Oh, Brother!

FREYA

My brother’s eyes were filled with something worse than rage…

~Disappointment.~

With one hand resting on the door frame, Mason tried to catch his breath.

And when he did, the scolding began.

“What were you ~thinking~?” he hissed.

“What?” I asked him, genuinely confused by his level of distress.

And then I smelled it…

The alcohol on his breath.

“Mason, you’re drunk.”

“Don’t start with me!” he said, his volume rising.

I could hear murmurs emanating from the living room.

Mason was causing an embarrassing scene.

For both of us.

I grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him over the threshold, down the hallway, and into my room. I slammed the door shut behind him.

“Why are you here, Mason?” I asked him, unable to disguise the fury in my voice.

“You know, I’m actually surprised it took you so long,” he slurred. “Normally you fuck things up ~way~ faster.”

Disgust swirled like sludge clouding his dark eyes. “You couldn’t just keep your clothes on!?”

“Excuse me?” I recoiled away from him.

“You’ve worked for him for less than three days and you’re already ~sleeping~ with him?”

“Mason, I’m—”

“Spare me the disgusting details,” he said. “I just can’t believe you would be so ~stupid~. What if they find you?”

“Who?” I asked, detecting a strain of real fear in his voice.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” he growled again.

“Who is going to find me, Mason?”

“No one,” he answered quickly, his eyes widening in alarm.

“It’s obviously not ~no one~,” I said, narrowing mine.

Mason seemed genuinely worried and unsettled.

“DAD!” he screamed suddenly, and I bristled at the mention of our father.

“He’s on the other side of the country,” I answered anxiously.

I hadn’t spoken to our father in four years, and as far as I knew, neither had Mason.

~Not after what he did…~

And Mason made me promise not to tell him where we had gone, to make sure that I was safe and out of his grasp.

But even so, every time I thought of him, I felt my hair stand on end.

“Do you really think Dad is keeping up with celebrity gossip?” I asked him after a moment lost in thought.

“Do you think this is funny?” Mason asked incredulously. “God, Freya, you never ~think~, do you?”

Drenched in his disappointment, I suddenly felt like I was five years old again.

“I thought you had more self-respect than to be Liam Henderson’s next little toy,” he said. “He’s objectifying you.”

“It’s not like that,” I shot back.

“My reputation will be damaged forever!”

“Yours!?”

“Yes! I’ll be a joke!” he said, choking on his words. “Do you know what they’re going to say at work?”

“What?”

“My boss will think that I used you to secure Liam as a client.”

“The truth is worse, isn’t it?” I shot back.

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked me.

“What would your boss think if he knew that you ~gambled~ me off to your client?” I said sharply. “~You~ objectified me first, Mason.”

That seemed to silence him, at least for a moment.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” I continued, “but I’m not actually ~involved~ with Liam. It’s all for show. A PR stunt to improve the public’s perception of him.”

“Freya,” Mason began, “the line between perception and reality is razor fucking thin,” he said, grabbing my wrist. “Don’t cut yourself on it. I can’t always be there to pick up the pieces.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Mason. You ~haven’t~ always been there.”

“So what? I should just go, then? Leave you here to be eaten by the dogs?”

“Yes,” I said firmly. “You really ~should~ go.”

“Fine,” he said, “but don’t come around begging me for help when he tosses you to the curb.”

“Fine.” I numbly led him to the door.

When I opened it, I jumped back, startled.

Liam was standing in the hallway, clearly eavesdropping on our conversation.

Without saying a word to Liam, Mason stormed down the hall and disappeared from the apartment.

I could feel Liam’s eyes burning into me like coals, and I couldn’t take the heat. I retreated back into my barebones room and sat on the edge of the bed.

A moment later, Liam sat down next to me.

LIAM

Hearing Mason’s words had infuriated me.

His voice booming from Freya’s room took me back to the first night I had met her.

The way that Mason had openly mocked her in front of a group of strangers.

How he toyed with her instead of just giving her the help she needed.

And how I, in an attempt to intervene, only made the situation much, much worse.

Freya was right.

We had both treated her like an object even though she was a full fucking human being.

I’d never really bothered to take what she wanted into consideration.

I’d just assumed that I knew what was best for her—that, in due time, she would understand that working for me would be the solution to all of her problems.

I’d had fans pay $1000 just to get a single selfie with me during a meet and greet.

