Page 82 of All In Good Time

“You’re acting weird,” she said, not having the decency to ease into it. She never did. If there was one thing she was good for, it was saying exactly what she thought.

“Fuck you.” She would only be about the fiftieth person to make that observation. Mal was the first, however, to not blink at his venomous outburst. Maybe a year ago she would have shrunk back into her seat, terrified of what he would do next—but she wasn’t scared of him anymore. Something he was both grateful for and weirded out by.

“Is this about Becca?”

Her name had become a chemical reaction. Anytime it was mentioned to him, he bristled and exploded like potassium metal in contact with water.

His hand slammed against the steering wheel to release his pent-up frustration. Mal leaned away with an eyebrow raised and scoffed, annoyed.

“It is sopainfullyobvious how attached you are to her and now you don’t even look at her.”

He might have been able to throw some sarcastic remarks at anyone else, and they would scurry away without a fight, but with Mal—his little sister—lying would only make him shine with dishonesty.

So he didn’t answer at all, instead, making the strategic choice to keep his mouth shut.

Mal wasn’t finished though. “I’m mad at her, too, in case you’re wondering.”

Derek’s hand tightened around the steering wheel. For some reason, he felt he had some otherworldly claim to his anger toward Becca. Onlyhecould be upset at her, no one else. Therefore, he turned and set his hardened glare on Mal, who looked like she’d expected it. “Why the hell areyoumad at her?”

She scoffed. “I know you live in your own little bubble all the time, but maybe if you paid a little more attention, you’d notice certain things—like the fact that you weren’t the only one who got the bad end of your dad’s…” She paused, but Derek already knew what was coming. He prayed silently for her to never finish the sentence. “Episodes.”

That was a kind way to put it—episodes. It made it sound temporary, short term. As if Derek hadn’t been dealing with it every day for his entire life, waiting for the bomb to explode.

But it wasn’t just Derek now. Not based on what Mal said.

He searched for the lie behind her hazel eyes. There wasn’t one.

She averted her gaze to stare at the dashboard. His focus peaked where her hand rubbed at her clean, bare wrist. Derek’s eyes homed in on the movement.

He’d probably done the same thing thousands of times.

The skin on her wrist looked the same as always, but those sorts of mannerisms didn’t appear out of thin air. They hadn’t for him.

“When you left, Mark was…upset. He wasn’t sure what to do about those people coming in, and he was frustrated, so he needed another target and…” Her sentence died off before it was done.

She didn’t need to finish, because Derek felt it. He felt those hands on his wrists, the pull of his skin, the burn of the tug. That was just the beginning for him. His wrist tingled as if the past injuries had risen up to the surface—an invisible reminder.

He’d never been at a loss for words before, but now, everything about him was as blank as the skin on Mal’s wrist. Hidden, secret, but not unfounded.

“Mal—” It was between a warning and a plea. She never did listen.

“I went to Becca, you know? I think I’m part of the reason she tried so hard to bring you back—I practically threatened her if she didn’t.”

Derek blanched, shocked by his sister’s words. Mal wasn’t lying. He could see it in her eyes when she met his, the overly serious challenge she held in them—it was the truth. Not just some lie she’d created to protect the girl she saw as an older sister.

“Why the hell are you telling me this?”

She shrugged, her hand holding her wrist gently. “Just thought you would want to know.”

He didn’t. He didn’t want to know.

The longer he went on avoiding Becca in the school halls and drawing his father’s attention from her to him, the harder it became to keep away. As much as he tried not to focus on her, it only made him think about her more. He’d managed, purely high on the power of hatred he felt from her betrayal, but he wished he could feel nothing toward her…the way he felt nothing toward everything else.

Hatred was so easy to manipulate with the right tools—simple things, like Mal’s words, cut through the anger and gave way to crumbs of the love he wanted to forget.

Dammit.

“It’s her fault we’re in this situation,” he said, his hands tightening to the wheel.

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