Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
ZEPHYR
We fall onto the bed, still sweaty and naked, breathing heavily. I yawn and let myself collapse on top of Darwin. He lets out an oof and a breath of laughter. With another yawn, I decide that maybe we’re finished fucking for a while. I’m tired.
His arms wrap around me, and we settle in. Silence settles around the room, getting louder and louder as our breathing quiets.
“Thanks for staying with me,” Darwin says quietly.
“It’s my room,” I point out.
He huffs. “I mean here. At the castle. I know that’s not why you stayed, but I appreciate the company anyway.”
“You just like my dick.”
I feel his grin, and he doesn’t deny it. “I enjoy your company too. I also never realized that I’d enjoy sleeping beside a hot body.”
“The bodies you usually sleep beside are cold? I have questions,” I tease.
Darwin pinches me. “You don’t like to be shown gratitude, do you?”
“Eh. I guess I don’t think I deserve any. I stayed for selfish, pitying reasons. Who was here was irrelevant, so being thanked for it kind of makes me look like an ass.”
“But you could have left at any time since,” Darwin points out. “You’re still here. Does that mean you just like my ass?”
I grin and run my teeth over his collarbone. I love how he shivers. “It’s a nice ass,” I admit. “But no.”
“You’re not staying to keep me company, though.”
Sighing, I press my face into his neck. “I don’t know why I’m staying. That’s part of it, to be honest. I don’t think you should stay on your own.”
“It’s so dangerous,” he muses.
“No, but humans aren’t really meant for solitude. When I stayed, I knew there’d be people here. You stayed because you’re a good person, even though you should have said something, so you weren’t staying alone. It’s not healthy to stay in a remote place all alone for three months.”
“I’m not alone even if you leave. Matty is here.”
I’m not about to point out that Matty isn’t the kind of company I’m referring to.
He himself isn’t in a healthy place mentally.
His solitary punishment isn’t helping his situation at all, either.
I don’t think Darwin’s thinking about how the silence of the castle would have affected him when he’s thanking me for my company.
“I’m glad to stay,” I say after a minute. “I enjoy your company, too.”
“What would you be doing if you went home?”
I think about Erez and sigh. “Don’t know. Trying to get my brother out of the house, maybe. I don’t feel like working, so I doubt I’d be going into the office.”
“Why doesn’t your brother leave the house?”
“He feels guilty about our sister’s death.”
Darwin inhales. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It was nine years ago. I’m not going to say we’re over it because it’s not something you ever really get over, but I’m living my life.” I also note the irony in that statement because staying on a remote island because I’m feeling bad for myself isn’t exactly living.
“Can I ask why he feels guilty?”
I open my eyes, though I can’t see anything.
Not only is the room dark, but my face is tucked into Darwin’s neck.
I inhale deeply and hold it. I’ve spent a lot of time not speaking about this out loud to anyone.
When Alice died, our parents put us all in therapy, including themselves.
We’d never dealt with a sibling death before, never mind a suicide.
You know, that’s what everyone says the answer is.
Following therapy—and the few times I talked to Jude about it—I haven’t spoken about it. It’s been maybe seven years since I’ve said anything other than ‘My sister died x-number of years ago’ to anyone at all.
“You don’t have to tell me. There’s no pressure.”
“It’s kind of a… weird story that begins far before her death.
Erez found her bloody and beaten up when he was six.
Alice was four at the time. He carried her home from fuck knows where.
No matter what our parents asked or said, he wouldn’t tell anyone where he found Alice.
Alice herself didn’t speak. I’m not sure she knew how.
“I think we all knew something awful had happened to her because she was absolutely terrified of our fathers. Seriously losing her mind, screaming and fighting and sobbing to get away from them whenever they came around. She trembled so badly that my fathers rarely entered the same room she was in. She was… terrified. The fear in her eyes frightened me. Here was this little girl—my same age!—and she was all bloody, bruised, and beaten up. Scared out of her mind, of my dads who she didn’t even know.
“Legally speaking, I don’t know how my parents kept her, but she became part of our lives.
