Author: Nyrae Dawn

It only takes a few minutes for the sun to come up and we don’t talk or touch the whole time. Soon I’m driving her home. Colt and Cheyenne’s car is here. I wouldn’t be surprised if they went home right after we separated.

“You’re up all night again because of me.” There’s laughter in her voice. I consider kissing her good-bye, but I don’t.

“Doesn’t matter. Sleep in the daytime or at night is all the same. It’s still sleep.”

“Yeah, I guess.” She pauses. “Am I going to see you again? I don’t mean that in a clingy way. I know what this is, but…”

“You said you wanted to be friends, right?” It’s the only way that I have to say yes.

“Sure… friends.”

Delaney gets out of the car. I wait as she walks toward the apartment, but then she stops and looks back at me. “I don’t know if it matters, but I don’t work tonight.”

And then she’s gone and I sit here, trying to figure out if it does matter, and I think it might.

Chapter Ten

~Delaney~

“Mom?” I walk into the house after school. Fear clings to my spine at the mess inside. The pictures that have been ripped off the walls. The faces torn out. Photo albums strewn around the room.

Bump, bump, bump, bump.

The drum of my heart almost rivals the music, Simon & Garfunkel, that’s blasting through the room. She and Dad used to sing them all the time. Loved the song “The Boxer,” but I don’t get the same feeling as I used to when I hear it. Now when I do, I know she’s thinking about him.

“Mom?” I say again, hoping she’ll come out. Hoping that even if her face is tear-stained or she’s still wearing the same clothes she had on yesterday that she’ll come out. It’s only when she doesn’t want to leave the room that I know the depression has its claws in her again. That it’s pulling her so far under that Maddox will stop leaving her alone with me again, taking up as my savior and bodyguard.

He’s not here.

She’s not coming out.

I let my backpack drop to the floor and leave the door open as I take slow steps toward the hallway.

This house is so much smaller than our old one, so it’s only about twenty steps later that I’m at her bedroom door. “Mom?” My voice shakes. Even if she is here, she probably can’t hear me over the roar of the music.

I peek inside. It’s empty.

Two more doors stand closed in the narrow hallway, mine and the bathroom. Maddox sleeps on the couch. Knowing she’s not in there, I still check my room first before turning to the bathroom.

It’s okay. She’ll be okay. I don’t have to be scared to go in.

Only I know it’s not okay and there’s no way to stop being scared, but still I push the cracked door open.

“Oh my God! Mom!” My foot slips in the blood running down her arms and making a pool on the tiny bathroom floor.

“Mom!” She’s on the ground, her head to the side, lying on the tub. One arm over it and the other limp to her side and her eyes are closed.

There’s no focusing on my heart or my breathing or the fact that she did this right before I came home. Knowing Maddy would be at work and I’d be the one to find her. Not that I’d want my brother to find her either, but I know she did this for me.

I grab towels from the rack, fighting my hands to stay steady enough to try and wrap her wrists. “I’ll be right back, Mom. It’ll be okay.”

Running from the room, I rush to my neighbor’s house and bang on the door. When she doesn’t answer right away, I push it open to see her walking my way. “Call nine-one-one. My mom is dying!”

And then I’m gone. Running back to her. I’m holding her head on my lap and sitting in blood. Petting her hair and trying to hold the towels around her wrists. Even though she tried to leave us. Even though it didn’t matter that I’d walk in and find her this way. I won’t let her be alone. Won’t let her die alone…

Later she rolls over in the hospital bed and looks at me for the first time. It’s hard as a diamond and cuts me deeply. “Why did you save me? You want me to suffer, don’t you? First you tried to take your father away from me and now my peace. I’ll never forgive you for saving me, Delaney.” And still I don’t leave her.

“Laney, wake up. Wake the fuck up!”

My brother’s voice and the hand shaking me breaks my sleep, makes me jerk into a sitting position. I don’t need him to tell me I was crying in my sleep. Even if I didn’t feel the wetness on my face, I would know. I sit up and lean against the wall, pulling my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them.

“Shit,” Maddox says, before he climbs into my bed and sits beside me. “Why do you let it get to you, Laney? Why can’t you let it go? They obviously didn’t care about us.”

I put my head on his shoulder. “Why do you think she let me find her? I mean, why not do it in the early morning after we left? Do you think she wanted to punish me for the close relationship I had with Daddy?”

“Don’t do that. Don’t try and make sense of it or blame yourself. She had nothing to blame you for.”

“You blame yourself.”

He doesn’t answer that.

His voice is soft when he says, “It was about the time in the bathroom?” I nod and he continues. “You shouldn’t have been alone. I can’t believe she did that knowing you’d find her.”

“Would it have been better if you did? It wouldn’t have changed anything.”

He’s quiet for what feels like an eternity. “It would have changed you seeing it. Would have kept you from still seeing it all these years later.”

I grab his arm and hold it tight. “You have enough demons inside you. Seeing her would have given you more. I don’t want that for you.”

