“You want me to go home?” he snaps and then grinds his teeth. Something’s going on. I think it might just be more long-distance relationship angst.
“I want you to not speak about what-shall-not-be-named inside my brother’s house, and if you can’t handle that, then yeah, you can go home.”
“Lo!” Lily gapes at me.
I close her mouth by pushing up her chin. I have a hard time not smiling. “Lily.” I pout at her.
She pokes my chest. “You’re not being nice.”
“Because I’m not nice,” I remind her.
She clasps my cheeks between her hands, and whatever speech she planned just leaves her eyes. They absorb my features with layers of sex and toxicity. I want to pull her closer, but I know I can’t. It sucks. It always sucks, but I’d rather have healthy Lily every day than horny, compulsive Lily.
While holding my face, Lily is in the deepest internal battle. To make it easier for her. I reach over to the counter, setting my salsa and chips aside, then I clasp her hands in mine.
We keep some space between us, but it’s hard on her and me. We both want to be all over each other. I end up wrapping my arm around her waist, and she holds onto me and then nods like I can do this without sex.
When I focus back on Garrison, who still sits on the counter, he opens a cupboard near his head. As he reaches for a cup, his hoodie rises, showing part of his abs and—
“What the hell?” I say mostly beneath my breath, too shocked to scream it. I raise my voice. “Garrison.”
He hits his head on the cupboard as he turns towards me. “Shit,” he curses, rubbing the spot. His hoodie falls back down with his arm. “What?”
I’m not the type of person to go at him, lift his hoodie up without asking, and pry deeper in his life. I’ve always waited for people to open up to me. I don’t like poking, but this…I have to poke at this.
I don’t think Lily saw.
I lower my voice so it’s just between the three of us. “Where did those bruises come from?” Welts, purpled and yellowed and the size of a baseball, blemish his ribs.
His face falls, and he shakes his head. His eyes flit to Lily for a second. “Lacrosse. Drop it.”
I don’t believe him. I had this feeling that I let go during last year’s Halloween. Something about…his brothers. The way he talks about them has always been off to me, but I didn’t pressure Garrison to talk about it. I never have, and maybe that’s on me.
Lily senses something too, especially the way that Garrison is more uncomfortable with her hearing this. Maybe she thinks whatever he says, she’ll tell Willow. Even though I’m her brother, the girls share more between each other.
“Oh look—Moffy,” Lily says, so obvious, so adorable. I pinch her shoulder on her way to the couch. I would’ve pinched her ass, but timing, place, people—all of that. I’m more aware today than other days.
Lily squints at me.
She’s trying to glare. “Be nice,” she reminds me.
“Yes, my Hufflepuff.” I give her a partial smile, and it fades as soon as she turns her back. I rub my neck and near Garrison a bit more.
“Honestly, it’s lacrosse,” Garrison starts again.
“It’s been Christmas break,” I say, my voice edged. “When were you playing lacrosse?”
“I don’t know…I just was…I was.” He hangs his head, his hair falling over his eyelashes. He holds onto his bulky headphones on either side of his neck. “Let me be.”
I hear myself speaking to Ryke.
Get off my back. Let me be. Leave it alone.
I’m new at being a hardass. I don’t always like it, but I know sometimes people need it. I also know Garrison, and sometimes reminding him that we care helps. I hand him my bowl of salsa, and I hold the chips. I pass him one, and he stares blankly at me.
“What is this?”
“Chips and salsa. If you don’t like them, we can’t be friends anymore.” I pop one in my mouth.
“We’re friends?” he asks like he’s unsure.
“Jesus Christ, do I need to make friendship bracelets for you to believe it?” This isn’t the first time he’s asked like that.
“Fuck you,” he snaps, and I watch him hesitantly dip his chip into the salsa.
“Don’t be pissy because I’m prettier. It’s just a fact you’re going to have to get used to.”
Garrison swallows. “I thought the tall one was supposed to be the prettiest.”
I always start to smile when he calls Connor the tall one. “Shh, we don’t like to tell him the truth. It ruins his allure.”
Garrison nods, his shoulders sinking forward.
I can’t believe he’s already twenty-one. I was so messed up at that age, and I hate that sleepless circles are beneath his eyes and that it looks like he hasn’t eaten in a whole week. I wished I noticed sooner.
“So what are your brothers like; you have three, right?”
“Yeah. Mitchell, Hunter, and Davis. We’re all two years apart from one another.” So twenty-three, twenty-five, and twenty-seven.
