: Chapter 16

The first thing I ever was in life was a poet. Since I was a kid. Before the drinking. The sex. Before I dabbled in coke, started grinding my teeth more than I smiled, and constantly began looking for the next fight.

And the next one.

And the next one.

Without ever writing a word, I was a poet. I saw beauty in the unlikely places that scared my parents. In abandoned train tracks. The foster home hells where my friends lived. In house fires, motorcycle crashes, and the destruction in the wake of a storm. In living too hard and dying too young.

In tears. In bruises. In abandonment.

I didn’t hate these things, because these things are profound. Horrible.

Tragic.

But profound.

And profound is beautiful, because it changes us.

The things I hated were the things that were lazy. Things that lacked pride. Things like … Keurigs. And punch cards and restaurants that considered potato chips an acceptable side dish.

My parents never got it. Why I wanted to peer over the edge of my grandpa’s grave to watch the dirt piling on top of his casket. Why I stole the car when I was twelve to drive out and meet the hurricane as it hit the coast. Why I liked smeared lipstick, skinned knees, messy morning hair, and the sting of my mouth being raw from a night of being used. It was all so beautiful.

There’s even beauty in knowing that my mother wished she never would’ve had me. Knowing a part of her thought she should’ve stopped after Iron. There’s beauty in knowing she was the beginning of Trace, Liv, and me, and we, in return, were her end.

The world is full of beautiful things, but almost no one sees it.

No one except Krisjen Conroy.

She’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever encountered. Beauty in motion. In everything she does.

She’s slow, considerate in her movements. Artful.

I love the flyaways of her ponytails and buns. Her sneakers with no socks. How kind her eyes are, and how she looks at you like you alone are precisely the person she was just waiting to see. I love how she skips the last couple of steps to a counter or the fridge, how she dances in the kitchen when she thinks she’s alone, and the way she takes more than one bite to eat a grape. She’s always appreciating the view, and I imagine she’d be as happy at a gas station as she would be a castle.

She’s in love with being alive.

And that’s also why I despise her. She can be what I can only see. She’s the breath others breathe. I’ll never be beautiful like that.

I jostle the girl in my bed. “Hey,” I bark, pulling on my jeans and ripping off the towel around my waist.

She stirs, the other one on Iron’s bed to my left moaning in her sleep.

“Get up,” I tell them.

I fasten the belt around my waist and grab the towel, rubbing it over my head to dry my hair.

“Tizz.” I shake her again.

That’s not her real name, but that’s all anyone has ever called her since we were kids.

“What?” she mumbles, turning over.

“Get out of my bed.” I toss the towel down. “Both of you, get out.”

It’s fucking eleven o’clock.

The brunette on Iron’s bed rises, her eyes still half-closed as she holds the pillow to her naked body and searches around for her clothes. Tizz throws off my covers and swipes her shit off my floor. “Asshole.”

Yeah, yeah. Until next time when you’re drunk and horny.

She dresses and whips open my door so the handle crashes into the wall. Both of them stumble out into the hallway, hair in their eyes and each other’s hickeys on their necks, looking beautiful but not exactly profound yet. That will come in about a half an hour as they cry in their showers and own up to their responsibility and self-loathing over what no one but themselves made them do with me in my room last night.

I’ll be drunk again before my own self-loathing hits. Fuck, I hate sex.

Opening my drawer, I see it’s empty, and dig into one of Iron’s, finding a clean black sleeveless T-shirt with the sides cut out. Slipping it on, I leave the room, but as soon as I step foot into the hallway, I hear the commotion downstairs and catch Krisjen rushing past me with a picnic basket. It takes a second, but I recognize it as ours. I wasn’t aware we still had it. She must’ve found it in the attic.

“What’s going on?”

She turns her head, her face lighting up, but she doesn’t stop. “Can you help?”

“With what?”