Maddox curses again and I know he’s about to shut down on me. “I gotta get ready for work,” he says, standing up. “Do me a favor and let me know if you’re going to be out all night again on a day off.”

“The way you’d tell me?” I taunt.

He runs a hand through his dark hair. “Did you tell him yet? Things don’t seem magically better.” There’s a sharp edge to his voice.

“Don’t be a jerk.”

“Why? You need me to wake you the hell up. You think you’re going to go to this guy and tell him your drunk dad, who was a lying bastard with a shitload of gambling debts, drove up a curb with his car and killed his nephew and he’s going to tell you it’s okay? And it’ll make Mom somehow wake the fuck up and everything look like it’s perfect? I have news for you, Laney. It never was perfect and it never will be.” The venom in his voice isn’t really directed at me. I know that, but it still pisses me off.

“What?” I stand up too. “It would be better to walk around pissed at the world? To try and pretend I ‘let it go’ when I haven’t? I have news for you, Maddy—you haven’t let anything go. You’re drowning in it even worse than I am. Almost as bad as she is!”

That last line is like a slap to his face. I see the hurt, the sting. See him bite back his anger because no matter how upset Maddox is, he would never really let himself take it out on me. But still… when he and Dad stopped being close, he got closer to Mom. He took care of her and I know his anger at her has clouded that. I know that what I said hurt him.

“Fuck. You.” I reach for him, but he jerks his arm away. “It must be nice living in a fantasy world, little sister. Not all of us have that liberty.”

Maddox slams my bedroom door behind him. I hear the front door do the same a few seconds later.

I hate that he’s probably right. That I’m just deluding myself and that I had the perfect opportunity to tell Adrian last night, but I let it slip through my fingers. Or maybe let isn’t the right word. I think I wanted it to, which makes me a shitty person. I let him kiss me and talk to me and the whole time this secret is rotting away inside me. Something he deserves to know. Something that if he did know would have probably kept him from touching me.

A touch I enjoyed way too much.

* * *

I used to run. It wasn’t something I started until after everything went down with my dad, but it somehow helped me through it. I think I imagined I could somehow find a way to run away from it all. Or maybe not even away. Maybe I could run so fast, so far, and so long that I could make it to the past and stop everything from exploding before it did.

I could ask Dad what was wrong when he had long days at work or not want the best clothes or cell phones when I was too young because all those things were just one more thing to pay for. One more thing to stress him.

Eventually I stopped running. I don’t know why. It could have been because I knew I’d never get anywhere or maybe it was because I thought it would help to finally stop running. Whatever the reason, I don’t do it anymore.

After hours of hanging around the house, I’m still so upset about my argument with Maddox that I need to run.

There’s no doubt I’ll regret it the second I step into the cold weather, but still I push running shoes onto my feet and gloves on my hands. I grab my brother’s beanie and a pair of earmuffs and I’m outside where the frigid wind bites my face.

My leg muscles start to ache in about two seconds, but it doesn’t stop me from keeping pace. I try to run from my truth with Adrian. The fact that there’s something about him that tugs at me, but I know I need to sever that pull. I need to stand up and confess our past and see if there’s some way we can work through this. Find a way to heal.

You see stuff like that all the time—where people from the same tragedy heal through each other. It could happen. We deserve that.

My mind runs to Maddox next. How much pain he’s in and how mad he makes me and how I wish I understood the extra shadows living inside him. Why he handles our past so much differently than I do.

By the time I make it back around to the front of the apartment complex, my chest aches and plumes of steam puff out of my mouth with each breath.

“You should dance. It’s a good way to exercise and you can do it inside, where it’s warm.”

I jump at the sound of Cheyenne’s voice. “Shit. You scared the hell out of me.”

Cheyenne laughs. “Sorry. You must have been out there. I figured you heard me walk up.”

It’s something I probably should have heard but wasn’t really paying attention. Since darkness is making its descent across the sky, it wasn’t very smart of me either.

“It’s been a long day. There’s a lot going on.”

“I hear ya. Colt had a doctor’s appointment today and those always freak me out. He’s out right now. I was planning on having a drink. Wanna come up?” she asks me.

I want to, even though I shouldn’t do it. Shouldn’t push my way into Adrian’s life any more than I already have, but I like her. She’s cool and God, what I wouldn’t give to have a friend around here. I miss having friends. Back home everyone knew who I was and what had happened, which made it difficult.

I guess it wouldn’t hurt to hang out if I don’t talk about Adrian.

“Sure,” I tell her. “Which apartment are you in? I want to run home and clean up real quick.” I hate admitting the giddiness inside me. I’m eighteen years old. This is what my life is supposed to be. Hanging out with friends instead of dealing with a suicidal mom and a brother who might be losing himself too.

Cheyenne gives me her apartment number and I tell her I’ll be there soon. After jumping into a quick shower, I change into a pair of jeans and a sweater. I run a brush through my hair and leave it hanging free before picking up my cell phone. There’s a text from Maddox telling me he won’t be home tonight. That he’s “out,” whatever that means. I hate it when he gets pissed and disappears.