Brant, age 23
My cell phone pings beside me on my nightstand, jolting me into an upright position.
I wasn’t sleeping. I can’t remember the last time I got a full night’s sleep.
I also purposely put my ringer on full volume because I knew June was going out tonight, and I worry like crazy about her.
Reaching over to where my phone is charging, I swipe open the text notification.
Kip: I’m bringing your sister home. She was at a party, and I think something happened. She’s okay, just a little worked up. See you in a few.
I reread his text message a dozen times.
I think something happened.
I think something happened.
I.
Think.
Something.
Happened.
A thousand gruesome scenarios swarm my mind, and my chest literally aches.
I call him instantly.
Kip answers on the second ring. “Hey, we’re leaving in a sec. Had to finish protocol here.”
“What the hell happened?” Throwing off my bedsheet, I start aimlessly looking around the room for socks, only to realize I’m already wearing them. “Give me an address. I’m on my way.”
“No, stay put. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Address,” I demand, and I hear Kip sigh into the receiver. There’s buzz and chatter in the background, and I strain my ear to listen for June—is she hurt? Crying? Sick?—but all I make out is muffled static. “Let me talk to June.”
“Brant, I promise you she’s okay. Whatever happened wasn’t serious—”
“Put her on the phone. Now.”
A purring of madness whispers in my ear, and I start pacing the bedroom. Hesitation lingers on the other end of the line, a fleeting pause, and then he says, “I’m sorry, but we need to head out. I’m on the clock. We’ll be there in ten, okay?”
“Just tell me what the hell happ—”
“Ten minutes.”
He hangs up.
Damnit.
I toss my cell phone onto the mattress, pull a shirt over my head, and march downstairs to wait outside on the front porch.
That’s where they find me ten minutes later.
Kip’s police car rolls to a stop in front of the house, the tires making prints in the mud from the afternoon rain shower. Both doors push open, and I rise to my feet, meeting them on the cobblestone walkway. June looks wrecked—hair knotted, makeup running down her cheeks in inky streams. Two swollen eyes land on me across the lawn, glimmering like sad blue moons. Kip trails behind her, scratching at his clean-shaven jaw.
“Thanks for bringing her home,” I mutter, my tone impressively calm. I shove my hands into my pockets to keep them from grabbing June like a madman and demanding answers, or from punching the wood pillar beside me, in the likely chance that I won’t like what those answers are.
June ducks her chin to her chest, then moves past me to the front porch, scuffing the toe of her shoe against the cement. She doesn’t say a word.
I walk with Kip back to his cruiser in hopes I can get his version of events. “Did someone hurt her? Touch her?”
Kip lifts his hand to rub the nape of his neck, tilting his head skyward. “You know, I don’t have any answers for you, Brant. I wish I did. She wouldn’t tell me what happened, but I don’t think it was serious.”
“How do you know?”
“No visible injuries. She said she wasn’t assaulted, and I believe her, and she refused medical treatment. She said she made a mistake, and that’s all she’d give me.”
I swipe a hand down my face, glancing over my shoulder to where June is waiting idly on the porch, her head down.
“Listen,” Kip continues. “My guess is she had too much to drink, maybe fooled around with some boy, and now she regrets it.”
My fists clench. There’s a veil of red over my vision.
“Go easy on her… she’s finding her way. My own sister did some pretty heavy shit when she was June’s age. Happens to the best of us.” He gifts me a small smile that does nothing to quiet my demons. “She’s a good kid, I can tell.”
The twitter of crickets blend with the early autumn breeze, and I close my eyes, forcing myself to relax. Calm down. Get a damn hold of myself because I don’t like what I’m becoming.
Nodding at Kip, I slap him on the shoulder and mutter, “Thanks.” I am thankful. I’m thankful June is in one piece, home safe.
Kip is a little older than Theo and me, pushing thirty, and while I’ve only known him for about a year, he’s fit right into our lives like he was always meant to. Kip lost his parents in a tragic boating accident five years ago, so I think the frequent Bailey barbecues have tethered him to Samantha and Andrew in a familial sort of way. He also has a sister, so he understands that connection.
He understands us.
Skipping his gaze across the yard at June, he glances back to me, then extends his palm for a handshake. I accept it. “Keep me posted. If you find out any details I’d want to know about, call me, you hear?”
“Yeah, will do.”
