Cyrus with that white streak of frosting in his hair from the party we threw to celebrate Tank and Kade coming home from juvie. Kade teaching me how to pick a lock the very next day while Tank watches with disapproval.
All five of us crammed into the RV, Cyrus holding the remote he wired up for the camera, grinning like we own the whole world.
My throat closes up.
I can't breathe. Can'tthink.
Can't—
"Oh! You already started the tour."
I spin around so fast I almost drop my bag.
Jinx leans against the doorframe, his golden hair artfully mussed and that smile that doesn't match his dead eyes planted firmly on his gorgeous face.
He's changed into jeans and a t-shirt that looks like it cost five-hundred dollars, but somehow—maybe because I just saw that boy in the pictures—he still looks likemyJinx.
The one who used to braid my hair while Kade plotted world domination.
"I—" The words stick in my throat. "I didn't know where to go."
"Well, now you do." He gestures around the room. "This is yours. For the next year, anyway."
The casualness of it, like he's showing me a hotel room instead of a cage they built specifically for me, makes me feel like I’m dreaming. I set my bag down on the bed, needing something to do with my hands.
"You painted it pink," I say, because apparently I've lost all ability to form coherent thoughts.
"Of course we did." Jinx moves into the room, picking up a snow globe from the dresser. I recognize it. I bought it at a gas station when we were fifteen. I'd thought the tiny RV inside was hilarious. "The exact shade of your old room. And that sweatshirt you used to wear all the time."
"I lost that sweatshirt," I mumble.
His fingers tighten around the snow globe. "Did you."
I want to reach out, to touch him, to make sure he's real and not some fever dream my broken brain conjured up. But the purposeful distance he's maintaining tells me that would be a mistake.
"Jinx, I—" I stop. Start again. "How can you be involved in all this?"
Okay. That was the wrong thing to say. I know it the second the words leave my mouth.
His expression goes blank in a millisecond, that careful smile dropping away to reveal coldness underneath. Holy shit, it's like he turned to stone. "Involved in what, exactly, Princess? Running a successful business? Taking care of people the system failed? Or do you mean the part where we agreed to kill your stepfather for you?"
I groan. "That's not—I didn't mean?—"
"Whatdidyou mean?" He sets the snow globe down with care, like he's afraid if he's not gentle it might shatter. Or maybe he's afraid he might throw it at the wall. "You come waltzing back into our lives after four years of radio silence, asking us to murder a senator for you—forpennies,at that, when you wereplanning on waltzing off with an eye-watering inheritance—and you want to judgeus?"
I almost lose my cool and spill that this isn't about the fucking inheritance at all. "I'm not judging?—"
"Aren't you?" He laughs, bitter and sharp.
If he doesn't stop interrupting me, I'm going to fucking scream. The last time I touched his hair, it was to braid it. This time, I just might tear it out. But I plaster my very best practiced fake smile on my face and let him go off.
"You think we wanted this?" he continues animatedly, clearly oblivious that the blank smile on my face is my murder smile. "You think this was our big dream growing up? 'Hey, let's become vigilantes'?"
"Then why did you?" I ask sweetly.
Jinx's jaw works, and for a second I think he might actually answer. Might explain how they went from stealing candy bars and fuckinggarden gnome protection racketsto whatever the fuck this is.
But then Cyrus appears in the doorway, and the moment evaporates.
