Page 162 of A Dead Man's B-Side
“Are you going to replace me now?” It had been a simple question, a playful question. But Rain could hear the fear hidden under all those layers of cool and amusement.
She sighed and wrapped her arm around his shoulders; they’d gotten wider. It was hard to reach the other end, an awkward position that made her arm ache quickly, before pulling him against her. “Nothing, no one in this entire world, could ever replace you. Youhave no idea how much I’ve missed you, Kay. You have no idea how good it is to see you.”
He remained quiet, deep in thought; she could always tell what each moment of silence meant with her brother. Whether he was enjoying the peace or pondering within it. When he was worrying and when he was brooding.
His lips set in a helpless line, his brows flattening in simmering frustration, eyes dark with the remnants of resentful memories of the life they’d been forced to endure.
“I missed you so much, Rain. You’ve no idea.”
“Ditto.”
Kay’s laugh was a mix of a scoff and a wet sniffle. “I want to meet this Sasha.”
Rain ran her hand up and down his back in a soothing manner. “Maybe one day.”
They both knew it was unlikely. They didn’t know what Alistair and Emmeliana had in store for their youngest son, and they learned a long time ago not to foster false hope.
“Tell me more about this band of misfits you’re now a part of,” Kay said.
And tell, Rain did. She recounted her first impressions of everyone, every detail of their dinners, their arguments, all their jokes (word for word). She tells Kay about Ajax calling Thaddeus an old man, Paris breaking into Sasha’s room (an occurrence that August had spotted), Marigold falling over the back of a couch, and August’s timeouts.
“And Wolf?” The name was spoken so abruptly that her heart stuttered at the intrusion of memories she tried keeping away from the forefront of her mind.
“... What about him?”
Kay straightened and tilted his head at her, so eerily similar to Sasha, she noted. “Still in the doghouse?”
Rain shoved him a little harder than a nudge this time. “I amnotin the doghouse. We… talk.”
He didn’t speak, waiting for her to continue talking, because who was she kidding? There always was more to say about Wolf. “We talk, or whatever you could call the stilted words we exchange. I know he doesn’t hate me… He just wishes I didn’t resort to the only option possible. He’s better now, and I think he realizes that.”
“Better how?”
Rain’s gaze latched on the wall in front of her and remained there. “Well, he’s sobered. And undoubtedlynotoff his rocker. Sasha keeps him aware, I think.”
Rain, despite Sasha’s weak attempt at distraction, remembered Paris’s short slip back into intoxicants. She also remembered him putting out cigarettes whenever he could bring himself to let go of his own addiction.
A small part of her was glad he was by Wolf’s side, not that she didn’t trust the boy to return to his old ways.
Wolf, once upon a time, was worse than Paris. Drowning himself in anything that could bring him closer to hallucinating a real enough version of his missing brother.
Rain never thought of herself as someone who would do what she’d done, but when she walked in on her best friend choking on his own vomit in his knocked-out state, she knew that the only way she could ever help him change was by telling his father.
She was only sixteen, and no sixteen-year-old could handle that on her own, no matter how capable she believed herself to be.
There was a naive part of her that hoped Wolf would pull himself out. That he would see how much he was hurting himself, and her in turn, and stop.
He couldn’t do that if he were dead.
The last time they’d spoken, truly spoken, he looked at her with betrayal in his eyes and hatred spewed out of his mouth in the form of words.
She didn’t mind. It hurt, of course. But if that ensured his survival, she would do it again.
He was so much better now, and she was glad he realized it, too.
She didn’t think he would ever return to his old ways, but it comforted her further that Sasha was by his side. She thinks Sasha hates that stuff too because of memories from his past. Perhaps his father or mother.
Or perhaps a friend taken from him by the same stuff Paris and Wolf once cherished.
