But in my head, I feel that cliff at my back.
See Lydia Flynn’s green eyes holding mine. She would’ve been glad I jumped.
“I thought she was off limits.” I say it anyway to piss him off.
“To kill,” Dad says with no emotion. Then, surprising me, he adds, “Not to fuck.”
“Yeah, well back at the funeral home when we first met, Mom screaming at me in the car, it sure seemed like I wasn’t supposed to fuck her either.” My mother had never gotten so emotional at anything I’d done, and that was saying a lot. I was never loud or bratty as a child, but I was destructive. Anything I could tear apart, I would. The staircase, the bed frame, holes in the wall and not out of anger, just to see what could happen.
But Mom was upset that evening.
Her eyes filled with tears, and my mother isn’t emotional.
I could feel the bitterness inside her when she told me to never speak to Lydia Flynn—or any Flynn—again.
Then we never discussed it.
What I don’t understand is where Lynx fits into all of it, aside from being her uncle and a prominent member of a family I’m not supposed to touch. Nor do I know if Indie’s death was him making good on his promise that I fucked up. When I told Dad about Lynx and the windshield, he told me I was lucky to be alive.
“Your mother might change her mind now.” Dad speaks quietly, and he offers no other explanation. His parents are from Canada, and I hold dual citizenship thanks to them, both French-Canadian, and far more reserved than any American I’ve met in the south. Mom, born and raised in Alabama, would get mad if I didn’t respond to her right away.
“Why was she so mad then? At the funeral?” I press, wanting answers to questions I’ve had for over five years. “What is it the Flynns have done to us?”
The hotel flashes in my mind.
Dad and Lynx were in the same room, but they didn’t seem like they were even remotely friendly then. What was the point of it all?
“That’s not my secret to tell. All you need to know tonight is if you hurt Lydia, your mother will be the one to pay for it.”
I clench my teeth together, but I tell him the truth after a moment: “I’m not going to kill her. I’m going to warn her, and I’m going to get answers, since you don’t have any.” I say it as a dig, because it is. But Dad claims he hasn’t been able to find Lynx, and he has no idea why Lydia would be following me.
“Keep your warnings without violence,” Dad cautions me.
“Why don’t you tell me what it is I’m walking into? What if she knows things I don’t? I’myourson.”
Dad is silent for too many heartbeats. Then he sighs. “Your mom is so much like you, you have no idea.”
I frown in the dark. “What do you mean?”
“Always looking into trouble, falling right into evil.”
My spine crawls as I straighten in my seat. “If you could speak without being cryptic, that would be helpful.”
Dad’s laugh is short and cold. “Don’t end up dead tonight son.”
And as I pull up to The Veil, a place I’ve just discovered Lydia owns as some sort of secret hideout in plain sight to spy on Ellicottville, he ends the call.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
LYDIA
Berlin and I walk outside of The Veil, his arm slung around me in a casual display of friendliness.
He is the only person on earth aside from Lele that I’d let touch me like this. He’s the only person on earth I’d let run a place I own so I can stay away from this side of town and honor my uncle’s wishes.
The Veil is mine, but Berlin minds it.