I watch her scurry down the stairs, but then Trace coasts past me, holding an old Yeti cooler I didn’t realize we still owned, either. “Forty-First Annual Bug Jam!” he answers for her.

“What?”

“You know what he’s talking about,” Krisjen calls back. “I need you all. It’ll be fun. Come on!”

I follow them down, the heat in my chest expanding, but the rising anger warms my stomach, too. I don’t even want to stop myself. “I don’t give a shit about St. Carmen’s reindeer games,” I growl, rounding the wrought iron banister.

Army stuffs a backpack with Dex’s shit, tossing in some sunscreen and diapers. His son sits on the couch, digging his hand in a cup and then stuffing little crackers into his mouth.

“Why is she in our house?” I snap.

No one answers me. Trace sifts through keys, deciding which truck to take. His baseball cap sits backward on his head, his greasy hair slicked back underneath.

Krisjen folds a picnic blanket.

Army turns, arching an eyebrow at me. “Just give us a break, will you? For once? It sounds fun. A nice break from the same shit we do every day.”

“Like Krisjen Conroy?” I throw back, turning my eyes on the girl who thinks she lives here. “You fuckin’ me next, honey?”

“If you want,” she chirps, unfazed. “I’d be excited to see if I have to fake my orgasm. Or if you can tell.”

Trace loses it, a chuckle erupting from deep in his stomach. He doesn’t dare look at me.

“There are children here,” Army tells us, but I head over to the kitchen and squat down, opening a low cabinet. I can’t be sober for this.

But when I look, the cabinet is empty. All the bottles are gone.

I pop up, looking over the counter at them. “Where’s the liquor?”

“I dumped it,” Krisjen replies.

I whip my arm, slamming the cabinets closed and zoning in on Army. “Her or me?” I grit out through my teeth as I walk back into the living room. “I’m not living in this bullshit anymore.” I turn to her. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

Running around here, sticking her nose in our business like some self-proclaimed matriarch.

“Just stay home,” Army tells me. “Cool off.”

But Krisjen chimes in. “He’s going with us.”

“Fuck you, slut!” I shout. Where does she get off?

Army grabs the front of my shirt and shoves me, but I twist and slam his arms away, pushing him in the chest.

Hooking the back of my neck, he whips me around, but I grip the back of his just in time, taking him with me as we smash into the entryway table. Stuff crashes to the floor, Dex erupts in wails, and I hear Krisjen.

“Stop. Please stop!”

I plant my hand on my older brother’s face and shove him away, watching him fall into the front door.

I suck blood off my tongue and spit on the floor, all three of them staring at me.

A lump moves down Krisjen’s throat. The corner of my mouth tilts up in a grin.

She dashes past me. “I have to get something from upstairs. Dallas, help.”

And I do as I’m told, following her.

“Dallas!” Army yells.

But I hear Trace mumble something to him. I don’t hear what he says.

They don’t get it. Just like our parents. No one gets it.

The pain I cause because pain distracts me, but love does so much more damage, and they don’t see that. I would respect Krisjen only if she were aware of it. If she knew what she was going to do to us when she leaves, I would smile. I would be satisfied if she knew that it would end but that she just couldn’t stop herself.

But she doesn’t, so that makes her simple.

Krisjen veers to the left, into my sister’s room, and I follow her in, slamming the door shut behind me.

“This is my family,” I grit out. “And we have been through more shit than you would ever be able to handle. They listen to every split tail who comes through here, because having a woman around reminds them of our mother, even though not a single one of us understood that fucking woman.”

Krisjen picks up her black hoodie, pulling it on.

“In a few months, you’ll realize you were made for better,” I go on, “and we were good for a ride. You’ll leave, and we’ll still be here, trying to hold our shit together. Please just fuck off. You know this isn’t home.”

She walks to the window and stares out as she sweeps her hair up into a ponytail. A brown lock falls down her temple, nearly touching her eyebrow as she lowers her chin to study something outside. Her bottom lip twitches just barely.

