Guilt sped and singed, skating just beneath the surface of my skin and consuming everything. I’d wanted to stop it, with all of me, and the only thing I’d done was push Mark over the edge.
A tear streaked free, racing down her angel face. “Our whole lives, we were inseparable. I know it sounds stupid, but we were more than sisters. More than blood. I was the one who wanted to experience everything, and she was the one who was reserved.”
She wiped the wetness from her cheek. “But together, we were a team, me rushing out to meet the day while she followed me everywhere.”
She trembled, her gaze dropping to somewhere on the floor. “When we were fifteen, I convinced her to sneak out to a party our mom had told us we weren’t allowed to go to. She’d tried to warn me it was a bad idea. That the only thing we were going to find was trouble.”
Gutted, she looked back at me. “She met a boy there that night. It was so unlike her, but she took off with him without telling me. When I realized she was gone, I searched everywhere for her, screaming her name as I ran in and out of every room of the house we were at.”
She touched her chest, right over her heart. “I had this horrible feeling I wasn’t ever going to see her again. That I’d lost her. The most important part of me. And I did, Zee. I lost her that night. Lost her to a world I never could have imagined she’d go, and I’ve been searching for her ever since.”
She blinked over at me. “That’s my truth.”
I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out and grabbing on to the closest connection I could find. I squeezed her calf, the feel of her inciting that battle that waged inside me.
Right and wrong.
And this was definitely wrong.
“You were fifteen. It wasn’t your fault.”
She shook her head. “It never would have happened if I hadn’t taken her there.”
“You can’t know that.”
Her head angled, eyes dimmed. “Can’t I?”
Hardest part was sitting there and knowing exactly what she was talking about. The awareness that one decision you’d made had changed the course of everything.
I wanted to reach over and erase it from her consciousness. Because if I knew one thing, this girl didn’t deserve that kind of burden.
She hesitated, all those questions moving around us like misshapen pieces trying to figure out where they fit. “What were you doing down there?”
Hefting out a sigh, I pulled my hand from her leg and roughed it through my hair. I had the inclination to just…tell her.
Lay it out.
Which was so goddamned stupid, I was certain during that fight I’d lost a piece of my mind.
“Let’s just say sometimes the wrong roads lead us to the right place. I’m just glad I was walking it.”
My answer only stirred up a thousand more questions, the girl watching me with so much belief and trust, without all the disappointment she should feel.
I couldn’t stop the vision from assaulting me. One of me setting my cup aside and crawling over her and tugging her down the loveseat so I could press my body against hers. So I could touch her and taste her and explore her.
Every inch.
Remember what it was like to embrace something good and pure.
I had to get the hell out of there. I was walking the most dangerous kind of terrain. A place that ran rampant with disloyalty and betrayal and shame.
Agitated, I rubbed my thigh. “I should go.”
There it was—the disappointment.
Her brows tightened before she seemed to nod in understanding. “Okay.”
I stood, set my cup on the small whitewashed table, and walked toward the front door. I could feel every movement she made, the ripple of energy when her bare feet hit the floor, the sway of her body, the taste of her breaths.
Fuck.
I opened the door, blinking against the stark sunlight shining down, and stepped out onto her stoop, knowing I needed to run. This needed to be goodbye.
Instead, I swung around.
She stood in her doorway, so goddamned pretty and perfect. Brighter than the sun. Every single thing I’d want if I hadn’t fucked away my life.
“You know him?” I demanded.
The shock from my question jarred her back.
I couldn’t shake the sense that encounter hadn’t been chance. The way the investigator had been pressing, there had to have been more.
She wavered, before she shook her head. “Just his face.”
“Same guy from that night? When you were fifteen?”
For a flash, she squeezed her eyes before she opened them back up to me. “No. He’s just another in an endless string she’s gotten wrapped up in. They just get worse and worse with time.”
Rage shook through me with the power of a freight train. Knowing she had gone there and put herself in the line of fire to confront that piece of shit. She had been willing to lose if it meant her sister might have the chance to win.
“You want to repay me?” I found myself suddenly saying.
She jolted, again caught off guard. God knew I probably looked deranged. Like I was barely clinging to reason. Still, she nodded, this girl who didn’t even know me.
“Then stay away from him, Alexis. Stay far, far away. Avril calls? Call the police. Tell them where she is. Just…stay away.”
I knew I was fucked when the only thing I wanted was to tell her to call me.
Another tear streaked free. “She’s my sister. I don’t know how you can ask that of me.”
Fingers trembling, I reached out and gathered the line of moisture that tracked her defined cheek.
Sparks and fire.
They flamed between us.
Something unseen but clear.
“Stay away from him, Alexis. I’m asking it of you because I can’t bear the thought of something happening to you.” It came out low, harder than it should have, because I didn’t have the right to make that demand.
I knew it.
So, I did the only thing I could do. I turned and walked away.
Giggles lifted beneath the warmth of the sun that blazed from above. Liam ran ahead of me, little feet pushing him as fast as he could go, even faster than the last time I’d seen him.
He squealed as I chased him close behind. I caught him, letting us somersault to the grassy ground. He clutched me at the sides, me on my back, staring up at the sky with his face in my chest.
Holding him.
The best feeling in the world.
I could feel the weight of his free, uninhibited smile as I ran my fingers through his silky brown hair.
“Why you been gone so long?” he said. He was just beginning to lose that adorable lisp, the boy growing faster than I ever could’ve imagined.
“Because I had to work.”
“Why you got to do that?”
I tugged him closer, my chest so goddamned full when I angled him so he was looking down at me, this kid filling all those vacant places that throbbed when we were apart. “Because that’s what mommies and daddies do…we work so we can take care of our families.”
He frowned. “Mommy doesn’t work.”