The force of his tackle knocked the wind out of me.
Jax Stonewood wanted a reaction from me. I was brought up to never give one though. At fifteen, in a household where restraint was a key to survival, I had a pretty good handle on how to control myself when someone surprised me.
I controlled my desire to look at the boy who sat on top of me, ready to smash a snowball into my face.
I took my time looking up at the clouds and the snowflakes dancing around instead. They glittered and sparkled, mingling wildly. With liberty. And a freedom that I envied.
“Aubrey, I thought I told you the last time it snowed that face washes are a tradition if you get caught on Stonewood land,” Jax said.
Finally, I turned my gaze toward him. “Don’t you dare.”
He smirked, one of his dimples revealing itself. Even catching my breath while lying in the snow, my heart still somehow melted.
Jax freaking Stonewood. My walking, talking sex-on-a-stick neighbor always warmed my blood even though I’d never admit it. Jay, his younger brother by two years and my senior by one, did little to nothing for me, but he was my best friend.
“Jax, come on, man. Mom said if you facewash anyone else, she’ll lock your ass in your room for the rest of winter.” Jay sounded out of breath, like he’d run up right beside us.
I wanted to thank Jay for coming to my rescue but couldn’t take my eyes off of Jax.
I never could.
The three Stonewood boys moved in next door four years ago, and our quiet, undisturbed block morphed into a revolving hangout for kids our age. The Stonewoods drew attention, and I didn’t have much choice joining in when Jax and Jay tackled me one day to steal my candy. Their older brother, Jett, couldn’t be bothered with their antics.
I admit, I cried to my mother, and they ended up having to apologize.
Jax and Jett tolerated me tagging along when they were in the neighborhood. After all, I was the homeschooled girl that their little brother had formed a bond with. Maybe the bond formed because we were close in age or because Jett and Jax left out their little brother a lot. Either way, it just happened.
Over the years, my crush for Jax just happened too.
Even right then, knowing he was going to smash snow in my face, I thought winter couldn’t have agreed with him more. His normally broody, calculating eyes glittered like the snow with mischief and fun. The cold reddened his cheeks just right, and the wind tousled his dark hair to look unruly. The wind, the cold, the snow loved him like everything else in the world.
The only people immune to his charm were his family, and I appreciated that Jay tried to shield me from it. “You know Mom’s not kidding either. She’s going to be pissed if she finds out you facewashed Brey.”
Instead of Jax acknowledging his little brother, his eyes stayed on mine. Then, they moved to my hat. With the hand that wasn’t holding snow, he ripped it off. “What’s with you and this bun all the time?”
I started to wiggle under him. “Let me up. My clothes are getting soaked from the snow.”
“Right.” His eyebrow quirked. “I guess I can’t mess with your pretty little face.”
My stomach dropped.
He was teasing me. I knew that. None of the Stonewood boys saw me as pretty. I’d seen the girls that paraded around them and in comparison … Well, there was no comparison.
They were tall. I was short.
They wore shirts that showed off their cleavage. I didn’t have any cleavage to show off.
They were women. I still felt like a girl.
I wanted to believe him if just for a second though. I wanted him to want me even though I knew he was older, hotter, and had much better-looking options to choose from.
That thought ignited my temper.
I bucked under him, trying to get him off. His smirk thinned, his blue eyes darkened. His head tipped closer, and I felt his breath on my lips. I could smell the mint of the gum he always chewed. He stared at my lips and then glanced back at me, like he was assessing everything in me, figuring out what made me whole. For a second, I thought he might even lean the extra whisper closer to touch my lips with his.
Instead, he squeezed his eyes shut and crushed the giant snowball I forgot he was holding into my hair, grinding it just hard enough that my bun fell apart.
I screamed.
Jay groaned.
Jax rolled off me, laughing hysterically.
My cheeks heated with embarrassment, and then it got even hotter as my embarrassment turned to rage.
Instead of dusting myself off and trying to save my bun, I scurried to scoop up as much snow as possible and slammed it into his face, smearing it all around.
“You’re such a jerk!” I yelled.
Jay hauled me back quickly as Jax made a grab for me. He whispered in my ear, ‘Don’t make it worse, Brey. Just go inside and get cleaned up. My mom just made lunch for us.”
Jax was standing with another snowball ready to launch and glaring at both of us. ‘Would you stop babying her, Jay? After winter break, us upperclassmen get to teach the underclassmen a lesson. You know Sophomore Kill Day includes her too.’
My eyes widened.
I’d heard about the water balloons launched at underclassmen on their way to school in the fall.
I’d heard about lockers being filled with pudding and about the lockers being stuffed with underclassmen as well. The high school administrators turned a blind eye to the bullying that happened. They called it just a little bit of good old fun.
I called it torture and wanted no part of it.
I whipped my head to Jay. “Please walk with me to school next week?”
