And as soon as he says it, I see it. Yellowed skin, yellow eyes, a suit a bit too baggy, movements made with careful precision, like every joint aches. I can’t help it. I laugh.
His eyes flash, but he doesn’t lash out. “This is not the time or place for your mirth, boy.”
I step closer, still chuckling. “You stopped by, why? To see what it might be like for you in a few weeks? Maybe you can choose your favorite bouquet and get a pre-order discount.”
His yellow skin grows red. “Weeks? Try many more months, you insolent boy. Better yet, never, if I can find that deviant who stole my daughter. He’s more than earned his consequence.”
Walker catches on before I do. “You want us to help you track down Bryce and Mattie? Us? Help you? After what you did to Clara? To Trips? To the man in the coffin on the steps?”His laughter joins mine, his sharp enough to cut. We make enough of a commotion that Trips leaves RJ working with the pastor to get Clara’s mom out of the sanctuary, and strides down the aisle, icy eyes burning with fury. Clara glances back, but must decide we can handle it, because she stays sandwiched between Emma and Summer in the pew.
“Father,” Trips says, as we create space between us for him to stand.
“Archie,” the man says, his eyes lighting up, like maybe he wasn’t sure Trips would speak to him again, like he’s glad to see his son.
“That’s not my name. Not anymore.”
His father waves off Trips’ correction. “Have you heard from your sister?” he asks instead, getting straight to the point.
“And if I had?”
“I’d ask you to go retrieve herandthat rotten boy who has her.”
“You thought this was the right venue for that request?” The ice in Trips’ voice doesn’t match the tremor of restrained violence beside me.
“I knew you’d be here with your ‘team.’ And I knew you wouldn’t do anything without conferring with them. You and I both know Mattie needs to come home.”
Trips huffs out his own version of a caustic laugh. “You’re delusional if you think I would ever work with you again.”
“I have the means but not the manpower.”
“I know.” Trips’ eyes light with malicious joy. “You’ve lost your personal army. I bet every favor you called in came back cashed. You’re out of options.”
The man’s anger rises to the surface, hotter and more unhinged than Trips ever has been. “She’s yoursister,Archibald.”
“Yes, she is. And I’ll find her myself, without your blood-stained fortune leaking fetid shit over everything it touches.”
He turns away from his father, and the man snaps, grabbing Trips by the arm.
The younger man—a larger, stronger, healthier mirror of his father’s aristocratic good looks—spins around, slipping his grasp. Charging forward, he forces his father backwards until his suit coat bunches against the doors of the sanctuary. Trips doesn’t touch him, but hovers over him, around him, his lips pulled back in a snarl. “You will never touch me or mine again. That is a promise. And if I learned one thing from you, it’s how to follow through on my threats. We are done here.” He waits a beat, then turns around, striding down the aisle without looking back. “Not just now. Forever. Goodbye, Father.”
Walker guards Trips’ back, but I linger, waiting to see what this monster will do. My palms itch with the need to hurt him like he hurt Clara, to twist him and break him the way he’s done to both of them. But as I watch his careful, pained steps out of the sanctuary, his slight struggle with the heavy wood doors, the way he palms the keys from his pocket like they’re a foreign entity, I decide that a quiet death might be more fitting for a man who claims he fed his ego for the sake of his family instead of his own gain.
I hope he dies alone.
Chapter 65
Walker
Ithought I knew what to expect when Clara and Trips got free. I thought we’d celebrate until we couldn’t anymore, then slowly fall into a structured version of Mexico. We had legitimate businesses to start, relationships to solidify, and freedom and joy to settle into.
Of course, I knew they wouldn’t come back the same. Trips had been more than clear about what kinds of things Clara might have to do to buy their freedom. I’d seen her hardly able to walk at the start of the semester, and the way she’d built up a mask as thick as my own as the months went by.
But I didn’t imagine it would be like this. Clara, listless on the couch, curled under a blanket with her hair a tangled mess around her, deep purple circles under her eyes, a pile of used tissues carefully stacked in a corner of the coffee table. Trips sitting like a statue in the room with her, his facegray, only coming to life when RJ passes through to ask if he’s gotten any leads on Bryce and his sister.
The third day after Clara lost her dad, a twin mattress appeared on the floor of her room, tucked in a corner, and Trips laid on it every night, the rest of us piling beside her in her bed. But he doesn’t sleep.
On a few nights, I woke to Clara crawling over me and joining Trips on the mattress in the corner, their quiet whispers nonsense in the dark. The new closeness they share would spark my jealousy if I hadn’t watched them at their wedding, seen the way they’d learned to trust each other—if I hadn’t had to strip and have my balls tickled by some random guard because of Trips’ father’s rightful suspicions.
They’d survived months like that. Trips, a lifetime.
