He’s spoiled.
I want to keep him that way. It’s better than the alternative, which is what I am.
The anchor who will drown if I’m not careful.
His long fingers flex around my thigh. “Lydia,” he says again. The rough edge to his words he gets when he’s angry bites at his tone. “Tell me you won’t.”
I smile at him. I only ever do. But I still say, “Get your fucking hand off me, and I promise I won’t.”
He looks down where he’s touching me, and he doesn’t move. “Tell me why you hate it,” he says softly. “Tell me why you never hug me. Or Fox. Or Berlin. Or…” His mouth presses into a thin line. He looks up at me then. “Or Lynx.”
My heart picks up speed when I think of Lynx, and what it is Lele is asking me. My nostrils flare. The void is filling up quickly.
I snatch his hand off me, flinging it toward himself.
Then I turn to stare at the screen. There is a memory begging to be released. Bloody and sticky and cold and there is a boy, but I don’t know him.
“I’m not interested in a therapy session with you, Le.”
It’s beena week since my brother had a seizure in my arms.
A little less than that since I found out the identity of the man responsible for the drug he took. The darkened moment we shared inside a funeral home has played on a loop in my mind, and I no longer wonder why my uncle didn’t tell me he was nearby. If he had, would I have been able to stay away? Less than six years between then and now, but it’s like an entire lifetime for me.
Yet I still remember it.
His hand around my throat.
The way his eyes flashed when he saw my broken fingers.
No one had ever been mad on my behalf; not until then. Even Lele didn’t know what really happened to me; all my injurieswere stitched up with excuses for my brother. An unspoken agreement between my uncle and I, it was easy to use them on anyone who asked.
But somehow, Storm Leary knew.
Now I have an excuse to go after him.
And his possible girlfriend.
I saw her outside the gym on Ely University’s campus two days ago, sitting on a bench and staring into a fountain like she might drown herself in it. She’s gorgeous, sunshine and southern, and it’d be tragic if Storm Leary found Sloane Stevens shattered into pieces on his fucking doorstep.
And he might.
I haven’t decided yet.
It depends on if Lele wakes up from this coma.
He has to. I know that. But right now, he’s still in it. Still at Astor Memorial. Still unresponsive.
And my uncle is avoiding me. I need to know how long Storm has been in Ellicottville, why Lynx thought I should be so fucking close to him, and what it will take to call off this truce Lynx and Storm’s parents have that I don’t even understand.
That’s why I’m tailing a very much alive Storm tonight from a distance as he drives his zippy little black WRX through an empty stretch of the mountains between my territory and his, rounding up and up a hill that I know has one exit to a gas station and a shit coffee shop, and nothing else.
It’s the middle of the night, and we’re thankfully not the only cars on the road. But soon, he’ll realize I’m following him. And soon, he’ll know I want him dead.
The thing is, though, I can’t kill him yet if I plan on murdering Sloane.
If my brother doesn’t wake the fuck up soon, I want Storm to watch his blond haired, pretty-eyed girlfriend die.
That’s the only fitting punishment. And maybe Eve was right. Maybe I’m more like my uncle than I thought.
