Page 21 of Friends vs. Family (The Ghost Bird 3)

I knew he was teasing me, trying to make me feel better. I still felt it was my fault, though. “Victor’s going to kill me,” I said, pushing a finger to my lip.

Nathan frowned. He dropped the laptop down on the ground. He sat cross legged on the carpet and pulled me into his lap. How easily he did so. My heart fluttered. He held me in his lap as Kota had done, as Gabriel had done. How did they seem to know what I needed? “Victor would never lay a finger on you,” he said. His broad shoulders made me feel even smaller than I’d felt with Kota. The muscles in his arms were hard against my body. “You have to stop worrying so much.”

My finger pinched my lip to my teeth. “He’s not going to be happy.”

Nathan collected my hand at my mouth. “Sang, Victor doesn’t give a shit about a laptop. We have more important things to deal with.”

I sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. “Like helping Ashley Waters get more funding.”

He squeezed my hand, pressing my palm against his chest, his palm on top of mine. “And making sure you’re safe.”

My cheeks heated. I wanted to look in his eyes but he was too close and I felt too shy. I kept looking at his hand pressed to mine against his chest. I felt his heart beating. I wished I felt as comfortable as they seemed to be with all the touching. Kota promised it would happen eventually. I wondered how long it would take.

Kota crept back from across the hallway, opened the door and peeked his head in. Nathan tensed at first with the noise but when I didn’t move, he didn’t move, either.

Kota spied the laptop on the floor and looked at us. “Something wrong?”

“The laptop is broken,” I said.

“So is her stereo. And I think that fan is, too.”

Kota frowned, glancing at the torn books stacked on the shelves. He pressed a palm to his forehead, rubbing his fingers across his eyebrow and putting his other hand on his hip. “The stereo will be hard to replace. It’s old.”

“I don’t need a new one,” I said.

A chop landed on my head. “Shut up,” Nathan grinned at me.

“So what was said downstairs?” I asked.

Kota sighed and knelt on the floor next to us. “He’s making her eat. That’s a good thing.”

I slipped out of Nathan’s lap, to sit between them on the floor. “What else?”

Kota pursed his lips.

“Kota,” Nathan said. “If it’s about her, she should know.”

Kota rubbed his palm against his jeans, smoothing out the material. “Her mother’s denying knowledge of what happened yesterday. She claims she doesn’t know what happen to Sang at all. She’s lying and saying Sang was on her knees this morning for stealing money.”

My breath caught in my throat. “Stealing?”

“She said there’s money missing from her purse.”

I blinked, shaking my head. “She has a purse?”

Kota and Nathan focused on me, eyebrows raising.

I shrugged. “She never goes out. I don’t think I’ve seen her with a purse since... I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“Regardless,” Kota said, “she’s lying to cover up why. I don’t really understand her motivation.” He turned to me. “Would he believe her?”

I shrugged. “I never talk to him. I never see him. I don’t know what he thinks.”

Nathan frowned. He reached for my hand, squeezing it. “It might be why he turns a blind eye to everything going on. He really doesn’t know because he isn’t here.”

Kota nodded. “You’re probably right. So if she lies about any injuries he happens to notice, or sees you kneeling, he’s going to take her side because... well... she’s his wife.”

We all grew silent. I sighed, letting go of Nathan’s hand to rub both palms across my face. “It’s conjecture. It isn’t helpful. He’ll go back to work tomorrow and I’ll not see him for a while. We’ll go to school. Things will cool down.”

Kota shifted, his lips pursed as if he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how to approach it.

Nathan blew out a puff of air. “What now?”

“Let’s get ready for the day,” Kota said. He stood up, lowering a hand out to me. I dropped my palm into his. It was easier to touch them when they reached for me first. My heart still fluttered. I was still nervous. In the back of my mind, I worried one day they wouldn’t want me to touch them or I’d go too far.

I stood up. “I guess I’ll go wash up and get dressed,” I said. “Are we staying in or heading out?”

