She took some of my weight and helped me up the stairs, gathering my purse she spotted on the stairway. “I was headed to bed and heard a scream. Good thing I stayed up late with Yasmine who had a bad dream or I wouldn’t have heard.”
“Yeah. Good thing.” I grunted with every step, the stabbing pain in my side increasing and throbbing.
I should have let Hudson bring me home. He would have walked me to my door, made sure I got in safe. He seemed gentlemanly enough to do something like that.
At my door, I took my purse from Samaya and found my key ring.
“Thanks again, Samaya. I appreciate your help.”
She eyed me with the look of a mom who cared about her kids. Foreign to me with my own but I’d seen it from moms inside. It was a look telling me I was stupid, but thankful I was okay.
“‘Night, Lilly. Come get me if you need help. Figure I won’t be sleeping for a while now.”
“Yeah.” I huffed a dry laugh that made me cough. Pain shot from my side to my head. “Me either.”
As soon as I was behind the door, I shoved my chair in front, and then another one.
You’re safe. You’re fine. Everything’s going to be fine, you just have to survive one night at a time.
I went to the small bathroom area that was so small I could barely spin in a circle. My hands shook so bad it took three tries to get the water on, two to grab the towel from the hook. I went to work quickly, skipping over my cuts and scrapes while I grabbed tweezers to try to remove slivers of mulch from my cheeks and chin.
It wasn’t until I washed my face, patched up the blood and curled into bed I realized I’d dropped the cupcakes.
I rolled over, hugged my pillow, and cried.
Nothing good lasted long enough, not for me, and I needed to remember that.
A soft knock hit my door, making me jump. I gave it a few moments to see if whoever was there would go away, but the knocking continued… quiet and patient, and not at all terrifying loud like Manny had some mission to complete.
I flung my pillow to the floor and curled up, careful of my side. The blood on my face had dried and my lip still pulsed.
I reached the door, shuffling slowly on sock-covered feet and peeped out.
It was Samaya, holding a small wicker basket in her arms.
I cracked open the door.
“You feeling better?”
“I’m fine.”
“I made a kit for you. Things to help get you fixed up. I can help if you like.”
My heart squeezed painfully tight in my chest and more tears surfaced. As a mom, she probably had cabinets filled with band-aids and first aid cream and ice packs, but the gesture meant everything.
“Thank you, but I can manage,” I finally said and took the basket from her arms.
“There are teas in there, too. Oils and tinctures that might help you sleep.”
I nodded, peered down at the basket and back at her. She looked pensive, sucking a corner of her bottom lip into her mouth.
“You should call the police.”
“I don’t need attention from them.”
“Men like him… he won’t stop. He’ll just get angrier.”
“Tell me about it,” I muttered and stepped back to close the door. “Thanks for the stuff. I’ll return the basket soon.”
“That’s not—”
I shut the door on her and the muffled word necessary filtered through.
Whatever.
Samaya’s life probably hadn’t been easy. No one who lived in this neighborhood had an easy life, but I didn’t need her lecture about men and their behaviors or anger issues.
I’d lived it.
Eight Years Earlier
“Get up.”
From my perch at the kitchen island, hunched over and trying to be invisible, I flinched as my dad shoved my brother in the stomach with his Ferragamo shoe.
“Damn it, Josh.”
It wasn’t a kick, necessarily, but getting closer.
Josh, for his part, was passed out on the kitchen floor, so he wasn’t exactly helping the situation. He got out of rehab two weeks ago. It wasn’t his first trip, but it’d been the longest he’d stayed clean.
Two whole stinking weeks.
Pretty sure he was going back in before nightfall. He’d have to dry out before he reported for football in a few weeks.
I prayed this last time took and went back to my cereal.
My brother was the smartest idiot I’d ever met, throwing away a career with talent he was born with and sacrificing it all for booze and girls and probably drugs I wanted no knowledge of.
Gone were my fresh-faced days of being a naïve pre-teen and clueless about the cloud of addiction that hovered over him. Reality smacked me in the face two years ago when he crashed his truck into our garage.
It was always better to remain unnoticed when Dad got like this but watching him try to shove his son across the tiled floor made me lose my appetite. Our dad was a dick, and Josh and I always promised we’d stick together. Even if he was an idiot, he was there for me.
“I’ll get him up, Dad, if you need to get to work.”
“Mind your own business, Lilliana. This is between Josh and me.”
I snorted and milk spilled out of my bowl and onto the counter. I considered it more of a family problem given how much effort we all went through to keep Josh clean. Me mostly. When he was home, he was still the overprotective brother he always used to be, pretty damn charming on his good, clean days. But now I was the caretaker. The number of times I shooed Dad out for work so he didn’t see Josh in a similar position to this were innumerable.
“Hey, Dad?”
“What?”
Sometimes distractions worked and he’d forget about his son with more problems than the tools needed to deal with them, but only if they were the right ones.
I took my chance anyway.
“I got an acceptance letter in the mail yesterday. From Purdue.”
Not only was it my dad’s alma mater, but I’d also received an academic scholarship. Not a full ride, but pretty damn important.
He ignored me. Apparently, his daughter’s achievement wasn’t the right distraction. I wasn’t surprised, but it still stung like always.
“Josh,” my dad said.
I read that tone as quickly as I’d read my acceptance letter. He was getting pissed. And Dad pissed usually meant Mom spent a few days in her room, or when he was really pissed, a couple days at a spa in Scottsdale, Arizona. My dad, the judge, tough on crime and all-around chauvinistic asshole. I hadn’t seen her yet this morning but that wasn’t usual. Mom usually slept until ten and started drinking by noon, although really, I couldn’t blame her. One misstep and it wasn’t Dad’s Ferragamo shoe in Josh’s stomach it was usually his fists to hers.
I jumped from my spot at the island and filled a glass of water. Before my dad’s shoe could shove Josh any harder or faster, I ran to Josh and dumped it on his face.
“Damn it, Lilliana. That has to be cleaned up now.”
No mention of Purdue. All he cared about was the water on his floor and that Josh was now groaning, rolling over on the tiled floor and swiping iced water from his face. “What the hell’d you do that for?”
I stomped back to the kitchen counter and dumped the rest of my cereal in the sink.