Chapter 26
Xavier
“So how has school been?” my mother asks, awkwardly staring at me while sipping from her cup of coffee.
“I can’t complain,” I reply.
“I love it at Spine Ridge,” Melody, my half sister, says. “It’s so grand, and I can explore so much.” She giggles.
“Someone’s happy they finally get to join the big boys,” my half brother Silas says.
“I’ve been waiting so long,” Melody replies.
“I still don’t think it was the greatest idea,” her dad, Alistair, says, and he rubs her back. “But I’m glad you’re happy, Mel.”
“She’ll survive,” Silas muses as he leans back in his seat.
“Have you killed any more people these past few days?” Silas’s dad, Felix, suddenly asks, and I nearly choke on my coffee.
Silas’s eyes instantly connect with mine. “No. Not for a few months, actually.”
“Wow, I’m impressed.” Aspen snorts.
“Well…” my mom mutters. “If it wasn’t you, then who’s been bringing bodies to old Otto over at the scrapyard?”
I spit out my coffee.
Across the table.
Right into my mother’s face.
She glares at me with her cup still firmly in her hands, and my face turns beet red. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Silas bursts out laughing, pointing at our mother. “Look at your face!”
My dad suddenly waltzes in and throws the pizza boxes he got on the table. “Dinnertime!”
Everyone stares at him like it’s the most inopportune time for him to barge in, and he squawks, “What?”
But then he notices my mom covered in coffee, and his eyes widen. “Yikes.”
“I’ll go grab a towel.” I quickly get up and walk to the kitchen, but halfway there, my phone buzzes. I pull it from my pocket and check the messages.
Sunny: Where are u?
My eyes widen, my heart instantly going a million miles an hour. She’s never texted me before.
Me: At my parents’ house for dinner. What’s going on? Something happen to you?
I bite my lip waiting for a reply, but it never comes. Not even a couple of dots. Strange.
I fetch the towel and turn on the faucet to dip it under the water, then bring it back to the dining room, but my mom has already started wiping her face with some napkins.
“Sorry, Mom,” I mutter as I hand it to her.
She gently wipes her face with the towel, then rolls her eyes as she places it down on the table. Before I can walk off, she grabs my hand.
“Are you involved?”
My eye begins to twitch. “What?”
“Are you involved in the killings?”
“I … I …” I don’t know how to answer.
What should I say? If I admit that I’ve been helping Sunny kill all these people, either Sunny kills me or they will. Either way, I’m screwed.
“Xavier,” Dad presses. “Answer your mom.”
“What killings?” I mutter, laughing it off as casually as I can, but I know I look dumb as fuck.
Silas leans back in his chair and folds his arms. “Interesting …”
“What?” I bark, throwing him a weirded-out glance.
He grins. “Nothing.”
“I don’t even know what y’all are talking about,” I say.
“You spat coffee all over your mother when she mentioned Otto’s scrapyard,” Dad says, as he takes a slice of pizza and munches on it like nothing is going on.
“I just got spooked by the idea of more bodies, that’s all,” I reply, jerking my hand free from my mom’s grip. “Anyway, I’m hungry. Can we eat now?”
I take a slice before anyone else tries to interrogate me because I don’t think I’ll be able to keep this lie going, let alone a straight face.
“You don’t happen to know anything about a murderer being on the loose, do you, Xav?” Aspen muses as she grabs a slice too, and she winks at me as she sits down on the chair.
“No,” I reply with a monotone voice, and I sit down beside her.
“Really?”
I kick her in the shin, and she nearly chokes on her pizza.
“Stop it,” I whisper sideways.
“You need to come clean. Before it’s too late,” she whispers back.
“What are you guys talking about?” Melody asks, breaking my train of thought.
“Homework. Aspen wants me to do hers.”
She audibly gasps. “I did not.”
“I know I’m the smarter twin,” I reply, putting up a petty face.
She pulls a piece of ham off her pizza and sticks it onto my cheek. “Earth to fucking Xav, like hell you are.”
The doorbell rings, and my entire body springs into action. “I’ll go.”
I drop my pizza on my plate and bolt toward the door before anyone can beat me to it, but the moment I open it, I’m at a loss for words.
Sunny clutches her belly, but her black jacket is stained in blood. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
She’s hurt.
I choke up. “Oh my God.”
“I can’t go back,” she murmurs.
Her bike is parked against the tree outside my parents’ house in a way I’ve never seen her park before. She must be in so much pain.
“Back where?” I ask, but she doesn’t answer.
I glance over my shoulder before I walk outside and put my shoulder underneath hers. “C’mon.”
