HUGE HOUSE HATES: Chapter 11

Things at Casa Carlton have reached an impasse, or at least that’s what it feels like. I’ve exhausted all my prank inspiration and energy for a while, and as far as I can make out, the Carlton brothers have taken their foot off the gas too.

I can’t say that I’m sorry either. Remaining hate-filled and on the front foot doesn’t sit all that comfortably with me. I wish it did, because I suspect that life that way would be a whole lot easier.

After a tiring day at work battling with a batch of pots that fractured during the firing process, I’m wrecked and in desperate need of a long soak in my big tub. I say goodbye to Naomi and head to my car.

On the way home, I try to imagine what it would be like to live with Alden, Mark, Danny, Tobias, and River without the stupid feud rumbling between us, and I can’t. Since I moved in, there’s been no normal conversation between us, and I know I’m partly to blame, but the more time passes, the less my feelings of resentment boil in my chest.

Could I call an official ceasefire? What would that even look like?

I’m sorry, guys, for the fish, the ranch, and the Oreos. It doesn’t have a great ring to it.

Should I bake a cake and just leave it on the counter with “peace offering” written on a card propped next to it?

Should I just leave it and see what happens?

The latter is the lazy option, but sometimes lazy is good.

But as I pull up to the house, laziness and reconciliation fly out the window because there’s already another party going on. Music blares out of open windows so loudly I can almost hear the glass vibrate. Three scantily-clad cheerleader types are waiting at the door clutching bottles of wine. Danny opens the front door, greeting them before his eyes drift across the driveway. When he sees my car, a smile curls the corners of his mouth.

Fucker.

The thought of my nice, quiet, relaxing bath disappears in a puff of resentment and anger. Grabbing my bag with a level of violence it doesn’t deserve; I stomp up the driveway and into the heaving house.

Poor Mrs. Henderson must be even more pissed off than I am for all the cleanup this party will require. I consider storming into the den and raging but decide against it. The more rage I show, the more these assholes will take pleasure in my response.

Gray rock, I think to myself. Be as dull as a gray rock, and maybe they’ll lose interest in trying to rile me.

In my room, I shower and dress in comfortable joggers, and a “Girls just want to have fun” retro tee. Finding my headphones, I flick through TikTok for a while, the mind-numbing content serving a calming purpose. But eventually, my belly rumbles, and I know I’m going to have to venture downstairs to find food.

I should have bought something on my way home. It’s a rookie mistake and one I might regret, but I figure if I eat food from the party, I’ll be safe. The Carlton brothers are vindictive fuckers, but they wouldn’t tamper with food their friends were eating on the off chance I’d consume it too.

As I jog down the stairs, I can hear moans coming from one of the bedrooms. Moans that are similar to sounds an animal would make on the brink of death. For fuck’s sake. This is hell.

People are milling around in the hallway. I feel eyes trailing me as I head into the room where the music obliterates everyone’s eardrums. All the surfaces are littered with bottles, both full and empty. On the low table in the middle, boxes are overflowing with triangles of doughy pizza covered in processed meat.

Of course, they’d choose the grossest toppings.

Grabbing three slices, I look for a plate but instead find a napkin to rest them on. When I straighten my back with my haul of pizza, I find Tobias staring right at me. Anticipating that he’s going to demand I drop the pizza, I straighten my shoulder and raise my chin. His gaze moves to my left, and when I turn, I find River less than two feet away.

Where are the rest of them? Do they have me cornered?

My heart thuds ridiculously in my chest, but my rational thoughts tell me that nothing will happen. They’re not going to attack me. The music is too loud to make a scene, and anyway, they’re not going to win female hearts by acting like douchebags in front of their groupies.

I’m about to turn and flee with a confident posture and false bravado when I spot someone out of the corner of my eye.

Someone whose profile sends ice water cascading down my spine.

Kyle Christopher.

My breath rushes between my lips, and for a second, I fear my knees will buckle. I haven’t seen him for nearly three years. I haven’t seen him since he cornered me at a club and slid his hand inside my underwear without my consent.

I take a step back, and the hand holding the pizza drops in slow motion, the slices slip from my fingers and hit the floor at my feet. Another step back, and my calves hit the front of the couch, barring my retreat, and I panic. I panic because I don’t want him to see me. I don’t want Kyle Christopher to know where I live. I don’t want to see his smug knowing face as he remembers my trembling legs and frozen expression.

A hand touches my arm, and I flinch so violently that I swipe it away. “Cora,” Tobias says. “Are you okay?”

In a second, I turn into his chest, burying my face against him as sobs wrack my body. I can’t get ahold of myself. I can’t pull my frayed edges together.

“Fuck,” he says, wrapping his big, strong arms around me. He doesn’t ask any more questions. He just scoops me up and carries me out the room, swaying with every step as I breathe and breathe and breathe, trying to stuff back down all the terror that I’d buried away and never told a soul.

In the hallway, Tobias pauses. I can feel his heart speeding in his chest against the wet skin of my face. I feel his hesitation because we’re not friends, yet I’m turning to him for comfort. We’re not confidants, and yet he finds himself in a position where he needs to ask me for information that is difficult for me to deal with and talk about.

The pause is only for a second, and then, as though he has decided something important, he strides to the stairs. The sound of the party only recedes slightly, but when we get halfway up, River shouts from below, “Tobe, what the fuck’s going on?”

Tobias doesn’t stop, and the thud of River’s feet against the stairs behind us lets me know that he’s following. At the top, I begin to struggle in Tobias’s arms, wanting to be put down so I can return to my room, lock the door, and hide until Kyle and the rest of the people downstairs have disappeared into the night. But Tobias isn’t letting me go, and by the time I raise my head to tell him to put me down, we’re standing in his room, and River is closing the door behind us all.

