Caleb

I couldn't figure out what to say to her. Not a goddamn word. But seeing Hailey awake and staring at me for the first time since she'd come to had me thinking about saying something.

It's kinda hard to say too much of anything when you're holding on to a girl with nothing but your boxers on. But I tried not to think about it too much.

I didn't know what was going on in her head. Usually, she says everything she's thinking, and I mean everything. You didn't even have to ask, and she'd spill her smart-ass comments all over the place.

But she was quiet. Dead quiet.

Eyes wide open but nothing going on behind them.

I thought maybe she was gonna pass out again, so I pulled her a little closer to keep her warm. I was so cold I couldn't really feel if I was making a difference, but she could, 'cause all of a sudden she got this look on her face like nothing I'd seen before.

She didn't really seem scared or anything-she never has around me-but all these creases started popping up in her forehead, and her eyes got big and wild like some kind of feral animal. So I figured I'd say something, 'cause I had a feeling she'd get crazy if I didn't.

        "I didn't do anything to you if that's what you're worried about," I said.

Hailey didn't blink, just stared at me like she hadn't heard a word I'd said.

        "Nobody touched you, Hailey. Honest. You can check if you want."

        "Get off."

I let her go pretty quick after that. She pulled my clothes around her like she wanted to hide herself from me. I wasn't even looking at her in that way. I hated that she thought I would.

        "Did Liam take the keys?" she asked, out of the blue.

        "What keys?"

        "The cop's?"

She pointed to the frozen red trail lining the side of the room leading to where Marcus and Cillian dumped Rusty's body. I couldn't get past his hands. Seeing Russ's fingers all blue and swollen like that wasn't something anybody could look at for too long.

        "I don't know. Nobody said anything about any keys to me. Why? It's not gonna open that door."

Her face scrunched up around the corners. The longer she glared at me the less I wanted to look at her. Whatever make up she had on was either smudged or had rubbed off somewhere along the way.

Her cheeks were blotchy red from the cold, and I figured she'd probably be pretty upset if she could actually see the way her hair looked.

Hailey tried getting to her feet, but she looked like a toddler swimming around in my jeans, shivering, and tripping all over the place. She stumbled over to Rusty, pocketed something, and started pacing around the room.

I stayed put. I wasn't even sure if I could stand yet, but I'd be damned before she figured that out.

        "Can you sit down? I'm getting dizzy watching you go around in circles," I said.

        "So stop watching me."

        "You're distracting."

        "I'm trying to figure my way out of here. "

        "There isn't one, princess, so sit down."

Hailey dropped the conversation. Trying to talk sense to her didn't work too well either. She walked around the room like an ant in a mason jar, thinking she could change things.

She didn't get it. Even after nearly freezing to death, she still didn't understand how bad things were on the other side of that door. We were better off dying in here than trying to fight to get out there. Liam was out there.

        "You think they're gonna let you leave?"

She stopped pacing and whipped her head around towards me.

        "I'll figure that out when I-"

        "When you what? When you open the door and my brother puts a bullet in your brain? What'll you do then? You're not a hostage anymore, you're a target."

She planted her feet inches away from my face and stared down at me like I was stupid. I wasn't gonna be looked down on by anyone else today. I stood up, body shaking worse than the shivers and nearly passed out from the pain ripping through my left side.

        "If I'm so high up on your hit list, then why am I still alive?" she asked.

        "You're not supposed to be."

        "And you screwed that up. I don't know what to say Superman. Thanks for the body heat, I hope stripping my clothes off while I was unconscious did it for you."

I sent the back of my hand flying across her face so fast it took her a few seconds to realize what happened. It took me even longer to realize what I'd done. I never should've touched her.

She wavered a little on her feet but she didn't cry. Instead the edges of her eyelids narrowed into swollen angry slits. She could be as pissed off as she wanted, I didn't give a shit either way. I wasn't gonna take any heat from someone I nearly died trying to save.

        "Unless you wanna die here, keep that mouth shut," I said.

She flicked her tongue lightly across the cut on her bottom lip and slipped into a crooked smile.

        "I need you to do something for me," she said.

        "Depends on what it is."

        "Make this count."

She stepped in close, real close, so I could feel her there-and everything got slow. Trying to think felt like walking around waist deep in molasses-thick and sticky. She slid her hands up the sides of my face and stood up on her toes 'til her lips were inches from mine.

I got sloppy all of a sudden, warm and damp all over the place. What kind of guy breaks a sweat in a thirty-degree icebox? She laced her fingers together around the back of my neck, like she didn't care how clammy I was and-

 Wham.

The edge of her knee came crashing hard and heavy into the weak side of my ribs. Blood spattered out of my mouth and into her face. I must've yelled pretty loud because she went white all over.

Hailey grabbed on to the sides of my shirt like she thought she could keep me standing, but I shifted my weight so she couldn't hold me up.

