She grinned as he opened the bourbon and poured her two fingers.

“Here you go.” He handed it to her.

I could smell the amber liquid from here, my tongue suddenly ash in my mouth as he returned his attention to her foot.

Alex remained near the door, and I just wanted to pull Em out of the room and get the girls away, but I had plans for Aydin, and I wasn’t ready to escalate it right now.

Even though it looked like that decision was getting more and more out of my control.

Emmy cupped the glass in her lap, staring down at it. “My brother got so drunk on this stuff once,” she said. “I remember how it tasted like it was yesterday.”

Aydin tore open an anti-bacterial wipe with his teeth, his eyes darting to hers before cleaning the blood off her foot.

“I could never figure out why he hated me so much,” she continued. “Like where did the anger come from, you know? We had good parents. They didn’t abuse us. He wasn’t bullied.” She trailed off, staring at the glass. “But he was always like that. As early as I can remember, everything had to be perfect. My hair. What I wore.” She started breathing heavier as the memories played behind her eyes. “Something was always out of place, and it never pleased him. Everything I did was wrong.”

She fell silent, and I forgot the others in the room, remembering her dirty, untidy cuffs, and the hair always in her face.

“So I stopped talking,” she nearly whispered. “The outbursts got worse, and then the shouting started. Waking me up in the middle of the night, because I forgot to unload the dishwasher, or there were streaks on the bathroom mirror.” The look in her eyes grew distant, like she wasn’t here anymore. “I peed my pants one night at dinner,” she said. “I was fifteen.”

I frowned, imagining going home to that every day after school.

“I realized he was sick, and nothing was going to be good enough,” she told us as Aydin bandaged her foot, “so I stopped trying. My clothes would be wrinkled and my hair not brushed, because if he was going to hit me anyway, then…” She met Aydin’s gaze. “Then fuck him.”

I watched him watch her, the space between them disappearing as he held her leg, but neither of them moved.

“I hardly ever saw him drunk,” she told us, “but one night, he passed out with a quarter of this bottle left. I emptied it into a water bottle and took it to school.”

She chuckled, but a look of sadness crossed her eyes, remembering that day. When was it? Did I talk to her that day? Mess with her? Was I nice?

“He thought he drank it all. He never knew.” She paused before continuing. “It was just one time, but that was a good day. I didn’t feel a thing. Not even the cracked rib.”

I knit my brow, thinking about Emory Scott sucking down bourbon in math class or stumbling through the cafeteria, and how easy it must’ve been to hide it, because no one ever noticed her.

She’d needed that bourbon more than she needed air that day, and I got that.

God, I got that.

You smile and laugh, not just because your head and everything in it feels lighter, but because when you’re drunk or high, it’s like a vacation. When you’re away from the same people, the same places, the same work…you don’t think about it. It’s a break from everything that worries you or makes you anxious or keeps your world small and shallow, and everyone who wants to take a piece out of you, and when you’re high, it’s like that. It just doesn’t even matter. Suddenly, you’re seeing Machu Picchu from your front porch, and you didn’t even have to leave town.

She got drunk and loved her brother again.

What made her stronger than me was that she only did it once.

She closed her eyes as she lifted the glass to her lips, and I could tell by the longing on her face that she was escaping again. I charged over and grabbed the glass, the liquid sloshing onto my hand as I tossed it to the side.

It crashed against the wall, the glass shattering.

Don’t. I stared down at her.

I’d rather eat my hands than see her do that to herself. If this was who she was, I’d rather this than see her become what I became—someone who needed to hurt myself day after day in order to fucking smile.

“Clean it up,” Aydin ordered.

But I remained still. I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do with her yet, but this—whatever this was going on between them—was not happening. She didn’t get to find herself with Aydin Khadir. She was coming with me.

“He didn’t save you then,” Aydin told her. “He won’t save you now.”

He watched her, and she watched me, and even though I knew she’d told me the truth last night in her bed when she said she loved me, I also knew Emmy was an oak. Her roots were firm, and love would not save the day.

“Am I going to save you?” Aydin asked her.

“No one needs to save me.” She kept her gaze on me. “I got it handled.”

“You do.” He finished, setting her foot back down on the floor, and then stood up, cleaning off his hands. “I can almost see it, can’t you?” he asked her as he gazed between Alex and me. “Them together? How good they look together? Him driving into her like he’s done a thousand times and looking down into her eyes as he does it?”

I tensed.

“All the times he was alone with her, inside of her, coming and forgetting about you,” he told Emmy. “You can see it, right?”

You son of a bitch.

“But we don’t care,” he went on. “Do we? We don’t care that he’ll fall back into her bed at the first sign of trouble.”

I flexed my jaw, the scent from the anti-bacterial wipes stinging my nostrils. My brain was fried. I didn’t know how to get what I wanted anymore without resorting to just taking it.

“Go ahead,” Aydin told me, his eyes flashing to Alex behind me. “Take her. I want to see how it was with you two. All the things she let you do to her, because that’s how easily she forgets and moves on.” Then he gestured to Em. “We’ll watch.”

But before I could act, he grabbed me and shoved me onto the bed. I fell, Emmy whimpering and jumping off the mattress as Aydin came down on me and dug a knee into my gut. I growled as he gripped my neck with one hand and backhanded me with the other.

I squeezed my eyes shut, the pain shooting through my jaw and up the side of my face, but after a moment, I slowly turned my head back to face him, ready for more.

Come on.

His eyes pierced, and he leaned down, his breath warming my lips. “Mine,” he breathed out. “All of you are mine. You’re not leaving. They’re not leaving. And when your little shits arrive, I’m going to hang them in the cellar by their ankles like dead deer.”

He hauled me up off the bed, and I stumbled back before he came in and punched me in the stomach, sending me hunched over.

“Will…” Alex stepped forward.

But I shot out my hand. “Stay back,” I told her. “Stay back.”

It took a few seconds, but I rose again and faced him, taking his shit but not taking it lying down. I can be a team player, but I’m strong.

He walked up to me, slamming another uppercut into my stomach. Bile rose up my throat. I hunched over again, out of breath and my head spinning.