Emma moves to my side, her hand ruffling her now short hair. “You never gave me a chance to explain,” she whispers.
“Em—”
Emma shakes her head, her hair swinging around her face, a chunk gluing itself to her lips. “Your anger was justified. So was your fear. But you never gave me a chance to even speak. You don’t know everything, Evie. And if you won’t even let me say my piece? You don’t steamroll somebody you love, even if you think it’s for their benefit. Not me. And not Jansen.” Tears trickle down Emma’s face, matching the shocked tears streaking down my sister’s. “I can’t accept your apology, Evie, even though I want to. Because true love listens first. If you love somebody, you workwiththem. You build a future together. And if you think they messed up, you ask them about it, and once you hear them out, then you decide if they’re in the wrong. Sure, you might need time to cool down, but you talk it out. You don’t scream at someone’s sister or shut down the conversation before it even starts.”
She stands next to the toolboxes, shaking. “I’m sorry. But I can’t forgive you. Not as you are right now.”
Emma spins, rushing out of the store, leaving my sister with nothing but devastation.
“I don’t steamroll people,” she mutters.
“Yes. You do. It helped me when I was a kid, but it also never gave me a chance to figure out how to do things myself.”
“Jansen—”
I yank at my too-short hair. “You still do it. Evie, you tattled to Mom after Thanksgiving, and made her worry when I’m obviously fine. Emma saved my life that night, which is exactly what Clara knew she could do.”
“That girl, she’s bad news,” Evie says, moving from the discomfort of her guilt to the easy fire of anger. “A cheat and a liar.”
I can’t hear that about the woman who holds my entire broken soul. I won’t. “We’re fucking poly, Evie!”
Anger that I rarely feel boils over, and it’s not until the sound echoes around me, a stockgirl glancing at me with wide eyes, that I realize how loud I’ve been. Swallowing, I try to keep my voice quieter. “I’mpoly. IwantClara to be with my friends. I need it. You should know better than anybody that two people aren’t enough for the shit life puts you through, Evie. It wasn’t enough for Mom and Dad. It wasn’t enough for you and me. Two is too small. But five? With five, we can catch each other, wehavecaught each other, and together, we can get back up, move together, be together. I love her, and I love them, and you can either take it or leave it. I’m done with your judgment.”
Her shock and anger dissolve into regret. “I didn’t know.”
“Because you never let anyone explain,” I say, sadness making my shoulders heavy.
Then I turn, leaving my sister crying in a hardware store, wishing more than anything that things were different. Only they’re not, and it’s not my responsibility to fix her.
Chapter 41
Clara
The last thing I want to do when I’m already questioning my humanity is deal with Trevor again. Luckily, I’ve managed to avoid being alone with him since the pool incident, but his bandaged hand is a constant reminder of our fight. It’s all I can do to keep an indifferent mask glued to my face.
It was a close call. Too close of one.
When we came back, I knew this plan would be all but impossible, that whatever glimmer of innocence I still had would be forever tainted, but still. This is so much worse than I’d imagined. The risks that seemed like puzzles to solve while sitting around a fire with the men of my heart are horrifically real now that I’m living through them.
I tortured someone. Then Trips killed him. And later that night, his mouth nestled beside my ear, he kept tellingme—telling himself—that at least we knew this guy deserved it.
That doesn’t make us the good guys, though.
I scratched out a coded response to Walker’s question on Thursday, passing it off to Jonah without comment. He’s one piece of the puzzle that I didn’t know we’d need, but he’s ended up invaluable.
The answer isn’t what Trips would want from me. It turns out that even after beating a man near to death, after shooting another, after staining my soul with blood and death and curated indifference, even after all that, I can’t put Bryce on that list. I hate him; he’s dangerous, but he’s mostly a broken man at this point. I can’t sentence him to death, not now. For all I’m pretending to be a psycho bitch, I’m not. And his name on that list would make me one.
A thought has spiraled in my head since that night, something Walker said to me more than a year ago—that the black sticks to you, settles into the creases of your skin, and you’ll never be clean again.
I get it now.
I wish I didn’t.
Trips’ blank, rage-filled mask might be on display, but I can tell he’s not okay, either. Whenever we’re close enough, he pulls me to him, interlocking our fingers, or running a knuckle across my skin. I’m his security blanket.
I’m okay with that. He needs comfort, and so do I. But we’re still in this gilded cage, still watched all the time, even if we’re allowed to walk the halls with minimal security now.
A death for a longer leash.