In a way only I would notice.

I love staring at her, but I hate her all the same. I want to be her some days, and make her cry most others. I want her to hit me.

And sometimes I want her to feel me in the dark.

I’m not beautiful in anything I do, but I will change her.

I open my mouth, but she speaks first. “Do you remember your mom well?” she asks, still looking out the window.

I close my mouth.

A car hood drops closed outside, and I hear the heavy creak of a door that only a car from the seventies can make.

“Do you remember what she was like when she was sad?” she presses. “How she behaved?”

I narrow my eyes. How is any of that her business?

“Was she self-isolating?” she goes on.

I walk slowly toward her.

“Loss of appetite?” she asks.

I approach, standing next to her as she watches Macon outside. The old Dodge he’s working on is parked half in the street, the driver’s door open as he tries to turn over the ignition.

“Insomnia?” Krisjen asks. “Mood swings?”

I freeze, staring at my brother. Krisjen cocks her head, gazing at him. My hands ice over.

“Macon shouldn’t drink anymore,” she tells me. “You want to drink, you go to the bar.”

Macon steps out of the car, but then he stops and just stands there. Staring at the ground. His chest rising and falling like every breath weighs too much.

I clench my teeth.

We watch as he twists his head, cracking his neck, and gets back to work.

He’s fine. Why is she saying all of this?

Krisjen turns, looking me in the eyes. “He needs help around here, he needs healthier food, and he must get some sleep,” she states. “And he needs to wake up with more to think about than just problems. Everyone needs things to look forward to. Even just a day of fun.”

Self-isolating, she said.

He’s … he’s always had moods. That’s nothing new.

Did he eat much at Thanksgiving? Anything? I don’t watch people eat. What do I care? I …

Macon can take care of himself. He always has.

“At some point we’re going to address that chip on your shoulder,” she tells me, “but right now, if you’re not in that car in ten minutes, you’re a piece of shit.”

Whatever I was going to say to her is lost, and she leaves, closing Liv’s door behind her. Walking to the window, I peer out again, watching him move around the car. He doesn’t look up. Ever. Not at the car that passes on the road. Not at the kids playing across the street. Not at Trace carrying shit out the front door and loading up the truck.

I shake my head. She’s overreacting. She’s just trying to make up shit. Insert herself by creating a problem that doesn’t exist. Macon is fine. He should get laid a lot more, maybe even get a girlfriend, sure. Maybe he should have kids by now, I don’t know. He’s ten years older than me. I guess I assumed I’d have my own place by that age. Why doesn’t he have anyone?

Why doesn’t he fucking leave us? I would’ve. Why is he still taking care of us? Why—

I punch the wall, the fire in my gut blazing, and I don’t know where it’s coming from. I back away from the window, running my hand through my hair.

Why didn’t he just leave?! Why didn’t he just fucking leave and live his life? He didn’t need to stay. I wouldn’t have stayed!

My eyes burn.

He isn’t yelling at me anymore.

He doesn’t yell at me at all. He doesn’t eat with us. He’s in the garage all the time. Alone. All the time.

This isn’t my fault. I didn’t ask anything of him. He didn’t have to stay.

He’s okay. He’s always okay.

I go to the window again, watching him head back into the garage, dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt. Just like my first memory of him.

Needles prick my throat. Macon is my first memory ever. Not my mother or my dad.

Macon.

My mom was pregnant with Liv in that memory. I came to understand later what had really happened that day. How it finally dawned on me that there were a few years between Macon and Army, and almost five between Army and Iron, but there was little time between me and Trace, and Trace and Liv. My father’s ignorant attempt to give my mother a reason to live turned out to be a burden that just made it worse.

It’s a whole new experience to remember things as an adult. How Macon was only thirteen that day, but I saw him as a man when it happened. I feared and revered him more than either of my parents because he was stronger than they were. A rock. Constant.

