Page 5 of Making Choices

Bloody Cherub and her magic.

Zeke swears she’s the only person capable of pulling him out of his rage when his control snaps. Her twin brother is adamant she can read his mind. Cherub’s mum called her an empath. Personally, I’m beginning to believe she’s some kind of sorceress because only magic could’ve dragged me back to my feet considering how close I was to ending it all before she snuck into my room.

When my smile widens into a grin and the emptiness in my chest floods with gratitude, I allow the first rays of hope to light a thin pathway out of the darkness that’s been holding me captive since Jenna destroyed my life.

I’m going to survive this.

Maybe I’ll always wear a mask to disguise how broken I am, but I’ll live.

Thanks to one meddling Cherub and the truth she apologised for making me see.

The water is scalding hot when I step under it. It washes away the filth that coats me—inside and out. Relaxes me. Soothes me. I shampoo my shoulder blade length hair three times, then apply half a bottle of conditioner to assist with the knots. As it sinks in, I tilt my face under the water and blink through the strange weightlessness that’s invading my limbs as my mind and my body begins to shake off the numbness that’s been my only comfort since the funeral.

“You’ve got an hour before it starts,” Cherub yells as she bangs on the door. “I’ve laid out clean jeans and your least smelly t-shirt on your bed. Your cut is hanging on the back of the door.”

At the moment, she sounds so much like a younger version of her ever-efficient mother that I can’t stop myself from chuckling. The Shamrocks will miss Scarlett. Her loss is going to leave a hole that’ll be felt for generations. Thankfully, she raised a daughter who embodies everything that she stood for during her too-short life.

After the one-two punch of Zeke’s mother dying of cancer, then Scarlett’s fatal accident two months afterwards was compounded by Jenna’s suicide and the murder of my son weeks later, the Black Shamrocks have been beaten from pillar to post. Watching Cherub effortlessly slip into her mother’s shoes, I finally believe that we’re going to get through this as a collective. It’s going to hurt for a long time. Some days will feel like a backward step. Emotions will run high. Mistakes will be made.

But I’m going to be okay.

And so is my brotherhood.

“Thank you,” I shout back at her when she bangs a second time. “I’ve got it from here, Cherub.”

She doesn’t answer me. Not that she needs to. Her silence is enough.

Cherub has done what Zeke sent her to do, so she’ll be moving on to her next project now.

I rinse my hair and scrub at my face, then switch the water off. With a towel around my hair and another knotted around my waist, I drag the door open and step into my bedroom.

Cherub has been busy in my absence.

My dirty clothes are piled in the hamper. A scented candle I’ve never seen before has been lit. The overflowing ashtray has been cleaned out. The empty beer bottles have been removed. New sheets and a quilt cover sit folded on the bare mattress for me to remake my stripped bed. Next to them are the clothes Cherub mentioned, complete with my motorcycle boots lined up below them on the floor.

As I go to double check that my cut is where she said it is, the door opens.

Since I was expecting my mother to invade my space as soon as Cherub tells her that I’m out of bed and putting on actual clothes for the first time, I do a double take when the tall blonde responsible for my miraculous return to humanity steps inside. During the weeks I spent hiding in my room, Cherub’s matured. The mischievous glint that used to glimmer in her cerulean gaze has been replaced by a solemn air. She holds herself differently, more rigid and less playful. Her ascent into womanhood has started, and a new softness curves her body in direct contradiction to the hardness in her brittle expression.

Cherub is motherless, just as she reaches the time when she needs Scarlett’s guidance most.

Choked up by a sudden burst of empathy, I silently watch her kick the door shut with her heel. As Cherub approaches me with a hairdryer and a brush in one hand and a bunch of hair ties layered on her opposite wrist, my brain kicks into action. Swallowing deep, I exhale slowly.

This could get messy.

“Cherub,” I venture timidly. “Zeke’ll kill me if he finds out I was half-naked around you.”

“Screw Zeke.” Cherub rolls her eyes. “No matter how much he tries to make it true, he doesn’t actually own me. I love you both equally.”

“Still…” I trail off as I tighten the knot on my towel. “Maybe—”

“Seriously, just shut up.” With a quirk of her lips, she shrugs off my next round of objections before I can verbalise them. “I invaded the cut—” Cherub lowers her voice to whisper the next word. “—sluts’ dressing room and lived to tell the tale. The hair dryer works and the brush is new. I’ll deal with Zeke if he starts… all you have to do is tell me how you want your hair.”

Knowing when I’m beaten, I fist my towel harder. “Um, I don’t know… just a ponytail like usual?”

“Boring! I’m going to twist it into a bun on the top of your head, so you don’t look back on the photos one day and realise you spent the majority of your teenage years looking like a bad imitation of David Beckham at his least hot.”

“What do you know about hot?”

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