I look out at Javi, still searching for shark teeth. “I don’treally know if I’m being honest. A lot of the days and weeks faded together, but I wasn’t on the streets the whole time. Sometimes I could get into a shelter, but I always felt like there was someone who deserved to be there more than I did.” I’d give anything to forget those first few months of solitude, but they haven’t stopped haunting me in nightmares. Javi was the best thing that could’ve ever happened to me, and I owe him everything.
“Bailey . . .” she says my name, and it strikes a match inside me, sparking the feelings I’ve tried so hard to suppress. I want to ask her to say it again.
God, I’m still a fucking disaster, and I’ve had twenty-six months to get over the girl of my dreams dating my twin—and I haven’t. It’s embarrassing, but I don’t want her sympathy. Not when I’m to blame for everything that went wrong between us.
“Do you think Hunter will talk to me while I’m back?”
Kaitlyn’s chewing on the inside of her cheek when I glance at her. “I don’t know,” she admits, her dark eyes sliding to meet mine, appearing more honey in the direct sunlight. “The past few years have been really hard on him. He . . . Hunter doesn’t talk about you much, so I really don’t know. I’m sorry.”
I’m not sure what answer I was hoping for, but based on the way my stomach sinks, it wasn’t the one I got.
It’s Kaitlyn’s turn, and it takes her a minute to come up with her question.
“Are you going to stay?” Kaitlyn asks, but this is a question I can’t answer because I don’t know.
“Pass.”
1 I love you so much.
CHAPTER FIVE
Kaitlyn
NOW
ShouldI have definitely talked to my boyfriend first before taking his twin and his . . . I don’t know what to call Javi. Bailey’s little friend? That just sounds like a terrible joke about his dick.
Oh, but yes.
I should have talked to Hunter. It’s all just so complicated because Bailey and I are . . . well, whatever we are now, I guess. I want to be friends again, because I missed Bailey so much, but it felt wrong to miss him when he wasn’t mine to miss. It’d be different if we hadn’t almost been something, but we were, and now I’m here with him. See?Complicated.
Honestly, I should ask Javi if he wants to dig a hole big enough to bury me in, so I don’t have to face the consequences of my actions.
But I don’t have to ask him permission for shit, so in my mind it seemed perfectly acceptable for me to hang out with his brother, who magically reappeared after two years, in a platonic way—like themostplatonic you can get.
“I know you said pass, but—” I start to say, because Ihonestly can’t let this go. I need to know because if Bailey is planning on leaving again. I want to prepare myself.
Bailey shoots me a look so intense I immediately back off.Okay then.No questions about if he’s staying or not, and it terrifies me because it makes me think he’s not going to.
I waited for Bailey to sit down in the sand while I stayed with Javi in the water before asking how he found Bailey, trying not to stare at the scars littering his back. I barely held my tears at bay when Javi said Bailey kept him safe from all the bad people who would hurt him.
“How have you been?” Bailey asks, breaking the tension between us. I’m a little surprised he even wants to continue talking to me at all.
When he ran into me on the stairs, he seemed like he’d rather be anywhere than next to me—and I used to be the one Bailey wanted to be next to.
“Good, I guess.”
“You guess?”
I hesitate, reaching for another handful of sand. I haven’t even talked to Hunter about this, so I probably shouldn’t be telling Bailey, but I’ll add it to the list of apologies I’ll need to make later. “I’m supposed to declare my major at Duke this fall, but I don’t know what I want. I thought college was where you’re supposed to figure everything out, and discover who you are, but I’m as clueless as I was the first day of freshman year,” I say, lifting my shoulders in a shrug. “I think I want to take a year off and figure out what I want, but I’m afraid everyone will think it’s because I can’t hack it in the real world.”
The worst part is Hunter has everything planned out, and it’s all moving along right on schedule. Yet, the closer I look at my plan, the more cracks I notice. There’s only so much duct tape you can use to patch them before it shatters completely.
My brother, Henry, bought me a full oil paint set and easelafter I mentioned I wanted to try painting in passing last summer. After years of sketching scenes to disappear into, I fell in love with it, but it’s not sensible in the slightest to want painting to be anything more than a hobby.
I need to pick something practical, but the thought of choosing a major in business gives me the same claustrophobic feeling it gives my mother. Unfortunately, Dad told me a long time ago he expected Henry and me to get our degrees, so I’m terrified to bring up taking a year off.
“The real world isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but I think you could handle it, Price,” Bailey says, offering me a smile that feels like a rainbow appearing at the end of a thunderstorm.