That kind of attention acted like helium, inflating my head until I floated off the ground and lost touch with reality.

And while I had completely rearranged Freya’s life, I hadn’t even bothered to ask her about her past…her troubles…the skeletons in her closet.

I’d never taken the time to actually get to know her.

~Hell, I never even asked her about her art.~

Lucinda had trained me endlessly in how to talk about myself, but I was lost when it came to asking sincere questions about another person.

And now I had just overheard that Freya might be in danger with her father…because of ~me.~

~What kind of man is their dad, anyway?~

~What did he do to make Freya and Mason so afraid?~

As I sat next to Freya on the edge of her bed, I heard how labored her breathing was. She was trembling.

“I can fix this,” I said, although I knew that my words were empty.

I didn’t understand the scope of her problems or how I could possibly solve them.

“It’s okay,” she breathed out, but the crack in her voice betrayed her.

“Your brother’s right,” I said. “It’s my fault. If I hadn’t been so desperate to get Jazelle off my back last night, you wouldn’t be in this situation.”

“You didn’t force me to come with you,” she said. “I made my own choice in the end. I should have known better.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I said. “You’re letting Mason get into your head. He’s making you think this is your fault, but it’s not. I hate the way he talks to you.”

“Like father, like son,” she muttered.

“Can you tell me what happened…with your father, I mean.”

“It’s a long story,” she said, still shaking.

I nodded, encouraging her to tell me something. Anything.

“Alcohol was his weakness, and in the end, it made him violent,” she said. “After that, Mason moved me out to New York. We haven’t spoken to him since.”

She stopped talking abruptly, holding back on any more details of the trauma.

I wanted to know more, but I knew I couldn’t expect her to open up to me when I had never been willing to do the same with her.

She didn’t look like she wanted to share anymore, so I figured that now was as good a time as any for me to do it.

I draped my arm over her shoulders and pulled her in close.

Feeling the warmth of her body next to mine, I found the courage to tell her part of my own story.

“Jenna died when I was thirteen,” I said, and saw her eyes flick up to meet mine in stunned silence.

“She was eight when she was diagnosed with leukemia, and my parents couldn’t afford her medical bills,” I continued.

“They never fought before she got sick, but after that, they fought every single day. And she just kept getting worse.”

I had to stop talking, the words threatening to turn into sobs.

“Where were you when she died?” Freya asked me.

Part of me wanted to storm out of her room. To lock myself in mine. To shut her, and the world, out.

Another part of me was experiencing a huge, cathartic release of pent-up emotion. I listened to that part and kept going.

“I was next to her,” I said. “She was rushed to the hospital after she collapsed in the kitchen. I sat with her the entire time while my parents were off somewhere…

“I just—I just remember the machines pumping liquid into her tiny body were relentless. It was so loud.”

For a moment, I could hear that horrible sound again, as clearly as if I was back in that stark-white room.

“Jenna opened her eyes for just a moment, and I saw something in them that I hadn’t seen before,” I said.

“She wasn’t going to fight anymore. She couldn’t stay for me. She had to leave us. To leave me,” I finished, wiping a tear from my eye before Freya could see me.

Freya turned her body to face mine. She reached out her arms and pulled me in for a hug, the tips of her nails caressing my neck, my back, running down the ridges of my spine.

I couldn’t remember the last time somebody had held me like this. I wanted to sink into her touch until I disappeared.

“You shouldn’t stay with me either, Freya. I’m a disaster waiting to happen. I’ll ruin your life.”

“No,” she said, squeezing me tighter, my cheek finding a home in the nape of her neck. “I’m not going to let my dad or Mason scare me anymore. I’m not gonna leave.”

With those words, Freya had taken a hammer to the stone wall that I’d built around my heart. She created a tunnel for me to escape from the prison I had made for myself.

Just then, there was a soft knock on the door.

“So…” Lucinda said. “What’s your final answer, Freya?”

Freya released me from her grasp. “I’ll do it,” she replied.

A smile spread over Lucinda’s face. “Great,” she said. “Get ready, then! You’re going with Liam to the studio in half an hour.”

Then Luce looked at me. “And you’re going to actually ~make~ it there today in one sober piece.”

I looked at Freya, sure that the idea would scare her off.

But instead, she just nodded.

~I can’t believe she’s willing to do this for me…~

~How long will that last?~