Jay smirked at me like I was silly. “I got you. Don’t worry about it.”
Jax grunted. “You can’t walk her to school. It’s tradition,” Jax said, abandoning his snowball to glare at us like my idea was outrageous.
“He can do whatever he wants,” I screeched.
“People are going to start to think you two are dating with how protective Jay is of you.”
Jay and I shrugged our shoulders in unison. Jay never really cared much about anything. He just wanted to have fun and wanted everyone to have fun around him.
For the first two years their family lived next door, he was the one who never asked why he couldn’t ring my doorbell or why he couldn’t come over. He mentioned once that he wanted me to hang out later than normal. When I said I couldn’t, that my dad would be home, he didn’t ask why that mattered.
After being homeschooled for so many years, he was the first friend I could trust and the breath of fresh air that I’d needed for a long time.
I begged and begged my parents to go to a public school after getting a taste of friendship. When they finally agreed, the darkness lightened up a bit, the clouds cleared.
The first day of sophomore year opened my eyes though.
I hadn’t realized how mean people in school could be and how territorial girls were of the Stonewood brothers.
Jax distanced himself immediately. He didn’t have time for Jay or me when he was captain of everything and enjoying every girl who looked his way in school.
Jay didn’t miss a beat though. Our friendship was an immovable force even when every one of the girls he hooked up with hated me. His friendship made me unpopular. Girls didn’t want to be my friend even when they realized my father mingled in all the same circles as their parents. I was the girl whose dad owned a big local business and who got to live next to the Stonewoods. That made me enemy number one.
I was a threat and a target.
And Sophomore Kill Day was going to be difficult to suffer through.
I felt the panic seeping in. It wasn’t being stuffed into a locker or getting hit with paint-filled balloons that scared me. I could handle all that. I didn’t even care if I got made fun of or picked on. If I came home from school looking a wreck or a phone call from the office was made, my father would resort back to claiming homeschool was the best option to raise a proper lady.
I knew better. He’d find something wrong with the studies my mother put together or he’d find fault in my work ethic.
He already found fault with so much.
Jay put his arm around my shoulders and told me he would walk me to school, that I shouldn’t worry.
Jax grumbled behind us, ‘What the hell’s she so quiet for? It’s just one day out of the year.’
I inhaled deeply, remembering that self-control was my friend. I grasped at that control so I wouldn’t snap at Jax—until I saw my hair in the foyer mirror of the Stonewoods’ house.
I froze and Jax ran right into me.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ His voice rose, but I didn’t glance at him.
My eyes were on my hair. My long, wavy brown hair had escaped the tightly tied bun that took a concentrated amount of time to do.
Both Jax and Jay stood on either side of me exchanging worried looks. My green eyes widened, glassing over as they stared back at me in the mirror. My face paled so much that it contrasted sharply with the dark brown nest that sat on my head.
I frantically started combing my fingers through it. ‘Oh my God. Do you have a brush? I need a brush.”
They both stared at me like I was crazy.
‘Okay, if you don’t have a brush, I’ll take a comb. I need to fix this right now.”
Jay shook his head, and Jax stepped back.
“You guys, I need something! Anything!’ Anything to make this look better. I felt control slipping through my fingertips. ‘Oh God. My father is going to kill my m—’
Both the boys kept staring, first questioningly, then with what appeared to be pity.
‘Please!’ I practically screamed.
I felt the air escaping my lungs. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to focus on twisting up my hair to wrap it close to my head.
‘Brey.’ Mrs. Stonewood appeared in the mirror. She stood behind me on the large staircase. ‘I have a brush right upstairs. Why don’t you follow me?’
I tripped and almost fell at the bottom of the stairs. Jax’s hand caught my elbow, and I turned to say thank you, to grab at any dignity I may have had left. When I saw his confusion at my panic, I couldn’t bring myself to say a word.
He started to walk up the stairs with me, his hand still on my elbow. I didn’t care. I just needed to get my hair back in order.
‘Jax, this is just us girls,’ his mother said, her voice stern.
Jax’s hand left my elbow and for some stupid reason, I missed it. Probably because I knew after this, he wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole.
I followed her up the rest of the white marble stairs and down the hallway to a gigantic bathroom that I probably should have just run to the moment I saw the mess on my head.
She went to one of the drawers and pulled out a brush. Turning me toward the mirror, she calmly started brushing my hair without offering me the brush to do it myself.
I stiffened, staring at her head over mine in the mirror. Her eyes were the same blue as Jax’s and they glistened with sympathy.
I didn’t want it. I didn’t need it. I had done just fine with my mother and my father so far. I stepped closer to the speckled granite countertop. ‘Thank you for finding me a brush.’
Her brow furrowed. ‘I can help you with your hair.’
She’d read my silent plea right. I wanted her to leave, but she wasn’t budging.
