A Little Bit

Chapter 35

Chapter Thirty-Five

Warren

“You really don’t have to be here anymore. I’m sure Mother has been asking about you,” I tell SJ for the millionth time. But of course, she just shakes her head, shoving more chips in her mouth while staring at the TV in front of us.

“She probably hasn’t even noticed I’m gone. And anyway, she can go fuck herself for a week or so. I’m always there.” She ends on a shrug.

That awareness perks up in my brain again, telling me that I’m missing something.

SJ resents our mother. So much. Yet she refuses to move out of that house. I have this overwhelming feeling that she’s suffering through something. Alone.

I couldn’t stay there any longer. I had to leave. I don’t know how she does it. Or why.

“How are you so strong?” I turn my body toward her on the couch. “We grew up in the same house. We’re twins. But I can’t do what you can. Not care about what she might think. Let her down.”

“You will if something makes you mad enough.”

“So something made you mad?”

“Everything makes me fucking mad,” she mutters and then curls her lip in disgust before quickly replacing it with a smile. “Except you and sleeping. Those are the only things I like.”

I let out a chuckle that is quickly cut short by a knock at the front door.

My back straightens, as does SJ’s before she pins with me with a crazed smile. “Who do you think is at the door, Warren?”

I give a slight shake of my head right before she bolts out of her seat and toward the door.

I chase after her. “Wait! Wait!” I quietly hiss as she ignores me and throws the door open with me on her tail.

“Eli,” I say entirely too breathily as he stands there on my porch. I walk unsteadily forward, angling my body in front of my sister who huffs behind me.

I try not to gaze at him. I don’t deserve to. But I can’t help noticing how haggard he looks. His eyes hold this harrowing look that wasn’t there before. Wasn’t there before me . I put it there. They pierce even deeper than usual, which I didn’t think was possible.

“Um… can I talk to you for a second?”

“Of course,” I answer automatically, stepping aside to let him in, simultaneously crushing SJ in the process.

She grunts and squeezes herself out from behind me, following Eli into the living room. “So nice to see you again, Eli,” she says to him as he turns to face her.

“Again?” I ask with a brow raised in her direction.

She smiles sweetly and shrugs, not answering my implied question.

I don’t have the energy to figure out what that means right now. “SJ,” I say quietly, resting my hand on her forearm. “Can you give us a second alone?”

She nods, keeping her eyes on Eli, something I don’t understand passing between them until she disappears down the hall of bedrooms to our right.

My body is buzzing. I can feel his energy radiating off of him. His essence. I want to wrap myself in it, drown under the potency.

But I can’t.

I know that.

“I want to talk about that night,” he says, ceasing my body’s buzz like a record scratch.

We’re standing across from each other, seeming miles away even though we’re in the same room. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. I watch the motion under a trance.

My mind travels back to a different time. A few days after it had happened, when Mother had pulled me into her office again.

“Warren. This is worse than we thought,” Mother says gently, bending down to where I sit in front of her office desk, petting my hair while I cry.

“I know. I know,” I mutter as I bury my face in my hands.

“Listen, baby, you’ve done something terrible. You killed that girl. They’ve concluded their investigation and have a good case against you.”

“Why haven’t I been arrested?” I ask, a hint of wariness trying to make itself known under the fog of shame and guilt.

She levels me with a patronizing look and circles back around to her desk, shuffling some papers and beginning to click away on her computer. “Sugar,” she begins, her eyes on the computer screen and her voice syrupy. “I had to pull some strings to keep you out of there.” She stops abruptly, turning a sincere stare toward me. “I did it for you, baby. This shouldn’t ruin your life—your chances of becoming the next Senator Baker like me and Grandaddy.”

I nod my head. “I know… I just—it doesn’t seem right. I don’t deserve to be sitting here with you. I-I took her life.” My voice catches as I sob again. The same gut wrenching sorrow that has plagued me for days rearing its head to try and take me under. “I should be in jail, Mother.”

“Enough, Warren,” she snaps, an angry venom slithering into her voice, highlighting her twang. “Now, I said what I said. Leave it be. Do good with this second chance you’ve been given. And you do well to remember who gave it to you and what you promised in return.”

He clears his throat, pulling me out of my memories. I focus my eyes on his, forcing myself to stare at what I’ve done to him. “Okay. I—what—um, what did you want to know?” I ask hesitantly, dreading how much more he will probably hate me to hear details. But he deserves to know whatever he wants. The least I can do is give him that, dredging up all the pain and suffering I’ve shoved down for so long.

He breaks his stare, looking down. “Do you know why she was out there that night?”

“Orientation,” I answer, replaying the few pieces of information that Mother told me after it happened. Her name and that she was there for orientation at AU. Starting her life before I snuffed it out. My body begins trembling from the onslaught of memories. I sit on the couch to try to combat it, but it won’t seem to stop.

