And when he does, I feel the icy chill all the way through my bones. “What?” he says so quietly, I barely hear the single word.
Hayden sits back, having lit the match and ready to watch the fire burn. Watchmeburn.
Nikolai looks like he’s going to throw up.
Walker repeats himself. “What’s he talking about?”
There’s no sense in lying. Clean slate? No more secrets? It wasn’t Hayden’s to tell, but here we are anyway. “It was one time,” I say, and leave it at that.
Maybe Walker was expecting I’d deny it. That Nikolai would jump in and make some sort of joke and we’d all laugh, like we’re pulling one over on him. Because for a second, his brows are still dipped in confusion.
But once he registers my words, they twist in anger. “It wasone time?
“I promise it wasn’t how you’re thinking, man. The three of us…we’ve experienced some shit together?—”
Walker pushes to his feet. “You—it was—together?” Red splashes across his neck, creeping onto his face. “You both with Jane at once?”
I hold my hands up, trying to placate the shitstorm I’d hoped I’d never have to deal with. “Like I said, it wasn’t like that.”
“Then tell me what the fuck it was like,” he spits. He whips toward Nikolai. “How the hell could you use her like that? Let him use her like that?”
“I didn’t fucking use her—” I yell.
Nikolai’s face turns hard as stone at the accusation. “Don’t you dare try to say that I used her. Or that he did either.” His voice is colder than I’ve ever heard before, icy rage undercutting every word. “She makes her own decisions. She’s her own woman. And what we do in the privacy of our bedroom is none of your fucking business.”
“Well it’s been made my business!” Walker roars. “And clearly it’shisbusiness, too.” He swings his gaze to me. “How the hell did this happen?”
I wring my hand together, trying to keep a level head even as my brain is screaming at me to fight back. “It wasn’t a planned thing. It just happened, and it was supposed to stay between the three of us.”
“How does thatjust happen?”
I’ll never be able to give him an explanation that makes sense. That’ll satisfy him. Especially not while he’s so enraged by the idea of me sleeping with Jane. I don’t know if he’d ever understand, even if he knew the full story anyways. It’s his twin sister after all. It won’t matter that it wasn’t just about sex. That it ran deeper than that.
So I just say, “I don’t know what to tell you. It happened. We’re all good. You’re just going to have to accept it.”
His head looks like it’s going to explode. “Accept it? Are you fucking?—”
“I tried to kill myself.” Nikolai’s words silence everyone. Even the wind seems to pause. Walker and Hayden have both completely frozen, faces leeched of color in an instant.
I wish I was sitting closer so I could put my hand on Nikolai’s shoulder. Be a silent support. I was never sure if he’d tell them. It certainly wasn’t my place to do so. And even if it meant Walker and I would go back to barely speaking, I’d do it to protect him.
He draws in a steady breath, shoulders pushed back. A portrait of strength, telling a story when he felt like he had none.
But Nikolai’s the strongest of all of us.
“After the shooting. When we were on break. I couldn’t—I didn’t know how to deal with everything I saw. I mean, you guys could see I was in a free fall. But I never let it show how badly I had lost my way.”
A lump sits in my throat, thinking back to the night Jane called me, pleading with me to hurry over to his house.
“I had texted Jane, who called Reid since she was in Boston and couldn’t get to me. The two of them…” Nikolai turns glassy eyes to Walker, who sat back down. Tears streak down his cheeks. “If your sister wouldn’t have called Reid, I probably wouldn’t be here right now. The two of them have shared that burden of that night, of seeing me like that, and never told a soul. It’s something I honestly planned to take to the grave. I don’t like thinking back to that time in my life. But I’m telling you now, because I know you both have held it against him that he never took his anger out from the break on me.” He nods in my direction. “And he could’ve told you both. Could’ve explained himself and why he wasn’t angry with me. Because he saw the darkness I had descended into firsthand. But he didn’t.”
I clench the bottle in my hands.
“He didn’t, for me. And the moment the three of us shared, much later on, it wasn’t some dirty thing, Walker. I’d never disrespect your sister like that. You know it.”
His jaw ticks but he doesn’t deny it.
“And it’s her business just as much as it is mine and Reid’s,” Nikolai says with a pointed look toward Hayden, who at least has the decency to shrink back in shame. “So I’m not going to get into it with you about it. We are all consenting adults, and it went much deeper than just sex for the three of us that night.” With that, he stands and slips into the house with his head held high.
