Isn’t it?

To create something new for Bass Bishop’s little sister.

To obliterate the softness, bury the bright, and lead her into the darkness?

To erase everything she is and rewrite her completely.

RIGHT?!

I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until a hard hand comes down on my shoulder.

I meet Maddoc’s gaze, and he lowers his chin.

Snap out of it, brother, that’s what he’s saying.

With his help, I do. I force my muscles loose and push a chuckle past my lips.

I grab the ball he offers and begin walking backward, Brielle studying me closely.

“That...” I trail off, plant my feet and throw for a three-pointer, slowly turning back, not stopping until I’m directly in front of her. “Was one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever heard.”

Her eyes move between mine. “I highly doubt that.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“And you should go,” she says softly. “Your BrayGirl is waiting.”

BrayGirl?

I look over as she does.

Katie K stands near the double doors leading to the empty locker room, pretending not to be eavesdropping.

She’s far from mine, just someone I enjoyed playing with, but I don’t tell her this.

I lick my lips.

“You were wrong, you know.” We meet each other’s eyes. “You said a BrayGirl is good enough for our bed, but not our heart.”

I’m not sure she realizes it, but she takes a step back before speaking. “So you could love a girl who would give herself to you when you haven’t earned it?”

“No.”

Her frown is as quick as my response, but it doesn’t hold long.

She understands what I’m saying.

Not only is a Brayshaw’s heart off-limits to the girls they sleep with, but their beds are, too.

With that, I walk away, grab Katie K and get the fuck out of there.

I should have realized right then and there Brielle Bishop would be a problem for me.

I didn’t.

Chapter 12

Brielle

I walk through the football field and out the back gate instead of going out the front.

I have no idea if Royce or Micah or any of the other girls from the home will be waiting around for me or not, but it’s not likely.

A fact that’s proven when a half hour passes, and I get no calls or texts asking where the hell I disappeared to. I could always say I stayed after to help my teacher, but if they asked him about it, I doubt he’d lie for a student he doesn’t even know.

Not that they would ask or that I have a reason to lie.

I’m technically a free reigner here until I’m called on by the game maker, aka Royce freaking Brayshaw and his hot and cold attitude.

That’s the logic I use when I hop on the city bus and take it the forty-five-minute route to the edge of town.

It’s the line where Brayshaw ends and the real world begins. Just behind this neighborhood are almond orchards and small, privately owned vineyards. Those go on for miles and at the very end of them sits a highway. It too, is miles long to the next true town, and the exact reason this one is able to function as it does.

Well, that and the money flowing through it.

Money is power.

But money isn’t always good.

People would never guess, but me and my brother? We weren’t poor.

We weren’t even a leg up on Brayshaw wealthy, but we weren’t poor.

Did we go hungry? Yes, but as a punishment.

Have fewer fancy things and rotate clothes like champs? Oh yeah, but again. Punishment.

We were pale and frail and silent, just as they wanted.

My brother is still a guy of few words, but he’s far from frail, though he hides it well. He built strength, but he built it how he wanted it—deceptively.

If our father taught him anything, it was how to hide what he didn’t want others to see.

I’m not too bad at it either, but as far as strength, I’m still trying to figure out where mine lies.

I can’t exactly kill with kindness.

That was one thing my father hated most about me. He said I wore my heart on my sleeve and one day it would be shattered, if he didn’t shatter it first.

What he didn’t understand was I was the way I was, because he was the way he was.

It wasn’t a weakness; it was a choice.

My heart was on my sleeve so my brother would know I still had love to give, and I’ll admit, a way to spite our parents. I needed to show them I wasn’t bitter and broken, like they wanted. I saw deeper, understood young, they weren’t normal or good or even decent, and I knew I would be nothing like them.

I give my brother a large amount of credit for that. He and I, through all of it, we had loved each other. And that alone was enough to endure the tomorrow that we knew would forever come.

Speaking of my brother, where is he?

I pull out my phone, but we’re too close, I have to focus, so I stuff it back in my bag.

I sit on the edge of the plastic and felt-covered bus seat, staring out the window.

With each stop made, we grow closer.

I lift my hand to yank the wire lining the windows that lets the driver know to make the next stop, but as my hand wraps around it, I chicken out. My fingers rest on the cooled pull string, and then someone else tugs it down.

I guess it’s settled.

We’re making the next stop.

I could easily not get off, but I came all this way.

I step from the bus, walking down my old street for the first time in four years. A street that, the day I was finally off of, I told myself I never wanted to set foot on again. Never see or think about.

That only lasted a few months.

It’s like the saying goes, you want what you can’t have, only warped.

I didn’t want to see my home, but being sent away, unable to, I wanted the chance to stand across the street and stare at it.

I thought about it a thousand times, and each time, Bass was beside me.

The entire situation, and conversation, played out in my head.

We would wait here, across the street until the living room got too smoky and our dad needed fresher air to blow his piney tobacco into. He’d come out on the porch and freeze, spotting us there, in the light, during summer, for all the neighbors to see.

What he’d say.

What we’d say back.

What our dad would try to do, and how we’d stop him.

How I’d get behind the wheel of my brother’s Cutlass and hit the gas, paint the brown garage red, if he even bleeds the same way we do.

No, that’s wrong, he doesn’t.

Me and Bass, we bleed on the inside where no one can see.

Pain becomes pity, and we never wanted any of that, so we showed none.

We participated in PE with achy ribs and blank faces, because to show discomfort meant to raise questions, raising questions meant raising our dad’s fists.

Silence was best.

Secrets were necessary.

Trust was nonexistent.

We didn’t trust our father not to kill us, our mother to save us. We didn’t even trust ourselves, which meant we couldn’t trust each other. Not because we thought we’d do one another wrong, but because we’d do anything for each other. Anything. Always. No matter what.