Facade

Daddy, daddy, daddy. His voice is in my ears and his face in my head and sometimes it makes me smile because I think it’s real. Think I hear his voice or see his face, but even in those dreams or thoughts where we’re not standing in that yard, the car always comes and it always takes him from me.

I grab Ash’s shirt and push it into my pocket, needing to get out of the room. Pulling the door open, everything freezes inside me at the same time I’m burning alive.

“Motherfucker.” I lunge at Delaney’s brother as he stands outside my hotel room. My forearm goes straight to his throat as I back him up against the brick wall and hold him there. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I’ve been following your ass through two states.”

“How the hell—”

Maddox cuts me off. His voice is rough as it tries to squeeze out from under the pressure I’m putting on him. “I left, but I was worried about Laney so I asked around about where you lived. It wasn’t hard to find out. When I got there, you were leaving. I started to follow you and for some reason, I just kept going. When I finally decided to talk to you, it was kind of hard to catch you since you’re not man enough to leave your room.”

Jerking my arm away from him, I let my fist fly right into his face. Blood rushes out of his nose and I flash to Ash, which gives him the delay he needs to run at me. He slams me into the wall on the other side of the walkway, before he hits me back. With everything I have in me, I push off the wall and we hit the other one, then the ground, both of us swinging at each other. Neither of us getting anywhere, besides trading blows.

“You’re a bastard and you don’t deserve my sister. She doesn’t deserve to get hurt for trying to make things right,” he says between punches.

“She fucking lied to me. She was playing games the whole fucking time!” I groan when his fist slams into my stomach.

“If you think that, then you definitely don’t deserve her, because you don’t know shit about her.”

And damned if I don’t know he’s right. If I don’t know those ghosts in her eyes were because she was just as haunted as me. If I don’t remember how she touched me and how she looked at me and the gift she gave me… but still, all that time she knew.

I pull my fist back to hit him again and he doesn’t try to stop me. He just lies there, and I want to hit him so bad. Want him to feel some of the pain I do, but instead I push off him and sit against the building. We’re in an outside hallway. I’m surprised no one came out with the fighting, but don’t care either.

“Knowing her or not doesn’t matter. It’s not enough.” I’m breathing heavy. My face and body are killing me.

Maddox curses before grabbing a backpack from the ground. He pulls something out of it to wipe the blood from his face before he sits across from me. Neither of us speaks for a long time and then he reaches into his bag again, pulls out a fifth of whiskey, takes a pull, and then hands me the bottle.

It takes me a second, but I grab it, take a drink, and then hand it back.

“She cares too much,” he finally says. “She’s sweet… despite all the shit we’ve been through. I know it doesn’t make sense, but in her mind she thought it would help. She wanted to believe she had the power to make it better.”

I grab the bottle from him and take another drink. I know he’s right. Know she wanted to try and fix it. That was one of my favorite things about her, wasn’t it? How sweet she was. How i

“Then you’re a bigger pussy than I thought,” Maddox says.

“And what are you ru

“Touché.” He takes a drink. “Did she tell you she found Mom the first time she tried to kill herself? That Mom knew Laney would be home soon. That she’d be the one to find her, yet she still slit her wrists in the unlocked bathroom right before Laney got home. That my little sister was scared to death her mom would die and she sat in her blood with her mom’s head in her lap and when she was okay, that same mom yelled at her for saving her. That she was pissed she was alive and blamed Laney.”

“Fuck.” I drop my head backward. Look at the ceiling. I knew she had tried to kill herself, but I didn’t know the details.

“I know you lost someone but you’re not the only one. She watched her mom almost die, more than once. She still loves her and cares about her, even though she always gets shut down. She lost her dad that day too. She lives with those memories. Lives with the knowledge that her mom will never love her like she should, yet she’s a whole hell of a lot better than we are. She doesn’t fucking run. She’s stronger than we could ever hope to be.”

Maddox pushes to his feet, hands me the bottle, and grabs his bag. “And for some reason, she loves you. Hurting you will be something else she lives with. It will eat her up inside and it will kill another part of her, like Dad and Mom did. Like even I do, but she’ll keep on living. I wish I was that brave.”

I watch as her brother walks away, leaving a trail of blood behind him as he goes.

* * *

“I hiding! Find me!”

Ash’s voice echoes around me. I look at the couch, his favorite hiding spot, and he’s not there.

“Hurry! Find me!”

“Where’d you go, little man? You found a new hiding spot. I can’t find you.” I’m smiling, proud of him for finding a real place to hide this time.

I search the living room, but he’s not there. The kitchen. Our room. Angel’s room. The bathroom.

“Daddy! Find me!”

My heart is starting to hammer and I’m begi