ever done anything like this for her. Three hours in, three hours back, just for her? Trina complained she had to do it twice a summer. The simple kindness made her hormonal. Crazy for him. What she was doing to his body made her crazy for him. “Han, I don’t even have a condom.” He had taken her wrists in one hand and held them down, bent over to take a few calming breaths.
“I can get one,” she said automatically. She knew her mother kept them in her bedside table. She couldn’t think about her mother that way—especially with Wes—but she’d seen them in there before.
She jerked her hands out of his grip and, with a coy smile, pressed her palms against the bulge in his jeans, worked it through the fabric. He groaned, “Jesus, Hannah,” before kissing her again, tongue skimming her lips. “Okay, yes. Go.”
In the hallway she scooted past Julia’s empty room, her footsteps silent. The door to her mother’s room was wide open, and the bedside table was closest to the door. She inched open the drawer and saw the foil squares, four in a strip. She eased out the whole strip—why not?—and slowly pushed the drawer back in.
“What the fuck?” The voice came from the doorway. Hannah jumped back, her heartbeat wild. Wes stood in front of her, shirtless, barefoot, and Hannah looked down at his toenails, long and yellow. “Look at me. Are you stealing condoms from me?”
“No. I was . . .” She couldn’t think. Wes barely spoke to either Hannah or Julia, rarely yelled at them. In fact, he scarcely acknowledged their existence, aside from his bedroom visits. Behind him in the hall, she saw Wyatt, eyes wide with fear.
“You’re what? Sixteen?” She realized then that he was too drunk to know which sister she was. He covered the gap between them in a second and stood over her. He was taller than she remembered, probably over six feet. Hannah straightened her spine, met his gaze. “You’re a whore like your mother.”
He said it quietly, which was why it came as a shock when he backhanded her in the face.
Her jaw cracked, and she saw bursts of light. She dropped the strip of condoms and collapsed on the floor, on her knees. She heard a noise, a low keening that she realized was her own voice.
Wyatt rushed at Wes, landed a right hook to his cheek. Wes stumbled once, his body cracked against the railing of the steps, and he fell to the ground unconscious.
The rest of the night passed in a blur: Wyatt made her call Trina at work, who came home within the hour, mumbling about being docked pay, but stared at Wes’s limp form in the hall with a sneered lip. He hadn’t woken up.
Wyatt had retreated to her bedroom, and Hannah claimed the punch. She even held her hand a bit for effect. It would help no one to have Wyatt discovered, Hannah reasoned to herself. Trina had enough on her plate. She doubted Wes would remember anything, and if he did and insisted that an unknown boy had hit him, Hannah would just play dumb. It wouldn’t be hard to make Wes look delusional. It would piss him off, though. Hannah bit her thumbnail.
“What were you doing?” Trina asked Hannah, her eyes narrowed. By this time Julia had come home, and she watched the whole exchange with incredulity and horror.
“I was looking for nail clippers.” The lie came out smooth and easy. Julia held ice to her sister’s cheek and let the tears fall down her own cheeks without wiping them away.
“I should have been here,” Julia whispered. Hannah almost told her then. Almost confessed. To everything. Wes and his nighttime visits. Wyatt hiding in the bedroom.
Wyatt wouldn’t leave until he was sure Hannah was okay. Hannah made every excuse she could think of to try to leave. She took ibuprofen. Let Julia fuss over her, blotting up the blood from her nose with a pile of tissues. Finally she pretended to be falling asleep on Julia’s bed, and Julia let her go.
She found Wyatt in her bed, waiting for her. He held the ice to her face and brushed the hair from her eyes. She could barely look him in the eyes, she was so horribly embarrassed. She just wanted him to leave her alone. Leave this stupid, trashy little house. She wondered if he’d tell anyone where they lived. Wondered if they’d go back to