This was it.
She’d really fucking done it now.
Maybe I should have reached this point before, maybe I should never have left it until this moment, but I’d been thinking like a sister. Reacting instead of acting. I’d had no money, no prospects without my degree, and I was young. Those were my excuses, but no more.
It was time to woman up.
I soothed him until he calmed down, and the second he didn’t fret as much, I got him cleaned up as much as I could and tossed his dirty diaper into the trash.
Leaving him for a second to roam around his bedroom floor, I closed the door to run into the bathroom and set up the baby bath. When it was ready, I headed into the kitchen to grab a quick drink of water and saw the broken glass on the carpet again, along with some droplets of blood.
How many fucking times did I have to tell her?
How many times would it take for her to learn not to break shit? And why the hell had she let Scottie crawl in here in the first place?
I’d put him down for the night before I left for work, goddammit.
Not wanting to leave Scottie for too long, I left the kitchenette that stank of old beer, ignored the crappy living room that smelled of cheap liquor that had soaked into the carpet, and returned to Scottie’s room.
Hauling him into my arms, he giggled as I blew a raspberry onto his cheek. When he settled on my hip, the rightness of everything just sank into my bones.
I could do this.
We could do this.
I needed to get away from my mother, needed to stop her toxicity from seeping into Scottie’s life.
Resolved, I washed him up, looked at his arm and was relieved to see the cut was tiny but the blood had made it look worse than it was, especially since my drunk mother hadn’t bandaged it properly.
It would scab over quickly, but the rift between my mother and her children never would.
Enough was enough.
I’d reached my limit.
Or so I thought.
After an hour of sitting with Scottie and comforting him until he could sleep, I was dead on my feet when I finally made it into bed.
Professor Maclean hadn’t texted me as was his usual way, and I found that disconcerting enough to keep me staring up at the dark ceiling longer than I should. Tomorrow, I didn’t have to get up for anything except for Scottie. My shift at the bar started at nine, so I had the day to work on the transcriptions and try and figure out my next move.
I’d need to start relying on Cheryl again, but at night this time, and the next thing was figuring out somewhere to live that was close to the bar.
Because my brain was whirring with thoughts, I was awake longer than my tired body wanted. Still, if I’d been asleep, I probably wouldn’t have heard the giggles coming from the living room, or the masculine grunts a few moments later.
Mom had given up her bedroom for Scottie when he’d been born, so the living room was literally where she ate, drank, and slept.
Now, she was apparently fucking in there too.
I didn’t say anything.
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard her having sex with some random. Christ, I’d probably been ‘there’ for Scottie’s conception too. But damn if it wasn’t going to be the last time I had to endure this.
As I heard her crying out to God as she faked an orgasm—because no one came that fast, not even me with the professor watching and stoking my embers—my phone buzzed.
I reached over and something inside me settled when I saw it was him.
Was it weird that I wanted to ask him why he was late tormenting me tonight?
Probably, but what wasn’t strange about my life?
The fact that my baby brother thought I was his mom, or that our mother was currently moaning like a porn star in the living room as she fucked a stranger, undoubtedly for cash?
I stared at his text for a long time.
Maclean: What are you doing tomorrow?
Why did he want to know?
Any other man, I’d have thought he maybe wanted to hang out with me. But this was the professor. He didn’t want that from me.
I wasted about twenty minutes before I replied, and even then, my heartbeat sped up because I was keeping him waiting. The tiny ticks had turned blue so I knew he knew I’d read the messages.
Because I wasn’t in the habit of lying, I texted: I’m moving out. My brother and I can’t live with my mom anymore. She’s dangerous for his safety.
Maclean: What happened?
His reply was astonishingly quick, and it made me wonder what he was doing. Made me question if he was lying in bed, in the dark, his body bared beneath the sheets as he spoke with me.
Even as riled up as I was, as angry and unsettled over my intentions for tomorrow, everything female inside me stirred at the thought.
I’d never seen him so much as discomposed, yet he’d seen me in so many various states of discombobulated it was ridiculous.
As I stared at his question, I wondered how much I should tell him.
He’d threatened me.
Had said, “I hold the worlds of you and your brother in the palm of my hand.”
But this was the man who’d appeared at my side at Enid’s funeral.
Who’d tended to my arm when I’d scalded it.
Who’d suggested the transcribing in the first place.
Would he really do anything to separate me from Scottie?
I gnawed on my cheek as I deliberated how I should reply. Though I barely knew him, I knew enough to know he wouldn’t be happy with a non-answer, and silence would only piss him off all the more.
Like he’d read my mind, my phone buzzed, and I snorted out a laugh when I read his next message.
Maclean: Waiting.
God, he was such an asshole.
His nose was bump-free, which led to the question of how the fuck had he reached this point in his life without someone breaking it for him?
Despite myself, I was amused by his arrogance, and it prompted me to answer with the truth.
Me: I came home and he was all alone in the apartment.
Maclean: She’d left him?
My jaw clenched.
Me: Yeah. And he was bleeding from a small cut and was a mess.
Just thinking about that mess made rage swirl inside me. As well as terror.
Tonight could have ended so differently. Could have derailed in so many different ways that my heart sped up as I contemplated the numerous and varied incidents in which Scottie could have hurt himself tonight.
Maclean: What’s your intention?
Me: I don’t know. Not really. I don’t have anywhere to go, but I know I can’t stay here.
There was a long pause, and I wondered if he’d fallen asleep. It was late, late enough that the fucking in the living room had turned to grunts and snores.
I settled my phone back on the nightstand, not expecting a reply tonight, hell, not expecting a reply at all.
What was there to say?
But I wasn’t ready for sleep. Not when I was thinking about the next steps I was going to take.
I had to get Scottie out of here, that was for damn sure. He couldn’t stay around the poison that was our mother.
When my phone lit up my bedroom, I jolted out of the daze my sleepy brain had fallen into, and when I read his message, I just gaped at it for a solid minute.
Maclean: You can come stay with me until you get back on your feet.
Was he for real?
I couldn’t stop myself from typing: I thought I was a filthy thief.
Maclean: You were. Now you’re not.