Free Written in the Scars by Adriana Locke

always lies with his pillow under his head, neck, and top of his back long-ways.
    He stayed with me.
    My eyes sting as they fill with hot tears, my headache now blocked by a surge of emotion. With more urgency than I care to acknowledge, I make my way into the kitchen. I’m across the room in half the normal time.
    Dashing to the window, only my car is in the driveway. A million questions fight for attention, a thousand possibilities and scenarios race through my mind. I struggle to piece together the events of last night.
    I have no idea what happened. Fear hits me hard when I realize that regardless of what occurred—he’s not here. Yet, through it all, a little bubble of happiness sits squarely on my shoulders because he was here.
    It infuriates me that him being here makes me happy. I don’t want to want him. I don’t want to be happy that he gave me a piece of his time, like he can walk back in my life and decide he’ll bestow some attention on me.
    God knows what he was doing all day yesterday, or last week, or the month before.
    My purse sits on the table. I go to it and rummage around until I find my phone. My finger hovers over Lindsay’s name when I hear tires hitting gravel.
    With a lump in my throat, I look out the window. Jiggs waves as he makes his way to the front door. Dropping my phone back in my purse, I head to the front and let my brother in.
    “You look like shit,” he laughs, ruffling my hair as he walks inside. “Feel like it too?”
    “Pretty much,” I mumble, following him into the living room. He picks up the pillow and blanket, and I automatically open my mouth to object, but shut it quickly. I don’t know what he knows, and I don’t want to muddy the waters.
    Jiggs gets comfortable, kicking his feet up on the coffee table and watches me smugly.
    “What?” I ask. I plop down in the recliner, my stomach roiling.
    He shrugs. “Anything you wanna tell me?”
    “No, but I know you know what happened last night, and I’d love to know too.”
    “You don’t know?”
    He seems surprised, uncrossing him arms. He peers at me through his thick lashes, a gift from our grandma.
    “Jiggs,” I ask, my voice unnaturally even, “Did he stay?”
    “Yeah. He brought you home from Thoroughbreds.”
    My world spins in a mad dose of uncertainty. “Why? Why did he do that?”
    Jiggs laughs. “Well, it was him bring you home or let you go home with Pettis.”
    “Pettis? I’d never go home with that son of a bitch.”
    “You almost did last night,” he cracks.
    “Oh my God.” I cover my eyes with my hands, unable to look at him. Unable to look at myself. That’s not like me. If I would’ve been willing to go home with Pettis . . . what else was I capable of doing? Or saying?
    My cheeks flush, my stomach rolling again, sloshing with the alcohol that caused this big mess.
    No, I caused this big mess. This one is on me. I chose to go to Thoroughbreds with the explicit purpose of getting wasted.
    “It worked out well,” my brother says. “Ty walked in and saw it and flipped his lid.”
    My chest swells, and I can’t help the smile that tugs at my lips. “He did?”
    There’s no denying that this little tidbit of information feels good. That I was able to get under his skin, even if I didn’t mean to. Score one for the alcohol because I never would’ve attempted such a thing sober.
    “He actually carried you out of the pub. I was going to bring you home, but he didn’t really leave it open for debate.”
    My gaze falls on the pillow at the other end of the sofa.
    “He left around five this morning. He called me when you went to sleep, and I talked to him again this morning. I know you’re thinking a million things, but nothing happened last night. He just put you to bed and slept on the couch.”
    Giving that a second to soak in, I imagine what last night must’ve looked like from his perspective—me, drunk, stumbling, and altogether foolish. And he comes in like some kind of