Kellen
Istep into the foyer of my old home and look around at the too-familiar walls, at the paintings and the crystal chandelier hanging above the twisting staircase, at the small Greek statues on their marble pedestals, and wonder how the hell I ever put up with living in this stuffy shithole of a place in my life.
At least it’s nice and cool inside. I wipe my forehead again and take a step forward. There’s dirt on my shoes and I smile to myself. If I ever came inside as a kid with dirty shoes and tracked mud on the floors, my father would’ve given me new scars on my back to join all the old ones he left etched into my flesh over the years. Now the old bastard’s dead.
“She’s in her room,” Tara says quietly, heading to the stairs. “She doesn’t come out much these days. I haven’t seen her outside in…” She trails off and looks over her shoulder.
I hesitate at the bottom of the stairs. Tara’s halfway up and frowning at me. She took her hat off, and her dark hair is down between her shoulder blades, black and thick and shiny. Her full lips are tugged into a frown, and her intense brown eyes stare at me uncertainly, probably wondering why I’m drinking her body in like a feast. Her skin’s sun darkened, tanned from working outdoors, and her body is beautiful and lean from the manual labor. I remember Tara was sexy as hell when we were younger, but she was my little sister’s forbidden best friend and still a teenager back then.
Now she’s a woman. Twenty-five, if I’m doing my math right. Suddenly, she doesn’t seem so off-limits anymore.
“Something wrong?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Just thinking about how I had a crush on you when we were younger.”
She laughs uncomfortably. “We met when I was fourteen.”
“And I wasn’t interested in you at first. But you grew up, didn’t you?”
“You’re full of shit.”
“I’m not. You were too young and Cait would’ve killed me, obviously—” I hesitate, not happy with my choice of words, but I push on anyway. “But you were always around.”
“We were best friends.”
“Yeah, I know that. Best friends that shared everything, right?” We reach the top of the stairs and she moves to hurry down the hall, but I grab her wrist and pull her back. She sucks in a surprised breath as my fingers dig into her skin and I hold her tightly, feeling the small bones in her wrist, delicate and soft. I could snap them if I wanted. Just a little more pressure and she’ll scream in agony, and there’s a part of me that wants to do it, that craves to see her in pain right now.
“You’re hurting me,” she hisses, but she doesn’t try to twist away. Her cheeks lose their color and I can sense the fear wafting off her. It’s intoxicating and my heart’s racing fast, being so close to her after all this time, a heady mix of pure hatred and the insane need to shove her back and fuck her senseless fighting for control.
“I’ve been wondering for years,” I say, getting close, right in her face. I shove her back, still gripping her wrist, and pin her up against the wall in the shadow of the stairs. She looks at me with pure panic and fear in her eyes, and she fucking should. “Which one of you started it? Was it you or Cait? It could go either way. Cait was a good person but she wasn’t exactly innocent. I don’t have any illusions about my little sister and the family we grew up in. This place drove us all to extremes, and while it never shocked me what happened to her, I always wondered. You had an edge to you back then too, didn’t you? Maybe you were the one that brought that shit into this house?”
“Kellen,” she says, half a moan, half a scared whimper. My fingers are digging into her wrist hard enough to leave a bruise and I realize I’m inches from her now, breathing hard, getting lost in my rage. I could hurt her, really hurt her, break her for all the anger I still feel after all these years. I wanted to do it too, ravish her and destroy her and leave her a simpering mess on the floor. I’d revel in her pain and drink down her tears.
Instead, I release her and step back. Her shoulders hunch forward as she rubs her arm, glaring at me, still afraid I might come back for more.
“Forget it. I don’t want to know.” I turn away, shaking my head. “It won’t fix anything. Might make it all fucking worse.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice quiet. “I didn’t want any of it to happen. You know that.”
“I bet you didn’t.” I have to get control of myself. I can’t risk ruining my plans for petty revenge. “Is my mother in her room?”
“Yes, but—”
“Go back to the garden, Tara. And pretend like you never saw me out there.” I’m trembling with anger and I can’t look back right now. If I do, I might see Cait in Tara’s eyes right now, and I don’t think I can handle it. Even after all this time, seeing Tara again woke up the rage I try to keep hidden as much as I can, and I’m ashamed of myself for letting it take control of me.
I shouldn’t have done that. Tara was just as fucked up as Cait when all that nasty shit happened and she didn’t exactly walk away from the experience without her own scars. The girl’s as broken as I am, maybe worse, and hurting her won’t bring back my sister.
But god damn, do I want to hurt her anyway.
I head down the hall and leave Tara at the stairs. Ahead, the manor turns into a maze of corridors, junctions, hallways, dead ends, and so many doors. It was like growing up in a labyrinth, and I remember how there was constant construction to this place for the first ten years of my life as my father added more and more space onto the main structure. It sprawled over the years and became this unruly, tangled mess, like an overgrown hedge. Back then, the place crawled with staff, and despite the massive sprawl, it never felt empty.
Now though, the halls are quiet. I reach my mother’s wing and slow as I approach her door. My parents had separate bedrooms growing up. I never thought it was strange until I met other kids and let slip that my parents didn’t share a sleeping space. They mocked me mercilessly and I learned to keep that bit of trivia to myself.
I can’t blame my mother for being unable to stay in the same room as my father for long.
I pause outside of her door. Nerves wrack me. I haven’t been back in a while, but I’ve called over the years and I’ve heard the rumors. I take a deep breath and knock before reaching for the knob.
But it twists and opens on its own, forcing me to step back.