Unsteady

I wake up to yelling.

My body jolts like I’ve been electrocuted. One of my biggest fears of being in this house is Oliver growing up and his anger driving him to confrontation. Of waking up to screams and a fight between a drunken man and a child.

I have to get them out of here.

I’m flying down the stairs, two at a time, seeing Oliver at the base, angled in the kitchen. He tries to stop me, but I push past him to see my dad with a broken beer bottle stretched like a weapon over his head. And Rhys, palms up, arms stretched, trying to calm him down.

My dad’s gaze shifts to me and he drops his stance.

“Sade,” he cries, dissolving into tears almost immediately.

I don’t want Rhys to see this part. Where my dad apologizes and cries, and begs me to help him. I don’t want him to know that sometimes he tells me he hates me because I look just like her. I don’t want Rhys to see the way that when I get close enough to help him, he pats my head gently or shoves my face away so hard that he nearly broke my jaw on the cabinet once.

I hate this.

“You need to go,” I snap, stepping in front of him.

Rhys’ voice turns almost desperate. “Sadie, stop.”

“I can handle him. I always do—and never with your help. Now, go.”

Oliver looks distraught, only for a moment before he storms off as I get to my dad and pry the bottle from his hand. He pulls it back and hurls it at the wall, screaming something about this all being my fault, before he’s blubbering again.

There’s glass everywhere and Rhys still. Won’t. Leave.

“Sadie, be careful,” he begs.

“Go—please, Rhys. I don’t need your help!”

“Please, baby. There’s glass everywhere. Just… just let me help.”

I whirl on him. “Stop it! I don’t need you to fix me, Rhys. I don’t need to be fixed. I have everything under control. Oliver gets to his practices and I make sure he has new skates and gear when he needs them. I do that! Liam learned how to read because I taught him—before he ever got to fucking school, because I was nineteen and I honestly had no clue what he was supposed to know. I didn’t need your help then, and I don’t need it now.”

I wait for him to leave. To tell me that he knew I was like this, worthless, terrible. A bitch, too angry and unlovable.

But he only stands there, quiet and solemn.

My breath is shuttering and I’m pretty sure I’m crying—which is embarrassing enough, but I keep my face furious, arms crossed. I want him to leave, I need him to—

He grabs the tiny duster and pan hanging off the wall, and starts to sweep up the glass, on his knees in front of me.

“Rhys,” I nearly shout it this time, my fury only ratcheting higher.

He shakes his head, before finally looking up at me, all dark chocolate eyes and a stern expression I rarely see from him. “No. I’m not going fucking anywhere. Not now, not ever. We’re going to talk about it all once this is done being dealt with. Now…” He shudders out a breath and rolls his massive, muscular shoulders. “I’m going to clean this glass up, because if you cut your fucking foot in here—even a goddamn nick, I don’t think I will be able to hold back from kicking his face in, okay?”

Every word is calm, almost serene, but I can see his own anger and fury beneath the surface. Like he’s holding it back because he knows I can’t handle it.

“Okay,” I say, surprising myself.

My dad is nearly passed out already, leaned against the wall behind me, his crying now silent but for snores. I grab his ever-thinning frame and walk him into the living room, mindful of the glass, before tossing him onto the recliner and hoping he stays passed out.

“Rhys—”

He holds a hand up to me and looks over his shoulder. “Go upstairs, Sadie. Wait for me there. I need a minute.”

My skin feels like it’s going to start melting off, and I’m quite sure I’m on the verge of a psychotic break, when Rhys finally comes upstairs.

He closes the door behind himself, turning completely towards it and resting his forehead. It takes several long breaths before he turns around and walks the space of my room, avoiding my eyes. He places something on the desk—my purse, I realize, and my stomach clenches.

“Are you leaving?”

That makes him look up, before away again. I feel that panicked breathing rise, like I’m drowning and kicking for the surface. I want to grab onto his wrist and beg him, so I cross my arms to hold myself back.

“I don’t know what I’m going to have to do to prove to you and Oliver that I’m not leaving—and honestly, I don’t care what it is, I’ll do it.”

“Wait—” I stall, stunned and lost for words. “Then… then why won’t you look at me?”

Loathing, self-hatred. If you feed them enough they grow like irremovable vines. Mine grew thorns and wrapped around me as a kid, and no one has ever bothered to try and get in. Until now.

“Because, Sadie,” he grits out, a harsher voice than I’ve ever heard him use—especially with me. “If I look at you, I’m going to see that fear I clearly saw when you walked into the kitchen. I can’t get Oliver’s face out of my brain, and now yours. And if I see that, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop myself from confronting him.”

