You better not be fucking dead.
The heavy door at the top of the stairs is my last hurdle. But as I clear the landing, right before I can take a step toward it, the door comes crashing open and I hear a woman’s voice shout, “Lele!” a second before I see my brother stumble through.
His eyes are wild, a darker green than my own, his bleached white hair falling over his temple as he careens toward me, his arms thrown out wide like he doesn’t know where he’s going. He’s shirtless, and I see blood on his lip, down his throat, and his black pants are slung low on his hips. I notice they’reunbuttoned, the moment before he reaches me and sends us both stumbling backward. My spine hits the wall and the scent of him—soap and forest—fills my nose, alongside the tang of his sweat.
I wrap my arms around him and feel his spine beneath my fingertips as I sag under his weight. In heels, I’m five foot six, and he’s over six feet flat footed. I can’t hold his muscular body up and we both crash to the ground, me landing on my ass and him curling into a puddle on my lap, his arms around my neck. I can feel his pulse through his back and his lips are near my ear.
“Lydia, please,” he whispers. “Something happened to me. Something is happening to me. Something…happened.” His chest heaves against my own and I hold him close as a sob escapes his lips. I don’t know what happened, I don’t know why he’s bleeding, but he’s alive, and gratitude grows fierce and thick inside of me.
He cries as I hug him closer, and the woman’s voice from earlier hits my ears again.
“He tried to kill himself,” she says. “He held a knife…to his throat.”
I lift my gaze and meet hers. She’s in a sparkly bra and a white thong and nothing else. One of Berlin’s girls then. The upstairs of Orange isn’t for anything less than deviance.
“He’s not suicidal,” I tell the girl, my tone cold as Lele keeps whispering my name. A grown man, in my lap like I’m his last hope.
I note Fox out of the corner of my eye, his gun drawn, but aimed at the floor.
Lele starts to tremble.
The woman hugs herself tight. She’s young. Maybe early twenties. I realize too late she’s likely the same age as me. It never feels the same, though, when I see it on someone else.
She starts to speak again. “I don’t know… He…”
Lele’s trembling grows more violent.
He’s shaking in earnest.
Fear clenches my heart and I say, “Fox,” keeping the panic out of my voice.
Fox is by my side in a blink. He heaves Lele off me and I watch my brother’s eyes roll back in his head.
Bile churns in my gut.
If something happens to Lele, I won’t last. I think of our promise to one another, bound in blood. I don’t believe in miracles, but I believe in fate, and he and I have that.
“No matter where you go,” he says, holding his bleeding palm over mine, the knife clenched at his side. “No matter what he makes you do, we’re family. And family comes first.”
“And Lynx?” I ask as I look over my shoulder, through the woods, toward the house. “What is he?”
When my eyes meet Lele’s, I see the answer before he speaks.
“Worse than a stranger. He is nothing tothis.”
This. Us.
“On his side, I think he’s having a seizure,” Fox says calmly. He gently positions my brother on his back but turns his head, and I watch Lele’s body shake. His eyes are wide and locked on mine.
“He took something,” the woman says, her voice a shriek as I crawl on my knees toward my brother and note the blood still streaming down his throat. Not a fatal wound, but it doesn’t make sense. Lele loves this life more than I ever could. “A…gummy? I don’t know what it was.”
I take a breath in.
I don’t look away from Lele. “Did you take it too?” There is no emotion in my voice.
“No, he only had one. It was big though.”
“What did it look like?” Words from Fox.
