“I don’t know anything.” Her voice drops lower, softer. “Only what you said the day I woke up. I only know she was something to you. I’m sorry for bringing her up.”
“She was my sister.” My voice cracks on that word. She wasn’t just my sister. She was my everything. A lump sticks in my throat, and I struggle to breathe. “She was taken. She was taken like you.”
I fixate on the TV, but I’m not seeing the screen. My mind drifts once again to the day she left, and the memory swirls like a fog.
“Did you find her …?” Shelby asks delicately. She knows. More than anyone, she understands what it’s like to lose your entire life. Fuck, I’m being selfish. She knows more than me what it’s like. She’s just like Molly, except she’s still breathing.
“No. They took my sister, killed my father. We went after them,” I tell her, looking over my shoulder at her. Shelby sits turned toward me with her back resting against the arm of the chair. I never even felt her move. “My father, his friend, Elias, and I. We’ve searched this entire fuckin’ city for her. Got as far as getting inside their headquarters before the bastard Gutierrez shot and killed my father.”
Shelby visibly shudders. “I’m so sorry, Alex. I don’t recognize her name, but we all had different names when we got there. It was their way of owning us. But maybe if you have a picture, I might recognize her.”
I clench my jaw. “No.”
Her face pales. “You don’t have to share her with me. I understand.”
“No, I meant I don’t have a picture.” I blow out a harsh breath and run a hand through my hair. “I don’t even have a picture. How fucked up is that?”
I’m forced out of my thoughts by a tiny, warm hand wrapping around the back of my neck. I can’t even look at her, but I know she’s looking at me. She’s looking at me and comforting me for my dead sister when she’s gone through the same. I want to buck her off at the same time I want to drag her into my lap and hold on.
“I don’t know what I’m doing, but it seemed like you needed a person.”
“All my people end up dead,” I croak.
Her fingers twist into my nape. “Is your mother dead?”
She’s your responsibility now, Alex. Take care of your sister for me.
“She left us when I was eight. My dad was a big drinker. A real asshole. He never laid his hands on her, but his words tore her down. So much so, we weren’t enough to make her stay. We weren’t enough for her to even fight for custody. She left us with him and never looked back.”
“So she isn’t dead—ˮ
I cut her off. “She also isn’t my person.” I catch her eyes, making sure she gets my meaning before looking back toward the TV. “She left us to him. Let me tell you, he never laid a hand on us, but he was a mean drunk. I guess it runs in the family. Molly was my responsibility, and I protected her through all that the best I could. Kills me that as soon as we were old enough to get out of that, I failed.”
“What about Elias?”
I scoff, but it turns into a growl as her hand shifts in my hair. “Only a matter of time.”
Shelby sucks in a breath. “That’s a terrible way to think.”
Reaching around my neck, I grab her wrist and pull her hand away. “It’s the damn truth.” I can’t seem to let her go, though. I turn her hand palm up and place my fingers in her palm. She’s soft and warm. The skin there is impossibly smooth.
“Are you a pessimist?”
“I’m a realist.”
Her fingers curl tight around mine. I could pull my hand away. Force hers to open and let me go. Instead, the move forces me to look at her. “Can I tell you about my past?”
My hand spasms in hers. “Yeah,” I reply. It sounds scratchy because my throat is suddenly dry.
“I met this girl there, and she taught me to hope. It doesn’t sound like you have much.”
“That well’s run dry, blossom.”
“Maybe so. But even then, there’s always hope. She taught me that. Those moments when I was so sure I’d die there, she taught me how to hold on.”
“How’d she do that?” I’m curious and tortured with every word out of her mouth. This is the closest I’ve been to hearing about Molly. About the conditions she lived in. My imagination isn’t conjuring this. It’s coming straight from a reliable source, so I crave more as much as I detest it.
“Memories.” Shelby smiles. “She said sometimes when she feels like giving up, she’d think of a memory of her life before. That would help give her a burst of strength. You might not be trapped somewhere physical, but you are trapped somewhere, Alex. I can feel it.”
Trapped. What an apt term to describe my life.
“We going to watch a movie or what?”
She quickly releases my hand. I forgot it was still wrapped in her grasp. Once her touch is gone, I instantly miss it.
“Yes, please. Elias won’t be back to pick me up until around 9:30. He had a date.”
“That make you jealous?”
Her eyes go wide, and she frowns. “Of course not. I’m happy he isn’t sacrificing his dating life for my sake.”
“You don’t feel pretty cozy with him?” Jesus, asshole. Why do I always have to resort to pushing her away?
“I don’t think I’ll ever feel cozy with a man again, to be honest.”
The truth in those words strikes me deep, and my regret intensifies. “Sorry,” I mutter.
She shrugs. “Worse things than not ever being loved. I could be dead.”
“I thought I was the negative one.” As if we are a couple, and she’s the yin to my yang.
“I thought that was a pretty positive observation.”
I plant my foot on the floor and push myself farther into the right side of the couch so I can face her better. The TV is long forgotten. “Yeah, the part about not being dead. I’m talking about the part of never being loved. What the fuck is that about?”
She smiles, but it’s small and sad. “Oh, come on. I might have been kidnapped at sixteen, but I’m not stupid about men and relationships. My chances of finding someone to love me when I can’t stand them touching me is pretty slim to nonexistent.”
“You let me touch you. You slept in the same bed as me.”
She stills as if that hadn’t occurred to her and hums. “Hmm. Maybe you’re right. I’m stuck in the now and letting that get into my head. I forgot to hold onto hope.”
“You know what? I think you’re full of it.”
“Yeah, you are too.”
Our eyes lock across the expanse of the couch between us. “What are you doing here, Shelby?”
“I don’t know. I’m just taking it one day at a time.”
“Don’t you want to go home? See your family?”
“I’m not sure I have a family left. Even if I do, I don’t know how to go back to that. I lived a different life for over two years. It’s not as easy as waltzing back home and walking in the front door. There’s so much shame. I’m not the daughter they knew.”
“If you were Molly, I’d take you however I could get you just so I could have you back.”