ROYAL (22 page)

“I’ve never seen you look at anyone like that,” she says.

“Like what?”

“With such . . . hatred in your eyes.”

I nod. I’m not sure what she wants me to say, but I’m not
about to deny the fact that I hate my sister. I hate what she did. I hate what
she’s done. I hate everything about her self-centered, ugly little heart.

“I need to get gas,” I say, changing the subject.

We pull into a little Conoco station on the corner of
Glidden’s main drag. It’s one of the few places open today, and it’s packed.
Cars pull up, frantic husbands run out with random gallons of milk and cartons
of eggs, stressed travelers refuel their mini vans, and tired toddlers throw
tantrums as their parents pop a new DVD into their rear entertainment systems.

I park in front of a vacant pump, and Demi grabs her bag.

“I’m going to get us some wine for tonight.” She points
inside and gives me a wink that sends a twitch to my cock.

I fill my thirsty car and grit my teeth when the credit card
machine is down. It instructs me to go inside and pay, but there’s a line ten
people long.

Guess I don’t have a choice.

All I want to do is go back to my place and lose track of
time for a few hours with Demi. She’s the only highlight of this shit-tastic
day, and she’s so fucking gorgeous I want to devour her from head to toe.

She needs to be naked, in my bed, her curvy legs wrapped
around mine and her nails digging into my ass as I bury my cock inside that
perfect pussy of hers all night long.

From outside, I see the top of her head as she peruses the
gas station’s fancy wine selection. Pulling my wallet from my pocket, I head
inside and get in line.

“Oh, hey,” she says when she sees me. I take the bottle from
her hand.

“You can head on out if you want.” I nod to the car.

The line grows shorter when a second checker comes to the
front. A couple more people and I’m next.

My cock throbs when I think about what we’re going to be
doing in T minus fifteen minutes.

“Okay, I’ll see you in a few.” Demi kisses my cheek and
heads out, the bells on the door chiming as she skips through.

But then my stomach drops. For reasons I never could’ve
anticipated.

Two more people are ahead of me, but I fish a fifty out of
my wallet and slap it on the counter, telling the cashier to keep the change.

I have to get outside.

Now.

Demi

“Hey. Hey, you.” A woman leaning against the brick façade of
the gas station calls after me as I head to Royal’s car.

I turn around, doing a double take. She looks familiar, but
I can’t immediately place her. Matte, dark hair frames a round face, and pencil
thin eyebrows accent blue, almond-shaped eyes. She wears a lot of makeup, like
a woman with secrets for days, and her full lips are bunched into a hidden
smirk.

She reminds me of a Bratz doll, pretty by her own standards
and looking like she’s completely up to no good.

Stopping and adjusting the purse strap over my shoulder, I
stare a little harder and rack my brain.

I know I’ve seen her before . . .

The woman motions me closer. Her knee is bent, her foot
pressed against the back of a cage of propane tanks now.

“Excuse me, do I know you?” I ask, stepping closer.

Glancing inside the Conoco station, I see Royal slapping
some cash on the counter and rushing to get out the door.

“You don’t know me, no.” She produces a lit cigarette from
behind her, tapping the ash on the sidewalk and taking a slow drag. Clear gray
smoke curls in front of her face and she laughs. “But we have something in
common.”

Narrowing my eyes, I shake my head. “What are you talking
about?”

Royal bursts through the doors, the bottle of my wine under
his arm.

“What the hell are you doing here, Pandora?” he says.

She takes another drag and a couple of steps toward him,
blowing a puff of smoke in his face.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She smirks. “What, I’m not
allowed in Glidden ‘cause all of a sudden you think your fucking cock is too
good for me? Running around with this rich bitch now, so you can’t be seen
associating with me?”

“Royal, what is she talking about?” I move closer to him.

“This is my boss’s daughter. Pandora.” His jaw clenches when
he says her name, and he watches her every move. “We used to . . . hang out. In
our free time.”

“Oh,” I say. “
Oh
.”

That’s where I’ve seen her. At the garage the other week.

She doesn’t seem like the kind of woman I imagined Royal
with over those lost years. In fact, she’s the opposite of what I ever pictured
for him.

I won’t judge him though. Rixton County is slim pickings.
All the smart, pretty, ambitious girls always move to Manhattan.

 
Royal hooks his
hand into the crook of my elbow and nods toward the car.

