I shake my head, and pinch the bridge of my nose. “You can’t call me that anymore, Laik.”
My jaw tightens, then clicks.
I think back to how she’d often called me that when she was sixteen. Back then, it was mildly appropriate. Now, not so much.
When she doesn’t reply, I split my gaze back toward her, meeting her mossy green eyes.
She sucks on her bottom lip, asks so quietly I can barely hear her, “Why?”
I keep my eyes to her mouth, contemplating how much I want to say when she curls over and reaches out. Laiken’s fingers brush across mine when she takes the cigarette.
I suppress a shiver as they slip away.
She places it between her lips, then draws her legs closer to her chest, resting her cheek to the top of her knees.
Her fingers tremble when she pulls the cigarette from her mouth, exhaling toward me.
“Why?” she asks again and this time she blinks, then blinks again and when I take my time to decide where to take this, she closes her eyes. “Never mind.”
Sucking back a breath, a chill runs across the nape of my neck. I palm it away and rasp, “Because you and I both know I was never your big brother.”
Laiken pops open her eyes slowly; heavy and rheumy. And at that sight, my heart beats hard in my chest. I feel each pang vibrate in the nerves of my teeth.
She lifts her head, resting her elbows to her knees, her hands clenching the tops of her shoulders.
She looks away, then shifts the subject. “That guy, Chase, the one from this morning, the one that?—”
“Yeah,” I tell her before she can finish. I couldn’t hear what he’d done again, seeing it had been enough.
She clears her throat. “I wonder who he was. He was saying something right before the television switched to the breaking news about the girl they’d found.” Her eyebrows turn in as she tries to recall what he said. “Something about being doomed and then before he shot himself, he said that all we can do is pray. It was really weird.”
I smooth my hair back from my face, telling her, “He said the same shit to me when I was in the tank.”
Laiken’s spine turns ramrod straight, her eyes flaring open wide. “You were locked up?”
I flick my gaze away from her, drop my chin to my chest. “Yeah, the same night you and Jade—” I swallow my words and shake my head.
“What did you do?” she asks, curiosity weaving stitches through her tone.
I turn toward her, speaking over the top of my arm, “After I got your call, I tried to find you, but the cops got to me first.”
She looks pissed off. “They shouldn’t have thrown you in lockup for that?”
I bite the inside of my cheek, growling, “They can do whatever the fuck they want.”
She doesn’t offer a response.
I tell her, “He said the same shit to me before he ran himself into one of the walls in the holding cell.” I’m shaking my head, trying to clear the picture, then I feel like a pussy because I wasn’t the one that watched him blow his goddamn head off.
“Laik…”
“Mmm?” she counters, looking up at me.
“Are you okay? After, you know, seeing…that?”
She drops her eyes from mine, and I want to reach out and pull her chin back toward me, but I don’t. She keeps it tilted down when she says, “I’ve seen worse.”
My hands start to tremble, and I run them through my hair, closing my eyes, trying not to picture her nightmares, the very ones that stole my sister.
