When the operator answers, I ask for her room. She patches me through and Mom’s groggy voice comes over the line on the third ring.

“Hey, Mom. It’s me.”

“Who else would it be? It’s not as though I have a husband anymore. And my son doesn’t give a shit about me.” Her voice is harsh. It’s not a good day, though when it comes to me, I guess it never really is.

“How are you? How are things going?”

She skips my question completely. “Where’s your brother? I want to speak to my son.”

My heart aches at her words, aches because even though she loves Maddox more, I don’t get why she can’t love me. Because I was suddenly a daddy’s girl and that has somehow turned me into a monster in her eyes and Maddox into an angel?

Which I could handle, if it gave her—or him—some comfort, but I know it doesn’t because Maddox wants nothing to do with her, the same way she wants nothing to do with me.

“He’s not here. He’s—”

The line goes dead. I try not to let the empty air squeeze through my pores and find its way inside me. I don’t need it there. Not anymore. I would do anything to bring our family back together. Why doesn’t she see that?

I will the tears away, not wanting to shed them today. I cry too much. For now, I only want to sleep. Sleep and pretend nothing is the way it is.

* * *

“I need you to call Mom,” I tell Maddox when I wake up. He’s sitting on the small balcony, smoking a cigarette again.

“Good morning to you too.” He takes another pull on the cancer stick.

“I’m serious, Maddy. I called to check on her this morning and she hung up on me. You know she would rather talk to you. We need to make sure everything’s okay.”

“If she hung up on you, that says she’s okay. That she’s like she always is.”

“You know—”

“No, actually, I don’t know what you mean.” He stands, leans against the railing and looks at me. “You say I take too much blame, but look at you, Laney. You think you’re going to save us all. You keep pushing, trying to fix her when she treats you like shit. You’re getting close to that prick, thinking you’ll make it better, when you know he’s just going to hurt you.”

I refuse to hear the truth in his words. Refuse to discuss Adrian with him. “Just call her. Two minutes. That’s all I ask.”

He sighs. “Why do you do this to yourself?”

The way he looks at me breaks my heart. I know he loves me. Know he feels like he has an obligation to take care of me because Mom was so mad at me, so hurtful after Dad went to prison. Her words try and find their way into my head, but I slam the door on them like I always do.

“I know we’ve been fighting a lot and I hate that. You’re my brother… my best friend. I know I push you and we don’t understand each other, but I need this. I need you to check on her and I need… I want us to get along. I don’t want to fight with you anymore.”

He closes his eyes tightly. I see his jaw tense. “You’re too good for the way she treats you. I hate her for that. You didn’t deserve any of this, little sister.”

Taking a step forward, I hug him. Hug him even though he stinks like cigarettes. The embrace doesn’t last long and then he’s pulling away. Dialing the phone and grunting a hello into it when she answers. And then he listens as she talks. Asks how she’s doing. She doesn’t hang up on him. She doesn’t yell. It’s Maddox who says he has to go a few minutes later.

I hear her voice through the phone when she says, “I know you only called because of her. Your father was the same way. She’s so spoiled. No one could ever tell her—”

Maddox turns off the phone. “I’m not doing that again.”

My chin quivers as I shake my head, telling him I won’t ask him to.

“Don’t fucking listen to her, Laney. None of this was your fault.” He ruffles my hair like I’m ten years old and then goes into the apartment. And I know that he thinks it’s his fault, but he’ll never tell me why.

Maddox has been gone to work less than an hour when the banging starts on my front door. It scares me at first, and I pick up my phone, ready to call someone if I have to, when Adrian’s voice breaks through the thin wall.

“Fuck,” he mumbles, and I give a small smile, wondering if he hit the door with his injured hand. My heart jumps, shocked that he’s there, but then it does a free fall because it’s probably not a good thing that he is.

I open the door, seeing a shadow of stubble on his face. The swelling has gone down in his eye, and it’s mostly only the purple ring.

“I need to get out of here.” His voice is calm, but I sense the urgency beneath his words.

“What happened? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

He shakes his head. “I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I need to go. I need to fucking breathe and I’m suffocating here. My phone rings every ten minutes and people show up at my house and I called…”

He doesn’t finish.

“Called who?”

“You’ve been crying.” He studies my face, slightly cocks his head like he does sometimes.

“I’m fine. It’s just stuff with my mom. Who did you call?”

Again he ignores my question. “I want to get lost. Have you ever wanted to get fucking lost? That’s all I want. I’ll be back. I just didn’t want you to think I bailed on you. Maybe your brother can—”

“They caught them. My boss got a phone call. One of them confessed, which is why they don’t need us to identify them. They were young kids, but even if they hadn’t been arrested, I wouldn’t need my brother to protect me.”

“What happened with your mom?” His eyebrow rises and I know he’s doing what I did when I asked again who he called.

“She hates me for not letting her die.” The way his lips curl down and his jaw tenses, I know he didn’t expect the answer. “Though I guess if I’m being honest, I’d admit that she had issues with me before that.”

As I’m standing here talking to him, I realize I can breathe too. That after speaking to Mom and fighting with Maddox so much, I was feeling the exact way he does—like I’m suffocating.

“Let me come with you.”

He takes a step backward and fear hits me. I’m scared he’s going to say no and I’ll be embarrassed I asked, and I realize how much I really do want to just… go. I’ve never been able to do something like this. Moving here is the closest I’ve come to something like that, but even that was with Maddox. It was, in my own strange way, for my family. Going with Adrian would be for me.

But he doesn’t tell me no and he doesn’t keep walking away. Instead he grabs my hand and pulls me to him. I recognize his scent now—all outdoors mixed with boy. His heat is familiar. The way he lines up against me is familiar and it shouldn’t be. Not on the level it is.

“You know if you go with me, there will be no escaping me anymore? That I’ll make you mine.”

And I know he doesn’t mean his to keep, but it still pumps all sorts of happy electricity into me. The kind of static I think we both deserve.

“What if…” Say it, say it, say it. “What if I don’t want to escape?”

“You should,” he tells me. “But I’m bastard enough to want you to stay.”

I expect him to kiss me, but he doesn’t. Instead he walks into my house and I follow him. “We’ll only be gone a day or two, so pack what you want.”

Giddiness pumps through my veins. This is the one thing I have that’s something I want and not just for me, but for him. For us. Because I think he actually wants me to go. An adventure no matter how short-lived. “Where are we going?” I ask as I grab a bag out of my closet.

“We can just drive for all I care, I just need out.”

It’s what he does. I’m not stupid enough not to see that. He ran from what happened, from his sister, and when he needs a break, he continues to run, even now. Does it make a difference that he’s bringing someone along this time? That he’s not going for good and he’s trusting another person with that part of him? I don’t know, but I really hope so.