Page 41 of The Casualty of Us
“Fine ma’am.” He holds his hand up reassuringly. “Kid just had the wrong address.”
I quickly start to back away as her eyes return to me, gaze tracking my movements curiously and calling out, “Happy Holidays!”
“Yeah, you too,” I mumble, my words probably too quiet for her to hear while turning to head back to the town car waiting for me by the curb and not breathing fully until I’m inside of it.
“Where to, Mr. Flynn?”
“Uh.” I rack my brain, considering heading back to LA for about a split second before discarding the idea. “School. Take me back to school.”
There are some other people stuck there for the holidays, and I remember some talk in the locker room about a Christmas Eve party on our last day of practice. Maybe I can manage to make it in time for that.
Not be completely alone on Christmas.
Getting piss drunk sounds pretty good at the moment.
It turns out that I get that wish too.
Opening my eyes on Christmas morning with horror and knowing that I’ve fucked up the best part of my life in the worst way imaginable.
Still not knowing, though, that it’s only the first of the two mistakes I’ll come to regret most in all the years of my life that follow.
Chapter Eleven
OPHELIA - DECEMBER 2012
I wakeup on Christmas morning to the incessant buzz of my phone next to me on the bed. The sound of it forces me to rouse myself from sleep and I blink at it a few times while wondering who the hell is waking me up on Christmas. I force myself to reach for the phone, sluggishly pulling it closer to see Marley’s name lighting up the screen. The call ending just long enough for me to catch the multiple notifications waiting for me before her name pops up again.
I swipe my thumb across the screen, putting it on speaker while snuggling back down into my pillow and mumbling drowsily. “You rang?”
“Hey,” she squeaks with something like surprise. “You picked up. Good.”
“What’s going on?” I yawn. “There’s like a million notifications on my phone.”
“Yeah, uh…” she starts hesitantly. “Most of those are probably me, but I just wanted to make sure that you didn’t hear it from anyone else.”
“Hear what?”
“Um.” She pauses, voice quieting. “Are you alone?”
“Yeah.” I yawn again with a scowl quickly following it. “Why?”
“So Kennedy texted me this morning and uh—” She starts and stops quickly, a weak sound leaving her that has my stomach dropping with it.
A dread hitting with the next beat of my heart that has me snapping at her. “What, Marley?”
“Hayes got caught with some girl in the auditorium in the middle of the night.”
The rushed words leave her in a single breath, and the whole world seems to shudder with them as the air leaves my lungs. A ringing starts up in my ears that has me staring blankly at the phone with what she said echoing in my head. Every repetition of it shaving away another slice until there’s nothing left to me but that moment crashing through my mind. Stuck somewhere not quite here and screaming for my brother with my instincts failing me horribly. Some removed part of my mind is still stuck on something else it can’t make sense of right along with that fact.
That this hurts more than it should.
More than some intrusive thought late at night had me pondering it possibly might if he eventually moved on.
It fucking hurts. All of it fucking—
“Ophelia!”
I blink back at the sound of Marley’s voice to see she’s been on the phone for a couple of minutes. Most of which I’ve been silent during.
