Teacher's Pet

XXXVII

Mollie

I tried to keep busy with different things ranging from washing laundry and cleaning the house to working on homework like the normal college student I was supposed to be. I felt like I had lived an extra ten years than I really have, each disaster was taking its toll on me. I wouldn't trade a life with Xander for normalcy, the friends and parties that came with a girl my age. I didn't need—or want—any of that.

When everything is settled, maybe I could reach out to Elizabeth and Josie, but I couldn't add a friendship to my list of responsibilities right now. I swept the broom across the hardwood floor, collecting the minuscule amount of dust that coated the boards. Just as I was about to move to get the dustpan, the front door flew open revealing three bodies casted over by shadows of the evening sun.

"Mollie! Get some water and bring it to the living room." Xander came into view with an arm slung over his shoulder, supporting the weight of an unconscious man.

"L-Landon?" He was helping Xander as they hobbled in through the door and around the staircase. "What are you doing here?" If he was here with Xander, that meant that was... "Dreven?! What's going on?" My head was reeling, that was the only reason why Xander would bring him here, but why here?

"Good to see you too, babe." Landon huffed out a breath as they lugged the dead weight to the living room. A string of profanities and promises of ass-kicking came from Xander before they started to bicker, and my cheeks warmed with embarrassment. Please, be asleep. I hoped Dreven was that, and not actually dead, but anything to keep him from hearing those two fight over me like a toy.

The thought of losing him when he's so close had my eyes prick with hot, sour tears. They fell down my cheeks in rivulets as the panic seeped its way into my stomach, filling my body with cement. I grabbed bottles of water, and scavenged through the drawers for towels and rags. What else, what else. I didn't know what I needed to do for him. He needed a hospital with doctors and nurses who would know how to help him—save him. The only medical knowledge I knew was from Grey's Anatomy and I didn't have a McDreamy here to save lives.

I grabbed the biggest pan I could find and filled it with warm water, gathered my haul of supplies and took off for the living room. Dreven was sprawled out on the couch, looking worse than he did when I saw him in the cemetery on his birthday, as if that were possible. He was cadaverous looking, unlike his normal muscular, freckled self. Beads of sweat trickled down his skin, and covered his skin like mist had sprayed him.

"He won't go to the hospital, so don't waste your breath sweetheart." Xander acknowledged me as I squatted down next to my brother. Dipping a rag in the bowl, I wrung out the access water and dabbed the sweat away from his forehead.

"Dreven..." My voice trembled, thick with fear and emotion. "Please, we h-have to help him. I can't lose him too," I begged, looking at Xander with tears blurring my vision. A sob hiccuped its way from my through, and I tried to swallow down the lump in my throat that grew bigger with each passing breath. My tears burned my skin and fell into droplets on Dreven's sweat covered shirt.

Xander looked as though he was in pain, torn between what to do. There was a difference between what Dreven wanted us to do and what we should do. The line was so thin, it was either life and death.

***

Eight months later...

Life was crazy. That was one thing I learned for sure this past year. Dreven was doing much better since he was no longer on the verge of death. That night, though... Xander had to perform CPR on him three different times on Dreven to get his pulse pumping life through his body again.

I heaved until the contents of my stomach were expelled into the trash can each time his pulse stopped, but now, he was healthier than before. The color came back to his face, tinging his cheeks with a warm pink. His body was filling out again, and once he got his appetite back he started working out, gaining back the muscle mass he had lost form using drugs. Six months in rehab and therapy helped him get his life back, and helped me get my brother back.

I was heartbroken when he told me why he had to 'go away'. He felt as though he was responsible for our parents death. He cried and begged for my forgiveness when he told me the story of the accident. It was a car wreck, Dad was fighting with Mom in the car while he was driving. Dreven had our mother sit with him up front so he could try to separate the two of them the best he could while trying to keep it a secret that they were taking Dad to the hospital. He was high on meth again, and tried to kill himself when Mom came home from work.

I was at school that day, unbeknownst that my entire world was about to turn upside down. They had hoped that once they had him in the Emergency Room, they could get Dad the medical care he needed. It was beginning to be too much for any of us to be able to handle, and he was hurting Mom more and more each day. We didn't want to see her hurt, and if Dad going away for a little while was what it took, then so be it.
But they never made it to the hospital. Not alive, that is. Dad had reached around the passenger seat and started to strangle Mom, to the point the color was draining from her face.

Dreven paled, tears gushing from his eyes in solid streams as he spoke the words aloud. He did what he could while driving, swatting our father away and trying to pry his hands off our mother's throat. Of course, that only infuriated our father even more, causing him to lash out at my brother next. Climbing over the center console, Dad was inconsolable, fighting against the two most important people in my life then. Dreven couldn't keep the car on the road and try to calm him down at the same time, ultimately swerving off the road abruptly.

The car had flipped into a ditch, Dreven explained how it felt, the tumbling, the nausea that rolled through him when it rolled three times over. The metal crunched, and our parents screamed. Mom was thrown from the car, dead on impact, and Dad... he was too—mutilated, for Dreven to explain his death. It was too gruesome, a thing of nightmares that haunted him each night.

Dreven was beat up too, he wasn't lucky enough to make it out unscathed. He had a few broken ribs, and cuts along his body that were now scar tissue. The guilt of the wreck led him to drugs—but it was more. The guilt of them dying alone, our mother's screaming in fear, and Dad crying out for the mercy he never thought to give. He felt guilty for taking them away from me, but he lost them too. Yet, most of all, he felt guilty for abandoning me. He confessed that he couldn't stomach the thought of seeing me, seeing my mother's eyes every time he looked at me. He thought I would be angry, that I would hate him.

Even while begging for forgiveness, he wanted me to hate him, he felt as though he didn't deserve my love. Dreven was my protector, my brother, always. I was more upset that I had to go that long grieving him, willing to sell my soul to have him back when he was only an arm's length away. I was sad that he want through that alone, and angry that he turned to drugs when that's the very thing that ruined our father—our family.

What happened to us wasn't fair, and neither was what he did. But he promised to not turn his way to drugs again, or to leave me.

Him finding out about Xander and I, however, was... interesting. Explicities I had never heard of before were tossed Xander's way, but I was able to stop the punches that were stewing, ready to be thrown at each other. I saved the details of Xander being my lover, boyfriend, or whatever label belonged on it to myself.

There was no reason in the world to share the crude details of our intimacy, or how Xander handled himself when I was in trouble. All that mattered was that he was mine, and he loved me. In Dreven's absence, he protected me, provided for me, and gave me a home.

I was thankful for the friendship Mr. Thomas—Oh, how I missed calling him that sometimes—shared with my mother. It brought me home, and in the end, that's all that mattered to my dear brother.

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I will be updating this book monthly on Wattpad and Inkitt. You can access further chapters on Patreon as it is being updated more often on that platform. The link is in my bio 🦋🤍
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シ M. Reeds