JOSS: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security) (102 page)

              I sneered at him even though I knew exactly what it was that he’d find if he dug deep enough. He had more than enough resources to do so. And I’d be helpless, absolutely unable to stop him from discovering my darkest secret.

              That frightened me enough to try to drive him away.

              “You’re a billionaire,” I said, flipping my hair at him. “I guess you’ll be able to buy the next best thing.”

              I rose to go, to flee from the inevitable, but Levi lunged across the bed, snagging my wrist.

              “What do you want from me, Meagan?” he asked. “Do you want my money? I’ll give you every penny. You can be on the cover of Forbes. You can have my company. My home. Every single thing I own. Just tell me what you want from me.”

              I didn’t know what to say. There would’ve been a time when I would’ve gladly taken a check for much less than a billion dollars and been on my way, whistling cheerfully until I found the next life to collide with, but this was so much different than anything I’d ever experienced. It was insane to consider, but I felt like anything was possible as long as I was with Levi. He was different from everyone else. He made me want to be different, too.

              “Do you want me?” he asked. “Is that what you want? My body? My soul? Just name it, Meagan. I’ll give it to you. You can have it. It’s all yours. All of it.”

              “I thought you didn’t want to do this anymore,” I said, my voice small. “You can’t say that and then offer all of this.”

              “It’s too late,” Levi said. He took my hand and lifted it to his lips, kissing it softly before turning it over, kissing my palm, the translucent skin of my wrist.

              “What’s too late?” My words were hardly louder than a whisper, but they sounded like a shout in the quiet room.

              “It’s too late to stop what we’re doing.” Those kisses continued up my arm—the bend of my elbow, the swell of my bicep, my shoulder.

              “Too late to stop?” I was breathless by this point. I didn’t want him to stop. I didn’t ever want him to stop.

              “Yes, too late to stop,” he said, scraping his teeth along my neck, making me moan. “I think I’m getting addicted to you, Meagan, and it scares the shit out of me, but I just can’t stop.”

              His kisses moved down between my breasts, around my bellybutton, lower, lower still, and I didn’t care. I didn’t want him to stop. He was addicted to this? Fine. That made two of us.

It shouldn’t have been sunny today. The weather was a betrayal, the unseasonable warm air, chirping birds. The autumn leaves were holding on to their color. If not for the fact that we were all standing in a graveyard, it would’ve been a fine day to be alive.

              There weren’t many people here, but I guess I should’ve expected it. There weren’t that many people in our lives, either, or I would’ve hoped something would’ve turned out differently.

              Matt stood beside me, his hulking physicality a comforting presence. It would’ve been even better if I could’ve leaned into him, let him do my standing and my mourning for me, and he would’ve. He was that kind of person, my brother. He’d breathe for me if I asked him to.

              But I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, let alone touch him. I couldn’t even touch myself, my arms held stiffly out at my sides, the droning of a preacher I’d never seen before in my life washing over me. I wondered idly if the funeral home rented them. When I’d called Matt with the news, too horrified to feel anything but numb, he’d left New York City instantly, boarding a bus even as he continued to push me for details I couldn’t give him.

              He was a good brother—the best. He’d been mostly responsible for making the arrangements. It was his nature, as the older brother, to speak up for me when words stuck in my throat, to explain me to people who asked me questions over and over again when I failed to summon the voice to answer.

              “They were pretty close, Mom and Meagan,” Matt would say, crossing his arms over his chest. “Meagan was the one who found her. I think you can find some sympathy inside of yourself and ask me the hard questions instead of her. Don’t you think she’s been through enough?”

              That was what he’d said to the cops, anyway, who found it hard to believe that theirs wasn’t the first number I’d called when I found her, lifeless, in her bed.

              And yet for all of his strengths, my brother’s biggest weakness was that he didn’t have a clue what I’d been through. He didn’t have a clue what had happened to our mother. To me.

              I flinched violently when Matt took my elbow.

              “Easy,” he said, his tone light, reasonable. “Funeral’s over, Meagan. Unless you want to stay here longer.”

              The preacher had long since completed his droning and wandered off across the graveyard to his battered compact car, and a piece of heavy machinery loomed a few yards away, ready to shove a pile of dirt over my mom’s coffin. I didn’t want to be here, but I was here all the same. I’d done everything in my power to avoid this day, and yet here I was.

              And there was my mom in the ground.

