“The greenhouse,” Mitchell explains. “You didn’t hear mom talk about how she needed help rearranging the plants and lights? You were at that dinner the other night.”
I don’t remember. Heat gathers again. Sweat caking my body and stifling me, but I can’t unfreeze enough to unzip my jacket.
Our mom looks between them. “Boys, that conversation happened after your brother already left.”
“Like he always does,” Hunter adds, digging the knife in my back.
I drag my gaze across the snow.
Our mom lets out a sigh and says, “Be nice.”
“He doesn’t make it easy,” Hunter snaps.
Likewise.
I swallow the retort and clear my throat to ask, “How did you all even get here? I didn’t see your cars?”
“Uber,” Davis says. “We were all still a little hungover from last night.”
Right.
“We actually still need some help with the heaters and lights,” Mitchell says to me. “You want to pitch in?” He nods towards the greenhouse and his eyes soften on me.
I think that Mitchell really believes he’s giving me a lifeline to be in good graces with our parents and our brothers.
It’s sad.
Because what I really need is for him to stick up for me. To keep our two older brothers from beating on me. But even if Mitchell tried now, he’d be twenty-one years too late.
“I left my car running,” I say. “I wasn’t staying long.”
My mom squeezes my shoulder. “I’ll shut it off for you.” She holds out a palm so I can pass her the keys. “Go spend some time with your brothers.”
I want to say no.
Deep in my gut, I don’t want to be here, but it feels impossible to leave in this moment.
I nod tensely, and my brothers disappear back into the greenhouse while I search my pockets for car keys. My mom waits for me, patient.
I’m hot and I end up pulling off my jacket. Doing a piss-poor job, half my T-shirt rides up my waist in the process. As I clutch the keys and wad up my jacket, I look over at my mom.
Her eyes are unblinking and zeroed in on my bare abdomen. At the fresh welts that mar my cold skin. Ones from Hunter after he tackled me outside, the holiday dinner from hell. It wasn’t even the first bad one I’ve had.
We’re both motionless, except for our gazes that meet. Truths exposed and raw, and it’s not like she hasn’t known or seen before.
This just feels different. Maybe because I’m older. Maybe because she has the ability to protect me right here, right now, and I’m twenty-one and suffering under the belief that she won’t.
She never has before.
My keys are cold in my hand.
She reaches out to stroke my cheek, and I stare down at the snow. Her soft touch feels as painful as the thorns she cut.
I glance at the greenhouse, then to my mom.
“Just give them a chance,” she says in a pleading whisper.
I want to shake my head, but I can’t. “They’re not going to change.”
She lets out this tiny breath and rubs my arm, and in her pitying gaze, I know that she’s not waiting for them to change. She’s always been waiting for me to change—to grow thicker skin. To be less sensitive.
More of a man, right?
I could make her a PowerPoint with all the evidence of their fucked-up deeds and she’ll still claim I left the majority of their brotherly love off the slides.
I stick my arms back into my jacket sleeves, and once I shake off the snow from my hood, our eyes lock for another beat. Protect me, Mom.
Please.
I drop the car keys in her palm. Giving her my escape.
She has a choice to make, and she doesn’t even hesitate. I watch her leave for the driveway. To shut off my running Mustang.
As soon as I walk into that greenhouse, I know for certain that I’m doomed.
It hurts to breathe. Pain splinters up my side with each inhale.
How do I reach my apartment? I have no clue—the whole drive is a blur. Like a dusty Sega game, the TV screen crackling with static. But I remember the greenhouse.
I remember pushing Davis so hard that he fell into a stack of ceramic pots. They shattered. Dirt spilled. The door was finally clear.
And I left to the sound of my dad yelling at me. For destroying my mom’s precious basil plants. They could’ve been parsley or spinach for all I know.
I didn’t get a good look.
I didn’t care, and I guess that’s my fault, right?
Stupid, clumsy me.
Once I’m inside my Philly apartment, I hold onto my ribs and search my kitchen cupboards. Banging each one open. Trying to find some pain pills. When I was a teenager, one of my friends in the neighborhood dealt pills and gave me oxy. Her therapist would write her all kinds of prescriptions.
All I have now is ibuprofen.
With one hand, I place the bottle on the counter and twist the cap off, having perfected the one-handed twist on “child-proof” caps years ago. It pops. I purposefully knock the bottle and the pills spill on the granite countertop. I scoop a handful, not even counting and toss them back into my mouth.
As soon as they go down, I cough.
Sharp pain erupts in my ribs. They’re broken.
I know they’re broken.
Sinking onto my desk chair, I try to forget what happened. Maybe I can see the events from Hunter’s fucked-up vantage. He just…he threw a bag of potting soil to me. It was heavy. I didn’t see it coming. The bag slammed into my gut and knocked the wind out of my lungs.
I doubled over. Coughing. And the bag—it landed on a gardening hoe and tore open. Soil littered the floor.
Davis slapped me on the back of the head.
I tried to put distance between us, but I walked closer to Hunter. He shoved another bag at my back. As if I had hands connected to my spine to grab the damn thing.
He knew what he was doing.
The brunt force plowed me into a wooden shelf, and the corner jammed into my ribcage. I can still hear the crack in my ears. I can still feel my feet slipping beneath me and my legs buckling before I dropped to the ground.
“Come on, get up,” Davis said. “Don’t be such a pussy.”
I blink back the images, and my fingers tremble as I type on my cell. I’m keeping my promise to Willow.
I text: Made it back home. All good.
I know—I’m not telling her the whole truth.
But she doesn’t need to worry. I don’t need to be the tumor in her life. Especially because this was the last time I’m ever confronting my brothers.
Before I left the greenhouse, I did something I never do.
I told them, “I’m never seeing you again.” I choked out the seething words, and Hunter and Davis laughed. Like I’m some joke.
Mitchell got quiet. He looked between them and me, and his eyes fell to the floor in a daze.
I don’t think any of them really believe me.
But it’s true. I’m never going to see them again. Not even when I’m dead. I’d rather spend eternity in hell than come back as a ghost to haunt their asses. I refuse to let them have power over me anymore. The only problem…I forgot to grab my hard drive.
My stomach churns. It’s either my hard drive or seeing them again. Fuck the hard drive, then.
I lean back, close my eyes, and wait to go numb.