Page 79 of The Way We Are

My worry grows when I notice how neatly the lid is sitting on my old shoe box. Even with me raiding my savings to fund Amelia’s prom experience yesterday, the dent shouldn’t be significant enough to lower the height this much.

With my heart throbbing in my throat, I throw off the lid. The walls crumble in on me when I glare down at base of my shoe box. Not a bill can be seen. Not one.

Fuck.

I rest my backside on the balls of my feet as my hands rake through my hair. Weeks of putting my body on the line for once instead of my heart vanished in an instant. This can’t be happening. Not now. Not after everything that has happened the past twenty-four hours.

My first thoughts drift to my father, but in all honesty, I highly doubt it's him. Henevercomes into my room, and the rare occasion he did when I was younger, it wasn’t because he was expecting to find thousands of dollars hidden under my bed. He only entered to fill my head with the false promises he loved issuing when drunk.

This could have only been one person, the one person who places my father above anyone else. My mother.

Goddammit!

My brisk strides down the hallway slow when an uneasy voice murmurs, “It wasn’t her.”

I spin on my heels so fast, a lack of sleep isn’t the only thing causing havoc to my senses. Damon has his shoulder propped on the doorjamb of his room. His hair is mussed in a messy style, and his eyes are also tired, indicating his night was as eventful as mine.

A restless night isn’t the only thing his eyes are revealing, though. They display he knows why my face is reddened with anger and my fists are balled. He knows about my hidden stash.

“You took my money.” I’m not asking a question; I’m stating a fact.

“It’s notyourmoney,” Damon denies, his voice picking up with anger. “That’sourmoney.Ourticket to freedom.Ouronly way out of this hell-hole.”

Although he doesn’t directly answer my question, his reply tells me everything I need to know. He took my money.

Air evicts Damon’s lungs in a grunt when I barge past him to hunt for my money in his room. His space is nearly a direct replica of mine, just ten times messier. Not only does he have a month’s worth of laundry on the floor, but he has several empty cans of bourbon, a used bong, and numerous other drug paraphernalia.

“What the fuck, Damon?” I murmur, stunned as fuck. I knew he’d spent the last few months flying under my radar, but I had no clue he was flying this low. “Did you spend my money on drugs?”

“No,” he replies, shaking his head.

I may have believed his grumbled comment if he didn’t sniff at the same time his glassy eyes connected with mine.

“Jesus, Damon. You’re sixteen years old—”

“Going on thirty!” he roars, his anger as wrathful as mine. “You know what it’s like living withhim. We didn’t have a childhood. We had responsibilities we should haveneverhad. I’ve aged more the past year than I have the past decade.”

“Then you should be more mature, not turning to drugs for solace—”

“I take them to forget!” he interrupts, his voice loud enough to wake up half the continent. “You don’t know what it's like. You’ve got friends, a job, the fucking means to leave this place for dust. I’ve got nothing.”

I stare at him, shocked by his outburst. Yes, he has grown up in the same house as me, but up until a few months ago, I sheltered him from our dad’s antics. He has no clue how bad it’s been. He never cleaned the blood from our mother’s face when our dad’s fist split the skin on her cheek. Or sat with her while she spilled lie after lie to the dentist when she had the chip his brutality caused to her front tooth fixed.Isaved him from experiencing that.Me.And how does he repay me? He steals from me.

“Where is my money, Damon?!” I roar, throwing his clothes over my shoulder as I search his room like an officer with a search warrant. “I swear to god if you’ve spent a single dollar on drugs, I’ll show you how bad it can be.”

“It’s notyourmoney,” he denies again. “You said it was for us. That we were getting out of this place. I’m not going to letherruin that for us.”

I stop rummaging through his drawers. He didn’t sneer “her” like he usually does when referring to our mother. He said it like he did when expressing anger for Savannah’s reappearance in my life months ago. I thought his anger was from needing to shoulder some of the responsibility for our mother’s care. I had no clue it was directed at Savannah.

When our gazes collide and I see the fury in his eyes, something inside me snaps. I have him pinned to the wall by his throat before I complete an entire blink.

“It’s notyourmoney. It’s not even mine. It’shermoney. It’s hers!” I scream into his face, my words as violent as the hold I have on him. “She needs this, Damon. If I don’t get back that money, she’ll never be free. Do you understand that? Do you understand that you're sentencing her to a fate as bad as our mother’s if you don’t return that money to its rightful owner?”

The anger in my tone weakens when I spot the moisture brimming in Damon’s glassy gaze. “I just want to get out,” he stammers. I’m certain his heart is hammering as fast as mine. “I don’t want to hurt Savannah, I just can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to end up like him, Ryan.” A tear rolls down his ashen face when he chokes out, “I hit Molly. I fucking hit her.”

When I release the collar of his shirt, shocked by his confession, he slides down to the floor in a heap. The thud of his backside hitting the floor has nothing on the tormented cry tearing from his throat. He sounds truly devastated.

“I fucking love her, but I still hit her.” He stares at his hands, as if stunned they were capable of such violence. “She wasn’t even saying anything wrong; I just didn’t want to hear the truth.” His hand shakes when he runs two fingers down his left cheek. “Right here. I slapped her right there.”

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