You Make Me (25 page)

“That will be when I’m dead.”

“Well, that should be sooner than later the way you’re going,” I snapped.

He turned and his face cleared. “Hey, you know what we should do? We should go to Vinalhaven and burn the house down. That will fuck with Heath for sure. What does he want it for anyway?”

For all I knew, Heath wanted to burn it down himself. “I have no idea,” I told him flatly. “Come here, Bri, lay down, okay? You look tired. I’ll give you your whiskey back, I promise.”

“Yeah? If I lay down?” His words were slurring and when he turned, he almost toppled over.

“Yes.” I took his hand and pulled him to the couch.

He sank down, heavy, giving a sigh. He turned on his side, not bothering to draw his feet up onto the couch. “Kitty Cat?”

“Yeah, Bri?”

“I didn’t mean to get drunk at Dad’s funeral. You know that, right? But I hated him for always taking in foster kids. It made me feel like I was never good enough. I just wanted him to pay attention to me.” He was still holding my hand and his palm was sweaty, his grip urgent, face distressed.

I could actually understand that. Even when I’d gotten older and I’d understood my parents needed the money, I had resented having a parade of sullen strangers through our house. But I had always felt my father’s clear affection. He and Brian had never been tight.

My anger towards him eased just slightly. “Yeah, I know you didn’t mean to. You need to go to rehab, you know that, right?”

He made a ‘pfft’ sound with his lips, then closed his eyes and immediately started snoring. I tugged my hand out of his and sighed. Going over to the bedroom I knocked on the door. “Kerri? He’s asleep, you can come out.”

A minute later I heard the lock turn and the door opened a crack. Kerri was small, thin, pale. She was what most guys would consider plain, but her eyes were intelligent. I couldn’t even imagine what the hell she was doing with Brian. “Thanks for coming over,” she said.

“Has he done this to you before?”

“No.” But her eyes flickered and I knew she was lying.

“Where is the money? When he wakes up he’s going to be pissed if you don’t have it.”

“I don’t have the money. He spent the money. He went gambling at the casino in Bangor and lost it all.”

“Oh, shit, seriously?” I bit my lip. “That’s why he got loaded, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I think he had it in his head he would double the money or something stupid.” Kerri leaned on the doorframe. She was wearing red glasses, a flannel shirt, and skinny jeans with converse. She looked way too cool for Brian.

“Why are you dating him?” I asked her bluntly.

She gave a nervous laugh and glanced over to the couch. “I’m not sure how to get out of it at this point.”

“Next time just call the cops.”

“You want me to get your brother thrown in jail?” She looked appalled.

“He would be forced to dry out.”

“Unless I’m afraid for my life, which I’m not, I’m not going to call the cops,” she said. “I’m just being honest. He would be so angry with me it would come back to haunt me.”

I studied her. She clearly knew what she was doing. I couldn’t stand there and judge her. How did I know how I would react if it was my boyfriend? And maybe she thought I was a bad sister for turning my back on him. For cutting him out of my life.

Maybe I was.

“Okay. But you can always call me. I probably should try to make more of an effort with him.” I looked over at my brother on the couch and remembered when it had been just the two of us with our parents. Before mom was really bad. When dad had two hands. Brian had been annoying, as brothers should be, but we’d had fun together too.

But then I remembered that he had called social services and because of his actions, I had lost Heath and had my heart broken.

So I set the bottle of whiskey down on the end table, gave Kerri a tight-lipped parting smile, and left.

Chapter Twenty

It’s odd, what happens when you wait for someone. Whether it’s four hours or four days or four years. You start to fixate on them. Every thought revolves around them, and every thought circles itself, around and around and around. Time ticks by slowly, a hundred thoughts crowded into each minute, each drip, drip, of the faucet while you sit and wait.

Even when you’re not sitting still, when you’re walking and studying and living, when you’re waiting, that person never truly leaves your subconscious. It’s like walking around with ankle weights on. Each step is just a little more effort, even when you’re not aware of it. Later, when the wait is lifted, when you don’t have that emotional poundage on you anymore, you can’t believe you never noticed it before. You can’t believe you slogged your way through.