And how incredible he was at that age to send my father running from the house. How he was often the one who made sure we bathed and brushed our teeth, and had clean dishes and clean sheets. Dad worked a lot and Mom just …

Self-isolating, Krisjen had said.

Mood swings.

Loss of appetite.

Insomnia.

It was gradual and quiet. Her withdrawal from us. Hiding away behind closed doors. Only Macon could tell what was going to happen eventually.

And now only Krisjen has noticed what the rest of us have been too close to see.

I step toward the door but see a jacket folded over Liv’s desk chair. An old leather motorcycle jacket Macon grew out of in high school that Liv found years later. I roll the soft, smooth leather between my fingers. The faded ribbed padding on the elbows and shoulders. The standing collar missing a button. He wore this a lot. On a bike. With no helmet. Because needlessly toying with death just might be worth the feel of the wind.

I drop it back to the chair, head to my room, and push my hangers aside. I dig in the back for Iron’s clothes and pull out his identical jacket. I slip it on, tie my boots, and grab my wallet.

I head down the stairs and into the garage, grabbing Iron’s keys off the ring on the wall.

“I want you to come,” I hear Army say.

I glance over, seeing Macon under the hood, Trace, Krisjen, and Army standing around him.

“With Iron gone, the Jaegers look weaker,” Trace adds. “You’re the only one who intimidates them more than him.”

Macon says nothing. I was wondering how they were going to get him to go have some fun.

“Please?” Army asks, his mood light despite their brawl the night before.

I move Iron’s bike, flipping up the kickstand as Krisjen dabs sunscreen on her nose and cheeks.

“I don’t know why y’all think he’s afraid to come,” she chirps, looking at her reflection in a hub cap hanging on the wall. “St. Carmen is your land, too, isn’t it?”

“Was,” Trace tells her.

But I chime in. “Is.” They all look at me, like they didn’t expect me to really come. “I know what to do,” I inform them.

Macon rises, his attention piqued. “And what’s that exactly?”

I roll the bike out of the garage. “Remind them that we’re still here.”

It’s all our turf. We forgot that. “Krisjen, you coming?” I call back.

She hesitates for a second, but she doesn’t ask questions. She climbs on behind me. I hand her a helmet, but she tosses it back on the couch in the garage. I smile.

In no time, Trace and Army follow with Dex, all of them climbing into the truck, and I start up the bike, Krisjen wrapping her arms around my waist. I rev the engine, seeing Trace smiling at me, and I catch movement in my rearview mirror, watching Macon pull on a faded leather jacket. He stares after us, looking reluctant for a moment.

But then he turns and grabs his keys.

The wind flies at me, hitting my sunglasses, but I only go faster, gripping the handlebars tighter. Krisjen’s arms constrict like a snake.

I race down dirt roads, through puddles, and bounce over the tracks. I watch her in my rearview mirror, looking off to the side, her hair flying. We lost my brothers behind us a few minutes ago.

I kick it into the next gear, lurch forward, and charge way over the speed limit, the bike rumbling underneath us. She laughs. I go faster. She holds tighter.

I lean to the right, her body following mine as we round a soft turn too fast, but she doesn’t tell me to stop. I race and race farther and farther, homes and palm trees and people zooming past. We rush past cars, my heart lodging in my throat, and I laugh to myself.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a bike.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a girl on one. It’s scarier. I love how she holds me, lets me carry her. She’s trusting. Why?

Before I know it, we arrive at Garden Isle, the pristine white beach the Saints love to keep for themselves even when they prefer to invade ours because we have a lighthouse and no rules. I skid to a halt, hearing screams and laughter from the carnival a hundred yards away on the other side of the parking lot. I don’t realize how fast my heart is beating until I feel the ache in my chest.

She starts to climb off, but I reach back and grab her leg, stopping her.

The sun beats down as a breeze carries the scent of their bake sale. Bake sales are beautiful. Not at all lazy.

