Page 16 of Wicked Ends
When I was a little girl,I used to dress-up in my grandmother’s dresses and long strings of pearls, and sit and play the piano. “Play” was a generous term for the sounds I brought out from the old grand that sat in the music room of my grandparents’ beautiful estate, but I wasn’t deterred. My grandmother would sit and listen for hours, as if it were the most interesting thing she could think of to do with her day.
My older brother, Dale, hated my playing. He would snip the strings with wire cutters whenever he could, prompting my grandparents to call in expensive technicians, until finally, they swapped the grand for an upright with a built-in padlock.
Had they known, even then, what kind of man my brother would grow up to be? I couldn’t imagine they did. They’d have been horrified if they’d known.
When they died in a senseless car accident, leaving their considerable estate, capital, and investment portfolios to me and my brother—half for me, half for him—I’d barely registered the money. I’d only been seventeen to Dale’s twenty-one, and thegrief of losing the only two parental figures I’d ever known was too much for me to bear. It’d nearly broken me completely.
The thing that saved me?
The piano.
I avoided playing while I cried and raged and bargained with the universe to return them to me. I avoided the music room altogether for weeks. One night, when my brother had his horrible, loud, and drunk friends over, I’d retreated there. My room wasn’t safe anymore, not since he’d removed the keys from all the doors in the house except his own. Sometimes, I’d hear the handle of the door turn and someone come in while I was lying in the dark. Luckily, whoever it was hadn’t gotten brave enough to close the door behind him and do whatever he intended to do.
So, I hid. The music room was the one place that Dale barely remembered was there. He wasn’t musical. In fact, my brother wasn’t anything at all, except violent. He wasn’t good at school, or sports, or arts of any kind. He was on the police force now, training to be a beat cop. He’d only gotten crueler as he’d climbed the ladder there. We lived in a small, wealthy California town. My grandparents had been saints in the community, supporting various causes and charities. Dale had stopped all of that after they died. He liked to party and drink, snort some stuff, pop some pills. His parties were becoming wilder and wilder, trashing my grandparents’ beautiful estate and priceless antiques. I couldn’t stop him. I was seventeen and couldn’t legally move out on my own. I was trapped. Dale was the executor of the estate, and I had nothing without his permission. At twenty-four, I would come into my full inheritance, but until then, I was stuck.
One night, weeks after they’d died, I ventured into the music room and had been shocked to find a lone key in the door. The one room my brother hadn’t remembered. I’d locked it, knowing I was safe for tonight, and sat at the piano.
The keys had felt like old friends, and when I’d started to play, I could feel my grandmother there, watching me from the chaise lounge in the window. If I turned my head just right, I could see her from the corner of my eye.
That was when I realized that the people I loved lived in my music. Colors swirled, and the faces of those I’d loved and lost were all around me. I practiced every day. It was my escape. My refuge. My happy place. I wanted to live in my memories and not in my reality.
The music room didn’t stay locked forever, sadly. My brother soon realized his mistake. Then, there’d been nowhere to hide in my house. I’d stayed over most weekends at Kenna’s house, until she’d moved across the country to live with her dad. Then, I’d found a room to bunk down in at my college. Dale normally never said anything when I failed to come home.
I forgot most of the details of those hard nights, and the many that followed, but I remembered the feeling of playing in the locked music room, feeling safe. I remembered how, during one of my hospital visits for yet another broken bone, I finally mustered the courage to tell the doctor who had hurt me, only for the police department to send my own brother to take a statement about himself. It was funny the things you remembered and the things you didn’t.
I remembered how my brother threatened my chance to go to college and make a future that one day, wouldn’t depend on him.I remembered what it felt like to know the walls were closing in and there was nowhere to run and no one to help you.
And I’d never forget it.
Marcus
For as long asI could remember, being a Hellion was my dream. The one thing I’d wanted for myself, separate from my shitty family situation. If I could be a Hellion, everything else would just fucking work. Unfortunately, now that I was one, I was getting to see firsthand that nothing was ever that easy in life. Tomorrow was still going to come, and no amount of college hockey could change my dad and brother’s minds about getting me into the Harbor Hounds.
I was here before I needed to be, like I always was. I might be the joker of the team, but I was also the workhorse. I showed up early and stayed late; I helped Coach out when he needed it. At a young age, I’d learned my value as a person—being useful to others. If I wasn’t useful, well then, there wasn’t much point in keeping me around. It had been a hard lesson to learn as I watched my mother leave, and a harder one to stomach when she made her monthly call to ask for money to be sent to her. Cole didn’t answer the phone, so she called me. The useful one. The fucking clown.
“If you’re of no fucking use to me, Marcus, then why would I need you around?”
My father’s catchphrase would never make it onto a motivational T-shirt, but hey, it was tattooed into my bones for free.
I was suiting up for practice when my phone rang. Cole was calling, and I knew exactly why. I blew out a long breath before picking up.
“Marcus, I need to talk to you about Dad’s parole meeting.”
“Pass. I’m at school.”
“This can’t wait. It’s in a week.”
“Well, good luck with it all. I’ve got to run.”
“Marcus!” My brother’s voice got farther away as I lowered the phone from my ear and disconnected the call.
If there was anything I didn’t want to talk about, it was the prospect of my dad getting out of jail early and being back in town. My life, as hard as it had been, had only gotten better when he’d gotten locked up for murder. It was too soon. I was still here; I hadn’t been recruited into the NHL, I hadn’t yet escaped Hade Harbor and his influence. It was too soon. I hoped the fucker would rot a few more years.
Stepping on the ice felt like home. Not that I was super familiar with that feeling. We’d lived in a shabby apartment in town back when my mom was still around, then an even shittier one when my father took sole custody. I’d lived in a group home for a while when my father went down for murder, and then in the cabin on the edge of town that my brother had built, basicallyfrom scratch. Sometimes I slept at The Clutch, or on the sofa of whatever party I was at. Now, I lived in the Hellions’ dorms.
Where I lived had long ago become less about a sense of home and more an idea of where my shit was. Home, well, that was a concept I was yet to truly understand, but if pressed, I’d say it was here, on the ice. With white all around and the cool, regulated air of the rink, there was a familiarity and comfort that I could pretend felt like home… whatever that was supposed to feel like.
The sound of Coach’s whistle blowing had me turning around. My teammates were making their way onto the ice.