“Let’s go,” he says.

Pandora’s nose scrunches, and she flicks her cigarette,
grinding it into a paper and tobacco stump with the scuffed toe of her pleather
boots.

“Do you know?” Pandora looks directly at me.

“Do I know what?” I ask.

Royal leads us away from her. But she follows.

“Do you know that he’s a sex offender?” Pandora yells after
us. A man heading inside stops, stares, and then continues. A woman pumping gas
takes a step closer to her sedan. “That’s right. Your little knight in shining
armor is a fucking perv.”

My ears ring, and I can’t bring myself to look at him.

Sex offender?

His hands have explored every inch of my body. His cock has
felt me from the inside. His mouth, his fingers, his tongue . . .

My stomach rolls and flips, and I feel a dry heave forming
in the base of my belly.

Not to mention the fact that being associated with a sex
offender is career suicide when you’re an elementary educator. No one, and I
mean no one, wants their child’s teacher to be fucking a sex offender.

For a moment, my disgust fades and everything turns red. My
head spins, and my chest thumps. I’m trembling, but I’m not scared.

I’m furious.

No wonder he didn’t want me to know.

No wonder he kept delaying. Distracting. Prolonging.

No wonder my parents want nothing to do with him.

My mind is flooded with every disgusting, sick, and vile
assumption it can conjure, and my legs wobble as he leads me to his Challenger
and opens the door.

“Get in, Demi. I’ll tell you everything.

Royal

{seven years ago}

I’m barreling down the highway in my truck, northbound to
Saint Charmaine where my fifteen-year-old kid sister spends most of her days
getting herself into all kinds of trouble.

Last time I saw Misty, she was strung out on something,
showing off a homemade cross tattoo she got from one of her foster brothers.
We’re not even religious, but she claimed she’d been having visions.

And the following week, I heard she was expelled from Saint
Charmaine High.

The week after that, she was apprehended for shoplifting makeup
and condoms from the local Wal-Mart. The store manager let her go, but she
earned herself a lifetime ban from store #82746A.

She’s a lost soul, and I can’t blame her.

She’s grown up never knowing the love of a parent. Never
having guidance and boundaries and expectations. Never having a family like the
Rosewoods take her in and treat her like one of their own.

I know for damn sure I wouldn’t be who I am if it weren’t
for the Rosewoods. They’re the closest thing to an actual family I’ve ever
known.

Cranking the window, I let the wind hit my face and glance
down to check my phone. I haven’t been able to reach her since I got her
distress text earlier.

The only time I hear from Misty anymore is when she’s in
trouble, and she needs me to bail her out. And as her older brother, I don’t
have a choice. I’m all she’s got.

She has no one.

The state failed her, though no one admits it.

She’s one of eleven foster children in a group home setting
in Saint Charmaine, and the foster parents don’t give a rat’s ass what she
does. She stays out late and comes home looking like death, and they don’t
question it.

As long as they pass their inspections and visits, that’s
all that matters.

Meanwhile, they sit back and collect all the benefits they
need. Money meant to give her food and shelter, she doesn’t even see. She
shouldn’t be as skinny as she is, and she shouldn’t be wearing hand-me-down
clothes from the Sears juniors department.

Misty told me once she spends most of her time at her best
friend, Sierra’s, house. Her father, Rick, creeps me the fuck out, but Misty
said he’s like a daddy to her. And she used that word. Daddy. Like she’s a
fucking kindergartener.

Rick’s missing a couple of teeth, and his daily uniform
consists of holey jeans and wife beaters, and the dilapidated shit hole he
calls home leans to the left, and the paint peels from the siding in thin,
curled strips. The yard is more dirt than grass, and the roof sags in the
middle. Can’t take care of his shit, but at least he keeps my sister fed and
minded, which is more than anyone else in Saint Charmaine has ever done for
her.

Misty sent me an SOS text this afternoon when Demi and I
were coming back from getting ice cream. The text was our secret code word:
FEBRUARY. February was the month we were taken from Mona’s care and separated,
and as a code word, February is our way of saying, “I need you. It’s an
emergency.”

I’ve always told her to say the word, and I’ll come running.
No questions asked.

And that’s what I’m doing.

I pull off on an exit, heart pounding, and head toward
Sierra’s house.

