SUNDRESS ─ kiara carrera & jj maybank

[ 002 ] what drowning feels like

Fury claws at her chest, slashing a red streak across her vision as she storms up the stairs, and before she knows it, she's throwing her mother's bedroom door open and there it is.

"Oh, shit—"

"You," Briar growls, a feral tempest raging in her skin as she takes in the sight—her father who'd supposedly abandoned them for his other family, struggling to pull on his pants and button his shirt at the same time, red-faced and red-handed, and her mother, wine-glass in hand, her silk robe slipping off her shoulder, and the untidy bed and its untidy business and a room that reeks sharply of sex—and the next thing she knows, the world has crackled to black. Briar snatches up the closest thing she could grab from her mother's dresser and without thinking twice, hurls it at her father. He dodges in the nick of time.

The brush strikes the wall and clatters to the ground at his feet. He's got one hand on the button of his pants, trying to keep it from falling to his ankles, and the other is raised in surrender.

"Sweetheart, let's talk about this, okay? Listen, just wait, wait, wait—"

She doesn't wait. She doesn't listen. All she wants to do is claw his stupid, vile face off. Chest heaving, teeth bared, Briar grabs for the next thing. Her hand closes around a snow-globe Briar made her mother buy when she was seven and she launches it at him with all of her might. This time, he isn't so lucky. It catches him in the face, glancing off his cheekbone before shattering on the floor, glitter and childhood seeping into the carpet like an unholy stain. When he straightens up, eyes wide with horror and fear, white in the mouth like he can't quite believe she'd struck to maim, Briar feels powerful.

"You have some fucking nerve," Briar seethes, venom lashing in her tone as her father finishes buckling his belt and is advancing towards her like she's a hostile viper about to strike. And she is. The next thing she's going for is his jugular. She's not guaranteed to miss this time.

"Flower," Paul Thornton says, voice low, like he's talking her off the edge as he slips out the doorway. But the way he says her old nickname—the one he used to call her when she was little—only makes her want to rip his throat out. His expression is pinched, pale. Good. "It's not what it looks like—"

"We're not your family anymore," Briar says, eyes flashing, steel in her tone, unrelenting. She shoves him. Hands to the chest. He stumbles, flinching like he's been punched. Livid, Briar shoves him again with all her might. How dare he play the victim? How dare he come into her house, and act like she's the bad guy?

"Listen—"

"Get out." Briar stares him down, jaw tight, her heart beating like a battering ram against her chest. Her blood is white-hot and she feels three sizes too big for her own skin, feels as though her hair might turn into snakes. Her father gapes at her, floundering for something to say, something to salvage, but there is nothing and she can't stand to look at his face any longer. She does not break. She will not give. She shoves him again, an inferno in her veins. "Get out! Go home to your wife and your son. Don't fucking come back here."

When he finally does move of his own volition, he only glances over his shoulder once to say, "don't... Don't tell Topper, okay? This will kill him. Please. I was never here."

Briar doesn't budge. She only levels him with an incendiary look. The nerve of this man. What does she care for his son? Topper Thornton might be her half-brother, but he will never be her family. And neither will his good-for-nothing father.

And then Paul Thornton is gone, a shadow in the hallway, a thunder of footsteps pounding down the stairs like a heartbeat, struggling to shove his belt into the loops of his pants.