The second I hit the floor, my body did it's own thing. The shakes hit me in waves. The first couple felt like little tremors, but the later ones got so violent that if I hadn't tried to keep my head up, I would've knocked myself out.

She probably thought I'd lied to her about everything. That I'd touched her, violated her, that I deserved worse than what everybody had already put me through. Maybe I did. Bleeding or choking to death from a busted rib or punctured lung was probably payback at its best.

I didn't want to cry-I did anyway. Hailey looked down at me like she didn't know what to do. But she'd already done what she wanted, she just didn't expect it to turn out the way it did.

She apologized over and over and waved her hands everywhere like it would fix things. She had nothing to be sorry about and nothing to fix. Laying me out was probably the smartest thing she'd done all day. She just didn't know it yet.

The door opened behind her, and somebody walked in. I shut my eyes and waited for the gunshots. Two clicks would settle all the bullshit. Instead Marcus ran over to me and lifted my head off the ground.

He looked terrible. His eyes had sunken too far into his face for me to be afraid of him. He was afraid for me. He kept yelling at me to stop crying or else I'd die choking on all the blood in my mouth. I started laughing instead.

        "What the hell have you done to yourself, Caleb?"

        "The usual."

I cracked a delirious smile. He stared back at me like I was crazy. Seeing Marcus all choked up was kind of funny 'cause I wasn't used to him worrying about me like this. I wasn't used to him worrying about me at all. Dying has its perks.

        "Didn't Liam tell you and Cillian to let us freeze to death?" I asked.

        "He said he'd shut the air off."

Holding in a second laugh was a mistake.

        "Does it feel room temperature in here to you, Marcus? You should've checked on me. You should've been here the minute his gun went off next to my face."

His eyebrows might as well have fallen off his forehead. Marcus had more of a guilty conscience than he wanted to admit. He just never said anything. I could see it though. His eyes would get lowly and pathetic and he wouldn't look at you straight.

He'd hunch over sometimes, even when he was sitting down. Growing up he couldn't even get away with eating the icing off a birthday cake without getting caught.

He's always been kind of soft. Sure, he could get pushy sometimes, but he didn't really have any pull.

He never spoke up when he knew something was wrong, and he couldn't stand up to anyone-especially Liam. That was where we were different.

Maybe that made him smarter than me, or maybe he'd screwed himself over because of that. Given the last couple hours, he would've been better off leaving Liam on his own.

        "I'll get you patched up. We're gonna need you when the cops get here. Can you stand?" he asked.

        "He's not going anywhere and neither are you!"

 Hailey, as usual, interrupted the conversation.

I never thought I'd see a five-foot-four skinny-minnie pointing a shotgun at me and my brother, but I guess there were first times for everything. Marcus was so distracted, he'd left the damn thing out in the open. Stupid.

        "Do you even know how to use that?" I asked.

Hailey whipped the barrel around towards me and tightened up on the trigger.

        "Say something like that again, and I'll blow your balls off," she said.

I changed the subject.

        "Where'd you get that shotgun, Marcus?" I asked.

He looked guilty as sin.

        "Rusty's trunk."

Hailey stepped up and shoved the barrel of the gun into the back of Marcus's head. She still had the safety on.

        "Stop talking and open the door for me, Marcus," she said.

        "I can't do that."

He stood up, turned around towards Hailey and pushed the nose of the gun out of his face. He wasn't scared of anybody else in this world but his family.

        "Hailey, you've been knocked around enough as is, and I don't want to add to that. I need you to let me help my brother."

        "And I need you to let me go," she said.

She slid her finger over the rounded edge of the safety and switched it off.

        "You can take care of Caleb once you get me out to Rusty's car. Try anything, and I'll take out the two of you. "

Marcus couldn't figure out what to say to her after that. Hailey had a lot more balls than most girls I'd been around. I hadn't been around many, but even if I had, I'd still think she was one of a kind-in a crazy kind of way.

As hard as she was trying, her threats didn't pack much of a punch. Mainly 'cause I had the keys she needed to drive Rusty's car. She wasn't the only one who wanted to get the hell out of here.

        "She's got a point, Marcus. Sticking around this place with Liam like this isn't smart."

       "We need you here. She can do what she wants, but you've got obligations in this house, Caleb."

Marcus and his goddamn orders. I used to do everything he said 'cause I hated disappointing him. I still did. I loved him, maybe too much, but he didn't make it easy. He acted so much like Ma sometimes it was hard not to blindly follow his lead.

But if she was still here, she wouldn't have wanted me to listen to anyone else but myself. I knew better than to stick around this place. I wished Marcus and Cillian did too.

        "I'm not staying, Marcus. I can't."

The air in the room got heavy between us, the change had nothing to do with a broken set of ribs. We didn't have to say anything to each other to understand that this was where our roads split.

The quiet had Hailey on edge.

Our silent code wasn't for her to figure out. She stood there, shaking like a jackhammer, using every muscle she had to keep that gun steady. I forced myself to sit up and swallowed down a mouthful of red spit.

