Fractured Freedom: A Brother’s Best Friend Second Chance Romance (Tarnished Empire)
Fractured Freedom: Chapter 5

Delilah

It’d been two days. And in that time, I found that most everyone left me alone. Mothers, sisters, daughters, and people in pain. There wasn’t a difference between any of us at the end of the day.

Except the one girl who stabbed another with a whittled down piece of metal from someone’s ceiling pipe. In her defense, the other girl had called her a terrible name.

Izzy caught me looking at her with pity. “Don’t even think about walking over to console her, Delilah. The guards are coming, and you’ll put a target on your back.”

“She looked like they backed her into a corner.”

“Yeah, well, we’re all in corners, and we all have to deal with the consequences of what we do in them.”

I sighed and walked away with her that day. Later, my sister swore at a woman who came near me asking to use my shampoo. Before I could give it to her, my sister snatched it away.

“Do we look like your fucking charity, Crenshaw? Get out of here.”

“Izzy!” I hissed as the girl turned away, giving us the finger.

“Don’t appear weak in here, Delilah, or they’ll make you weak.”

“Sharing isn’t weakness,” I huffed. We were standing under lukewarm water, and it was a communal shower, a huge white tiled space with only a few shower heads. I really was in no position to argue when I felt completely exposed and outside of my element.

While I wanted to shake in fear and crumble in defeat, Izzy stood tall. “In here, it is. You need to be smart.”

“Smart? Smart?” My voice was shrill as I turned off the shower and grabbed my tiny towel to dry off. I rubbed aggressively at my legs, leaving red marks on every inch. “How in the hell did we get in here, Izzy? Smart would have been never carrying drugs into an airport in the first place.”

She rolled her eyes. She’d done the same thing when I told her she needed to call Mom and Dad. When I had, they’d both cried and said they would make calls. My mother was beside herself, and I almost cried with her.

Almost.

I couldn’t, though. I didn’t need her worrying, especially if I was going to be in here a while. I explained that it was comfortable enough and went into detail about how Izzy and I got to share bunks.

My mother didn’t say much about Izzy. I knew she blamed her, and I couldn’t stop myself from blaming her too.

Back in our cell that night, I lay in my bunk and stared up at hers. “How could we have been born from the same womb at the same time and have such different lives?”

“Well, technically, I was born three minutes after you. So, that’s probably why.”

I kicked her mattress as I chuckled. “I mean it. Where did it go wrong for you?”

“Wrong?” she asked like I’d insulted her again. “I don’t know that anything is wrong with how I turned out.”

“Izzy.” My tone was condescending, and I hated that I couldn’t stop the word vomit, but my anger had it spewing out of me faster than I could control. “Your friends are pieces of shit. You don’t come to family stuff. You went to juvenile hall when you were only seventeen, and your grades were shit. You told me you were going to school, but we never went to your college graduation, so I’m guessing that’s a lie. You’ve been smuggling drugs for money, haven’t you?”

“Well, if you have it all figured out …” She trailed off, but I could hear the pain in her voice. I felt that same pain in my heart.

How could I change her when I could barely change myself? I’d always been the good one, and I never veered away from it even when I knew I wanted to take more risks and live my life. I couldn’t fault her for not being able to change herself either.

Except my life didn’t hurt others, and maybe that’s why my resentment toward her pushed more hateful things from my mouth. “Figured out? I’m in jail because of you. I hope it was worth it. Did you get paid a lot, or was it just to keep up your status in whatever shitty group you’ve been hanging out with?”

“Lilah, go to sleep. You’re being a bitch.” She said it softly, but the words still stung.

“Do you even want to apologize for this?” I threw back. “I’m a bitch because I finally stopped being gullible after all this time. I’m finally siding with our family. You’re the addict, and you’ve been dragging us down because you won’t go out and get help. Grow up. Take accountability. Be sorry.” I wasn’t ever confrontational with her. Never had been really. Maybe the shock of it had her mad enough to respond.

“Fine!” she yelled, cutting me off as she whipped her head over the side of the bed so I could see her glare at me.

I gasped when I saw tears streaming down her face. Izzy never cried. I did. And she was always there hugging me when it happened. We were allies even if we didn’t hang out in the same crowds. I was the yin to her yang. Sweet to her spicy. Tame to her wild. Twin sisters against the world. I’d believed her for so long.

Maybe it was the heartbreak of her lying to me or that our bond was truly severed here and now, but tears slid down my cheeks too as she said, “I’m sorry for all of it, okay? What do you want me to say? That I’m a fuckup? Sure. I was always the black sheep. Mom didn’t even think she was going to have me, Lilah. Five D names and a left over I, right?”

My mother only got one ultrasound without health insurance and Izzy had hidden behind me. When I was born, they’d quickly informed my mother of another child. She’d named her Isabel rather than another D name. I didn’t think it bothered her but I guess it had.

“I didn’t care about school or my life like you did,” she continued. “You had it all, and I had some friends, okay? People liked me just for my fun personality and it meant more than school, okay? I don’t really know how that’s possible, just that it is. I always felt beneath all of you, and somehow you always climbed up that happiness pole and found the freaking sun when I was left clawing through the darkness.”

Her apology didn’t appease me. It made me feel worse for what I’d said before, my words curdling in my stomach and souring like rotting milk.

I wasn’t always happy, wasn’t always perfect.

I just didn’t share my sadness with any of them.

“That’s not true,” I whispered. She didn’t know about the days in college where I couldn’t see a thing because I’d been sucked into a black hole of pain that didn’t seem to ever let up.

She didn’t know I’d carried a baby. A baby that I’d lost.

Nobody did.

“Oh, whatever,” she scoffed and flew back over the side of her mattress. “Don’t try to paint me a picture of you not doing well, Delilah. You always have and you always will.”

It wasn’t the time to share my own demons. I needed to be strong for both of us, so I didn’t respond to her.

I let her drift off to sleep while I cried silently below her that night, wasting my tears on a twin sister who I wasn’t sure knew how to love me back the same way I loved her.