Page 38 of Apathy
“No, you’re not.”
“Excuse me?” I came closer to the table, vexed with his entire demeanor. “You can’t tell me what to do, Dy.”
Seated at the head of the table, he kept looking at me, all the while holding a croissant in his hand. I loved my brother, adored him, but he could irritate me like no other person could. When we were kids, he would fuss if I fell, hovering over me like a mother hen. If he noticed I was sad, he wouldn’t let it go until I told him what bothered me. When Zane died, he wanted to stop his studies, so that he could stay at home and take care of me.
As if he needed to take care of me.
The moment Ash left, and after overthinking the entire thing, my body still tingling from his touches, I knew that Dylan was going to pull something like this. It wasn’t in his nature to let things go, and the mere possibility of me being in danger was going to turn him into an overbearing and overprotective brother. That was the side of him I didn’t love all too much.
As soon as I started dating Zane, he started hating him. If he called, Dylan would get annoyed. If he came over, Dylan would rather choose not to be around, than stay and watch a movie with us. The number of times I had to beg him to behave was exorbitant, and I never wanted to deal with that version of him again.
If I didn’t know any better, I would go as far as to say that he was jealous.
“Sky.” He took a deep breath, as if preparing himself to talk to a small child. “You went through a lot yesterday.”
“And yet, I am fine!” I thundered. “You can’t expect me to stay here the whole day. Life goes on. What I saw and what happened yesterday… Well, I can’t do anything about it.”
“Somebody carved your name into that girl’s chest!” he bellowed, slamming his fist on the table.
“H-how,” I stammered. “How do you know about that?”
He fisted his hand, glaring at the table, refusing to look at me. I hoped that he wouldn’t find out about that. It was bad enough that the entire police force of Winworth knew, but I wanted to spare him the details. Or maybe I just didn’t want to think about that. And maybe, just maybe, I wanted to pretend that the name on Megan’s body wasn’t the same as mine.
“That officer from yesterday called. He wants you to come down to the station to give your statement.”
“But I don’t know anything,” I argued. “If I hadn’t slipped, I wouldn’t have found her and—”
“No, Sky.” He finally looked at me. “If you hadn’t gone into the fucking forest, and I told you a million times that you guys shouldn’t be wandering through there, you wouldn’t be in this situation.”
I sat there, gawking at him as his words registered in my head.
“Well, I am extremely sorry that you didn’t get a sister that would sit at home and do nothing but go to school,” I sneered. “But you’re stuck with me. I refuse to play the part of the perfect little daughter and the perfect little sister, while you guys do whatever the fuck you want to. I’m not a child—”
“Then stop acting like one!” he roared, catching me by surprise.
Dylan never yelled at me. Hell, he never ever raised his voice around me. This side of him was something I hadn’t seen before. After yesterday and Ash this morning, the last thing I wanted was to have to deal with whatever crawled up his ass.
Stupefied, I studied him and the sharp intakes of breath he was taking, but I couldn’t say a word. I didn’t ask for special treatment because we found a body in the forest. I never asked for anything. Yet he loved pretending that I was still a little girl who didn’t know how the world worked. If only he knew… If only he knew about the things that were hiding inside my head.
If only he knew that I wasn’t a little girl anymore, because I wasn’t allowed to be. I refused to sit here while he unleashed all his fury at me.
“Where are you going?” he asked as I stood up and started heading toward the exit from the kitchen. We usually had breakfast here, rather than in the dining room, but the idiot managed to make me lose my appetite in a matter of minutes. “Skylar?” he bellowed when I continued walking without answering.
“Goddammit,” sounded behind me, but he could go and fuck himself if this was how he imagined this day to go. His footsteps echoed around the hallway, and as I rounded the corner heading toward the large staircase, leading to the first floor, his hand wrapped around my arm, turning me to him.
Only lit by the wall lamp, his face looked more dangerous than ever before, but I was too tired of men throwing me to this and that side and expecting me to do only what they wanted me to do. My father wanted me to attend the university in Seattle, Ash… Well, I still wasn’t sure what exactly he wanted from me, but I was sure that he wanted something, and now Dylan was trying to control what I did and where I went.
I didn’t like it.
He was supposed to be the one person in my life that would ask me what I wanted to do before making any decisions. And yes, I was a child. I was a goddamn teenager who had to deal with things that no other teenager could even comprehend.
“Where are you going?” he asked again, pulling me closer to him.
His body heat enveloped around me, and in the tiny hallway, he seemed to be everywhere. I always wanted to know how he managed to be both scary and caring at the same time. Even though he held me to him, he wasn’t hurting me.
But men never hurt us intentionally, at least not at first.
It always starts small, with punishing touches, poisonous words and restrictions that only make sense to them. And if Dylan was going to be that kind of a man, I didn’t want to be with him today.