I look ahead but keep holding her leg. “Aren’t you afraid of anything?”

Army is probably angry at how fast I was going. Macon, too. Liv would’ve yelled at me to slow down. I put Krisjen in danger, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Pain,” she finally says. “I’m afraid of dying in pain.”

We’re all afraid of that.

“You can’t think straight when something hurts,” she tells me, “and I want to be there in my last minutes.”

I dig under my fingernail with my thumb.

“What are you afraid of?” she asks.

I pause just a moment. “You.”

She sits there.

I swallow the lump in my throat. “The last woman to live in our house, other than our sister, was our mom.”

We’ve been like this a long time. Liv was never one to fuss with the house the way my mom did. Baking, decorating …

Krisjen’s not like Liv, though. Krisjen is someone they’ll start to depend on, but she’s not family. She can ditch us anytime.

“She knew I was in the house that day,” I say, and then clarify. “My mom. She knew I was the only one in the house. She didn’t even lock her door.”

I was thirteen. The same age Macon was when he confronted our father about continuing to get her pregnant. I was alone with her that day. I heard something fall on the floor upstairs. I knew. I didn’t go upstairs.

“I want you to leave,” I tell Krisjen.

The longer she stays, the harder it will be when she goes.

I expect her to argue, but she doesn’t. She simply says, “Okay.”

My stomach sinks. She moves to climb off again, but I curl my fingers around her thigh tighter. “You’re not afraid of anything else?”

I feel her looking around me, trying to meet my eyes, but I can’t let her.

“My second-grade teacher had a sister,” she tells me. “She was shot in a parking lot coming out of a store one night. The killer didn’t know her. She was sixteen.”

I listen.

“Life isn’t about what happens to us, Dallas, because things are going to happen. Rich, poor, good parents, bad parents, no matter what, we can’t predict other people. If I can’t change it or prevent it, then I don’t think about it. Just adapt when it happens, and remember how lucky I am to breathe at all.”

I blink, my eyes burning. That’s what I fear. A world where so much is at the mercy of chance. “And if I can control what’s going to happen?”

“Then please don’t get arrested,” she says.

And to my surprise, I start laughing. A woman who just might understand me.

I release her, letting her climb off, but I stay on the bike. “I still want you to leave.” I meet her eyes. “For your sake as much as ours. Macon doesn’t let us love Saints. And he’s right. You’ll never want a life in the Bay. Money always wins over the heart.”

“But you have money,” she says. “Don’t you?”

I turn my gaze away, feeling another smile pull at the corners of my mouth. “Probably more than I know about.”

Macon doesn’t tell us everything.

So, no. She wouldn’t be giving up much security if she was with one of us, but she’d be giving up status. Luxury. We have money, but we’ll never have servants. Or fancy dinners. Or world travel.

“Clay and Liv are together,” she points out, taking off her hoodie and tying it around her waist. “He’s fine with Liv being with a Saint.”

I dig a pack of cigarettes out of my breast pocket. “Is he?” I light one, blowing out the smoke. “Why do you think he changed his mind about letting Liv go to Dartmouth? Sending her off and even helping pay for it, so she can’t use debt as an excuse to come home to a state school to be near Clay?”

Her brows pinch together, and I see the wheels turning in her head. She straightens, staring down at me. “He thinks the distance will kill the relationship.”

I nod. “We had to mop Army up off the floor after his girl destroyed him. Macon’s tired of cleaning up problems that should never have been problems.”

“Did he ever have to clean up after you?”

I snap my gaze to hers.

But before I can answer, she’s walking away and throwing me a sly smile over her shoulder.

I wasn’t going to tell her, but she knows there’s something she doesn’t know. She’s not stupid, is she?

I take another drag. By the time the full measure of the consequences of fucking the one Saint I should never have fucked hits the Bay, she’ll be gone anyway. Probably.

