Page 15 of Grip Me Tight
“That conversation didn’t sound fine.” I can’t not get involved in this, even though it really isn’t any of my business. She wants me to leave her alone, but it’s an impossible task. Even if I walk away right now, the threats in his voice, the sound of her begging him to stop will take up residence in my head. I tilt my head up to the sky, dragging in a deep breath of the cool night air. For five years I’ve scrounged for every scrap of information I can get about her, from Noah’s texts with her at school, her pictures on social media, to the little snippets and stories from Emma and Don. For almost five years the music in my head was all about her.
Even if she doesn’t know it.
“Tanner, don’t pretend like you care.”
I’ve spent a lot of time pretending around Sterling, mostly trying to convince her of exactly that – that I don’t care, or that I only care to the extent that she’s Noah’s sister. My fists clench. How could Noah not know this guy was a first-class bully? I heard the way he raised his voice to her, and her weary response. It’s not the first time she’s taken shit from that guy. “Noah and your parents will care.”
“So what, you’re going to tattle on me because I had a fight with my boyfriend?”
“Is he still your boyfriend? Rage fills my head, like the hot rush of air from a passing train. This jerk will never have a chance to threaten her again.
“No.” She sighs again, a defeated sound that makes my chest hurt. “But he wants to be.”
I rein in my anger. It’s not directed at her after all. “You deserve better than someone who’d speak to you that way.” What I really want to ask her is what she wants. But I’m afraid of the answer.
Sterling turns back to me again. “What do you know about it?”
“I know what I heard. That type of anger isn’t normal, Silver.”
Her lips soften. “You haven’t called me that in forever.”
I curse inwardly. My pet name for her, based on how funny I thought her name was originally. I used to think, that’s rich people for you, naming their kids after precious metals and shit. Plus, her blonde hair is pale and shimmery and reminds me of this movie where there were two princesses, one named Silver and the other Gold. I’ve never told her that part, though. “Well, I haven’t been around in forever.”
“Right. Not since the Fourth of July party where you guys signed your deal.” She unfolds her legs on the rock and pivots toward me. “Too busy being a rock star for old friends? But I guess, we weren’t ever really friends.”
Ouch. Her tone is light, but the derision lacing her words cuts me like tiny little blades.
“We’ve been busy, but I get to see your parents, when I can.”
Sterling nods. “Yes, I hear all about those trips. But you never come home.”
“This isn’t really my home, Silver.”
“Is that how you feel?”
I study her in silence. Emma and Don have made me feel more at home than anyone in my entire life. The real reason I’ve never ‘come home’, isn’t because of them, or because I don’t have time, or because I’m too busy being a rock star, as she puts it, but because of her. I don’t trust myself around her. There’s no way I can be around her and hide how I really feel. And I can’t tell her how I feel because it doesn’t matter.
I’m no good for her. I never have been. I’m not good for anybody, really, but especially her, this angel on earth, who was given a second chance at life and there’s not a chance in hell I would let her waste it on me.
I’m broken inside. Probably, I was born with it, like my mother said she was. I wish I’d known my grandparents so I could figure out how far back it stretches. Maybe I would have stood a chance if I’d had someone like Emma for a mother, but instead I had a woman who preferred to stare at herself in a dingy mirror, seeking her faded youth while she berated me for ruining her figure. And those were her good days. Days where I tried to understand anxiety and depression and untreated mental health issues. On her bad days she’d whisper how my daddy was a demon who stole her soul and cursed her with a son who stole her beauty.
Unfortunately, she never told me who he was. Sometimes she said she’d tell me when I was older and sometimes, she’d cry and tell me she didn’t know who he was.
Keep in mind my mother once dragged me to a confessional and told the priest she was a virgin who’d been impregnated against her will by God, and she thought it was her duty to send me back.
Most people thought it was drugs that messed up my mom, but I know there were issues there that went beyond the drugs. I know because I stayed away from all that shit and still the demons that lived inside my mother’s head creep into my thoughts every now and then.
I fear my sanity has a time-limit. And that is the reason why I need to stay far, far away from Sterling Silver and her beautiful smile. She doesn’t deserve to live in the shadows of someone else’s darkness.
“Mom would cry if she ever thought you didn’t feel like this was home.”
“Your parents are amazing people and I’m so grateful for them. But I’m a grown man now, I don’t need a home.”
“That might be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
I stuff my hands into my pockets, finding it hard to look at her all of a sudden. I glance out at the darkness of the lake, ribbons of moonlight bisecting the water.
“You can go back to the party, Tanner. I just need some air.”
