Chapter 24
Lilah
I listen to Jon’s mom’s side of the conversation as she talks to Destiny. She insisted on calling after dinner to tell her I’m staying overnight. “I don’t believe it’s my place to get into the middle of a family dispute,” Bethany says, “but that said, Lilah seems quite shaken. It might do you both good to have a night apart to pull your thoughts together so you can work out whatever the issue is with clearer minds.”
I pray to God Destiny won’t enlighten her on the “issue.” I’m not mentally prepared to defend it in any way other to say I love Bran, and I feel like I need more to justify it. Because what Bran and I did technically
is
illegal in the state of California. I Googled it on Jon’s laptop before his parents got home. I thought if I told the cops I consented, he would be okay. It turns out consent doesn’t matter. I’m sixteen and it’s illegal for a twenty-six-year-old to touch me with any sexual intent.
Destiny says something and Bethany’s calm demeanor doesn’t change, so I’m sure she didn’t spill my secret. When she hangs up, she smiles. “Family is the most important thing, Lilah. I hope you take this time to truly search your soul and find a way to mend this fence.”
I nod, but I’m pretty sure the fence is trampled beyond repair.
Jon and I go upstairs and sprawl across his bed with our algebra homework while Bethany makes up the double bed in the guest room.
“So…are you going to tell me what’s really going on?” Jon asks from under long blond lashes. He’s been uncharacteristically subdued since I told him I needed a place to stay. “Shoot me, but I checked your search history. Did you have sex with that guy?”
I tuck my legs underneath me. “Can I plead the fifth?”
“You slut!” he says with a grin, holding up a hand for a fist bump.
I shove his hand away. “Did you know the legal age of consent is sixteen in more than half of the states?”
He nods. “I saw the Wikipedia page in your history.”
I flop backward onto the bed. “I know he’s older but we just clicked, you know? Even though I knew it was wrong, I started feeling things that were totally out of my control.”
“Such as?”
I roll on my side and prop my head in my hand. “I didn’t choose to fall for him, but it was like a freight train. There was nothing I could do to stop it.”
He raises his eyebrows and laughs, but it’s a little bitter. “You’re going to sit there and explain to
me
that you don’t get to choose who you love?”
I crawl closer and pull him down with me, wrapping my arms around his neck. “I guess you get that part already.”
“He goes to Redwood High, and he’s a junior. Plays linebacker. I’ve crushed on him since we talked after our first game this season.”
“The guy from the party?” I ask. “The cute one?”
He nods.
I yank the pillow out from under his head. “Then why’d you say he wasn’t your type?”
He takes a deep breath and stares at the ceiling. “Do you have any idea how hard high school is for a guy? We’re supposed be trying to fuck all the cheerleaders, not the opposing team.”
I pull him tighter into the hug. “I love you too, if that helps.”
He rolls his head and smiles that rubber smile. “Slut.”
♫
I go to my job after school, not sure if I even still have one.
“So, what was that yesterday?” Gillian asks when I walk in, her expression suspicious and her arms folded tightly across her chest.
I glance around and find the store empty, save us. “I’m sorry about the scene…and leaving,” I say, evading the question. “It won’t happen again.”
She looks at me a moment longer. “You know I can only pay you for the hour you were here yesterday.”
I nod.
She turns her back and starts straightening the cartons of cigarettes on the shelf behind the counter. “I took care of the cereal, but I need you need to check the pet food section and diapers.”
“Got it.” I turn for the shelves and breath a relieved sigh once I’m hidden in them. For the next five hours, I wait for the other shoe to drop…Destiny, or worse, the police to show up and make another scene. At eight when Gillian flips the open sign in the door to closed, both relief and dread wend through my insides. No public scene, but now I have to go home and face Destiny one on one.
I told her the truth. Besides Bran and I, she and Jon are the only other people on the planet who know what happened in that motel room. She’s the only person who could hurt Bran.
I’ve stalked my phone, waiting for a text or call from Bran. So far, nothing. If he listened to the message, he knows he’s in danger. I have to talk Destiny down.
I unlock the flimsy street door and trudge up the stairs. When I walk in to the apartment, I don’t see Destiny, but I do see boxes stacked on the counters. I look inside and find our entire kitchen is already packed into them.
Destiny comes out of her bedroom and just looks at me. The disappointment in her eyes is glaringly apparent, but there’s less unbridled fury than was there yesterday.
I hold up a hand lamely. “Hi.”
“Are your thoughts straight?” she asks with a sour expression, and I realize she’s mocking Bethany.
“Straighter.”
She moves to the couch and drops into it. “Then explain it to me.”
I lower myself into the cushions on the other end. “When I met Bran, I didn’t know you were into him. I didn’t know about your ‘grand plan,’” I say, making air quotes with my fingers. “But the thing is, Destiny, Bran deserves more than to be your security blanket.”