Macon will be cleaning up after me for years.

The truck pulls up to my right, and I hear the rumble of another bike somewhere farther in the distance. I spot Aracely at the carnival entrance adding tequila from her flask into a frozen lemonade she just bought, and Krisjen finds Liv and Clay where everybody is dancing to a DJ playing music. I could buy them all a drink. Liv has to go back to school in a couple of days. She’d appreciate it.

I could buy them all a drink to be nice. I’m not going to. I’ve grown enough for one day.

I turn my face up to the sky, just as thunderclouds roll in, and the warm wind blows the tent flaps. I smoke the last of the cigarette, the breeze caressing my hair, and the smell of hot tar drifting through my nose. Reminds me of kites. I don’t know why.

“We’re all going to be wet in an hour,” I hear Trace call out.

He walks over to me, smoothing back his dark hair and refitting his baseball cap over it.

“Yeah.”

No one cares, though.

He sees my cigarette and reaches into my breast pocket, stealing the pack. He lights one up, and we both gaze at the crowd of people, taking in the view. Army circles his arms around Krisjen, and she laughs. I look at Trace watching them.

“You still want her at all?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “Sometimes.”

His answer surprises me. I thought he’d lie, act like he doesn’t care.

“She’s good at loving,” he tells me. “She was pretty hot on Iron that night.”

He saw them through the trees. I’d only heard about it.

By the pool. On a lawn chair. In the rain.

Iron’s the only person I ever really feel comfortable with. Of course he’d make love to a girl outside, in the night air. If someone wants to look, that’s on them. Not him. That’s why I love him.

With Krisjen, though, I hated her more. Of course she would fuck another one of my brothers, making a spectacle of herself for everyone to see. Sluts spread for anyone.

Yeah, double standard. Boo-fucking-hoo.

But really … She was going to hurt him. She’s going to hurt Army. Women bring pain. Wives make everything worse. I would’ve been fine without a mom.

I watch her dance as she smiles with my sister and her girlfriend out on the dance floor.

But honestly, I’m glad Iron had something that felt good before he went away. I’m really glad.

“She’d be a sight with all four of us,” I say before I can stop myself.

Trace turns, looking at me.

I inhale a deep breath and flick the cigarette butt off. “I’ve been trying to get rid of her, but I’ve been completely ignoring how useful she could be.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

I hold his eyes for a moment. “She’d do anything for us, Trace. For the Bay.” I look back out at her as she pulls her hair out of her ponytail, looking like such a tomboy in her jeans and T-shirt, no makeup. Makes me dream about stripping her down. “Krisjen Conroy on camera would buy us our land and anything else we wanted for good. Her grandfather would pay whatever it took to keep a video quiet.”

He immediately squares his shoulders. “No.”

“You and Army have already fucked her,” I tell him. “I can do what needs to be done. We’d be good to her. Gentle. Take her somewhere private and quiet. On the boat, maybe?” I don’t blink. “She’ll have the night of her life, Trace.”

It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. We’d make sure she enjoyed it.

“Don’t tell me the idea of your older brothers having something you got to have first doesn’t turn you on,” I taunt him.

He stares at her as she dances, but then starts to walk away. “You’re a son of a bitch.”

He doesn’t look back at me, and I just smile. “Think about it,” I call out.

He keeps walking until he’s lost in the crowd.

I know Trace. He’s usually up for anything, and everything else he just needs time to warm up to.

I scan the crowd once more, spotting lots of Bay people and lots of Saints. Milo Price texts on his phone, and I take note of the cameras on the light posts and the drones flying around, catching footage that typically broadcasts on the town’s social media pages. Phone cameras are taking video, and the live cam at the top of the visitor’s center has a 360-degree lens I know is in full working order.

Anyone, no matter where they are in the world, can see us right now.

My body warms. Taking out my phone, I tap out a text.

The message reads Delivered, then Read.

I smile, putting my phone away.