Kota hesitated, shifting on his feet while he held my hand, intertwining our fingers. “I don’t want to cause any more trouble, but if your father’s here, maybe we should take advantage of it. If you’re sure they won’t come looking for you.”

“They haven’t even asked after Marie,” Nathan said.

“Right,” Kota said. “We’ll fall back to Nathan’s house. No offense, Sang, but I don’t want to scare my mom or my sister with those wounds on your wrists. I’m not sure they’ll understand.”

I didn’t want to worry them anymore, either. I wondered how much Kota told them about what happens over here. How far did this inner circle of friends go? I moved away from them to open my closet. I started to pull out a skirt and a blouse.

Nathan grunted behind me. “Wear shorts,” he said. “And a t-shirt. We’ll start some training.”

“Maybe we should give that a rest,” Kota suggested.

“You’re the one that gave the order. Remember? Self-defense this weekend.”

“I think she’s had enough. Let’s let her heal,” he said, looking pointedly at me.

I knew what he was asking me to say. I swallowed. “I cracked my tailbone yesterday,” I told Nathan. “It kind of hurts.”

Nathan’s blue eyes widened. “What? When?”

“When I was knocking the stool in the tub to get your attention.”

Nathan looked confused for a moment. “Oh,” he said. “Was that what it was? Well shit. How do you fix a broken tailbone?”

“You don’t. It’s like her ankle,” Kota said. “You wait for it to heal. That means no rigorous training for a while though.” His mouth twisted. “We may need to take her in for another X-Ray.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” he pushed his palm into his eye.

“We’ve been busy,” I said. I still traded the skirt for shorts. I thought I should save the skirts for school.

Kota and Nathan withdrew to the attic, so quietly that if I wasn’t watching, I probably wouldn’t have heard them. Music started and I guessed the other laptop was okay. It would mask their noises and my parents might think it was from my stereo.

I crossed the hallway and locked the bathroom door. I put down the clothes I was going to wear on the counter by the sink. I moved to the tub. My fingers lingered on the faucet. Silas fixed it. That meant something to me.

; I flicked the water on. The shower spray crashed into the basin. At first, I stared at the light sparkling in the water before it touched down to swirl into the bottom.

My knees wobbled, I thought about stepping into the shower. My stomach churned, my hands started to sweat. I had to sit down.

Flashes came over my eyes. Water streaming into my face. Screaming with no one listening. Nathan’s confused, horror struck face. Silas’s contorted rage.

I was terrified of the shower. The thought of stepping into it made me lose my breath and my stomach start to twist.

I swallowed, shifting the water from the shower to the faucet to fill up the tub. The shaking and the sweating subsided. I breathed some mild relief.

At least I wasn’t afraid of a bath. My heart was still thundering but I didn’t feel so lightheaded like before.

How embarrassing. When the bath filled up with warm water, I slipped into the tub. I tucked my legs against my body, my knees against my chest and I rested my head on one of my knees. The warm water swallowing me up felt better, anyway.

I’d been lucky I hadn’t collapsed and they hadn’t heard me falling over. It was one thing they didn’t have to know about. They had enough to do and most of it was involving me now.

Kota had to be mistaken. You couldn’t tell everyone all of your secrets. You couldn’t burden someone else with every little thing. You took care of yourself and tried not to be in the way and help others as best as you could.

I didn’t need to worry them about how I felt about showers.

By Monday, the marks on my wrists were still obvious, but Gabriel permitted the pink bands Silas gave me. Gabriel did, however, spend the night again Monday evening to determine what I should wear and what I wasn’t allowed to if I was going to keep wearing them.

Someone spent the night every evening, although my father was home in the evenings and my mother was subdued, in a gentle phase of sleeping most of the day and eating regularly. A doctor called, conveniently, on Tuesday afternoon to ‘verify’ which pills she was taking and to schedule an appointment in a month. She complained about doctors telling her what to do and tried to get them to put the appointment off but they said the next available date would be in three months.