“No,” he says, taking a step closer before remembering how much he doesn’t want to be close to me and stepping right back. “I mean why she was on that specific street. At that specific time.”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Okay,” he mumbles, turning away to run his hands through his hair. Then he blows out a breath. It’s slow and shaky. He looks back at me and I see that profound sadness again. The one he showed me the night he called me to come get him. It’s agonizing to look at. Despite all the turmoil that’s inside me, all the aching and misery I’ve suffered from over the years, it still hurts more to look at his pain. To see it etched all over his face.

“Well,” he continues, his voice hoarse and wavering. “She was there because… she-she was trying to kill herself. I mean… probably. We don’t know for sure. But, she had been depressed for a really long time apparently, was addicted to pills and had tried to take her life before.”

I spring up from the couch, going to him and opening my arms, but he holds his hands up to me, touching the cotton of my shirt. “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t,” he whimpers around all the emotion in his throat.

His head falls to his chest, a shudder coming out of him, before he suddenly fists his hand in my shirt and pulls me to him.

We crash together with a loud crack. No one else can hear it. But I can. Maybe he does too. It’s the burst of a fire, fusing us together, burning our skin to each other.

My hands find his hair as he buries his face in my chest, sobbing and clawing at my shirt. “I didn’t even know,” he croaks. “She was suffering and I was just completely oblivious. I could’ve… I could’ve… I don’t know. I could’ve helped. I could’ve listened. But I was just a dumb kid. No one even told me. They told me she had to go to camps when she was actually in rehab and in the hospital. I didn’t—” he cuts himself off, digging his head harder into my chest.

I gently massage his head and murmur into his ear, “There was no way for you to know. You were a kid. They kept it from you.”

He shudders again. “I should’ve seen it,” he whispers sadly, before lifting his face to mine, blazing me with his dark eyes, his eyeliner smeared underneath.

And then the spell breaks. He remembers what I did. I can see it change in his eyes. The adoration leave them as he jerks out of my hold.

He hastily wipes his eyes. “Um. That’s not all. Your mom—well, someone from her office—came to talk to my parents a few days after it happened.”

I cock my head to the side. She never told me that.

“I-I didn’t know that,” I say as my brow pulls together.

He nods. “He came and showed my parents the report from Charlotte’s autopsy. Explained that it showed she had taken a fatal amount of oxy before you… before you hit her.” He kicks at the floor before meeting my eyes again. “My sister was an addict. She knew how much she could take to be okay. And the amount she had in her system was way past that. Way past it. So that means that she most likely wanted to die that night. I don’t know if she stepped in front of your car or if she was just so out of her mind that she stumbled in front of it. But whether you were there or not… she probably would’ve died that night.”

I stare at him, unable to really understand what I’m hearing. Mother had always made it seem like it was my fault. And she had known this all along?

He interrupts my thoughts, “The guy wanted my parents to sign an NDA about the specifics of the accident. He told them that your mom wanted to avoid a scandal even though you weren’t at fault. That the public would just glom on to the part about you killing someone and ignore the rest. He said your mom was willing to pay a lot of money to make sure they signed it, and if they didn’t, she would release Charlotte’s autopsy results.” He sighs. “My parents were tired and grieving. They didn’t want to deal with it anymore, so they signed it.”

I’m still silent, staring straight ahead at nothing, feeling something unfurling inside of me.

“Warren? Did you know?”

I shake my head and look at him. “No. I’m-I’m so sorry, Eli.”

A disbelieving expression clouds his face. “ You’re sorry? Why? We basically just found out that it wasn’t your fault.”

“It still happened. It still hurts you. It was my mother who pushed additional pain onto your family. I can’t be happy when all of those things are still true.”

He smiles, prompting me to take a step closer to him, but I stop when he immediately backs up.

“I need time to sit with all of this. I’m not sure how much this changes for me. You still kept it from me. And…” his voice trails off. “I just thought you deserved to know the truth. I’m-I’m gonna go.”

I nod as he turns and walks out of the living room, quietly shutting the front door and leaving me reeling.

Mother knew all of this. All this time, she’s held this over my head. Saying she saved me from prison, gave me a second chance when really, none of that was true.

It was a terrible accident that wasn’t my fault and she kept them quiet, not to protect me, but to save her own skin and manipulate me in the process.

“You have to be now, right?” SJ says, surprising me from the hallway entry, looking at me with her hip cocked.

“Huh?” I ask and then scowl at her. “You were listening?”

She walks toward me. “Of course I was. But what I mean is, you have to be mad enough now, right? To be strong? To tell her to fuck off?”

I stand up, heading for the front door. “Yeah.”

I hear a distant, “Good luck, baby bro,” as I slam the front door, heading toward Mother’s house.