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I slide my eyes to the guard. He shrugs with one shoulder. “Suit yourself.”
“Go in there.” Marcus’s grasp hurts. His thumb caressing my jaw comforts me.
I go. Walk right into an old memory.
Rylan and I are sitting cross-legged on the bed in her room. We’re young, thirteen. I can tell since she’s wearing her One Direction T-shirt. A year later, she claimed she grew out of them and moved on to Radiohead.
“Gross,” she hisses.
“What’s gross?” Marcus of today and the thirteen-year-old me ask in tandem.
“Don’t you hear her?” Rylan scrunches her face in distaste, plucking at a lint on her duvet.
Marcus’s new girlfriend. The first one he introduced to Rylan. The first woman to stay over for dinner. For a lot of dinners.
“Alexa?” My confusion in the memory hung heavy, as it does now. Why has my mind brought me to this day?
“Stay with it.” Marcus’s voice centers me.
I’m back with Rylan. She tilts her head up, her lips curled in an angry sneer. “Who else? Laughing like she’s a freaking hyena. The woman is repulsive.”
“Your dad likes her,” I point out, smiling despite myself. For Rylan. I don’t like that he likes Alexa, either. “She makes him happy. Isn’t that a good thing?”
Alexa is tall and curvy. I was short and lanky at thirteen. A blue stripe has been dyed on her gorgeous silky black hair. Mine is blonde and, well, regular.
It hurt to have to witness Marcus and her holding hands.
After his mouth was on her temple over one of the dinners I attended, I ran home and cried for hours.
“Baby.” I’m confused by the change in Marcus. By the tenderness emanating from him. He clears his throat, his cruel self returning. “Continue.”
“She…” Rylan plucks the lint out, discarding it with hate. So much hate that I don’t ever remember seeing on her face. Other than that day with Anthony.
I whimper.
“Leighton, you’re safe,” Marcus encourages me.
I slip smoothly back into the memory.
“I make him happy.” Rylan’s frown scares me. “We watch movies together. We go to fairs. He loves the food I make. Why isn’t that enough?”
She and I are both thirteen. I don’t have to explain to her there are things she could never give him. Things he’s not interested in taking from her. That she doesn’t want to give.
But I do. Even this young, I want to give him everything. And I can’t.
“You’re enough.” I place a hand on her shoulder. She shrugs out of my hold.
Weird. Rylan always smiles. Always lets me hug her. Always hugs me back.
Yet ever since Marcus introduced Alexa to Rylan, she’s been on edge. She’s been saving her smiles for her dad. With me, she snaps. Just a little. Just enough to worry me.
I hate it when she’s sad.
The Marcus between my legs sighs heavily. He’s remorseful. Even in my trance-like state, I feel his contrition.
Alexa’s laugh filters through Rylan’s closed bedroom door for the millionth time today.
“That bitch.” Rylan’s blue eyes darken. “I bet she applied to be his secretary just so she could fuck him.”