With a final smile, he retreats back into his cruiser and makes his way down to the main road.
I turn to June.
She’s staring at me now, her arms dropped at her sides, brown hair flittering across her face, sticking between parted lips.
Go easy on her.
My fingers stretch and splay as I advance on her. My heartbeats vibrate through me like a power drill. My insides tense with dread, with anger, with a fierce sense of possessiveness over this woman.
No… this girl.
She’s just a girl.
A teenager, bound to make mistakes. Destined for missteps.
And I know, I know… those missteps shouldn’t stomp all over me with steel-toed boots, leaving me shattered and ruined.
“Brant.” Her soft voice surrounds me, ripping through the rancor. June closes her eyes, long lashes wet and fluttering, kissing the curve of her cheeks. “Brant, I…”
The tips of my shoes land at the porch step, until we’re eye level with one another. I ball my hands to keep them from touching her. “Tell me what happened.”
“I…” A carousel of emotion dances across her face, and the wind whips through, stealing her breath, as if even nightfall loathes to hear her sins. June swallows, the delicate bob of her throat capturing my attention for a split second before our eyes lock again. She rushes out the words. “I messed around with Wyatt.”
I go still.
Eerily still.
June continues, tripping on her words, desperately reaching for me as she begins to ramble. “I-I don’t know why I did it, but I hate myself for it. He said cruel things; vulgar things. Things that make me feel dirty and awful, and I’m so afraid you’ll look at me different now, and I won’t survive it. I just won’t.” She grips my rigid shoulders, lightly shaking me. “I already feel like I’m losing you, and I can’t bear to see you slip away from me for good. You mean everything to me, Brant, everything. You and Theo, Mom and Dad. You’re my whole world, and I can’t lose a piece of my world, or it wouldn’t be whole anymore.”
“Go inside, June.”
She blinks. Her mouth is partially open, her next words eclipsed by my command. June’s fingers curl around the fabric of my shirt as her head shakes side to side. “What happened to you, Brant? Why did you wake up one morning and decide you didn’t love me anymore?”
My heart decimates into kindling, but I don’t reply.
I say nothing, and she takes that as a confirmation.
Something in her eyes dwindles, fades like hopelessness. She is nothing but tattered sails in a big sea.
But she doesn’t know the real reason for my silence. She doesn’t understand that my sea is morphing into a deadly monsoon, and I refuse to let her drown in the weight of my waves. “Go inside. Now.”
“Brant, please—”
Spinning away from her, I stalk toward my car, and I don’t look back. I refuse to watch her standing on that porch step, a picture of devastation and confusion, as I speed away down our street.
I just drive.
I simmer.
I nearly boil over.
Ten minutes later, my tires are squealing into Wyatt Nippersink’s driveway, my car parked diagonally, my door still hanging open as I fly through his front lawn and start banging on his door.
Wyatt cracks the door a few seconds later, his smirk immediate. He pulls it wider, slowly, knowingly, resting his arm against the frame without a care in the world. “Howdy-ho,” he greets me through the screen. “Look what the cat dragged in. Or should I say… the kitten.”
He purrs.
My claws come out, and I yank the screen door open and shove my way inside, grabbing him by the shirt collar and throwing him up against the far wall.
Wyatt laughs, only losing his breath for a moment. “Testy. Didn’t mean to touch a nerve. What brings you by, eh?” He sneers, enjoying this far more than he should. When I don’t respond, he adds, “Kitten got your tongue?”
My grip tightens, my forearm perched along his throat.
“No, wait,” he drawls. “That was my tongue, she had.”
“Fuck you. Fuck you.” I’m breaking. I’m snapping right in two, and Wyatt Nippersink is going to be the first person to feel the aftermath of my detonation. “What did you do to her?”
“Nothin’ she didn’t ask for, and certainly nothin’ she didn’t want.”
“She’s just a child. She’s not even legal, you sick fuck.”
“Close enough.” He sniffs, trying to shove me away, but my grip is iron. He laughs instead. “I see how you look at her, Elliott. I know exactly what you’re thinking when you stare at those pouty pink lips.” Wyatt chokes a little when I press harder, but that doesn’t stop him from spewing out more filth. “Bet you’re wishin’ it was your dick she got wet with that hot, willing mouth of hers. Mmm.”
My heart stops. My blood swims with black ice.
