“Rod started taking things more seriously around then,” I say.I tip my chin to the sky, blue and relentless, like it refuses to understand grief.“Maybe it wasn’t just the accident.Maybe it was something else ...you sending him songs.Trying to help him find his soul.”
She almost smiles.“I had no idea it was him.”
“You know what’s funny?”I ask, rubbing Arlo’s tiny heel with my thumb.He curls his toes, and the tenderness nearly undoes me.“I gave him that laptop hoping you two would meet online.He needed someone who could understand him, and you had done that since forever.”
Kit presses a kiss to the top of Arlo’s head.He sighs—content, careless.She looks back at me.“I’m glad we found each other again.Life’s a lot better with my two guys.”The smile hangs there for a second, and then she tilts her head.“But why not tell me what was happening with you?”
“If I said it out loud, it would be real.”The words scrape my mouth raw.“So I pretended it wasn’t—at least until Julian was better and we could move back to Seattle.After that ...I figured Eddie and Barrett would help me forget.”I swallow, because the next part always tastes like metal.“But it was impossible.I was still part of a world that never belonged to me.”
Her fingers thread through mine, firm.“You belong here.To us.I wish I’d been there for you.”
I shrug because the past is there to learn from and can’t be changed.
“Clara was apologetic,” I say.My laugh comes out thin.“She promised she’d introduce me to my real dad.”The swing creaks.Arlo kicks.“Instead, she shoved me into Dorian’s world—like she’d promised me to him.And ...well.Here we are.”
The breeze moves through the chimes, bright and cruel.Kit doesn’t look away.Neither do I.It’s all right there between us—the truth, the blood, the fucking bargains other people made with my life—and for once I don’t try to bury it.
“I should’ve told you,” I say.“I should’ve trusted you with it.”
“You can trust me now,” she whispers.
Arlo lets out a soft sound, a drowsy protest that pulls me back.I tuck the blanket around him, tracing the curve of his small shoulder.The swing rocks us forward and back.Forward and back.The light is too bright for this conversation.The day is too beautiful for confessions, and yet here we are—trying to name what hurt us, trying to stitch something real out of all the wrong rooms we were pushed into.
“Dorian was dreamy for the first couple of weeks and then ...everything changed fast.I wasn’t in charge of my life anymore,” I say, breath unspooling.“He kept demanding more, and if I didn’t give it, my mother’s career would pay for it.Then it felt like a trap, and I couldn’t get out because if I did, he’d find me and kill me.”
She opens her mouth, then closes it.The silence gathers like rain about to break.
“I’m not sure how Eddie figured it out,” I add.Sure, he says looking at me was enough to know I was drowning, but there had to be more.
“What about you three?”Kit asks suddenly.“I saw you once—with them.”
“When?”The word comes out thin.
“Close to Christmas a couple of years ago,” she says.“I asked Roderick about them, and he said they had a weird set up for a long time.He didn’t know if Barret and Eddie were together, or if they just liked to share.”
“It’s not like that,” I say, hoping she isn’t judging me.
“I know.Barret was obviously in love with you.I saw it way before I caught you that time,” she says, and the certainty there gives me something to hold.“I had no idea what was Eddie’s role in all that.Is that it, though?Are the three of you together?”
I nod.“Yeah.I mean ...I think that’s where this is going.”
Kit smiles, small and sure.“As long as you’re happy and you love each other, that’s all that matters.”
“Even when it’s unconventional?”
“Who cares?”she says, and her hand finds mine.
I could give her a list of who’d care and who wouldn’t but maybe as long as my family and friends support me it shouldn’t matter.
ChapterTwenty-Six
Cleo
Roderick has always been protective of me.So it doesn’t surprise me that as I pass Eddie’s office, I hear him roar, “What the fuck were you doing with my sister in the first place?”
Of course, I go inside—before the mastermind behind my ticket to freedom gets mauled by my overprotective brother.And it’s not just because Eddie’s the one helping me with Dorian.Not really.I love Eddie in ways I never thought possible.It isn’t that I love him more than Barret.I don’t.I love them both—equally and differently at the same time.It’s a lot more complicated to explain how it works, but it makes sense to my heart and my soul.
My head ...that one has always fought my feelings.Mostly because I don’t believe I’m enough.I call them daddy issues because, honestly, the root of it all was that Caleb never loved me the way he loved his sons.If my mother hadn’t begged him to give me his name, things might’ve been different.
