Page 136 of My Brother’s Best Friends Entanglement

I shake my head. “Leave me out of it. Nothing you can say is going to convince me to agree to this.”

She ignores me. “Come on, I know you want your room back. It's your safe space, your sanctuary. First you let me borrow it, now Leon as well? You must be dying to move back in.”

“Nope.”

“You must,” she exhales, tired.

I turn on her, voice low but loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Do you actually want me to tell you what I want? Right now. Here. What I would give everything up for? In front of everyone?”

She blinks and holds her breath. Nobody says anything.

“Right. So, discussion's over. I'm not going to talk about this again.” I look at Alexia. “Come on. We're going to be late.”

She doesn't say anything for the first ten minutes of the drive, just watches the houses go past.

I keep replaying it.

“Maybe we should find somewhere else.”

Turning it over and over in my head, wondering whether I imagined it sounding like the first line of a much longer goodbye. She hasn't said anything about Sydney, or about her plans after Leon's recovery, nothing about what she's going to do after there's no more reason for her to fill the house every morning with her sounds, her scent, her warmth. But I can feel the shape of her leaving sitting in the car with us anyway, and it's got my hands too tight on the wheel.

Whatever I'm feeling, I know it's nothing compared to what's weighing on her right now. I can only see what it looks like from the outside, snapping at everyone, freezing us out, picking fights about nappies and dowries and sleep schedules instead of just saying what's actually wrong. It would be easy to call it bratty if you didn't know her, haven't seen what it costs her to put a normal face on for her brother every morning. She's not being difficult. She's drowning. And I'm drowning with her. I don't know how to reach her without pulling her under with me.

“Are you ever going to talk to any of us again?” I ask when we're parked at a red light five minutes from the university.

“I am talking to you.”

“About anything that's not Leon's care?”

She leans her temple against the window and closes her eyes, like holding up her head is too much for her right now. “That's the most important thing right now.”

“He's doing fine, Alexi. He's recovering. You can see that.”

“He can't even go to the bathroom by himself.”

I nod. “And a week and a half ago he was on a table bleeding out. Compared to that, he's doing remarkably well.” The cars start moving again. “You know who's not doing well?”

She doesn't answer.

“You need to eat. Sleep. Talk to me. Hell, talk to Zachary if you have to. Or Marc— okay, maybe not him. But at least me or Zachary.”

She cracks the tiniest of smiles. “I have been talking to you guys and I'm fin⁠—”

“Let's not insult both of us by you finishing that sentence.”

She sighs. “What do you want from me?”

The question comes out sharp, but underneath it, I hear what she's not saying: I don't have anything left to give you right now.

“I want you to tell me what's going on in your head.”

“This isn't about you, Rhys.”

“No. That's exactly it. It's about you.” A horn sounds and I look up to see the car ahead of me long gone. “It's about your inability to let any of us in right now.”

“Oh, that's rich, coming from the human vault. I've known you my whole life and sometimes I feel like I don't know you at all. You don't ever tell anyone anything!”