Page 50 of Rules Are Meant To Be Broken

“Pumpkin, wait—”

She hung up and gently placed the phone on the bed. Her breath became shallow. The weight of her father’s disapproval made her feel cornered. It hung heavily on her shoulders. Rather than face what was clearly going to be another difficult conversation with Xavier, it was all she could do not to faint like some vapid Elizabethan heroine. Her heart was about to burst through her chest. She pressed her shaking hands over it, but it was as though everything from the neck down belonged to someone else. This moment, this whole day, was all happening to someone else.

She was dimly aware that Xavier was talking. At least, she assumed sound was coming out of his mouth. Everything was so foggy. Dust motes swirled in slow motion around her like tiny snowflakes.

Somewhere in the room, a vibrator continued to buzz. She tried to gather them together, to line them up neatly. Her hands operated independently of her brain, which refused to work at all, probably trying to avoid thinking about the train wreck of her life. God, how she wished she could walk away from it all.

Xavier stomped over to the mini bar, poured amber liquid into a cup, threw it down his throat, and reached for another. In between shots he paced, back and forwards in front of the door. In her panicked state, it felt like he was blocking her only escape.

When he stopped and fixed her with a steely gaze, the room stopped swimming and came back into focus. Sound and feelingbattered her like a bomb blast. She flinched, reeling back, and dropped the dildos she had been gripping onto the floor.

In her numb state, she hadn’t noticed. Xavier hadn’t been talking. He’d beenrantingfor a good five minutes, his arms waving wildly, his words tumbling over each other, the volume increasing as he wound himself up.

“… the fuck he thinks he is harassing you like some creepy Jack-In-a-Box on steroids. I should call him back and—”

“Stop!” She held up a hand. “Please, Xavier, just stop.”

He rounded on her. “What? How can you put up with this harassment? He’s treating you like a child. You spoke to them already. You said you were fine. Let’s not even go into the fact they set private detectives on you in the first place.”

“They did think I was missing. That was kind of legitimate.”

Xavier seemed not to have heard. “This is abuse, you know. What they’re doing to you is abuse.”

“It’s not abuse. They’ve had to keep me close all my life.”

“Why? I don’t get it. You’re a grown woman. A brief rebellion in your teens hardly justifies why they can’t let go. It doesn’t make any—”

“My brother was dying.”

That stopped his pacing.

She went on. “Before I was born. Conceived even. He was dying. Malcolm, my youngest brother. He was born with a rare form of anaemia, a debilitating illness, and he spent years in and out of hospitals. The doctors had this great idea that the only way to restore his health would be to transplant stem cells from the umbilical cord of an uninfected sibling. My parents wasted no time producing a spare -– me.”

His face went slack, devoid of all emotion.

“My family was fortunate enough to have enough money to afford the transplant, but they really didn’t have a choice. My mother was beside herself with grief and misplaced guilt. Shewas practically suicidal. Lucky for us, I was born, the surgery was a success, and my brother was cured. However, from that day forward, I’ve been tethered to my brother. I’m their back-up plan, a walking spare part. Hence, the human blankie thing I mentioned before.”

They sat in blessed silence for a moment while Xavier digested it all. When he spoke again, his words were tinged with hardness. “Why you, why not one of your older brothers?”

“It’s always been like that. They’ve always—”

“What? Kept you a prisoner?”

Her voice was quiet, stony. “You don’t understand. They’re my family. You’re not.”

He blanched as though she’d struck him. His mouth snapped shut, and the colour leeched from his face. Much as she wanted to stuff the words back in her mouth, she was so tired she could barely lift her head. All she wanted was to be left alone. Why couldn’t they all leave her alone?

“Your family are manipulating you. You know that, don’t you? How long will you let them keep you in a hermetically sealed bubble? It’s been long enough, Hope.” His voice softened. “Are you scared of them? Is that it? It’s your choice. If you don’t want to go back, I mean never go back, I can protect you, baby. Just say the word.” He said it quietly enough, but the intent was clear. An ultimatum disguised as a choice. Choose Xavier or choose her family. She couldn’t have one without losing the other.

She sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know, but I can’t leave them like this. They’re worried about me. I have to go back eventually.”

“Why?”

“Being selfish will only end in heartbreak and disaster. Stop trying to fix it. This isn’t your problem.”

“Isn’t it over now, though? You’ve done your job. You saved your brother when you were born.”

“It could come back. The anaemia. It did once before. When we were both young. They dragged me out of school, sped me to the hospital to give him a transfusion. We were both so little, a blood transfusion worked back then. They said if I had been even few hours later it would have been too late. It’s improved now we’re older, but my brother needs me nearby. Probably always will.”

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