I wait for him to add more, but he just stares at his hands.
“Which one’s the worst?” I ask, too edged to be coy.
Garrison eyes me up and down. “I know what you’re trying to do.”
I could lie. I’m a great goddamn liar, and I have years of proof hiding an addiction and romance to prove it. But I don’t, not to this guy. “Am I right?” I ask, a breath imprisoned in my chest. I gesture to his ribs. “Did one of your shitty fucking brothers do that?”
His nose flares. His throat bobs. He turns his head left and right for a way out of his own pain. I get it. I so fucking get it.
“They’re just messing around,” he says so quietly I almost miss the words.
I clench my teeth, my blood boiling. My instant reaction is retaliation. Hurt them the way they hurt him, but I breathe in, breathe out, and I settle enough to think first. “Can I see it again?”
Garrison glances at the living area, but everyone is seated on the couches, most of their backs turned and focus directed on the children. As his head swings to me, he lifts his hoodie, his bare skin visible.
The bruise spiders up his side, the deepest purple area around his ribs. Fractured. They’re fractured—I can tell because I’ve had rib injuries many times. I peek at his back, more welts on his lower spine like someone kicked him. Jesus…a rock lodges in my throat. I never realized how responsible I felt for Garrison, not until this moment.
I’ve seen this guy a thousand times since he was seventeen, but somehow I never saw this.
“Let me check out your other side,” I whisper, two seconds from being choked up.
He’s shaking, but he shows me his left side. The bruise across his abdomen looks faded, older. Like this has happened multiple times. I have to tilt my head towards his lips to hear his next words.
“I’m the little brother. They just pick on me. It’s what older brothers do.”
I’m the little brother too, and Ryke would never do that to me—but I can’t say that to Garrison. I hear the malicious rebuttal that I’d spout if I sat in his place, well aren’t you a goddamn lucky bastard.
So I say, “Your ribs are fractured.”
A tear rolls down his cheek. “Yeah, I know.” He aggressively wipes the tear away.
“It’s happened before?”
He shrugs tensely. “Whenever I see them, they like to play rough, so whatever…”
“Which brother?” I question, my eyes murderous at this point.
Garrison lifts his head, his chin quaking, and his voice cracks as he says, “All of them.”
My chest collapses, and very softly, I say, “I’m not going to let them hurt you anymore.”
Garrison tries to cover his face. He slides off the counter to stand, but his legs buckle, his back slipping down the cabinets until he’s on the floor, forehead pressed to his bent knees.
I don’t touch him because I know that touch really isn
’t his thing. Now it makes more sense why.
I kneel nearby, and I have to ask, “Does Willow know?”
He nods. Keeping his head down, he mumbles out, “It’s not her fault…for not telling anyone. She thought it stopped. It did…for a while, but when I went back for Christmas break, they were all there…” He starts shaking again. “Forget it. Forget I said anything.”
I’m really quiet as I ask, “Will you stay at my place, at least until Willow comes back?” Lily won’t mind having Garrison with us for an indefinite amount of time. I know she won’t.
Shock freezes him. “That’s years.”
“So?”
He looks up at me, eyes reddened, cheeks tear-streaked. “Willow could break up with me by then.”
“You’d still be a part of this family.” I gesture in a circle. “I wouldn’t kick you out because of it.” Long before he became Willow’s boyfriend, we all knew him as Garrison Abbey: the rebellious, teenage neighbor.
“I have an apartment in Philly.”
“You live alone.” And I think you need someone right now. I pause. “I’m going to be blunt like my brother. You look like shit. You’re a little gaunt, and man, you smell like you’ve been spraying cologne instead of showering.”
“I’ve been busy,” he snaps, already defensive. “I have a job, and it’s the only thing that keeps me from…”
“From what?”
He shrugs. “From feeling like a stupid loser. Like I have no purpose, alright? I have something outside of waiting for a girl. I have something…and I need to put time in it. I shouldn’t even be here. I should be working—”
“Hear me out,” I cut him off, just as his voice cracks. “I have this little kid who’s a big pain in my ass because he keeps begging for a sibling. Every day I have to hear, ‘but Jane has two brothers’ and if he just saw you in the house, he’d be happy. But most importantly, you’d save my goddamn eardrums.”
Garrison lets out a short laugh. “The important things.”
“Damn right.”
He pinches his eyes. “Stop crying,” he says beneath his breath. That’s me. I see and hear so much of my past torment in his aching words.