‘Is there a reason you can’t wear it down?’
She knew the reason. Adults like Mrs. Stonewood were easy to read. They all held the same expression. The first time I encountered that look had been a day my mother picked me up from grade school. My teacher had seen a bruise on her arm when my mother reached for me.
She had gasped and we both stiffened. My mother pulled down her sleeve quickly but my teacher’s eyes had already changed. They flicked to our car nervously, and she asked if everything was all right.
On the way home, my mother said she wasn’t going to be dropping me off anymore, that I would have to walk. I read her thoughts. That day, I nodded my head in total agreement. Soon after, I was being homeschooled.
Now, Mrs. Stonewood begged me with her eyes to tell her something as she stroked my hair and brushed away the curls.
I didn’t answer her.
She’d always been a sort of friend to me, the type of mother I never had. She yelled at the boys for me, let me eat cookies, she even told me to call her Nancy instead of Mrs. Stonewood. At this moment though, knowing that she wanted the truth, I figured not answering was my best answer. I just couldn’t bring myself to lie to her.
She began to fold my dark curls over one another and said, ‘Whenever you’re ready, we can talk. Just us girls.’ She always said ‘just us girls’ when she wanted me to understand it would be our little secret. My throat constricted and when I looked away from her, I felt wetness slide down my cheeks. I wiped the tears away quickly, hoping she didn’t see.
If she did, she didn’t say a thing. ‘All better.’
I looked in the mirror and saw that my hair was French-braided, and it looked classy. Father wouldn’t mind this. No curls. No frizz. No hair out of place.
‘Thank you,’ I mumbled.
‘Don’t thank me when two out of my three boys did this to you.’ Her third and oldest son, Jett, was in college, living near his father. Thank God because I didn’t think all three Stonewoods here would be good for the female population.
I let out a sigh and smiled a little. ‘Only Jax, really.’
We started our way back down the hallway.
‘I’m going to have to ground him for eternity at this rate. To think, he’s seventeen and facewashing girls. I doubt there’s hope for him.”
I laughed a little, feeling the weight of my braid swinging and realizing I felt a little freer with this hair style. ‘Not this time, Nancy. I got him good after he did this to my hair.’
‘Snow to his face?’ Her eyes met mine again and they no longer appeared sympathetic, she was trying to make me smile.
I laughed a little and nodded.
‘All right. He’s off the hook this time. Go beat them in some of those video games.’ With that, she turned a corner and disappeared.
I made my way down the hallway and found both Jax and Jay sitting in the middle of their rec room, two empty plates beside them as they played a video game.
I moved to grab the plates to take them to the kitchen. Littered with crumbs, those plates would have been grounds for a fight in my home.
Jay grabbed my arm and yanked me down. “We’ll clean up later.”
I stared at the plates for a second longer, willing away the itch to clean it up. When Jax pushed another controller in my hand, I welcomed the distraction. ‘If you pick the character Peach again, I swear I’m going to make it my mission to throw every question mark I get at you,’ he mumbled.
I smiled, realizing that neither of them were going to comment about the hair incident.
I didn’t care that both he and Jax got annoyed with me picking to be Peach every time. I didn’t care that they would tease me the whole time. I only cared that they would be my friends knowing my faults. It mattered that they acted as if my panic attack hadn’t happened at all. Real friends accepted you for who you were, not who you pretended to be. ‘You’re just mad because I beat you every time I play her.’
Jax groaned when I picked her as my character, like I always did. ‘Do you want to be her or something? We at least switch our characters. You are obsessed with her!’
Truth was, I wouldn’t mind being her. She was a princess. ‘Whatever.’
After a round I lost, Jax leaned toward me. ‘How’s it feel to be losing, Peaches?’
I scrunched up my face. ‘Her name is Peach, and I’m not her.’
‘No. You’re not. You’re Peaches.’ He laughed to himself as he focused back on the screen. Jay started to laugh along with him.
‘Peaches kinda fits you,” Jay said.
Jax groaned. ‘Find your own nickname for her, man. Quit copying me.’
‘It’s not a nickname!’ My voice came out high and irritated.
‘You kinda screech like her too.’
‘You want me to call you Bowser?’ I said trying to get the upper hand, but as he crossed the finish line in first place, I slumped.
‘No, Peaches. You can just call me winner.’
I glared but kept my eyes on the screen. “You’ll always be last place in my book. L.P. L.P. rolls off the tongue quite nicely too.”
He grumbled something about showing me what could roll off my tongue nicely but I ignored him, so happy with my quick work on a degrading nickname for him.
We bickered and played again and again. Before I knew it, the sun was setting. I finished in first place only to throw my controller down, ‘I gotta go!’
Jax rolled his eyes. ‘You can’t leave just because you finally won.’
‘Get over yourself, L.P. I won like ten times in the last hour.’
