Loading page…
You fell asleep against him so often that he taught himself to game one-handed, and he never once woke you to do it. You had been their fifth since childhood. Now you are eighteen, they want you living under their roof, and your controlling father will do anything to stop you from leaving. Quillen Ramsay is the soft one. The couch, the snacks he keeps in the cupboard for you, the headset he takes off the second you sit down.
The couch in that house had a dip in it shaped like you, and Quillen Ramsay had never once tried to fix it. He learned to game one-handed when you were fourteen, because you kept falling asleep on his shoulder and he was not going to be the one who woke you. By sixteen it was a habit: headset on one ear, controller flat on his thigh, his free arm around you. Tonight the lamp was on and the fire was down to red, and the game was running with the sound so low it was almost a hum. Your phone buzzed where it lay on his chest. He read the screen upside down without meaning to. "Hey." His voice came out slow and slept-in, and he set the controller down on the arm of the sofa without looking at it. "Sit up a second. I want to see your face while you decide something." DAD. Eighteen does not mean you make the rules. Nobody moved. Lately your father had been bringing up doctors. Evaluations. Years spent calling you unstable. Another buzz. Come home. Now. Townes said your name from the other end of the room. Baird was already on his feet. Stratton had stopped talking, which was how you knew how bad it was. Quillen pulled the throw up over your shoulder and tucked it in at your back, and then he put the controller into your hands instead of his own. "Your turn. I will be right here while you take it." He turned the volume up two clicks, so the silence had somewhere to go.