Our family. Whether she knew her name isn’t something we ever learned.
One day, Erez told us her name is Alice.
I don’t know whether he gave her that name or if she told him, but from that day on, we had a sister named Alice.
“It took years for her to trust our dads, but she eventually came around. She turned into a happy child. She laughed with us, played, and went to school. She had friends and went to sleepovers—though admittedly she came home from more than she stayed at if they had a father figure or an older brother. She didn’t have male teachers.
My parents made sure that she was never in a class with a male teacher.
Her guidance counselor needed to be a female.
My parents made sure she felt safe everywhere she went.
As we got older, I think we all began to have inklings about what she’d been through as a small child.
Nothing we ever said out loud, but things we always suspected.
“None of us suspected that there was something wrong, though. Not once that I can recall had Alice ever hinted that she wasn’t doing well.
She was still talking to someone professionally once a week, and she was always happy.
She painted all the time, and we indulged her—always bringing her home new paints and canvases and anything she wanted.
“One day, when we were fifteen, Alice stayed home from school. She didn’t feel well. Dadis said she was running a bit of a temperature. At that point, we’d been staying home alone when we were sick. Our parents would check in on us throughout the day, sometimes stopping in or otherwise calling.
“Dadaz and Dadwa came home that day and found her in the bathtub, face down.
Fully clothed. Her toxicology report said the only thing in her system was some over-the-counter sleep aid.
Her death was ruled an accident, but her being in the bath with her clothes on told a different story.
Not only has Alice never taken a bath—even as a child, she hated them and wanted a shower—but she was in the bath with her clothes on.
How do you accidentally die like that? We knew the truth.
“I think Erez blames himself because he found her all those years ago. He became her protector. Her guardian. They were close friends, and she always sought him out when she was upset, hurt, or lonely. Sometimes, just when she had a bad night. Erez was her best friend. But this meant there was something she didn’t go to him with.
We all thought she was healing from whatever hell she’d lived through as a child, but here was proof that there were still demons clinging to her that we couldn’t see, that she didn’t tell anyone about, and were too strong to fight on her own anymore. ”
“Oh my god,” Darwin whispers.
I nod. “Erez hasn’t been the same since.
We check in with each other every day. Either he messages me, or I message him.
I almost think we do that because he knows he’s sinking further and further into a dark place and is afraid that if he doesn’t have someone knowing where he is daily, he might go off the deep end and follow Alice. ”
“Is he talking to someone?”
“I don’t think so. He hates talking about Alice. Again, I think the guilt is too heavy. He wasn’t able to rescue her from this, and it haunts him.”
“Can I ask you a for-curiosity question?”
“Weird but okay.”
He laughs. “Sorry. I’m just curious about how Lanzo reacted.
Antisocial disorders expressly state that they can’t form connections, but I think that’s bullshit.
So many presumed psychopathic or sociopathic serial killers blend in so well with society because they have families, friends, and shit.
There are so many cases when they stopped killing for ten, fifteen, twenty years, and when asked why, it’s because their family needed them and they didn’t have time to spare. ”
“Ah.” I think about Lan in relation to Alice and shake my head.
“Lan’s always quiet, so I don’t know that I’d classify his quiet behavior as different.
He’d stand in the doorway to her room, filled with canvases of painted images that Alice had been working on.
As a teenager, I caught him standing there for hours.
I think he still stops by her room now when he’s over at our parents’ house.
I’m not sure I’ve ever actually heard him talk about her or her death, though.
Except to disagree that it was accidental. He asserts that she planned it.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I shake my head and sigh again. “It’s… been a long time. Again, I’m not going to say I’m over her death, but… I’m doing better than Erez. I suppose that’s something.”
“Do you seriously worry about him? Worry that he’ll follow her?”
“No. I don’t think any of us do. I think if we suspected it, then no one would leave him alone. Ever.”
“Please don’t take this offensively—”
I grin. “You’re going to point out that we likely wouldn’t know if he was actually planning to follow, right? Just as we didn’t know Alice was planning to kill herself.”
“Yeah.”