I wonder if he looked at me and thought that I had it easy. I was a Kotova. Born into a legacy more sturdy and predictable than his life would eventually be.
I wonder if he looked at me and thought Baylee deserved a better friend. Someone smarter. Someone less reckless and wild. Because I ran with his sister to vast unexplored places. In a city more new to me than to her.
And even when I remembered to ask, he never wanted to come along.
In the kitchen, Brenden meticulously spreads mustard on one slice of wheat bread while I just throw cheese down on mine.
The air strains the longer we share company, and I feel something brewing.
My cell vibrates on the counter. I try not to grab it too fast, but I’m also worried he’ll see the sender on the screen. Discreetly, I check the text.
Are you okay? Usually you reply faster… – Baylee
I text quickly: I’m talking to your brother (and yes to hanging out at the club. I’d risk more than that)
After I send the message, I glance at Brenden. He looks at me with an unreadable expression. I set my phone on the counter and reach for the turkey, but I realize it’s in his hand. Not purposefully since he hasn’t put meat on his sandwich yet.
But he’s still staring at me.
(It’s nothing.)
I believe it’s nothing.
I try to believe, at least.
“Something wrong?” I ask just as the main door opens.
Zhen crests the doorway and then skids to a stop. His confused and slightly alarmed eyes dart between Brenden and me. “…is everything okay?” he asks Brenden. I hear, do you need me to stay?, beneath his words.
“I’m fine,” Brenden says.
Frazzled, Zhen spins on his heels and leaves through the same door. He looks back once before shutting it closed.
I rotate my taut shoulders and hold his gaze.
“Tell me you’re not texting my little sister,” he says, freezing my muscles. “Tell me I’m just imagining this nightmare in my head with you at the center.”
“I’m not texting her,” I lie in one breath.
Brenden gauges my features and then shakes his head. “I don’t trust you. I don’t think I ever trusted you.” His jaw tightens and he caps the mustard.
“I’m not texting Baylee,” I repeat, suppressing all of my emotion. Numb—I want to be numb. I want to not fucking care, but Brenden is Baylee’s rock. He’s her world. Her brother, her heart.
Slowly, he rotates to face me. “Show me your phone then.”
I rest my elbow on the counter and grab my phone, but I don’t pass it to him. I open my mouth and expect to let out a million excuses—but I say, “I love her.”
His nose flares, jaw muscle clenching. Trying just as hard to trounce uncomfortable sentiments.
“I’m in love with Baylee,” I say again, my heart on fire.
“I heard you,” he says flatly.
I breathe deeply through my nose, and I rake my fingers across my damp hair. I thought it’d change something if he knew, but it only makes it worse. A rumor about “my love” for Baylee can’t spread through the troupe. It’ll somehow reach Marc Duval.
The no minors policy will be enforced.
We’ll probably be fired.
So I backtrack. “Just as friends,” I clarify. “She doesn’t know either. I’ve never told her.”
He processes this. Staring me dead in the eyes. “But you text.”
“About work. Sometimes about Katya. It’s my sister’s birthday today—that’s what the text was about.” (I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.) Lying to Brenden feels equivalent to ripping at his relationship with his sister. I don’t want to touch it with malicious hands.
Brenden scrutinizes me, discomfort mounting between us, and I can’t tell what he believes. He might not even be sure himself. “Katya’s turning seventeen, right?” he asks.
And I immediately regret bringing up Katya.
“Yeah.” I screw on the pickle jar for something to do. “She’s seventeen today.”
Brenden nods. “You know what I remember?” He leans slightly on the counter, angled more towards me. “She’s little. Like this high.” He motions to the counter’s ledge. “Ten or eleven? We were conditioning for Infini, and Katya accidentally slid down the climbing rope. Burned her palms badly.”
I remember this, but I don’t add to the memory. I just listen.
“Before she even thought about crying, you were there. You blew on her hands and then lifted her onto your back. You were silly enough that she started laughing, and you found the nearest first-aid kit and bandaged her palms.”
A chill slips down my neck. I see where he’s going. I can share a story in the same vein as that one, only replacing me and my sister with Brenden and his.
Bay was almost inconsolable when their parents passed, and Brenden was the one who made sure she had a dress for the funeral. The one who accompanied her to the doctor for checkups. The one who kept her upright when she wanted to sink low.
I understand more than I want to.
Baylee and Katya aren’t alike, but our relationships with our sisters are similar. Mirrored. Almost identical. He played the brother and the friend and the parent to Baylee. Just like I did to Katya.
Just like I do.
“How you treated your sister—that’s what I liked most about you,” Brenden tells me. “And then you screwed over mine, and I thought, fuck this guy.” He glowers and grimaces.
I go cold.
He nods to me. “So I want to know how you’d feel.”
I dread the next moment. “If what?”
“If your little sister met a guy that got her into hard drugs. That steals on the regular. He’s been to jail for theft, and he’s a stain on the company that she’s employed by—how would you feel if he came into her life and tore at her career and everything she’s worked so goddamn hard for? How would you feel then?”
(Heartbroken. Worried. Protective.)
My eyes burn, and I nod more than once before I say, “I’m sorry.”
“Tell that to her.”
“I already have.”
He shelters his feelings. And then he faces the counter and finishes putting together his sandwich. The air is even tighter than before.
“I would never wish ill on anyone,” Brenden tells me, “especially not Katya, but I hope you realize something.”
I place a slice of bread on top of my sandwich and cut it in half. He waits for me to ask, and I finally do. “What?”
“Being a Kotova doesn’t make your little sister immune to bad guys. Some prick can come into her life and completely unhinge it—and then you’ll stand there and you’ll look him in the eye.” His gaze latches onto mine. “And you’ll think, fuck this guy.”
I feel like I’m seven billion tons of brick.
Brenden take his sandwich to the couch, and then I stare off at the wall, his words echoing shrilly in my head.
Stomach coiling, I grab my phone and text Bay.
Has my sister opened her birthday present from me yet? I send, and she replies back fast.
Not yet – Baylee
I stare off again. My gift was a bad idea. And I’m going to take it back.
Act Thirty
Baylee Wright
“I’ve fortunately and unfortunately known him since I was twelve,” I explain to the girls in my bedroom while shaking out a dry tube of mascara. We’re all in bathrobes, our hair twisted out of our faces while we get ready for the club tonight.
I sit beside Thora on the floor, tiny mirrors propped up. One of my legs is outstretched and the other tucked beneath my ass. And I try really hard not to think about my texts or Luka and my brother chatting right now. My phone, I’ve set aside to ignore that stress for a second.
“Emphasis on unfortunate,” Katya agrees, seated at the desk chair.
The last girl here, I just met about an hour ago. She’s friends with Thora, and also John Ruiz’s twenty-three-year-old cousin.
Camila Ruiz draws the most even cat-eyeliner on Katya’s lids. Substantially more skilled at makeup than both of us. We couldn’t even do a halfway-decent smoky eye after two hours of trying.
“Why unfortunate?” Camila asks.
I blow a clump of mascara off my brush. “Besides the fact that Dimitri has a hundred different names for a vagina?” I say seriously.
“And he calls tampons string peens and spirit sticks,” Katya adds.