The door cracks open and cold air rushes into the SUV.

“Tell me if you run out of places to stay,” she says and then the door shuts behind her.

With her pack slung over her shoulder, Haley shoves her hands in her pockets and slowly idles to the front door. I want to stay and see if she looks my way before she goes into the house, but I don’t because what if she doesn’t?

Chapter 19

Haley

West is homeless. I sort of crave to crawl onto his lap, bury my head in his shoulder and weep for him because when you’re the one going through something so horrible, it’s too difficult to cry for yourself. Sometimes I wonder if the agony inside would disappear if someone would shed the tears for me. I’m not sure I could survive expressing all the pain.

My heart one million percent aches for West and that creates problems. I’m attracted to him, I hurt for him and, overall, I like him and I need additional complications like I need a hole in my head.

Staring at the television, my uncle sits on his La-Z-Boy throne in the living room. He’s below a man, who’s below a man, which makes him the lowest man at an exterminator company. From six in the morning until three in the afternoon, he kills things for a living. The things everyone else cringes to touch.

I slip off my sneakers and line them neatly near the front door and hang my backpack on one of the many hooks. Feeling like a wallflower geisha, I lower my head and position myself next to my uncle’s chair. I learned once in Sunday school that wishing someone dead, wishing for the murder of someone, is as sinful as committing the act. Standing here, I have the same thought every day: when I die I’m heading straight to hell.

While staying focused on the television, he talks at me. “Where’s Jax and Kaden?”

In the cramped living room, my younger sister lies belly-flat against the floor and colors a picture of a house: two stories, blue shutters, rosebushes near the front door. The sun is shining and a family of stick figures smile. It’s our old house. It’s what we used to be. “At the gym.”

He knows this, but he enjoys asking. He enjoys knowing I’ll answer.

“Why aren’t you at work?”

“It’s Monday. I’m off.” He knows this, too. I’m a waitress, like my mom. Except I work at the pizza place for bad tips and she works double shifts at the Roadhouse for slightly better bad tips. She works so much that I never see her anymore. Ever.

My uncle avoids looking at me. It’s a reminder I’m not worth being looked at. He drinks from the frosted can of Coke. Alcohol, he says, is the devil.

If I didn’t believe he was Satan incarnate, he could be considered a handsome man even in his blue work uniform and with the stench of pesticide-death rolling off him. He’s my father’s half brother and a thirty-eight-year-old carbon copy of Jax: whitish-blond hair, blue eyes and sturdy build.

It’s the half part that has made the difference between my father and him. The difference between me living in this prison for a few months and Jax living here his entire life.

My uncle finishes the Coke and extends the can to me. “Cut up the vegetables and start the meat and get me another.”

Dad steps out of the bedroom and I catch his tired eyes. Tell him to say please. Tell him I’m not his slave. Instead, Dad glances down. When we moved in I promised him and my mother I’d keep my mouth shut and do what I was told.

I made a promise.

A promise my pride prefers not to keep. I’m not a slave. I’m not. Being poor, being homeless, being a girl doesn’t make me less.

“I think I told you to do something, girl,” says my uncle.

“Haley,” Dad barely mutters. I flinch like I did when Conner rammed his fist into my gut. With too much anger, I snatch the can out of The Dictator’s hand and stomp into the kitchen. I breeze past Dad, not once meeting his eyes.

The burner on the stove pings when I slam the pot against it and a few magnets bounce to the ground when I throw the refrigerator door open.

“Don’t let him get to you.” Dad picks up the magnets and snaps them back on the door. He speaks in a hushed tone because we’re not allowed to have opinions in this house. No one is allowed to think in this house. “It’s how Paul handles things.”

I want to scream at Dad to find a job. To save us. But I don’t. That wouldn’t be fair of me and life hasn’t been fair to him. A black forest of bitterness festers inside me and other words flow out instead. “You’re okay with how he talks to me?”

Because guys shouldn’t talk to girls like that. Because my own father doesn’t speak to me that way. I deserve to be treated better. At least I think so. My eyes burn and I quickly blink. My life is so twisted I’m not sure what’s correct anymore.

I’ve been hanging upside down for too long and a terrifying doubt wedges itself in my brain, asking the question...is this normal? Is this right? And the horrifying part is the small voice answering, “Yes.”

Dad grabs my shoulders and I gasp. He turns me, forcing me to stare at him. Fire blazes from his eyes. “No one should talk to you that way. Do you hear me, Haley?”

“But he does.” My throat thickens with every word. “And you let him.”

Dad releases me as if my skin were layered with acid. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I’m your father... I should...”

He pivots slightly, angled half toward the living room, half toward me. The gray of his skin is what worries me and causes me to snag his wrist, to keep him from deciding between fighting for his daughter and giving the rest of his family a place to live. “It’s okay.”