I can feel Olivia deflate, I already know what she's thinking. I can feel it in the way she breathes against me.
“Do you really think Deck did that to Seren, Trace?”
I lean back, moving to hold her head in my hands as I look her in the eyes.
“Olivia, I know how much your brother meant to you,” I start, already witnessing the little quiver of her top lip as her emotions storm her. “I know what his death did to you. I wish I was there to help you through it. But I’m here now. And at the end of the fucking day, all I know is what Seren wrote in her journal. Declan was probably the closest thing I’d consider a best friend and if he were still alive, I’d fucking kill him.”
“What if he’s innocent, Trace? What if we can prove that he didn’t do that to her? I mean, from what Seren said, he loved her. I can’t-”
“Olivia.” I press her head into my chest, eager to quiet the flood of thoughts she must be feeling right now.
She sniffles against me, sobs eluding her. “I just- I thought I knew him better than I really did. Both of them.”
I hold her like this for a moment, letting her get it all out. Letting her use me as a vessel for her grief, her pain.
She pulls me in tighter, her arms wrapped around my back.
“You know Seren knew about us?” she starts. “Alli told me that she told her. And to think that whole time, I was trying to protect her. All while she already had a feeling about us and all while she was in love with my fucking brother.”
My heart hurts for her. I know how fucking destroyed seeing her with Jensen made me. I saw fucking red. But back then, even though I gave her a lot of shit for it, I knew that in her heart she thought she was doing the right thing by wanting to keep us a secret from Seren. Though I can’t help but to wonder what would have happened if we had just told her sooner.
“What are we doing, Trace?” Olivia unravels her arms and steps back, worry swirls in her eyes. “What are we going to do?”
I brush my thumb against the pulse in her neck, knowing that no matter what we do, I’m not leaving her behind again. Knowing that no matter what, as long as this is still beating, I'll do anything she ever asks. I'll give her hell on earth and bring heaven down from fucking clouds. Whatever she wants. Leaving her behind was the hardest thing I've ever had to do and I can feel it, she'll know everything soon and the reward for my patience will be worth the pain and the suffering. If I can't have her, then I want nothing.
“We can leave, Olivia. We can drop this. We can leave everything behind and run, just like we wanted to the first time,” I tell her and I can feel the flutter in her neck speed up. “Or I can help you piece together the rest of that night and we can find who killed your brother.”
“And Seren…” she breathes. “But if Deck really did do that . . . set your sister up, then don’t you think the killer did everyone a service? I mean, didn’t he deserve it? And Tyre and Jett would make sense but Seren-”
“You don’t believe he did it, do you, Livie?” I interrupt her, knowing she’s trying to fit things together that we can’t possibly understand without knowing the whole truth.
She sighs, looking up at me through her red-rimmed eyes and I swipe at the trail of tears on her cheekbone.
“Trace, I didn’t know Seren went through that. If she would have told me when it happened, I honestly don’t know how I would have reacted. I want to believe her. I mean, I do. I know she wouldn't make that up. But I know my brother, Trace. Declan would never do something like that, ever. I just wish they were both still here.”
Discomfort tangles in my nerves, despising that I might let myself go against Seren’s words. I owe it to my sister to believe her, to avenge her. But when I see the look of despair in Olivia’s eyes, seeing the way it wrecks her to think that her brother could do something like that, I know that I owe it to her to be by her side too. I know that no matter what the outcome is, Declan is already dead. And I recognizethat if she finds out that her brother was murdered as an innocent man, it’s going to destroy her.
I do my best to pacify her, wanting to be the person she can trust. I know she already does. It takes a lot for someone to relinquish control the way she has already, even if nothing around her is making sense.
“I believe you, baby,” I aver and her eyes pop open wide with uncontained ardor, appreciation glistening in the pools of her ocean eyes.
“So what do we do?” she asks, trying to hold back her tears.
But right as I'm about to divulge a mediocre plan to her, a loud noise resounds around us, causing Olivia to jump and me to reach for my pistol.
“What was that?” she questions in a hushed tone.
“Stay here,” I tell her, talking a step away but she reaches out to stop me.
“Don't leave me,” she begs and with the legitimate frightened look in her eye and the sheer clamp of her hand over my arm, I almost listen. But someone is out there.
“Olivia, stay here,” I argue, making sure my voice doesn’t carry before turning around and walking toward where I believe the noise came from.
I realize that I can’t see much, so after taking a few steps more, I stop, centering myself in the silence, treating my ears to pick up on anything.
Suddenly, a scream rips through the cold air, and my heart drops. I rush back only to see that Olivia is gone. I don’t even hear a struggle after the faded echo of the scream dies down, she’s just gone. Panic expands inside me, but not more than the fury I feel, knowing that if anything happens to her, I’ll fucking lose it.
I twist my body, slamming my fist into the back of the mirror wall, glass shattering on impact. My heart fills my throat and I stop breathing as I feel the creep of blood start to seep from my knuckles.