I don’t say anything. I barely breathe, as if any noise might ruin this moment.

You ruin everything. Look at him—the golden boy who’s never angry, suddenly furious. You take everything good and ruin it. Oliver’s next, already so angry. Liam won’t be far behind.

I close my eyes.

“Look at me,” he commands, and I do, instantly. He’s pacing at the foot of my bed, aglow in the muted light of my bedside lamp. He looks larger than life, he always has. Like what I imagine the children of ancient gods might have looked like, in some way that marked them different than mere mortals.

“I thought you were like me,” I whisper, the words pouring. “But you’re not. You’re… Rhys, you’re amazing. You’re everything to the people around you, even the ones who don’t know you. Out there? On campus or on the ice? You’re a shooting star out there. Fucking golden. And you might’ve been hurting when you met me, but… you’re getting better. And my life is going to be like this for a long time.

“Like—I’m in the middle of trying to win custody of the boys, trying to graduate early this semester so I can get a job and prove to a bunch of adults that I’m enough to take care of these boys. And I—” My voice chokes off, because I realize I might’ve been about to say something insane. “I care about you enough to see that you’re on your way to this massive, loud, amazing life.”

Rhys’ hand raises to stop me, and I do, easily. Partially because I don’t want to say what I was about to say. I selfishly want him, always, no matter that I’ll always be pulling him down or holding him back.

“I’m gonna say something now, Gray. And I need you to hear me. Really hear me, okay?”

I nod.

“I love you.” He breathes, and he’s smiling—both dimples glimmering. As if I didn’t just spill the mess of my life, first with my mother, then my drunk father trying to attack him—and now with my speech about how terrible it is for him to have me in his life.

My anger has never worked on Rhys; neither has my efforts to shove him away.

So I listen, my heart hammering so fast I’m sure it’ll sprout wings and soar from my chest.

“I love you. I love everything about you. I love your anger and your snark. I love the way you skate—like you’re full of fire, and it makes me remember when I fell in love with hockey. I love how you take care of your brothers, how you protect and love Aurora. I love the way you get that frustrated-confused look on your face—the same one you have right now—with the little divot between your brows.”

I laugh with him now, but my eyes never leave his face even as he tilts his head back and smiles again.

“And nothing—no dark part of you, or your life, will ever change that. So, like I told Oliver, if you don’t want me anymore, that’s something I’ll have to deal with. But there will never be a day that I do not want you.”

He’s walked to the side of the bed now, towering me where I sit, my fingers twisting around the blankets. He leans down and grasps my chin gently. “Tell me you understand.”

“I do.”

He nods. “Good.”

My mouth opens for a moment, like I might say it back, but then I just leave it there. Gaping like a fish out of water.

He uses the moment to kiss my bottom lip, sucking it softly between his lips and teeth. Our foreheads press together as he sits on the bed, closing me in the comfort of his warmth.

“You don’t need to say anything right now, okay? I can love you enough for the both of us.”

“For now,” I blurt.

He smiles, and I can see the glimmer in his warm eyes now. That he understands the words I’ve given are a promise.

“For now, kotyonok.”

“You ever gonna tell me what that word means?”

“Maybe one day,” he says before pushing me back into the mattress and pressing I love you into every inch of my skin while he makes love to me, soft and sweet and slow.

After, he asks for my little Bluetooth speaker, setting it on the bed between us. The big window over my bed leaks moonlight over his naked skin like it’s bathing him in the glow.

While he fumbles for his phone, I lean forward and kiss and nip at his neck again.

Two clicks, and then music plays. A song I know well, but not one from my playlists.

Brandi Carlisle’s voice is soft, the pluck of the guitar strings slow and gentle, as Rhys Koteskiy plays “Heaven” through the suddenly soft speakers in my room.

“It’s my song for you.” The automatic response is to stop him there. Convince him that he shouldn’t have a song for me. Especially not this one.

But his face is so open, every muscle relaxed, and I do believe him. That he loves me.

There’s a boyish innocence on his face as if he didn’t just fuck me slow into the mattress with his hand over my mouth to keep me quiet, before he asks, “Do you have one for us?”

Only a million, I want to say.

But Rhys Koteskiy could never be confined to just one song—he’s a symphony, a never ending playlist that I want to repeat forever.

“I’ll think of one,” I say, curling into his skin.

He’s burned into me, I think, like a brand.

I’ll never recover from him.