              “Meagan?”

              “This is all my fault,” I muttered, my throat thick with the tears I wanted to shed but couldn’t. I was too sick. This couldn’t really be happening.

              “Don’t say that,” Matt commanded. “Mom was sick. She’d been sick for a long time. She’s in a better place now.”

              The heavy machinery chugged to life, heaving toward the dirt pile at the edge of the open grave. My brother, still gripping my elbow, steered me away, seemingly certain that I shouldn’t watch.

              She hadn’t raised us with religion, but I was certain of one thing—my mom really was in a better place. Anything was better than the place she’d been in…the place I’d been in, as well.

              I thought about going back to that silent house, smelling of bleach and sickness, and my knees gave way.

              “Meagan!”

              My brother caught me before I could fall, swinging me toward a cement bench erected beside a grave by some other grieving family.

              “Don’t make me go back there,” I babbled, terrified at the idea of the ghosts that would be there, waiting for me in that house. “Please. I can’t go back there.”

              “Go back where?” My brother’s face was pinched with concern, and I hated being so weak in front of him. He had his own concerns, and he hadn’t understood what it had been like in the house. He couldn’t know because I’d never told anyone.

              “Just take me with you,” I begged. I knew I sounded desperate, and I hated it, but it was the most honest I could’ve been. I was desperate to get out of that house, out of this town, out of my life.

              “Meagan, you know that I’m still trying to get on my feet,” Matt said, looking chagrined. “I’m sorry that you were the one who found Mom like that. You don’t want to go back to the house, and I understand that, but you have to.”

              “I won’t be any trouble,” I promised him, shaking my head back and forth violently. No. I couldn’t go back to the house. I wouldn’t. I was going to escape. This was the only chance I’d get. “You know that I’ve always wanted to live in New York City. I would be able to help you with your rent. I’d get a job anywhere to start, and I’d be so good that I’d start climbing the corporate ladder, or whatever. You just have to give me a chance.”

              “I know you’re going to be great at whatever you choose to do,” he said, his face sad, “but I’m living in a hole in the wall with three other guys. I can’t bring my sister into that kind of living situation, understand? I don’t trust them.”

              “I’ll sleep with a baseball bat,” I said, the words rushing out of my mouth. “I can handle myself.”

              Matt snorted. “You’re from Nowhere, New York, Meagan. This is New York City we’re talking about. You have no idea about the kinds of things that can happen there.”

              With that statement, I knew I was much more worldly than my big brother. It was a moment that should’ve upset me more. I’d always felt that he was the one who was going to whisk me away from all of this pain and suffering and torment. He was going to be the one who was going to save me.

              But he couldn’t save me. He hadn’t. And he wouldn’t.

              I hadn’t been able to save myself, either. Or my mom.

              “Meagan, you know I don’t want to leave you here, alone in that house,” he said, “but you have to give me a chance to establish myself in New York City before I can just bring you there to live with me. I have to pay my dues.”

              He continued talking, and I let his words wash over me, unfeeling. He was promising to move me to the city in a year’s time, after he could determine how some job prospect was going to pan out. Matt sounded hopeful, determined, and that was all well and fine, but I knew I couldn’t trust my big brother to save me anymore. He didn’t have a clue about what could happen to a girl left on her own.

              “So, what do you think?” he was saying, rubbing his hands together against a cold wind that had just started blowing. The unseasonable warmth was just starting to turn, and part of me was glad, hoping it would really turn nasty now, wishing for winter to freeze my impotent rage and self-loathing.

              “What do I think about what?”

              “Give me a year,” he said. “I have a really good feeling about this job I applied to. I’m supposed to have an interview next week. Give me a year to save up—and you start saving up, too—and then I’ll come back for you.”

              I shuddered helplessly, and it wasn’t the wind. Someone else had said that to me, and it had been more of a promise than what my brother was telling me now.

              “It’s all my fault,” I repeated.

              “What did I say?” Matt demanded, his face stone. “I don’t want you saying that. Mom dying wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. She was sick, Meagan. You have to accept that.”

              “You don’t understand.” I locked eyes with my brother. “You don’t have a fucking clue. Mom’s dead because of me. I killed her.”

My brother stared at me like there was something wrong with me. There was something wrong with me—lots of things, in fact. He didn't know the extent of it. But I couldn’t blame the way he was staring at me now. I’d just told him, at our mother’s burial, that I was the reason she’d died.