“She said it was her first time suckin’ cock, but I wouldn’t have had a clue—I shot my load in a quick minute. Right down her pretty little throat.”
I’m going to be sick.
I think I’m actually going to puke all over his ratty Adidas sneakers.
Stumbling back, I let him go. I let him go because I’m too afraid of what I’ll do if I don’t. My hands sweep through my hair, balling into fists. My head shakes back and forth. I’m queasy and wrecked, and I shouldn’t be any of those things, and that’s exactly why I am. “Why her?” I swallow, watching him readjust his wrinkled shirt. “Why June? She’s sweet, and good, and pure—”
“Because she’s yours.”
He says it so simply, so matter-o-factly.
Because she’s mine.
My jaw clenches. My eyes glaze over. My heart hammers with the final thwacks of bitter truth. They pound into me until my bones feel like they’re crumbling into splinters and ash. It takes everything I have to ask him in a frail, pathetic voice, “Why do you hate me so much?”
Wyatt straightens, pushing back his golden red hair. He looks at me as if the answer is clear as day. “You fucked my sister over, so I’m going to fuck yours.”
Wendy. This is about Wendy.
I grind my teeth until they nearly chip. “We broke up. It happens. I wasn’t trying to hurt her—this isn’t the same thing.”
His fist slams against the flimsy, paneled wall. “That’s where you’re wrong.” Wyatt’s voice is booming, anger bubbling over his unflappable visage. “She’s my fucking sister. She’s held my hand my whole life, kept me outta trouble, risked her ass to keep me safe. She’s my world, my goddamn twin, and you’ve tossed that sweet heart of hers into a meat grinder more times than I can count. Wendy is a good person, and she doesn’t deserve the pain she’s suffered at the hands of an asshole like you, who could never love her right, because he’s already in love with his fucking sister.”
Deadly silence blankets us.
We’re both breathing hard, violently, spitting through our teeth.
I say the only thing I can think to say: “I’ll kill you if you touch her again.”
Wyatt pauses. And it’s that heavy kind of pause, the kind when you know something sinister lurks right around the corner. I brace myself for it.
His grin curls, brimming back to life, as he says to me, “Like father, like son.”
I’m off my feet in an instant, my knuckles flying at his face, bones cracking with the gravity of my rage. I tackle him to the nasty carpet, and all I want to do is bury him under the floorboards.
Blood spills from his nose, misting me. His own fist slams against my jaw, sending shockwaves of throbbing pain throughout my body. Clearly being the more efficient fighter, he gains the upper hand the moment he punches me, and I’m on my back, my hands going straight to his neck.
My fingers curl. A vicious noose.
He does the same to me.
We’re throttling and strangling and gagging.
And then my mother’s face flashes to mind, her eyes bugged out, mouth open wide. The life snuffed out of her. The hideous purple tie coiled around her neck, sealing her fate.
My hands release his neck, arms dropping to the floor with surrender. With submission. With the final threads of my humanity still intact.
If he still wants to strangle me, so be it.
I’d rather be dead than become my father.
Wyatt’s teeth bare, his stubbled chin wet with strings of saliva. He looks at me, right in my eyes, and I guess he sees a sad white flag staring back at him, because his grip loosens, and he lets me go. He jumps off me, reeling backward onto the floor, where blood from both of our faces stains the already mottled carpet. Inching back until his spine hits the wall, he slams his head against the panels with a final growl and closes his eyes. “She couldn’t go through with it,” he mutters, and I almost don’t even hear him over the ringing in my ears. “She pussied out before I could sink my dick between her lips. Congratulations.”
I lie there, staring at the dusty ceiling fan, letting his words sink in.
“Now, get the fuck out.”
His tone is quiet, calm.
Done.
I pull up on my elbows, still catching my breath. We glance at each other, just once, and there’s a flickering of mutual understanding that hangs mutely in the air.
Don’t touch June.
Don’t touch Wendy.
And the damnedest thing happens—
We obey.
June is curled on her bed when I get home that night, knees drawn up, Aggie tucked tightly in her grip. I hover in the doorway, a broken shadow.
“June.”
My voice sounds just as cracked.
But she doesn’t take my splinters and holes as any sort of weakness—no, she takes them as an invitation to slip inside.
June jumps from the bed, clad in only an ivory nightgown. She races toward me, slowing to a stop in the center of the room. “Brant.”
