“Do what you like. I’m not paying any longer.”
“Okay. Well, it was nice doing business with you. Any other special requests you or your dad have, I’m your girl.”
My dad.Thanks for the graphic reminder, Robyn. I fondly remember when the only treachery I had to worry about was my girlfriend fucking my dad.
Before I found out her brother had killed my sister.
In a burst of frenetic energy, I take care of everything else I’ve left dangling in the wind. Her accommodation goes first, thestudent housing office indifferent to the news that Evie is freeing up her room for a new tenant.
And I’m happy to pay over and above for them to be the ones to inform her of the expiring lease. My heart craves the contact, which only makes me more determined. The last thing I need is to see her again.
Next, I call through to a moving company and task them with emptying her dorm room and delivering everything to her old flat. I guess that’s where she’s gone already.
Back to her brother, clean and in recovery on my tab. Alive and well while my sister rots in her grave.
For a second, the rage is so all-consuming, I shake too much to spin through the contact list on my phone. Then it passes like it always does. Slinking into the back to wait for another turn on centre stage.
Next, I place a call with my bank, cancelling my credit card and ordering a replacement in case she memorised the number. After they confirm a new one’s on the way, I pause, trying to think if there’s anything else.
For weeks now, I’ve been consumed with the drive to meet her every need, to ensure she has everything she wants.
But there’s really nothing. She only stayed at the school dorm to please me. To make it easier to reach her when I needed to. To give me a place to stay when staying at home became unbearable.
Everything else was just… normal stuff. Nothing fancy. Her school uniform and a few spare clothes. Food and a place to store it.
I have spent money, a lot of money, but most of it went to Ant. Some to her work but that was a ‘me’ thing, not a ‘her’ thing. Even the credit card bills are ninety percent Dahlia.
Dad gave her fifty grand, and even when she thought she was leaving, she turned more than half over to me without a second thought.
She didn’t need my money any more than she needed me.
The pain digs into my sternum, so sharp I bend over, hugging my arms around my torso to ease the discomfort. So sharp that when my brain tries to point out the flaws in my train of thought, the contradictions that won’t fit neatly together, I brush it aside, too exhausted to think.
I had been planning on going to school. Instead, I head back downstairs and hide in the spare bedroom. In the evening, fed up with my racing thoughts and the sharp daggers of my memory, I collect a shot from my bedroom, twin to the one I used on Evie, and inject it straight into my thigh, letting the warm ocean of unconsciousness claim me.
A brief flicker in my brain wonders if this was why Addie started, to gain control of intrusive thoughts so they could stop hurting her, then every channel unplugs in my brain, and I float away.
The next morning,I decide to stop wallowing. I text Zane to let him know about my fake illness and even faker recovery. He’ll learn the truth soon enough; he’s more than capable of putting two and two together, but hopefully a lie will hold him until I have the strength to answer properly.
“Where’s Evie?” he asks, raising his eyebrows in surprise when I roll into my carpark without her. “Have you moved back home?”
“I never moved out,” I snap, temper fraying already. With my eyes closed, I count to five, slowly exhaling, then open them again. “But, yeah. I’m staying at home this week.”
“Cool,” he mutters, not bothering to repeat his first query. Probably sensing I wouldn’t answer it the second time, either.
We tread upstairs to the clubhouse, the heat already stifling and the air so still that even when we throw the windows wide open, it barely makes a difference.
“Broken any sinks, lately?” Wilder asks Zane as he stumbles into the room, yawning and immediately collapsing on the cushions, on the verge of falling asleep.
“What’s this?” I ask Zane, happy for any distraction. “You doing a bit of remodelling?”
“Yeah. He’s been plumbing Susie,” Wilder quips, snorting at his own joke.
“I got a bit enthusiastic in the girls’ bathroom off the science block,” Zane expands. “We were having a lovely time, when physics decided we were taking too many liberties, and broke the sink clean off the wall.”
He pauses for a second, head tilted, eyes half-lidded, a beatific smile on his face. “She’s no longer returning my calls. Apparently, in the confusion, I may have suggested she was the only one placing any weight on the equipment in question.”
“That’s what you get for fucking a heifer.” Wilder narrows his eyes as he glances my way. “Where’s your mini-me this morning?”
