Page 32 of Unwrapping Deviance

I roll my tongue over my teeth and taste the copper. I grunt and accept the offering.

“Thanks.”

She nods and faces forward.

“Let’s get breakfast,” Daniel decides. “We’ll eat, get groceries for the next few days and go grab your bike. Sound good?”

It doesn’t.

My baby’s already been behind bars for hours. Who knows what they’re doing to her, but I know why he’s chosen that order; the impound is in the opposite direction of town, the restaurants and shops, but it’s in the direction of the cabin. It wouldn’t make sense to go back and forth.

So, I relent.

I sit back in my seat and do my best to clean the blood off my face. But the whole time, my attention keeps drifting to the figure holding my brother’s fingers between both of her hands. Thumb gliding over his knuckles. Her face is turned to the window, head back, quiet like she’s a million miles away.

Her slap is still a sharp reminder across my cheek. She’s a tiny thing, but she carries a wallop. I almost saw stars.

It was my own hurt and anger that kept me from feeling the full burn of it.

“The fact that you think I would ever choose you over Daniel...”

Why would she?

No one ever did.

Daniel is what she deserves. He’s the one everyone has always ever wanted.

The athlete. The guy every girl wanted because he wasn’t an anti-social reject with severe aggression.

I was alwaysthe otherMacAllister. The weird, emo kid with the baggy hoodies in the middle of a heat wave. The stoner and burn out with no future.

No one ever picked me, and I’ve learned to live with that. Still, something about hearing Mira say it ... this random girlwho I shouldn’t give two shits about, I was eighteen all over again and it was Lucy standing in front of me. Spitting those words from her soft lips still coated in my cum.

My fingers drum against my thigh. A restless patter that weirdly calms the anxious energy coursing through my nerves. My gaze slants back to the tiny bundle watching the tidy streets of Jefferson scroll past her window with her lip caught between her teeth.

The image of her lunging at Walton to stop him from hitting me replays through my mind. Her tiny frame clinging to his arm, trying to wrestle it down.

Aside from Daniel, no one has ever stood up for me before.

Mom tried.

But never a stranger with no motives or reason to. She hadn’t even paused.

“Why did no one help?”

The silence had stretched for so long, both Daniel and I lost in our thoughts, that we jump with Mira’s quiet question.

“What?” Daniel asks.

Mira tips her chin towards a small cluster of people huddled around a lemonade stand some chubby cheeked little girl has set up along the curb.

“They saw what was happening. No one did anything. Actually acted like they didn’t even notice.” She turns her face to the man behind the wheel, her brows creased between the turmoil behind her eyes. “They were going to shoot Christian. I don’t understand. What did you guys do that was this bad?”

Daniel’s deep exhale packs into the cabin and I don’t blame him. I definitely don’t envy the decision he now has to make.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs at long last. “I’m sorry you had to see that. It’s my fault for leaving you—”

“You didn’t leave me outside a crack den, Daniel. It was the police station. I wasn’t approached by meth heads. They were law enforcement. I don’t understand...”

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