CROSS (A Gentry Boys Novella)(21)

“Strength in brothers,” I whispered.

Stone smiled. “Strength in brothers,” he answered and gave my neck an affectionate squeeze.

We weren’t alone. We never had been. We never would be.





CHAPTER SEVEN


ERIN



Awful. I felt awful.

I felt awful when I saw that my father had been tiredly waiting up for me. I felt awful when I saw that he’d tried to call my phone at least nine times in the last two hours because he’d heard about Stone and Con’s Excellent Adventure and wanted to make sure I was okay. I felt awful when I caught his relieved sigh as soon as I was safely inside the house again. It would almost have been better if he’d yelled or grounded me or taken my phone away. But he just told me to put Katie to bed and get some sleep. I knew I wouldn’t hear anything more about it from him.

I fell asleep with a sour taste in my mouth that was still around when I opened my eyes in the morning. I used half a bottle of mouthwash and it tasted like sawdust as I swished it around and spat.

My head felt heavy with pressure.

Not real pressure.

The pressure I’d invented during the hours I spent worrying about Con and running around Emblem all evening, desperate for information about what would happen to him.

The pressure of anger towards that arrogant brother of his who acted like the whole ordeal had just been created for his amusement.

The pressure that came from the fact that I was a vital piece of this family puzzle, bound together by mutual loss and limping through the days. I couldn’t imagine how they’d survive without me here to mix casseroles and take action when Penny outgrew her gym shoes for the third time this year.

I pressed my fingers to my temples, rubbing, trying to ease the weight within. I knew a more effective way to ease it but Roe’s voice reached me as clearly as if she was in the room.

“You can’t be all things to all people, Erin.”

She’s said it with love. She’d said it when I reluctantly showed her the fading scars and explained why they were there. I knew other people did it too. All of them surely had their own reasons and no two reasons were likely to be identical. Roe was trying to let me know that it was okay to climb down when the mountain got too steep. My mountain was steep indeed. If I tried to take another step I’d surely fall.

Erin Rielo: Daughter. Sister. Cook. Maid. Stand-in Mother. Girlfriend.

I slowly rolled up my sleeve and looked at my bare arm, feeling shame, guilt. Roe was right. I was too many things. Somewhere in all those things I’d lost track of myself.

My fist closed and the muscles in my arm flexed. Roe had been begging me to tell my father for a while, even threatening to tell him herself if I didn’t stop. But it was an empty threat and we both knew it. I didn’t tell him because I couldn’t give him another moment of agony. I just couldn’t. And this would be agony for him. He would think I was headed down the same twisted road of forked tongues and sharp thorns that had claimed my mother. Sometimes I was afraid of that too.

The only thing that might be worse than my father knowing would be Conway knowing. All this time he’d thought he knew everything about me. As it turned out, he only knew the parts that I allowed him to know.

Slowly I opened the keyboard tray to my desk. The object I was looking for was all the way in the back. It made a harsh scraping sound as I withdrew it. Holding my breath, I stared at the thing. Such a harmless everyday object, small and utilitarian. I hated the sight of it ,but I liked holding it in my hand. I exhaled, feeling a dirty kind of relief as I pushed the sharp edge against my skin. I was used to the war that raged inside of me as the point broke my skin and left a trail of red in its wake. The pain was good and it was terrible.

But the pain was mine. I controlled it absolutely. I summoned it to replace the hateful pressure building between my ears. There were names for people who did this. I’d heard them before, just never admitting out loud that they applied to me. I gritted my teeth as the sting of the cut radiated. A sick feeling started bubbling in my gut. This would be the last time. I needed to keep my own promise to make sure it really was the last time….

“Morning, butterfly.”

I gasped at the sound of his voice and frantically shoved something underneath the copy of Anna Karenina that was lying on my desk. I pushed my sleeve down and weakly said a silent prayer to whoever was listening to please please please work this out in a way that Conway wouldn’t realize what I’d been doing.

“What are you doing here so early?” I’d spoken sharply. I hadn’t meant to. This was my fault for leaving the window open.

Conway, crouched in the window frame like an over grown Peter Pan, stared at me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Guests don’t usually climb through the window at the crack of dawn.”

Something like hurt flashed in his blue eyes. “It’s mid morning and I didn’t think I was a usual guest, Erin.”

“You’re not.” I sank down into my pink rolling desk chair. I felt like a bitch. “I’m sorry. It’s just, with my sisters always barging in I get kind of protective about my privacy.”

“Oh,” Con said quietly. He made no move to climb out of the window. He looked down at the peeling laminate floor that my father was always meaning to replace.

“Come in,” I told him.