I know exactly where it is, because I’ve dropped her off
there before when she begged and pleaded and cried for me not to take her back
to the foster house. She claimed two of her foster brothers were bullying her,
making her show them her tits and trying to sneak into her bedroom at night.
She claimed she sleeps with the dresser in front of the door, at least when
she’s there, but most of the time she sleeps at Sierra’s.

I guess it’s the lesser of the evils.

I filed a complaint with her caseworker once. Evidently her
claims were unfounded, because she was never removed from their care and life
seemed to go on for the caregivers and all involved.

But the thought of anyone touching my little sister like
that makes my blood boil. The first time she told me, I got black-out angry. I
wanted to kill those motherfuckers, and I would have had Misty not stopped me.

She said going to them and threatening them would only make
it worse, and I certainly didn’t want to do that for her.

By the time I pull up to Sierra’s house and fly out of my
truck, all I hear are screams. People yelling. Male and female.

The slam of a door rattles the windows on the front of the
crooked house. Clanking and shattering and stomping sounds grow louder as I
approach. Rick’s truck is parked outside, the driver’s side door partially ajar
like he was going to go somewhere and changed his mind.

Or like he was grabbing a shotgun from behind the truck
bench.

Fuck.

“Misty!” I bang on the rickety screen door and then walk in.
I don’t have time to be fucking proper. “Misty, where are you?”

The house smells like chemicals, and my eyes burn the second
I step in. After a few breaths, my lungs burn too.

“Royal!” The stomp of Misty’s feet down the stairs pulls my
attention in that direction. She flies into my arms, her cheeks damp with
tears, her bleach blonde hair pulled in every direction, and her clothes ripped
and torn. The swelling on the side of her face tells me that fucking bastard
hit her.

“Shit, Misty. What’d he do to you?” I brush the hair from
her face, and her dark eyes fill with tears. “I’m gonna kill him. I’ll fucking
murder him for hurting you.”

“Who the hell is in my house?” Rick’s voice booms from the
top of the stairs. The tinny clinking of his belt as he fastens his torn jeans
is all I see from my angle.

Rick’s a big man, and each step he takes makes the stairs
creak and crack and the handrail lean.

“You just come in my house?” Rick spits when he talks.

“What’d you do to Misty?” I fire back.

She stands behind me, taking fistfuls of my shirt and
holding onto me for dear life.

“You fucking hit my sister? My fifteen year old sister?” I
ask. “Answer me, asshole.”

“Ain’t none of your damn business, son.” Rick pulls a pack
of cigarettes from his pocket and flicks the top of his lighter open, flashing
a smug, yellow-toothed grin as he lights up. “What, you think you’re the
fucking po-lice? Busting in my house, demanding to know what the hell me and my
girl are doing in the privacy of our own home?”

My stomach deadweights. I’m going to be sick.

“You . . . are you touching my sister?” I turn to Misty and
she stares down at the dingy, matted carpet beneath her feet. “Fuck, Mis. Tell
me you’re not screwing Rick. You’re fifteen.”

Misty may have seen and done more things than most adults in
this life, but she’s still a goddamn child.

Rick takes heavy steps toward us, brushing his shoulder
against mine and grabbing my sister by the arm. I reach for him, pushing him
off her, and he shoves me hard enough that I land on top of a nearby coffee
table. The thing collapses beneath me, shards of broken glass embedding into
the palms of my hands.

I’m cut, bleeding, but I don’t feel it.

All I see is red, and I want to fucking murder that
motherfucker.

Rising up, I brush the beads of glass off my clothes and
move by the front door where Rick is messing with Misty. He grabs her ass,
giving it a squeeze, and she adjusts her torn shirt, trying—and failing—to
cover up a little more.

“Don’t fucking touch her,” I say.

Rick spins to face me, peering down his bumpy nose and
sneering. He takes a drag off his ashy cigarette and blows the smoke in my
face.

“Yeah? What are you gonna do about it?” Rick laughs. He
hooks his arm around her shoulders, and she hunches down, pleading for help
with her dark-as-midnight eyes. Rick kisses her forehead and laughs. “We’re in
love. Your sister loves me. And she needs me. Ain’t that right, babe?”

He lifts her lanky arm, the one she’d kept hidden and
pressed against her body since the moment I walked in.

It’s covered in track marks.