Her frown deepens. “This isn’t about me or my plan or anything but the fact that I trusted you to his care and he took advantage of the situation. He’s not right, Lilah. No normal guy his age is going to take a sixteen-year-old to bed.”
I shake my head. “He didn’t know.”
“That’s bullshit,” she spits. “We talked about you. I’m sure I said something at some point. He knew.”
I picture his face at the show Wednesday, the shock. No. The
horror
. He couldn’t have acted that. And what would be the point of pretending? “Tell me what you think you said to him about my age.”
She shoots out of the couch and throws her hands in the air. “I’ve worked with him for two months. You’ve come up more than once. There’s no way he didn’t know.”
“You’re wrong,” I challenge.
She glares at me a moment longer, then grabs a box off the living room floor and turns back to the hall. “There are boxes in your room. I’m picking up the U-Haul tomorrow.”
“What about the car? It’s still not fixed,” I say, grabbing at any straw.
“I sold it to the guy for parts,” she says, like it’s no big deal. But it’s a huge deal. She’s always said when this one died we’d never be able to afford another.
Panic kicks in my chest. This is really happening. “Where are we going?”
She spins on me. “How the fuck should I know? I just know we can’t stay here.”
She disappears into her room and I drop back onto the couch. It’s not like Destiny to be so impulsive. She’s the duck person. They all need to be in a row before she makes a decision. Even when we left San Francisco a few months ago, she had this apartment and the job lead at Sam Hill before we got here.
And now she doesn’t even know where we’re going.
I pull my phone out and text Jon.
We’re leaving
. Then I pull up Bran’s number and stare at it for a long time before typing in three short words and hitting send.
He may not want to hear them, but if I’m never going to see him again, he needs to know.
Chapter 25
Bran
Told Ma I was sick and stayed home tonight. And I
am
sick. In the head.
It’s after midnight and I can’t stop staring at Lilah’s text. I sit on the couch with a pot of black coffee and recite the Gettysburg Address over and over, hoping it will take my mind off her. She’s six-fucking-teen. I have T-shirts older than her. I lost my virginity when she was five. But even as I recite, my eyes course over the text.
I love you
.
Fuck.
I coerced her into saying it right out loud to my face on Wednesday morning, and when I heard it coming from her mouth, my heart burst open at the seams, just like the fucking Grinch. She’s changed me fundamentally, like a shift of magnetic poles, and I can’t even remember how to be who I was before.
I think about the lyrics of the song she wrote, how she kissed me as Shiloh sang her words.
“Fuck!” I growl, shoving up from the couch.
I pace the window like a caged beast, staring toward town, in the direction I know she is. My heart’s at a wild gallop and my breathing’s short. I’m too fucking young to be having a heart attack, but that’s how it feels. In the chaos of my thoughts, only one is clear. Lilah’s my addiction and I can’t quit her. I can’t give her up without a fight.
There’s only one person who can hurt us. One person to fight.
I yank on my jeans and grab a hoodie on my way out the door, then take off at a jog to my carport as tug it on. I burn rubber and am across town in a heartbeat.
The streets of downtown are deserted. It’s after one, so even Sam Hill is locked up. It’s so quiet that when I bang on Lilah’s door, it sounds like shots in the night.
I look up at the dark second story windows and after a few second, one of them lights. When it lifts, I’m hoping for Lilah, but it’s Destiny’s scowl that meets my gaze. “I’m calling the cops!” she yells.
I hold up my hands in surrender. “I just want to talk.”
Daggers rain down on me from her glare. “Stay away from us.”
I bang on the door again out of sheer desperation. “Lilah!”
Destiny’s gone from the window the next second and I hear yelling. I spin for the door and one good kick with my biker boot blows it right off the hinges, just like I knew it would. I bound up the stairs, two at a time, and pound on the door at the top.
“Get out of the way, Destiny!” I hear Lilah shout.
“Lilah!” I call as I rattle the knob.
This door’s a little sturdier, but I could get through it if I had to. I ram my shoulder into it and hear the splinter of wood near the deadbolt. But just as I’m regrouping for my next assault, it swings open and Lilah is standing there. Behind her, boxes are stacked on the counters and small kitchen table.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
Destiny yanks her sister back by an arm. “We’re getting the hell out of here before you can do any more damage.”
I step closer. “To who, Destiny?”
She backs away from me, her sister in her grasp. “Lilah is
sixteen
! She’s my responsibility. I trusted you to watch after her, and instead, you raped her!”
“Stop!” Lilah says, shoving away from Destiny. “I love him. He didn’t rape me.”
Destiny spins on her sister. “That’s not what the cops or the courts will say. You’re too young to get it, Lilah, but he’s sick.”
Tears well in Lilah’s eye as she shakes her head. “He didn’t know.”