As I sat in Heath’s apartment on the futon and waited for him to get home from work, I thought about all the years I had wondered and worried and deep in my heart feared that his love for me hadn’t been real. Convinced myself it was. Then tore that conviction down all over again with doubt. Before building it back up yet again, needing to believe it was real. How I had vowed to forget him, get over him, live my life as if he hadn’t existed.

But that had been impossible and I hadn’t even realized it until the wait was over, and he’d shown up in Orono. Looking for me.

I had falsely thought I was done waiting when he’d come out to Vinalhaven and we’d taken up where we had left off. After he had said he loved me. After he’d made love to me. Yet I kept waiting. I kept waiting for the truth. I kept waiting for him to share with me what he had been through, what he was thinking. What he was
doing
.

We liked to call it missing someone. But the truth was, it was waiting. Relentless, boring, painful, endless waiting. At the mercy of schedules, finances, or personal choice. Whatever kept them from us, what made us miss them, it was waiting. An endless stint in a hard chair at a doctor’s office, while we scrolled through irritation, impatience, agony, restlessness, fear.

As I sat on the bed, knees propped up, I picked at the skin on my thumbs. I bit my lip. I scratched my hair convulsively. I was waiting and I wanted to crawl out of my skin. I didn’t understand what was happening. Why Heath had kept it from me that he was seeing Brian at the bar.

It hurt and while I knew he never lied to me, this was a lie by omission and was that really any better?

All I knew was it felt like nothing good and I felt weird, off, anxious.

I sat there doing nothing but waiting, wondering if I could be pregnant. It was possible, and if I were honest with myself, over the last few days in a secret part of my soul, I had wished I was, or at least thought I wouldn’t be horrified with the news. Which was ridiculous, because in no way were we prepared to be parents. Heath hadn’t even asked when I was due to get my period or if I was worried.

Maybe I didn’t understand him as well as I thought I did.

But I knew that was a lie.

I knew exactly what he was doing. He was getting what he wanted, plain and simple. The house, me. The future he wanted, he was building it without asking.

When Heath came in around two-thirty, he kicked his boots off at the door and looked at me in surprise. “Hey. I didn’t think you’d still be awake.”

Normally I wouldn’t have been. I went to sleep around midnight usually and let him wake me up when he got home with kisses, and a seeking hand stroking me back to reality. Then when I dozed back off an hour later, I was satisfied, sleepy, warm.

But now I just stared at him, not sure where to start. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“No? Too much caffeine?” he asked with a smile, peeling off his coat, plucking his hat off his head.

I shook mine. “Brian’s girlfriend called me. He was loaded and having a temper tantrum. She asked me to go over there to calm him down.”

“Did you?” Heath looked nothing more than curious. He didn’t look surprised or wary. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? To get sucked into his shit?”

“Funny you should say that, because it seems you’ve gotten sucked into his shit yourself. Or you sucked him into your shit, I’m not sure which one.”

I expected him to deny it, though I’m not sure why. I knew he never lied. He just didn’t tell me everything.

He just gave me a knowing look. “So he told you about the house, huh? I wish he hadn’t. I wanted to tell you myself.”

“I really wish you would have told me yourself too.”

“How was I supposed to know that you were going to talk to Brian? You never talk to him.” He gave over and sank down onto the bed beside me with a sigh. “God, I’m tired.”

I just glared at him, not sure what to say. Why the hell did he not understand that there was an issue here?

When I was silent, he glanced over at me, and he rubbed his face. “Oh, no, you’re mad. Is there any way we can do this in the morning? You can be pissed at me after a good night’s sleep.”

That made me explode. That he could so easily dismiss my upset and anger. Go to sleep? Was he freaking kidding?

“Oh, I have no doubt I will still be pissed at you tomorrow, but no, I’m not just going to roll over and be fixating on why I’m upset while you happily fall asleep like nothing is wrong. How could you be spending time with my brother without talking to me about it? You know I don’t want to communicate with him. Were you really giving him free drinks?”

“Yes.”

That was it. Yes. Just yes. No explanation.

