Breed Me On The Bike

WAS BETTER

CORA~

It is dark when I pull into my own driveway.

Miles’s SUV is gone. Good. If I had to look at it tonight I would key it and I do not have time for a misdemeanor on top of a million-dollar debt.

The house smells like this afternoon with the candle I lit this morning like a person who still had a normal Tuesday. I lock the door behind me anyway. It feels stupid.

I go straight to my bedroom.

The bed is still wrecked with their nonsense. I do not look at it longer than I have to. I strip the sheets and shove them in the hamper like that fixes anything, then I open the closet and start pulling things off hangers.

I am not dressing for them.

I am dressing for a proper conversation. Jeans. A polo. Hair off my neck. No dress. No tight anything. No lip gloss either. If they think I walked into that lot this afternoon to be looked at, they can look at denim.

I hold up a black dress I bought for the rehearsal dinner and put it back so hard the hanger bangs.

Negotiate. That is the word I keep using in my head. I will sit down. I will ask for the number on paper. I will tell them how I am going to pay it. If they insist on me instead of money, I will call the police.

The thought dies as soon as I have it.

Iron Dominion does not get arrested in this city. People say that like it is weather. Cops do not walk onto their lot. Cases disappear. Names disappear. Dad already said it. I heard it years before today and treated it like a story men told to sound tough.

I swallow hard.

“Oh God,” I say to the closet. “What the hell am I going to do?”

Run?

I sit on the edge of the bed with a pair of jeans in my lap and I let myself think it for ten seconds. Pack a bag. Drive west. Change my number. Be somebody else in a different state.

They would find me.

I have heard enough about them. They found men who owed less than my father. They found people who left in the middle of the night with cash and a head start. I am a nineteen-year-old with a Honda and a customer-accounts login.

I am not ready for any of this.

I put on the jeans and a plain navy polo. I scrape my blonde hair into a ponytail and look at myself in the mirror. I look like I am going to return a blender. Fine. That is the point.

Just then a knock hits the front door and then the door opens.

I turn.

Avery is in my living room like she still lives on the guest list. Sage is gone. She is in a cropped sweater and clean makeup and she has the nerve to look nervous.

“What are you doing here?” I ask. “I made it clear today in the group chat that I did not want to see any of you in this house again including Dad”

Avery holds up both hands. “I know. I know. I just… Cora, can you let me talk?”

“You talked this afternoon. With your body on Miles.”

She flinches like I slapped her. “That is not fair.”

“It is exactly fair.”

“I came to say I was sorry.”

I walk out of the bedroom and stop at the edge of the hall. “Say it and leave.”

Avery’s eyes go wet on cue. She has always been good at that. “I am sorry. I did not want you to find out like that. I did not want you to find out at all. It got out of control and I panicked and I know I ruined everything for you.”

“You ruined my bed,” I say. “The rest was already ruined. You just helped.”

“Please do not be like this.”

“Like what?”

She wipes under one eye and smears nothing. The makeup still stays perfect. Perfect pretense!

“I care about you. You are my sister.”

“Stepsister.” I correct.

“That still counts.”

“It counted less when you were on my bed.”

Avery lets out a shaky breath. “Mom said you pushed her. She has a bruise.”

Avery looks around the living room like she is seeing it for the first time. The water glass is still on the table. I did not wash it. The lipstick mark is still there. She sees it and her throat moves.

“I should not have come here with her,” she says. “I should have said no.”

“You should have said no a long time before today.”

“I know.”

I cross my arms. “If you came to cry, the door is behind you. I have somewhere to be.”

Her gaze drops to my clothes. Jeans. Polo. Ponytail. “You are going to them like that?”

“I am going to talk.”

Avery laughs, small and disbelieving. “You cannot talk Iron Dominion out of a debt, Cora.”

“Watch me.”

“That is what I mean,” she says, and the sorry look on her face starts thinning. “You always think you can handle it. You always think you are the one who gets to be reasonable and clean and above it.”

There it is. The perfect charade mask finally slipping.

I tilt my head. “Say the rest.”

“There is no rest. I am trying to apologize.”

“No. You are trying to look like the victim in my living room.”

Her face changes. The wet eyes stay. The sweetness does not.

“You make everything so hard,” Avery says.

“I make everything so hard?,” I repeat. “After what happened today? I am the one that got sold. And I am the difficult one?”

“You have always been the difficult one.”

“I have always been the one who paid for the florist when Dad ‘forgot’ his card. I have always been the one who stayed late at the shop. I have always been the one who made the binder and the timeline and the polite texts to Miles’s mother. You hearted napkin photos, Avery. Do not confuse that with work.”

Her mouth tightens. “Of course”

“Of course what?”

“That voice,” she says. “The one you use when you want everyone to know you are better.”

I laugh. I cannot help it. “I am standing in the house where you screwed my fiancé and you are mad about my tone?”

“You are nineteen.” She takes a step closer. The apologetic face is gone now. “You are nineteen and you have the job and the car and the little adult schedule and everybody talks about Cora like she is the one who turned out right. Dad. Teachers in school then. The shop guys. Miles’s mom. You walk around this family like you invented responsibility.”

“I did not invent it. I did it.”

“And you never let anybody forget it.”

I keep my voice even. “You are jealous?”

Avery’s laugh is sharp. “Do not flatten this.”

“I just did. You are jealous. You are older. I am younger. I worked. That has been eating you alive and today you finally found a way to take something that was mine.”

“Miles was not yours. He was a job,” Avery says. “Dad put him here but you turned it into a love story because you need to be the girl who gets chosen for real.”

That one lands. I do not let it show more than a blink.

“Get out of my house,” I say.

She does not move. “You always act like you are above us. Above this family. You work your little desk job and you eat clean and you keep your legs closed like that makes you holy.”

“Avery, leave my house, I pay the rent here, you have a Daddy, go stay at his house”

“Why? You pushed my mother on the kitchen floor and called her a w***e”

“Because she disrespected my mother and made fun of her death”

Avery’s eyes flash. “You talk about your Mom like she was a saint. Your mother is no different from a w***e, it was better she was dead”