While the others are chatting among each other, I swiftly take Sunny upstairs and into one of the bathrooms all the way in the back of the house, where barely anybody ever comes. Except maybe Melody when she’s covered herself in baby oil again to clean off all the paint stains on her skin.
I put Sunny down on the edge of the tub and close the door before I grab a seat and sit down in front of her.
She’s bent over, clutching her sides, breathing out soft puffs of air as a curtain of black-and-green hair covers her eyes.
I lean forward to peek underneath until I find the darkness in her eyes reflected in mine.
They narrow. Fiercely.
Terror grips my heart, but I keep my body steady as I grab her arm, which she keeps locked in place.
“Let me see, please.”
After a few seconds, she finally lets me win, and I gently pull it away.
There’s a bloody mark on her jacket, so I slip it off her shoulders and let it drop to the marble floor. The black tank top underneath sticks to her skin from both blood and sweat, and I swallow away the lump in my throat as I look at her voluptuous body.
Focus, Xavier, focus goddammit.
There’s a cut on her arm, which is clearly from a fight, but the wound in her belly is obviously more dire.
I reach for her, and she flinches the moment my finger grazes her shirt, as though she’s prepping for attack mode almost immediately the second someone touches her, and I don’t understand.
It’s as if the thought of exposing even an inch of her skin …
of herself … makes her feel in danger. Like anything or anyone could be a threat to her.
But I will never, ever hurt her.
“It’s okay. I’ll be gentle,” I say, trying to keep my gaze fixated on her eyes despite the fire roaring in them.
Biting my lip, I gently curl my fingers under her tank top and push up the fabric until her naked belly is exposed, along with the gnarly-looking wound on her side.
She hisses when I graze past it with my thumb.
I pause, hovering over her skin while searching for approval, but if I keep waiting until she’s less pissed off, nothing good will ever happen. I have to help her.
I get up to pull the first-aid kit off the shelf in the corner, open it, then take out the bottle of alcohol and some cotton. I sit back down again and set all the supplies beside her on the tub.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Your wound needs disinfecting,” I say.
I dip the cotton in the alcohol and bring it to her skin, glancing up just once to make sure she won’t try to stab me with the many weapons she carries everywhere she goes.
C’mon, Xavier. You can do this.
I dab the wound, and she hisses in pain, nails digging into her thighs. I clean out the gash as best as I can. It’s quite deep, and I’m pretty sure it’s from a knife of some sort.
I pull back the cotton and stare at her blood, while mine begins to thicken with a rage I’ve never felt before.
I leer up at her. “Who did this to you?”
She tilts her head, a lopsided smile briefly appearing on her face before it’s gone again like it never even existed.
“No one.”
My nostrils flare, and I grab the next piece of cotton. Every one of my touches elicits a reflex of jolts and twitches in her body, but the longer I continue, the less frequent they become. I chuck all the cotton in the bin beside me and stare at the bleeding wound for a second.
“It’s too deep. That’s going to need stitches.”
“I can’t go to the hospital. It’s not safe.”
“I know.” I grab a pair of gloves and put them on, then pick up a needle and a thread from the box. “It’s going to hurt.”
“I can handle it,” she says.
I swallow again before I bring the needle to her skin and pierce through, trying to go as slow as possible so I don’t anger her further. I know she’s on edge, and it probably has everything to do with her current condition.
Something’s gotten her spooked. A surprise attack by an enemy?
“Whoever you’re protecting doesn’t deserve it,” I say, slowly looping the thread through her skin.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” she replies.
I pause and look up. “They hurt you. I can’t let that slide. They need to be punished.”
Her brows furrow, and she seems genuinely surprised that I’d say that.
“I … It was a mistake. That’s all,” she says.
“Being stabbed is rarely a mistake,” I reply, finishing up the sutures.
She sucks in a breath. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I cut the thread and tuck the scissors away. “Won’t or can’t?”
She narrows her eyes at me again, and I get it. She doesn’t like prying eyes, but all this avoidance isn’t helping her one bit.
In a moment of brazen courage, I place my hand on top of hers. “Let me help you … please.”
With widened eyes, she leans back as her lips part, eyes darting between my hand and me.
Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door, and Sunny immediately retracts her hand. I turn my head the second the door opens.
“Um, sorry for interrupting, but Mom’s asking who was at the door, and I don’t know how to answer her without lying to her face,” Aspen says.
“I’ve been holding her off for now, but it won’t be long until she starts searching the house.
” She looks at Sunny and a know-it-all smirk slowly forms on her face. “Hi, by the way.”
Sunny just raises her brow. That’s it. No wave, no hi, no nothing.