He stood to his full height and crossed his arms, trying intimidation. ‘Peaches, let’s be realistic.’
Maybe it was the way everyone backed down from him or the way he commanded everything around him but I never wanted to give in to him, to let him have anything without a fight. I put my hands on my hips and stood a little straighter. “L.P.,”—I mimicked his tone—“realistically, Jay beat you last time, and he’s the worst.’
‘Hey!” Jay jumped up. ‘I’m way better than Jax in most things. He plays this way too much.’
I patted Jay’s arm and glared at Jax for making me indirectly insult Jay who always stood up for me. He was the sweet one, the one I would call my friend. I held Jax’s eyes. ‘Of course, Jay. We both know you’re better than Jax at most everything.’
Jax’s eyes widened as he took a menacing step forward. He searched my face again, analyzing me. ‘What the hell does that mean?’ he ground out, a gravelly tone in his voice sending shivers up my body.
I stepped back quickly and turned as if unaffected. I didn’t answer him because I didn’t really know what it meant. Jay and I were friends, nothing more. I didn’t know if he was better at anything than Jax, other than being my friend.
He was the absolute best at that.
‘See you guys later!’ I yelled over my shoulder as I bounded down the stairs.
Halfway out the door, Jax yelled from the stairs, ‘See you on Sophomore Kill Day.’
I winced at the reminder.
Jay would protect me. I hoped.
What Jay wouldn’t be able to protect me from was walking into my kitchen and seeing my father sitting at the table, glaring at the door.
‘Where’s Mom?’
‘You mean Mother?’ he asked, his voice louder than even his normal yelling voice. ‘I’m asking the questions, Aubrey.’
I nodded, frozen in the doorway.
‘Close and lock that door. You are letting in the cold.’
I turned and did as I was told. I had no choice. Not when I didn’t know where my mom was.
As the lock clicked into place, I felt my body start to shake. I couldn’t turn back around. I willed myself to pivot, to face my father.
I pled with my self-control, begging it to help me stop shaking, to give me the courage to ask him again where he’d locked Mom up this time.
Control, that little friend of mine, wasn’t needed though. Instead, my father yanked me back by my French braid and spit out, ‘What the fuck is this? She let your hair grow this long?’
Tears stung my eyes from the hair pulling.
The tears spilled over when he reached for the knife block and slid a large butcher knife from it. The metal glinted in the light. It shined as if it had been sharpened and primed for just this specific moment. When the metal sparkled as it swung toward me, I wondered if blood made it shine more brightly.
I wouldn’t find out that day because my father only sliced it fluidly across my braid.
My hair unraveled and hung shoulder-length. He threw my twelve inches of braid into the trash and the knife into the sink.
The sounds of the metal hitting ceramic and the knife ricocheting forcefully around the sink drew my focus to the sharpness of the blade. How quickly it sliced through every strand of the hair. Gone, it was all gone.
‘Don’t blubber in my house,’ my father yelled and slammed his open hand upside the back of my head. I flew forward, seeing black. Just barely, I caught myself on the countertop.
The blade was closer now, my teeth just inches from the side of the sink.
My father, such a smart, successful man. People said we were lucky to have him. He’d saved my mother, Tala, from that home she’d lived in on the reservation.
That home though was my mother’s sanctuary. Father didn’t let her talk much about it but she shared with me how it saved her when her own mother vanished. One night, her mother went to work and the next she was gone like a beautiful star burning out in the galaxy.
‘Go clean up your mother. She’s in the office,’ he grumbled as he pulled the keys from his slacks and threw them at me.
I stood there wondering what he would do if I said no. If I didn’t back down and pushed him just a little further.
My father, such a smart man. He never hit us where it would leave a mark for anyone to see.
His eyebrows raised.
My shoulders sank.
Control was my friend and my enemy. I hated it for making me a coward and loved it for saving my mother and me from more pain.
My mother laid like a wounded animal on the floor when I opened the door. I hurried to her and smoothed her hair back. I slid my hands over her face as she cried and ran her fingers through my hair. “Oh, my little dreamer. All your dreams have been cut away.”
Yes, every strand of my hair held another dream, another identity, another hope. My mother taught me those sorts of things about our heritage behind closed doors when my father wasn’t around to listen. How the wind whispered to me to make me strong, how the water could wash away most anything, how my hair held a piece of me that connected me to every part of those before me, to her. A part of me I would never ever get back.
She cried for my loss.
I cried when I saw what he’d done to her ribs.
She cleaned up my hair that night as best she could.
I cleaned up her back and ribs.
Nights like those, we were the closest and furthest from each other. No other person in the world could know exactly what we were going through in those moments. We were also so lost in our own nightmares, we were too scared to speak them out loud to one another.
I always thought our bond was indestructible, a desolate pair who would always make it through the worst trauma together.
