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ix. Bite The Hand That Feeds
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It was seven minutes 'til four in the afternoon and Blair Cameron was sitting on her brother's bed with her knees up to her chest, face pressed into the sleeve of her hoodie.
Rafe had dollar bills laid out on his dark covers, nearly five hundred, if she'd have to guess. The Wolf of Wall Street was playing on the TV across from her at low volume, but she was hardly paying attention either way. She still could smell the smoke if she tried hard enough and JJ Maybank's face bleeding disappointment was creeping behind her eyelids every single time she blinked.
Topper spent the night at her house after they came back from the movies, Kelce reluctantly drove back home, and Sage and Rafe made a quick trip down to the trailer so they could both stash on their addiction. You know, the ones that came in little transparent bags. She and the Thornton boy talked all night, or rather he ranted about how he didn't feel as close to Sarah as he used to while she balled herself up on her bed, palms pressed to her ears, and tried to vanish as well as she could. She wondered if she could slip through the duvet's cracks.
Her head was pounding when her brother woke her up the next day with a glass of coffee that was already cold by the time he remember the pot and made his way up to her room. Topper had sneaked out the window like he always used to do. When he stepped inside her room, Rafe frowned at the sight of a balled up bunch of silk-scarves on her desk, by those beloved fake flowers of hers, but only placed the glass besides it and shook Blair awake maybe a lot more brutally than he used to when they were kids.
If he had caught sight of the flask, he'd know it belonged to their father (which she had no clue of).
Sarah was still MIA and Blair was becoming considerably worried, her leg constantly bouncing up and down nervously, phone pressed to her thigh. She made breakfast for the both of them and her father who, somewhere along the lines of Blair and Rafe talking around the kitchen isle, barged in the room with that loud, fatherly smile of his. He couldn't say no to his daughter's lovely strawberry pancakes.
The beginning of the day passed so fast Blair didn't even have time to think about it. All until she sat down on her brother's bed to watch a movie because she didn't have a television in her room and her MacBook had been dead for the past 36 hours. As she installed herself with her phone still clutched between her hands, he pulled a dark duffel bag from under his bed and grabbed a stash of cash, one he made from selling cocaine at that party Blair missed, no doubt. The ring on his pointer finger, a compass-engraved signet she brought him for his eighteenth birthday, was reflecting the light penetrating past his wide open window. Her head was pounding so much she was considering snapping those goddamn curtains shut.
