I found Boone and Wren around back. Boone had his sister tucked beneath one of his arms with a blanket draped around her, guiding her toward her old Honda. I slowed to a walk and approached them from the side, ignoring the feeling that my heart was about to malfunction. Neither of them noticed me.
“You said you were going to stop,” Boone’s voice bellowed into the still night as he continued steering Wren to her car. The blanket was so tightly drawn around her body, she looked like a nun in a habit. “You promised me no more of this shit when you had to call me after the last one got out of control.”
Wren struggled against Boone, but she was as short as I was and had always been rail-thin. She might as well have been trying to move the Hoover Dam with a team of mules. “I didn’t call you, Boone. You showed up all on your own at that one, dragging me out in the exact same way.”
“And it was a damn good thing I did show up, because what would have happened if I hadn’t?”
They’d made it to Wren’s car. Boone managed to throw open the driver’s side door and still maintain his hold on her.
“I would have made the other two hundred dollars I was planning on making that night, and there would have been a jack-off line out the bathroom after I left.” Wren shoved at Boone’s side, squirming against him. “God, Boone. When are you going to stop acting like I’m a kid?”
“When you stop behaving like one,” he growled.
“This is my job. This is how I make my living. This is me being an adult and leaving the kid part behind. Why can’t you see that?” When Wren shoved him again, she caught him just enough off guard he staggered a bit. “Thanks to your Save the Little Sister routine again, you cost me another thousand bucks tonight. That’s one thousand singles I had plans for.”
“Plans for shooting up your arm?”
Wren managed to free an arm from the blanket and didn’t waste a moment slapping Boone’s cheek. The slap echoed across the lake, making me wince.
If anything registered on Boone’s expression right then, it wasn’t pain.
“You’re a son of a bitch.” Wren’s voice quivered, more from what I guessed was anger than sadness. “And in case you didn’t catch the first five thousand hints, here’s me saying it out loud—leave me the hell alone.”
Boone’s jaw set, but he stayed silent. I wanted to move in, but my feet were stuck to the ground.
“You couldn’t save me then, and it’s too late to save me from whatever it is you think I need saving from now. A person has to want to be saved for it to work, big brother, and does it look like I’m screaming for help?”
Boone’s arms had fallen away from Wren when he stepped back from her slap. Lifting her arms, she threw off the blanket and did a small spin in front of her brother. If it made me wince to see Wren in her outfit—if that was what one could call it—I couldn’t imagine how Boone felt. How he’d felt when all of those guys inside had seen his little sister the same way.
“Wren—”
“Don’t, Boone. Just don’t.” Wren kicked off her clear platform heels and chucked them inside the Honda. Without them on, she barely came up to his shoulders. “I’m sick of the hero act. You’ve been playing it your whole life, and it’s never been that successful of a role for you.” Wren shook her head at him. “You can’t even save yourself.”
My feet were finally able to move. The sound of my footsteps crunching through the gravel made both of their heads turn, though Boone’s moved as if a weight had been strung to it.
“Oh, goodie. Clara’s here.” Wren’s eyes narrowed at me as I approached. There was very little of the girl I remembered in the woman before me now. Apparently she felt the opposite from the way she was glaring at me. “You can run along and save her now. She was always your main priority anyway.”
I tried to ignore that the woman in the high-leg purple sequined thong and matching pasties was the same girl I’d seen camped out in front of the television in Dolly’s trailer, a coloring book and box of crayons colored down to nubs in front of her. It was next to impossible though.
“God knows she needs all the saving she can get.” Wren shook her head at me next before disappearing into the car and slamming the door.
“Wren, stop.” Boone lurched forward and rapped on her window.
She answered by waving her middle finger at him, sputtered the Honda to life, and as she gunned it out of the driveway, it didn’t seem as though she were trying to avoid hitting me with her 80s Accord. It looked more as though she were trying to make me a hood ornament.
I dove to the side, but it wasn’t necessary. At the last moment, she steered the car to the side. She might have wanted to scare the shit out of me, but she didn’t actually want to maul me. It wasn’t one of the more comforting realizations I’d come to, but at least I wasn’t roadkill.
“Shit, are you okay?” Boone yelled as he lunged toward me.