I wiped at the tears blurring my vision. I ought to hold back. He didn’t need to know this. It wasn’t his fault, but right now lashing out was all I had. It was all I could do to keep myself standing.
“Do you know what the hell my mom was doing when I got home?”
Dead silence. The stupid clock in the living room ticked the seconds away.
“She wasn’t even there. She came home at midnight after getting back from the casinos.” A hysterical, watery laugh jumped from my throat.
My gaze swung back to Ron. “That’s who you left me with. I was an eight-year-old little girl, just like Nora’s, but you didn’t take me Halloween shopping. You were on the road at games or scouting trips and then you just stopped coming home. You just stopped. I’m glad to know you can be a great guy.” It was the knife I’d already thought had been twisted as far as it could go, but no. There was more. I wiped my nose with my sleeve, my face an absolute mess. “It’s awesome you’ve got that fatherly instinct in there. Just sucks you didn’t use it with your own kid.”
There were no more words to say. My chest burned like someone was shoveling piles of coal into a furnace or chucked an entire keg into a bonfire and shrapnel cut through my body.
I flung open the door and fled his house. My feet slammed into the paved walkway and I cut across the lawn to speed up my escape. Blinded by tears, I raced past the houses along the street, gasping for air.
This time LJ didn’t jump in front of me. He tackled me, wrapping both arms around me and holding me against his chest.
I shoved at his arms. “Stop it. Get off.” Slipping out of his hold, I took off running.
“Marisa!” He could catch me—he was way faster than me—but he didn’t.
He let me go.
With every step, a jolt shot through my body that wrenched ugly sobs from my throat.
With every step, the burn got hotter.
With every step, I hated the way LJ had looked at me when I’d blurted out the biggest secret I’d been keeping from him since we’d become friends.
Ron had a girlfriend with kids. An eight-year-old daughter. Twins. And he was so great with them.
I’d just spilled everything to LJ, the secret I’d kept from him since the beginning of our friendship. Stupid. So stupid to blurt things out like that.
My feet drummed against the ground until I skidded to a stop, grabbing onto the railing of the porch to The Brothel.
“Marisa!” LJ shouted. His car door slammed.
I flung myself up the stairs and jammed my key into the front door, closing it behind me and took off up the stairs to hide and pull a Keyton, never to be seen again.
But the latch didn’t catch.
His footsteps behind me were as loud as my thundering heartbeats.
We burst through my door at nearly the same time.
He caught my arm and spun me around to face him. “Stop running.” His gaze was fierce, bordering on pissed.
The burning pressure was back, pounding furiously in my nose.
His furrows softened and he held onto both my arms. “Stop running from me, Marisa. Please.”
“Why shouldn’t I run? Maybe I want to be the one running for once. First my dad, and then my mom every damn chance she got.”
His face was filled with sadness and shock. “Why didn’t you tell me?” The words bordered on desperate.
“Tell you what? That my mom, if she could even be called that, was an alcoholic? That I spent time at your house because I hated being home alone? Because I hated going to bed hungry? Because I hated her rolling in the middle of the night alone—or not?”
“All of it,” his whisper was so intense it sent shivers shooting down my spine.
The ugly, wracking sobs were back like they were wrenched from the depths of my heart. It was an emotional detonation that only he could bring about.
He hugged me, holding me so tightly I could barely breathe. Or maybe my lungs had stopped knowing how to function.
Quieting, with the tears turning cold against my skin, I held onto him, clung to him. Still feeling seconds from coming out of my skin.
The house was quiet and we went upstairs to my room. My fingers and tip of my nose tingled at the change in temperature.
Tears flooded my eyes as my body thawed from the chill. All the things I’d kept from LJ were held back by a dam close to bursting. The downpour raised the water and it lapped at the edges of the wall I’d built up to separate that part of myself from who I was with him.
Throwing off my coat, I plopped down on the floor, wanting to get this over with.
From the look on his face, he wouldn’t let it go.
He took off his coat and hung it on the back of my chair. “You could’ve told me.”
“And become a charity case to your family?” I scooted back and crossed my legs.
He faced me, sat and crossed his. “Why would you think that? We’d have done anything for you. Still will.”
“And become a mooch or someone you felt you had to keep around? No. That’s not my deal.”
“What the hell is wrong with you? Why do you keep talking about yourself like this?”
I shook my head, looking away. “You don’t know what it’s like to be…” I trailed off.
“No, don’t stop. I’ve been your friend since the third grade. How could you think I wouldn’t want to know?”
“There’s more than a few things you don’t want to know about me, LJ.” Trying to share them in the past had only gotten me hurt. He wanted to be my knight in shining armor, but I wasn’t his princess in the tower. I was his sidekick.
“Things like what?” He prodded and wouldn’t let it drop.
“Things like the scar on my wrist was from the first time I tried to make soup by myself and my mom came in and spilled the whole thing and I reached for the pot like an idiot. Or the week I spent with you the summer before ninth grade, my mom wasn’t visiting a friend in Chicago. I don’t know where the hell she was. I still don’t have any idea.” I was pissed for the scared, lonely kid bumping around the house and feeling everything she was at the same time.
He held onto me and rocked me until the tears dissolved and my skin was itchy from the salt staining my cheeks.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was that bad?”
“What could you have done?”
“Something? Anything?”
“Were you going to move me into your tree house? We were kids.”
“Yes, but my parents would’ve helped. They’d have had you come live with us or tracked down your dad.”
“You had a full house as it was. Adding me to the mix when everyone was dealing with so much already wasn’t okay.”
“Screw okay. My mom loves you like a daughter. I lo—I can’t believe you kept all that from me for so long.”
“What the hell does it matter? Why are you getting upset? You should be happy, I saved you from dealing with all my baggage. We played video games and ate crappy food in your room and the backyard, wandered the woods and hung out. We were kids.”
“And you were a kid dealing with things you shouldn’t have had to.”
I shrugged. “I could say the same about you. You were handling all the stress of your dad being sick. You were helping your mom and Quinn. We all have to deal with heavy shit sometimes.”