten.
She hadn’t.
But it just so happens that this date now had a different meaning.
One that I knew my parents felt was more important.
“Avery, we just can’t do—”
“Mom,” I cut in, feeling my stomach churn, a resurgence of the pain that I’d just spent the past couple of hours fighting as I forced myself to put on some makeup and get dressed and drag my ass here instead of climbing back into bed. I knew if I did, I wouldn’t leave. Not for hours. Maybe not for days. “I need this. I need my family.”
What’s left of it.
Mom tugged her short blonde hair behind her ear and pursed her lips tightly. “We are not your family.”
The burn of tears tickled my throat, a bitter taste burning my tongue. “You adopted me.”
“Because Micah fell in love with you,” she hissed back. “Not because we did.”
I’d known it for a long time.
I came second.
Always an afterthought.
It wasn’t like they hadn’t made it obvious that I was only there because they would have done anything to make their beautiful daughter happy. Their biological daughter happy.
My dad stepped up behind Mom, his hand on the door. “You need to leave. Do you have any idea what we’re going through?”
“I do!” I whispered loudly, trying to fight back the tears. It had taken too long to get to a point where I could breathe without feeling a dull ache in my chest. I couldn’t go back. Not now. “Because I’m feeling it, too. You aren’t the only ones who lost her. I lost her, too!” I should be staying home, spending the night with her and Dad, looking through photo albums, watching old home movies, and grieving together.
But instead, once again, I was being pushed aside.
Left behind.
Deemed not worthy.
My mom’s head bobbed up and down. “She was going to be something great. She was going to be something amazing,” she muttered, but not saying those words that I knew she was playing over and over in her head.
It should have been you.
She kept looking past me, into the darkness, her focus going somewhere else. Somewhere I felt like I was probably familiar with.
Hell.
“Avery, if you care, you’ll go,” Dad warned, his hands on her shoulders, pulling her back inside the house, so he could shut the door on me. On the unwanted daughter. The daughter who wasn’t as beautiful. As perfect. Or as amazing as the other.
The daughter, who was more like a stray puppy they adopted, only to put it in a bag and thrown off a bridge when it no longer served a purpose.