“Why? You know he’s an alcoholic. You shouldn’t feed his addiction!” Just because I didn’t like Brian on a regular basis didn’t mean I wanted to contribute to his problems. “He’s going to kill himself and you shouldn’t be handing him the gun.”

Heath made a sound of frustration. “What do you care? He is, and always has been, a waste of space. He’s selfish, he’s lazy, and he’s cruel. He deserves everything that’s coming to him.”

“He’s my brother,” I insisted.

“That doesn’t make him any less of an asshole. I was letting him get drunk because I wanted him to let down his guard around me. It’s that simple.”

“So you could take advantage of him?” I studied him, trying to understand, wanting to understand. It sounded so… planned. So intentional. So manipulative.

“Yes.”

That he said it so baldly made the hairs on the back of my neck raise. “So you could steal the house from him?”

“I didn’t steal the house. I paid him. He was going to lose it anyway because he hasn’t paid the taxes. So I offered him a solution. More than he was ever going to see if he just let the bank take it.”

“But it’s for sale, someone might have bought it…”

“Maybe. Maybe not. This way he got some cash, which he really needed, and I got the house. Win-win.”

I shivered. “But you didn’t discuss it with me, Heath. You just… did it. You got my brother drunk and you took our family home from him. Why did you do that? Was that paybacks for what he did?”

“There was an element of that involved, yes.” Heath leaned towards me, his eyes intense. “He stole you from me. He took everything good in my life and he ruined it. He took you, he took my place in your family away from me, and he took the only real home I’d ever had away. So was this revenge? Sure. I did it on purpose and I’d do it again.”

Staring at him, I tried to find any hint of remorse in his voice, but there wasn’t any. Not a drop. Sometimes his anger scared me. That he held so much resentment and rage inside him. That there were huge parts of him that I didn’t know. Had it always been that way? Had I just chosen to ignore that with the romantic fervor of being seventeen?

“Why are you so angry?” I whispered.

But he just scoffed. “You’re angry too. You just don’t admit it.”

“That’s not true. I have no intention of getting revenge on Brian.” But I had turned my back on him. I had contemplated slapping him. The fact that maybe there was an ounce of truth to what Heath said unnerved me, which in turn made me even more angry. The very thing I didn’t want to be. “But all of that aside, why the hell didn’t you tell me? What else haven’t you told me?”

“It was supposed to be a surprise. A gift.” He shook his head. “Because I’m a fucking idiot, apparently.”

“It was definitely a surprise. You should have talked to me about it. You never even asked me if I want it. Or if I want you to have it.” That didn’t sound right. It sounded selfish. But it was my childhood home. The emotion attached to that, to what my family had been, what we had never been, what no longer existed, was huge. My emotion. And yes, he was attached to that too, to the house, to my family, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t his house to do with whatever he wanted.

Only now apparently it was.

He could do whatever he wanted and he hadn’t even bothered to consult with me about it.

There was that feeling again, of being directed, led, by the men in my life. It seemed like my choices were always taken away.

“If you want me to have it?” His eyebrows shot up. “So it’s conditional? Maybe I don’t
deserve
it?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Well, what did you mean? Because I’d love to hear.” His voice was rising. “I’d love to hear how me saving your house from the bank and probably sliding into total dilapidation is a bad thing. But you know, maybe you’re just like your father and Brian and everyone else… maybe you don’t really think that I belonged there, with any of you.”

“You belonged with me,” I said firmly, starting to feel guilty, starting to panic. I hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings, to make him feel that he shouldn’t have been there. But damn it, I was right. There were things you discussed before you did them.

“But not in your family? Yeah, well, I never belonged in any family, so I don’t know why the fuck I keep trying. I wanted to make a family with you. That’s what I wanted.”

“Wanted? Past tense?”

“Don’t go looking to pick a fight with me, Cat. Seriously. I am not in the mood.”

As if I were the unreasonable one. “I’m not picking a fight. I’m trying to understand why you keep secrets from me.”

“I don’t keep secrets,” he insisted. “And if you trusted me, this wouldn’t be an issue. I’m not going to keep doing this. I’m not going to have this same goddamn conversation every time you feel jealous or insecure.”