Hailey turned the barrel towards me out of panic. She was too scared to shoot. She would've been better off pointing the damn thing at Marcus. He could take it from her anytime he wanted. I could hardly move.

        "I'll get you home, alright? If you let me hitch a ride to Charlottesville with you, I'll take you home," I said.

She looked skeptical.

        "Don't screw with me, Caleb."

        "I'm not."

I slid my hand into my pocket and pulled out Rusty's keys. She wasn't paying attention to where my hands were when she hit me. She broke my ribs to get my brother's attention, so I stole from her to keep my collateral.

        "You're gonna need me around if you want to figure out how to get further south off the radar," I said.

Marcus's shotgun wavered in Hailey's hands. She had the same sorry, helpless, look on her face that gave her away at Union Station. Broken kids were always easy to spot. We're real good at pretending that we're okay in front of normal people, 'cause normal people can't tell we're faking.

Hailey had the eyes of a faker, the big bold kind like newspaper headlines-easy to read and hard to miss. She knew I'd figured her out. She'd probably figured me out too, 'cause fakers are the only ones who can recognize each other.

My brothers hadn't even figured out that I'd been faking for seventeen years 'til today.

        "When we get to your Mom's place, I'll turn myself in. You can shoot me if I try to run."

I meant what I said. But Hailey hadn't made up her mind to trust me yet. She looked over at me, then Marcus. She dropped her eyes to the floor for a split second. Marcus only needed a split second.

He rushed her.

Hailey dropped the gun and sent it spiraling out of her hands and on to the floor towards me. Marcus's shoes raced towards me, just one foot after the other, real slow, like he was running through water. If he got a hold of it, he'd stop me from leaving. I wasn't stopping for anybody anymore.

I turned the gun around in my hands, as frozen and useless as they were, and used the barrel as a makeshift crutch to get to my feet. I got a split second on Marcus-I only needed a split second.

I sent the butt of that shotgun crashing into his gut, and he hit the floor wheezing like a penny whistle, eyes bloodshot and wide from the shock of the impact.

I spat up proof of a bad decision. I couldn't stay steady on my legs anymore, but Hailey caught me before I keeled over.

        "Get outside to the car, Hailey. Should be in front of the house. Grab any clothes you see near my bed on the way."

She slung my arm over her shoulder and hurried us out of the cold room.

The house looked like an asylum. Everything my brothers and I had made together, every piece of furniture we'd cut and carved had been broken down into barricades. My bunk was gone.

Liam and Cillian must've used the wood planks to board up the windows. The moonlight couldn't even get in. They'd set up the house so nobody could get in or out without falling through one of the traps in the floor or tripping on the broken woodpiles scattered all over.

Hailey's shoulders tensed up under me. She didn't say a word, but I felt her fear. I pinched the soft spot just above her collarbones so she knew she'd be alright. She needed to believe that we would be, even if I didn't.

Hailey stepped into the kitchen. The dull glow of Liam's knife in the low light caught my eye. He never walked around without it. Scared the hell outta me that he was.

I picked up the handle and angled the blade to redirect what little light was coming in from the outside. Silver strands of barbed wire lined the living room floor. This was the thirty-year-old version of what he did to bugs as a kid.

Marcus used to talk about how he'd set traps, real elaborate ones, so he could catch beetles, cockroaches, and all kinds of critters and kill them. He wouldn't kill them right away either.  He did it slow-pulled their legs off one by one, or ripped out their wings.

Liam said he did it 'cause Ma didn't like bugs. They scared her, so he made them suffer. He hadn't changed much since then. He outgrew the bugs, but not the killing.

Light spilled out onto the floor from behind us.

The living room lit up just enough for me to see that Hailey didn't have a chance in hell of getting across with me weighing her down. But getting out wasn't an option anymore 'cause Liam walked in.

I didn't have to turn around to feel him there. Three pairs of shoes scuffled up behind us. Two shotgun rounds clicked into place. I told Hailey to stay where she was, but she'd already started turning back to see where the sounds had come from.

Liam's eyes flickered through the dark over the back end of his flashlight. Cillian had his shotgun fixed on me, just low enough to blow a hole through Hailey and then through my chest if he aimed right.

He was a great shot. Never missed anything he'd pointed a gun at. He used to shoot baby squirrels with his BB gun. Today he was aiming at me with a shotgun. I wondered if he felt any different. Didn't look like it.

        "I'd offer you my help, Caleb, but Cillian's keen on shooting you and who am I to deny him the privilege?" Liam said.

I pulled Hailey to me, turned her out of Cillian's line of fire, and covered her eyes. She didn't need to see any of this. She should've boarded that train to Charlottesville and never ended up here. If she was gonna die, it would be after me.

A good man doesn't let a girl take the first round. I wasn't a good man, but dying doing something good for someone was better than living like I had. I was fine if that someone was her.

I stood there, eyes closed, waiting for the gunshots for the last time. Two clicks would settle all the bullshit.

Click. Click.

Bang.