I looked at her then, and the truth came out rougher than anything before it.
“I made your days hell because you reminded me of the worst night of my life, and because I wanted you so badly I could barely breathe around it. Cruelty gave me somewhere to putall that fucked-up rage. It gave me something to do with my hands besides reach for you.” My jaw tightened. “You asked why, Edwina. That’s why.”
Her tears spilled then. I hated myself for every single one.
“You didn’t remember me. But I couldn’t forget you. That destroyed me. I had carried you for years, and I meant nothing to you. Your life kept moving while mine stayed trapped in that crash, trapped with my sister dead, with guilt in my throat, with your face burned into every goddamn memory of that night.” My voice dropped. “And the worst part was that even through all of it, through the grief, the anger, the guilt, I still wanted you. I wanted you so much it made me hate myself.”
The confession sat between us, too ugly to soften and too honest to take back.
“That’s the truth,” I said. “Ugly as fuck, but it’s the truth.”
I stepped closer again, stopping just short of touching her.
Her face twisted then, stripped of every defense. “Oh my God,” she whispered, the realization hitting her all at once. “It was you.”
“Yes.”
“I thought…” She broke off, pressing trembling fingers to her mouth. “There was someone. I knew that much. Hands pulling me out, a voice telling me to stay awake, rain hitting my face. But after the crash, everything came back in pieces. Your face was never clear enough for me to know.”
“No,” I said.
She shook her head as if she could deny the missing years back into place. “If I had known—”
“What?” I cut in, unable to take the shape of that unfinished mercy from her. “What would you have done, Edwina?”
That stopped her, because we both knew there was no clean answer. Knowing would not have brought my sister back. It would not have untangled Alessia, grief, guilt, my bitterness, orthe fear that had already taught both of us how to destroy each other. She looked at me helplessly, and Christ, I hated how much that face still did to me. I had wanted it, cursed it, searched for it in memory, and blamed it for things no face should ever have had to carry. Missing her had become its own sickness, and I had carried it for years.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Exactly.”
The silence that followed felt alive with every ghost we had dragged into the room.
After a moment, I stepped closer and lifted my hand to her cheek. The pain was still there, ugly as fuck and breathing inside me, but some truths survived even the worst ones. One of mine was that I had never learned how to stand in front of her breaking and keep my hands to myself.
“My little Flare, you were the one person I couldn’t forget, and that was the cruelest fucking joke life ever played on me.”
She closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, the room felt different, as if the truth had moved something between us even though it had fixed nothing.
I stood there with the accident finally dragged into the open, the old ghosts given shape at last, and still one question stayed lodged under my ribs.
Rhodes.
That fucking name.
I had been turning that name over in my head for too long.
Rhodes.
So I asked her again. “What happened to Carter?” My voice was rough from everything already dragged out between us. “How the fuck did you become Rhodes?”
For a moment, she only looked at me.
“Everything happened at the airport,” she said.
My body went still.
