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“You didn’t tell me the truth,” I snarled, furious. “I was standing right there, asking you, fuckingbeggingyou to just tell me what was happening to her, and you didn’t!”

“I couldn’t—”

“You asked me to look after her, and then you took her away from me! You took her back tohim,” I roared, chest heaving.

“Because I had no choice,” he hissed. “You have no idea what I’ve been dealing with.”

“That’s a cop-out answer,” I spat, running a hand through my hair. “Everyone has a choice.”

“And every fucker has an answer for every other fucker’s problem—until it’s their own fucking problem and then they’re fucked,” Joey sneered. “You think you know, but you have no idea.”

“This has been going on for years, hasn’t it?” I demanded. “And you all just…buried it.”

“It wasn’t an everyday thing,” he snarled down the line. “Our old man has a drinking problem. I’m usually there to prevent shit going down. I try! I fucking try, okay? But I wasn’t on Saturday. I had training. I didn’t know… I didn’t expect anything to happen. How was I supposed to know? I thought she was safe. I thought she was in Dublin withyou! His bad day is Wednesday—”

“Oh,I’m sorry,” I sneered, sinking down in the back seat of the car. “I wasn’t aware that he had a beating schedule! Is it only Wednesdays he likes to knock her around? Should I pick her up on Tuesdays and drop her back on Thursdays? Would that suit him?”

“Listen to me—”

“Where is she now?” I demanded. “Are you with her? At your house? Is he there, too?” I knew I was going to lose my mind if he gave me the wrong answer. In my mind, there was only one answer to this fucked-up question. Their father needed tonotbe there. He needed to be as far away from her as humanly possible. I couldn’t fucking bear the thought of it. Putting his hands on her. Looking at her.Touching her…“Is he near her?” I choked out. “Has he touched her?”

“Would you just stop talking andlistento—”

“I should have trusted my gut,” I spat out, interrupting him again. “I knew there was something off about your family. I bleeding knew it. That night you came and picked her up? Everything inside of me was screaming to keep her with me. And instead of listening to the red flags shooting up in my head, instead of opening my goddamn eyes, I pushed it down. Because I kept thinking, no…no, this guy loves his sister. He wouldn’t stand by and let anything happen to her.” I had to bite my knuckles to stop myself from driving my fist through the window of my father’s car. “More fool me!”

“Fuck you, rich boy!” he choked out. “It’s easy for you to judge me. You’ve never seen hardship a day in your entitled life. I did everything I could for my family.”

“Except for the right thing,” I shot back, livid. “You are aware that’s how he has so much power over you, right?” I gripped the phone tighter. “Keeping quiet solvesnothingfor you andeverythingfor him!”

“She’s sixteen, asshole!” Joey roared down the line. “What do you think would have happened to Shannon if I went running to the Gards? She’d have been thrown into a care home, that’s what! And there’s more than just her to think about. I have three little brothers to look out for.”

I opened my mouth to protest and then quickly stopped.

He was right.

I dropped my head. “Fuck.”

“Yeah. Fuck,” Joey sneered. “This isn’t a movie, Kavanagh. This is our life. It’s real, it sucks, and you don’t know a damn thing about it. We’ve been in care. We’ve lived through that. For Christ’s sake, our brother was—” He stopped short and exhaled a ragged breath. “We’ve been in the system, we know the score, so before you throw blame at me for not doing something, ask yourself why we would prefer to stay with him than go back!”

It took me a moment to absorb his words before speaking again. “Well, here’s what I do know. I know that I’m on the way to your house right now, and I know that if I find him there, if he’s anywhere near your sister, I’m going to bring the world of trouble to the scumbag’s doorstep—”

“She’s not at the house, asshole,” Joey erupted in my ear. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. She’s at the fucking hospital!”

My heart stopped dead in my chest.

“I took her there myself on Saturday evening,” he choked out. “After our old man beat her to within an inch of her life for messing around withyou. Some asshole teacher from Tommen called the house and reported that he found her getting off with you in a changing room, so fuck you back, Johnny Kavanagh. If this is on me, then it’s on you, too!”

The line went dead and I just sat there, numb to the bone, feeling a million different emotions invade my body, and stared blankly at the phone in my hands.

I could hear my parents talking rapidly to each other, but I couldn’t make sense of what they were saying. A few seconds later, my father climbed into the driver’s seat and cranked the engine.

“I told you,” I said, eyes locked on the back of his head as the car tore off down the driveway. “I’m not a liar.”

7

Not Today

Shannon

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