And now it makes sense. Rick is her supplier. He got her
addicted, he’s feeding her addiction, and he has complete control over her.

I have to get her out of here. I have to get her out of
Saint Charmaine. She’s coming back to Rixton Falls with me. I’ll beg and plead
with Robert and Bliss to take her in if I have to, but she can’t stay here.

She’s going to die here.

I have to save her.

I’m the only one who truly gives a shit about this lost
little fifteen-year-old.

“I said,” Rick nudges Misty. “Ain’t that right, babe? Tell
your brother you love me.”

Misty’s bottom lip trembles, and for a second I think she’s
upset because he’s coercing her.

“I . . . I’m sorry, Royal.” My heart stops in my chest with
her words. “I . . . I do love Rick. I love him so much.”

That forty-year-old asshole wears his smug smile loud and
proud. “See. Told you.”

“You’re a kid, Mis. You don’t know what you’re saying.
You’re addicted. He’s got you all addicted, and you’re afraid to be without
him.” I reach for her, trying to pull her into me. “Come on. You’re coming home
with me. We’re getting you out of this shit hole. You need to get clean.”

Misty shakes her head, fat tears sliding down puffy, bruised
cheeks.

“Why’d you text me?” My voice is low, not like it makes a
difference. Rick is watching our every move with a celebratory smile because he
knows nothing I’m saying is going to get through to Misty.

That’s how it works with addicts. Addiction always wins.
Addiction always gets the last word.

“I thought you were in trouble. That’s why I came,” I say.
“What happened?”

Rick squeezes her shoulders before patting her back. Hard.

“She just had a little performance anxiety, that’s all,” he
says, slicking a wet tongue across his crooked teeth. “Was her first time. She
was a little nervous.”

Without thinking, I pull back and sock him across his jaw
with a right hook. He stumbles backward, knocking over an empty plant stand and
hitting the back of his head on the wall so hard it leaves a dent.

He seems out of it for a second, so I hook Misty’s arm and
pull her toward the door.

“We’re leaving.” I’m seething, my hand balled into a pained
fist and throbbing.

She jerks her arm back. “I don’t want to.”

Rick rises, gains his footing, and stumbles my way, looking
like he’s two seconds from charging me like a linebacker into a quarterback.
Almost in slow motion, he rears back and then lunges. Misty blocks him and he
pushes her to the ground. She yelps when she lands on her elbow, and I fall to
her side.

“You, okay?” I ask.

She squeezes her arm with her opposite hand and nods, her
teeth digging into her lower lip.

“Come on, let’s go.” I pull her to her feet. As soon as I
get her to my truck, I’m calling the police to deal with him. And I’ll make
damn sure he’s sent away for a good, long time for statutory rape. Drug
possession and distribution. Assault. Anything and everything.

“You’re not going anywhere with her.” Rick grabs her by the
wrist, nearly snapping it, and yanks her away like a fucking rag doll.

I bet Misty doesn’t weigh a pound over eighty.

“Baby doll, you know I love you. I’d never do anything to
hurt you.” Rick combs his meaty fingers through her hair and she stares up into
his eyes with equal parts love and fear. “That was a misunderstanding upstairs.
That wasn’t me. You’re just so damn sexy, I couldn’t keep my hands off you. I
couldn’t wait. And you were
so
good.”

I’m going to be sick.

“Baby, I need you. Don’t go with him. He’s your brother, but
he ain’t never gave two shits about you. Only pops up when you’re in trouble,
like he’s some kind of babysitter or some shit.”

My chest burns. I fucking hate that Rick’s right. I
should’ve been here more for my sister. I should’ve been around for the good
times and not just the bad.

“You still love me?” Rick asks, flashing deceptive puppy dog
eyes at my sister.

I’m sure she’s starved for those words. It wouldn’t surprise
me if she can count on two hands the number of times she’s heard those words in
her life. And I’m sure Rick knows it. He’s capitalizing on this broken, fragile
girl who wanted nothing more than for someone to give two fucks about her.

“You know I’d do anything for you, babe.” Rick kisses her
forehead, pretending I’m not standing there. His voice is soft and tender, like
a loving partner, like someone who wants to protect her, keep her safe and warm
and happy. He’s not acting like he just fucking raped and beat her an hour ago.
“You’re my world, Sugar Bee.”

Misty
smiles
.

Fucking smiles.