Her tone quivers. My name pours into the darkness like a plea, an apology, and a confession all at once. Just the sound of her so lost, so crestfallen, has my walls tumbling down for good, as if the last five weeks were nothing but a bad dream.
My legs start moving. I close the gap between us, catching her face between my palms. “Junebug.”
She gasps a little, a burst of something. Relief or remorse, I can’t tell. Tears glisten in her saucer-like eyes, glittering with silver moonlight.
Her hands lift to my wrists, curling tight. Holding on. Like she can’t believe I’m real.
“You called me Junebug.”
My heart squeezes.
I know I’ve pushed her away; I know that. It’s been killing me. But I promised her I’d always protect her, and as long as I’m alive, I will.
I knew it wouldn’t be easy—I knew it would be a damn hard promise to keep, but hell… I had no idea it would be this hard.
I had no idea the one person I’d need to protect her from was me.
I cling tighter, the tips of my fingers grazing her hair. Silky soft, but not made for me. Not made for my hands to fist, or for my lips to kiss.
This is so wrong.
So, so wrong—and all I’ve wanted to do is protect her from these feelings.
These confusing fucking feelings.
Wendy poisoned my mind with crooked thoughts, and all I’ve done is let them fester. Every time I close my eyes, I think of that wretched dream.
I think of June, so sweet and perfect, naked in my arms, writhing, panting, begging me to take her.
It’s sick.
I’ve been derailed. Possessed.
I’m losing myself…
I’m losing her.
“Please don’t hate me, Brant,” she says, pressing her face into the front of my shirt. She inhales deeply, then nuzzles her nose against the cotton. The gesture sends an illicit tremor through me. “Promise me.”
I swallow back the poison and hope it doesn’t choke me.
“That would be impossible,” I say, and it’s as honest as I’ve ever been. With her cheeks between my palms, I tug her head back gently, gazing down at her. My thumbs brush along her skin, collecting the new falling tears. “I can only love you. There’s no other way.”
“You mean it?”
“Of course, I mean it.”
A smile lifts on her pretty face, as porcelain as a china doll, and just as delicate. But the longer she stares up at me, her eyes start to squint through the wall of darkness. And then they widen with horror, and her hands fly up to grasp my face. “Brant, you’re hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
I allow her to graze her fingertips along my busted bottom lip. I shouldn’t allow it, but I do. I’ve gone too long without her touch, and my willpower has shriveled up and died.
My heart will be next if I don’t step away.
June traces two fingers along the ugly split, with nothing but affection and sweetness glowing in her eyes. Far from the corruption lacing my bloodstream, tainting me with impure thoughts. My eyelids flutter, and I pray she doesn’t notice the way I sway, drunk on the feel of something so innocent. Something I never used to question.
I need to go.
I need to figure out a way to protect her from whatever the hell this is, this plague, this sickness, without pushing her away. Without breaking her heart.
Without making her think I don’t love her because nothing—absolutely nothing—has been further from the truth.
“June.” I take her wrist in my hand and lower her arm, catching the flash of worry in her eyes. “Junebug, you should get some sleep. We can talk more in the morning.”
I don’t let her question it, or convince me to stay.
I just go. I walk out.
I can’t be in here right now. She’s too soft, too vulnerable. I’m still surging with adrenaline. I’m still suffocating on the awful awareness that the child I watched grow up, the angel I swore to protect, the little girl I craved in a million beautiful, innocent ways—is now becoming the girl I crave in the only way I shouldn’t.
And it’s not fair.
It’s not fucking fair.
If my father hadn’t murdered my mother, I would still just be the neighbor boy, and she would be the girl next door. Instead, he branded us with a label; forced me into something twisted. He turned the only girl I’ve ever wanted into the only girl I can never have.
But I still love her.
I still love her in all those other ways—all those precious, pure, good ways.
And I just have to hope that the rotten love doesn’t spoil all the rest.
Lines were starting to blur.
And if there’s anything in this world that can mess a man up inside and drive him to the brink of insanity, it’s a blurred line.
I did all I could to rid myself of the bad love, without ridding myself of June entirely. I truly did.
I tried to temper it.
Tried to bury it alive.
But here’s the thing about trying to bury something that isn’t dead—
Sometimes it comes back, madder than ever.