              That I’d killed her.

              “Meagan, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, finally breaking the silence. The weather had taken a nasty turn, transforming an unseasonably beautiful day into something a little more appropriate for a funeral. The coat I’d worn wasn’t thick enough, but I welcomed the bite of the north wind. It hurt, and I deserved to hurt. The physical pain was such a nice distraction from the emotional guilt.

              “You don’t know what you’re saying,” I said. “I was there. You weren’t. The fact that she died—that’s my fault, Matt.”

              My brother put his face in his hands. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here. I’m sorry, Meagan. If this is you trying to impress upon me that it wasn’t fair for me to leave you here, then you’re right. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t understand how bad it was with Mom. I know that it wasn’t easy to see her gradually fade away.”

              I violently shook my head back and forth. That wasn’t how it had happened. That wasn’t it at all, and Matt didn’t know how truly bad it had been—our mother’s death wasn’t even the half of it.

              I didn’t know if everything that happened would’ve still happened if my brother were there. It was hard to know—impossible, even, to guess. And it was painful to imagine—not to mention unfair—that I would be angry with him over his presence. He was trying to earn a living to bring more money home, to make sure our mother had the funds she needed to battle her illness.

              That had all been in vain.

              I wasn’t so sure she’d been sick anymore. That was how warped my reality was. Someone with enough knowledge of medicine, who had access to the right or wrong drugs, could simulate anything, more or less.

              I was painfully aware of that. I just didn’t know how to tell my brother. He’d already dismissed the worst truth I’d tried to offer him.

              I loved my brother, as much as I could love a person anymore, but his practical nature sometimes got in the way. He thought everything had an explanation—that if he just asked the right questions and thought about it long enough, he’d be able to divine anything.

              He was the older one, but it was apparent I was going to have to protect him from this awful truth. Sometimes, brother dear, shitty things just happened. There weren’t reasons for them. There wasn’t an easy explanation, one that tied the narrative up in a neat little bow and left you satisfied.

              There were real monsters out there, and one of them had been living with us.

              Another one was me.

              “I understand why you weren’t here,” I said finally, “and I don’t blame you for it. You were trying to help the family.”

              “I didn’t do enough,” he said, his shoulders slumping. “I couldn’t protect you from seeing Mom deteriorate. And I couldn’t earn enough money to get her better treatment.”

              How had I worked myself into this position? My brother had been overprotective of me for my entire life. How could I protect him from his own guilt when mine was trying to swallow me whole?

              “Mom was just really sick, Matt,” I said. “It mystified the doctors.”

              “She should’ve had better doctors.” Poor, practical Matt.

              “It’s better that she’s at rest.” I couldn’t believe the words I was finding to say. Of course our mother wasn’t better off dead, not when I wasn’t entirely convinced she’d been sick in the first place. “She suffered a lot.” That statement was true, but not at the hands of some arbitrary illness. There was a name I could give her tormenter, but I didn’t trust my brother with that knowledge.

              I didn’t want him to think I was crazy on top of everything else. I could imagine him weeping as he locked me away in some institution and threw away the key. He’d never believe anything I’d tell him, and it would destroy our relationship. Right now, I needed him to get me out of this town. I couldn’t sacrifice our bond over something as awful as the truth.

              “You know better than I did what happened,” he said, sighing. If he could admit that, why couldn’t he believe me when I told him I was at fault in her death? Was it that painful to believe? It would give him the explanation he craved, the easy bow that would help him sleep easy at night.

              Only it wouldn’t be an easy sleep. My brother would never forgive himself, and then I’d have one more life on my hands.

              The heavy equipment roared behind us, shoving the dirt on top of our mother’s casket. Each heavy thump of the earth falling on top of her made us both flinch.

              I suddenly wished I were crazy enough for my brother to lock away. If I were removed from reality, I wouldn’t have to deal with this. I couldn’t deal with this. My anxiety flared mightily, and it felt like the heavy equipment behind us was piling dirt on top of me, load after load, keeping me from breathing.

              “There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” my brother said, though I could barely hear him above the roar in my own ears, the harbinger that I was about to lose my composure.

              “What don’t you understand?” I asked, my voice faint. I could tell him lots of things he wouldn’t understand, lots of things I still didn’t understand myself.

              “I don’t understand why Carl didn’t come to Mom’s funeral.”

              It was at that statement I started vomiting.