“What happened?” River asks as Tobias finally releases me, and my feet touch the floor. My stomach roils, the shock of seeing Kyle and the release of all the previously trapped feelings hitting me with full force. I stumble back and drop to the mattress, my face in my hands, sharp, fast breaths hissing between my lips.

“Hey,” Tobias says. He kneels on the floor in front of me, resting his big capable hands on my shoulders. “Cora. Talk to us. Tell us how we can help you.”

Help me?

“You can’t,” I say.

“Tell us,” he says again. “Tell us what you need, and we’ll do whatever we can.”

For the first time, I raise my head to look at him in disbelief. The last time we really looked at each other was on the night that I saw him naked on my bed with that girl, and he thinks he’s going to be the one I’ll confide in? But instead of seeing amusement or derision in his eyes, I see real concern. My eyes flick to River, who’s standing with his hands in his pockets and a deep furrow between his strong brows, worried eyes fixed on me. The door rattles, and Mark’s voice rumbles from the hallway. “What’s going on?” he asks.

I start to panic, my breaths are coming faster, and River must notice because he unlocks the door and steps into the hallway. Tobias’s hands cup my cheeks in their rough warmth, bringing my face up so my eyes are forced level with his. “Cora, breathe, honey. In, out…that’s it. Slowly. Breathe.”

And for reasons I cannot fathom, I do. I inhale and exhale to match his rhythm, and my heart starts to thump slower in my chest. My throat burns at the tender way he’s gazing at me, at the quick way he stepped in as soon as he could see I was in trouble. He’s big and brutish, and we’ve never exchanged even a pleasant word to each other, but I believe he’d move mountains to stop me from feeling like this.

At the thought, another tear leaks from the corner of my eyes, but before it has a chance to cool on my cheek, he wipes it away with the pad of his thumb.

“Did something happen down there?” he asks softly. “One minute you were taking pizza, the next you looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

“I did,” I say on instinct. “I mean, I saw someone I haven’t seen since…”

He blinks slowly, and I can tell he’s thinking carefully about the next words he wishes to say, fearful that he’ll disrupt my confession. “Who?”

I close my eyes because even trying to get my mouth to form his name feels painful. Even thinking about him yanks me out of this body and flings me back to my younger, more vulnerable self. It’s like an out-of-body experience, seeing myself in such a visceral way.

“Kyle Christopher,” I whisper, raising my lids to see his response.

“Kyle?” Tobias’s neck straightens, his eyebrows raising in question. “How do you know Kyle, Cora?”

Blowing out a long breath, I swallow around the razor blades in my throat and clench my hands, trying to pull my fractured pieces together. This feels like such a huge moment. I never imagined I’d come face to face with that awful man. I never imagined I’d have to face up to what happened or consider telling another human being about it. When it happened, I didn’t tell my mom. I didn’t tell my friend, Kyle’s sister. I just stuffed it down deep inside myself and vowed never to go anywhere near him again.

Now, Tobias, who isn’t a friend or a family member, who isn’t someone I would ever have imagined I’d share more than an uncomfortable silence with, is asking me to open up something that feels slick and black and shameful.

“I can’t,” I say. “I can’t do this.”

“Listen to me,” Tobias says. “Either you tell me, or I’m going to go downstairs and ask Kyle what the fuck he did to have you looking as pale as a ghost.”

“NO,” I blurt, grabbing onto his soft white shirt. “You can’t.”

“Shit, Cora. You look fucking terrified.”

“Please,” I say. “Please don’t do anything.”

That’s the moment I see something change in Tobias’s eyes. They go from a soft, mellow honey to a fire-filled amber, and his jaw ticks. “Did he do what I think he did?” he growls. “Did he hurt you?”

“Tobias…” I don’t let go of his shirt because I know. If I don’t hold him here, he will bolt downstairs and kick the shit out of Kyle. I can feel the coiled tension throughout his muscular body. It’s practically vibrating off of him.

“Did he?” he says, just as River enters the room again, closing the door with a soft click.

“Did who?” River asks.

I swallow again because what do I say? How do I go back to the Cora I was minutes ago, when my only thought was finding something to eat for the evening? How can I slam the lid back down on these memories when the teenager who hurt me is downstairs, now a fully grown brutish man?

“I swear, Cora.” Tobias’s hand slides from my cheek to rest at the side of my neck, his fingers pressing to the ridges of my spine. It’s a firm grip, but I don’t fear him. Instead, it’s reassuring. He’s strong and capable, and he’s trying to show me that I can trust myself in his hands.

“He touched me between my legs…at a club…I didn’t want him to.”

The darkness I see in Tobias’s eyes is instant, like blackout blinds have been drawn down and obliterated anything other than the cold fury that’s raging inside him. I grip his shirt tighter as River mutters foul curse words and begins reaching for the door.

“You can’t do anything,” I blurt. “You can’t because then he’ll know I’m here. I don’t want him to know, okay? I don’t want anything to do with him ever again.”

Tobias’s hands slip, and he takes hold of my wrists gently. “Listen to me, okay? If you think I’m just going to go downstairs and party with a fucking predator, you have no idea who I am. That man isn’t welcome here, ever again, do you understand? And he’s going to be told that now.”

“River!” I shout as he opens the door. “Please.”

When he turns, and our eyes meet, his usually ethereal eyes are stormy and dark. “Cora,” he says. “Let us deal with this.”

And before I can say anything else, Tobias has risen and left the room with his brother.