“He made you believe that because he’s twisted. He wanted to fuck you so lulled you into a false sense of security.” Destiny’s glare nearly cuts me in half when her eyes find me. “He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. He uses and takes what he wants, and when he’s done he tosses his victims aside like so much trash.”
“You weren’t a victim,” I say, lifting a hand. “I never forced you to do anything.”
Her face is so twisted with hate it’s barely recognizable. “You are a vile, stinking pile of filth, and I will see you rot in jail.”
“Are you really protecting your sister, Destiny? Or are you just getting revenge on me?” I stare her down. “Hate me all you want for falling in love with your sister instead of you, but don’t drag her through this.”
“He never—” Lilah starts, reaching for Destiny’s arm.
Whatever she was going to say is cut short when Destiny spins on her and swings, taking her to the floor with a right hook to the temple.
My heart thuds to a stop in my chest. “Christ!”
I spring for Destiny and tackle her to the ground. I straddle her and pin her shoulders down. She claws at my face and I feel a nail slice through my cheek.
I grab her arms and pin them to the floor next to her head, a trickle of warm blood courses down my face and drops from my chin onto her T-shirt, where I hover above her.
“No, stop!” she screams. “Get off me!”
“Destiny,” I say, “calm down.”
“No!” she begs. “God, no. Please.”
I glance at Lilah as Destiny kicks and bucks against me. She’s just getting her bearings, pulling herself to a sitting position against the couch. She looks through a mask of shock at her sister, writhing on the floor, then back at me.
But then Destiny stops screaming. A low moan, like a wounded animal, tears up her throat and she twists on her side under me and curls into a fetal position. I ease up my pressure as she wails, a cry from the depths of her soul.
Lilah crawls over and tentatively reaches for her shoulder. There’s already a red welt rising on her left cheek. “Destiny?”
Her sister only curls tighter into a ball.
I lift myself off her and touch Lilah’s face. She flinches away in pain as I brush my fingers over the bruise. “You okay?”
She nods, but her attention doesn’t leave Destiny. She pulls her sister’s shoulders into her lap. “Something’s wrong.”
Destiny’s still moaning and a trail of spit trickles from her open mouth onto the carpet.
“I’ll call an ambulance,” I say, grabbing my phone and dialing 911.
It’s only a few seconds later, after I’ve given the dispatcher the address and said it’s a medical emergency, that I hear sirens cut through the still outside. A cop is the first to arrive, followed a few minutes later by an ambulance. By that time, Destiny’s cries have trailed off. She’s basically unresponsive when the paramedics check her over and load her onto a stretcher. Lilah goes with them to the hospital, and when the dust settles, it’s just me and the cop. His name is Steve Shaw and he was a few years ahead of me at Oak Crest High.
He takes a look around the room, then looks at me. “Okay, Bran. Why don’t you start from the beginning and tell me what happened here.”
If I were a good person, I’d tell him everything. But I’m not. “Destiny Morgan works for Mom at the bar. We…dated.”
He gives me a skeptical look, because everyone in this town knows me and my reputation. “You mean you had sexual relations with her.”
It’s not a question, but I nod. “Things didn’t end well. She thought I was into her sister. I was worried and came by to check on them and Destiny had some kind of breakdown.”
“I was the first responder, but someone else had already broken the outside door in.”
Again, not a question, but he’s clearly waiting for an answer. “That was me. I heard them fighting and Destiny wouldn’t let Lilah open the door for me.”
“Did either Miss Morgan have reason to be frightened of you?”
The truth is, Destiny was terrified, but only after I was restraining her. It was almost as if it triggered some memory and she went somewhere else in her head.
I shake my head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Then why wouldn’t she have just let you in? Why did you feel you had to break the door down?”
My lips press hard together. “She just didn’t want me near Lilah. She was jealous.”
His gaze becomes more focused on my eyes, looking for the lie. “Did she have reason to be?”
Moment of truth. “I kissed Lilah.”
If he figures out how old Lilah is and decides to poke into it, I could end up in a world of hurt.
He takes a deep breath but manages to contain the eye roll. “Regular Payton Place.”
“We were in L.A. and her friend was on that show,
The Voice
. We got caught up in the moment and I kissed her. It was caught on camera and Destiny saw. She went batshit, threatened to move them away from here,” I say, gesturing at the boxes. “I heard them fighting and I was worried for Lilah’s safety, so I broke in the door.”
“And then Destiny just…” He shakes his head. “What?”
“She was screaming at me, then she swung at Lilah. Nearly knocked her out. I jumped on her and she started screaming, then crying. Went from there into what you saw.”
He nods slowly and pulls out a pad, jotting some notes. “Don’t go anywhere, Bran. If everything checks out, then you’ll be fine, but I need to talk to the sister first.”
I start toward the stairs. “Got a tool kit in my car. I’m gonna just nail this door shut for now.”
He takes one last look around and follows me to the door. “I’ll be in touch.”