Page 55 of Sweet Chaos
I pulled on my jeans that I’d left on the floor and grabbed a clean shirt from my dresser.
“Hey,” came Scarlett’s sleep-groggy voice from behind me. I sat on the edge of the bed to put on my high-tops, my mind focused on the logistics of getting to Vegas as quickly as possible. She wrapped her arms around me from behind and rested her chin on my shoulder. “What are you doing up so early?”
I removed her hands and stood up, gathering her clothes from the floor and tossing them in her general direction. “Get dressed. I’ll drop you off,” I said brusquely.
She sat back on her heels and looked out the window. It was barely light outside. “Okay. Are we still going surfing?”
“Change of plan.”
Her brows drew together in confusion. “Oh. But—"
“For fuck’s sake. I don’t have time to debate this. I’ve got shit to do. Get dressed.” I stalked out of the room, feeling like shit for snapping at her when she’d done absolutely nothing wrong, but fear and dread had rendered me incapable of exchanging pleasantries.
We were silent on the ride to her apartment. She was chewing on her bottom lip, upset or hurt or both, but I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say to make it better. So I settled for my default mode. I said absolutely nothing.
“Was this a mistake?” she asked when I stopped in front of her apartment. “I mean, yeah, I know it was, but do you feel like—”
“Something’s come up,” I said, cutting her off. Right now, I didn’t have a fucking clue how I felt about anything, and I didn’t have the mental capacity to talk about feelings and shit. “I need to go.”
“Yeah, okay, I see how it is. God. I really am so stupid.” Before I could say another word, not that I had a ready response because my mind was elsewhere, she was out of the car and slamming the door.
No sooner was it closed, I hit the accelerator and tore off down the street, leaving Scarlett and Costa del Rey in my rearview.
20
Dylan
Idecided to drive to Vegas. The way I drove, I could get there in under four hours. I’d have my car and wouldn’t have to deal with flights, rental cars or taxis.
Music blasting, I drove on autopilot, shattering the speed limit even though a part of me knew I was already too late. The problem with having hundreds of miles of road stretched out ahead of you and nothing to do but drive was that it gave you too much time to think. An onslaught of shitty memories assaulted me, things I’d tried hard to forget pushed to the forefront of my mind.
The time I was twelve and my mother’s douchebag boyfriend tried to rape Remy. When I’d burst into Remy’s locked bedroom, baseball bat in hand, Russell’s pants were down around his knees and he was on top of my sister, his meaty palm clamped over her mouth to keep her quiet, the piece of shit. I was still small and no match for a two-hundred-pound asshole, but I had always been a fighter so that hadn’t deterred me. Rage and adrenaline had fueled me, blocked the pain when he punched and kicked me. I kept bashing him with a baseball bat, fury rendering me deaf and blind and half-crazed. I would have kept going and left him for dead if Remy hadn’t stopped me.
My mother had finally turned up, late to the party as usual, and found us hiding behind the dumpsters. She told us to get in the car and then she just drove and drove, straight through the night and all the next day. Across the heartland and the flyover states until we reached the desert. That was how we wound up living in a trailer park in Vegas.
I remember sleeping on a lumpy sofa, one eye open, ever vigilant over the men my mother brought home. Sometimes I used to fall asleep on the floor right outside Remy’s bedroom door, so they’d have to get through me before getting to my sister.
Remy was beautiful, men noticed her, and I vowed never to let anything happen to her again. Not on my watch. One night while we were living in Vegas, my mother came home with a fucked-up face and broken ribs. I nearly cried myself to sleep when I found out that some asshole had knocked her around. But instead giving in to crying, I’d gotten drunk on my mom’s beer and punched the wall until the skin over my knuckles ripped and shredded.
My view on Vegas? It was the place where hopes and dreams went to die. Where else would you find pawn shops and strip clubs next door to wedding chapels? That right there said it all. This town set you up to fail.
So the last place I wanted to be right now was Sin Fucking City.
My mother’s apartment was in downtown Vegas, about a ten-minute drive from the strip. Her apartment complex was one of those places that promised an oasis but didn’t deliver. Two three-story faded yellow buildings faced an empty swimming pool surrounded by brown palm trees swaying in the desert wind, the sunshine highlighting the shabbiness. It was exactly the kind of place my mother would choose to live. You could give the woman millions of dollars and tell her she could live anywhere, sky’s the limit, and she would end up in a trashy trailer park or a derelict house on the wrong side of town.
She had never believed she deserved better and she had passed that belief on to her kids. Why strive for something good when the world was just going to kick you back down where you belonged?
After banging on her front door and getting no answer, I used my key and let myself into her apartment. Technically, the apartment was mine. The lease was in my name. I paid the rent. I paid the utilities. I took care of her the only way I knew how. By throwing money at her.
The air inside her apartment was stale and smelled like cigarettes from an overflowing ashtray filled with red lipstick-stained filters on the scarred coffee table. An ugly as shit brown plaid sofa with stains on the cushions sagged against the beige wall. It looked a lot like the one I’d slept on in my teens. Dust motes floated in the air, the sun filtering through the vertical blinds in the living room, and I took it all in, trying to process the mundane, everyday existence of my mother before I ventured farther into her apartment.
I scrubbed my hand over my face and stopped in the hallway, trying to breathe. My chest was tight, and my stomach was churning. “Mom. Get your ass out of bed.”
My voice echoed in the quiet apartment. Not a sound came from the other side of her closed bedroom door. And I just stood in the hallway with those dingy beige walls closing in on me and I waited. For nothing.
My footsteps were slow and measured, my leather high tops squeaking on the linoleum as I got closer and closer to the door, the dread increasing with every step I took. I wrapped my hand around the doorknob and turned it. Pushing the door open, I stepped inside my mother’s bedroom and nearly gagged on the scent of her cheap perfume. I fucking hated that perfume she wore. It was sweet and cloying and smelled like cheap chemicals. Her bedroom was empty.
She might not be here. She might have gone out.
