Chapter 8
EIGHT
A whisper of something lingers in the air as she hurries away as if she’s trying to escape more than just our presence. My eyes stay on the path she took, unease prickling at the edges of my thoughts. There was something about how she carried herself like she’d been running from ghosts too.
What was she even doing here?
And why did seeing her sitting by my sister’s grave, speaking as if they were close, unsettle me so much?
We visit Rosie and Mom far too rarely. Maybe two times a year, birthdays, mostly.
Which isn’t enough. And this is the first time we’ve been back since Oscar’s funeral, but it’s not easy for us.
We can’t leave the house without being recognized.
Not that I mind that so much, but this? This is different.
Private. It’s not something I want to share with the public or the press.
Grief should be allowed its privacy.
That’s why we generally come at dusk, when the city is distracted, when everyone is on the Strip, forgetting the dead.
Everyone but us. And her.
It’s been three months since Uncle Oscar was murdered, and I haven’t had the opportunity to feel anything—grief, anger, fear. They’re all locked somewhere deep inside, buried under the weight of keeping everything together. Holding the edges of my crumbling family with hands starting to splinter.
I can’t let go or let my guard slip for even a second. Every stranger, every interaction is a potential threat. There’s no room for weakness. No room for me.
Sylus is slipping. He’s out all night, every night, and when he’s home, he’s high, numbing himself. And I get it. I do. But every time I see that glazed look in his eyes, I find myself gripping tighter. He’s barely holding on, and I’m terrified he’ll slip through my fingers entirely.
Alaric has hardly left his bedroom. He’s disappeared into his own shadows, locking himself away for days, and I’ve stopped knocking on his door, too pained from my dozens of attempts to reach him that only ended in silence.
He’d only just started trusting us to fight his demons with him in recent years, but now I don’t know if I’ll reach him before he shatters entirely.
Ezra’s always been steady, the solid ground beneath our feet.
Now, even he’s cracking. He’s grumpier, moodier, lost inside his mind.
I see the haunted look in his eyes, the weight he carries that none of us are fit enough to help him lift.
If Oscar was the one who kept the bonds of our pieced-together family strong, Ezra was the one who shielded us.
From crazed fans to violent ones, he’s always been the one who protected us, but who’s protecting him now? Who’s keeping him from breaking?
Levi had always been the wild one, who laughed too loud and lived too fast. But beneath all that glitter and chaos was a heart too soft for this world.
My twin has been drowning his grief with anger, having more and more outbursts that are so out of line with his usual demeanor that it leaves me feeling hopeless.
I don’t know how to help any of them, but I know I cannot allow myself even a moment of weakness. If I let my guard down and my emotions surface, it wouldn’t be rage that spills out the same way it has for Levi. It would be despair.
A bottomless pit of it.
I can’t afford to fall into that. If I fall, who’s left to hold the rest of them up?
Oscar’s role in our family is mine now, to be the glue holding us all together. I never wanted it and didn’t ask for it. But someone has to do it.
So, I take it on—the responsibility, the fear, the endless exhaustion. I carry it, even as it grinds me down to nothing.
Because I know what happens if control gets lost.
Everyone around me dies.
Mom. Rose. Uncle Oscar. All I have left of my blood-related family is my twin. And if I let go of my ironclad control, I’d probably turn into a paranoid wreck, wrapping all of my brothers in bubble wrap to make sure nothing could happen to them.
Which, according to Levi, is what I already do.
But fuck, he especially is his own worst enemy.
Partying, drinking, he doesn’t give a fuck about himself or his health as long as he gets his high.
If I didn’t constantly mother-hen him, the way he loves accusing me of doing, he’d probably starve.
I don’t have to worry about him dying of thirst, though.
Champagne counts as liquid, right?
And then there are the fans, all the people who want a piece of us, or mostly him. The girl at the grave wouldn’t even be the first stalker Levi has had if that’s what she is. At least she didn’t seem dangerous.
“Oh my God.” Levi’s laugh, sharp and sudden, snaps me out of my thoughts. “The pretty Little Bird caught your attention, huh? I haven’t seen you look at someone like that in ages.”
“It was… strange.” I shoot him a glare. “You see that, too, right? Her hanging around Rosie’s grave… it doesn’t make sense. She couldn’t have been her friend. She looked younger than us, maybe mid-twenties. They wouldn’t have known each other before Rosie died.”
“Weird? Sure.” Levi chuckles, a mischievous glint lighting his eyes.
“But also a delight,” he says, his voice slipping into that playful tone he uses when something, or someone, has piqued his interest. He makes a cooing sound, and Pebble flutters down from Rosie’s gravestone, landing on his shoulder and nestling in.
“Why would that be a delight?” I ask, more to distract myself from the growing unease settling in my stomach. “All we have now are questions and an empty wine bottle to dispose of. A very expensive wine bottle,” I note, examining the label. It’s a good year, one I have in our wine cellar.
Levi grins, pulling his phone from his pocket with a flourish. “Yep, questions, one empty bottle more, and… something less.”
“What are you talking about?”
I’m not in the mood for his games.
He grins wider, looking like the cat that got the cream. “You really didn’t notice, did you? It’s fucking perfect, she’s fucking perfect.” He taps on a screen and puts it on speaker. It rings once before Ezra picks up, his deep voice filling the air between us.
“Dove.”
“Hey, Ezy baby,” Levi coos into the phone as if he hasn’t seen him in ages, even though Ezra is sitting in his car outside the graveyard waiting for us to get back. “Have you seen the glittery goddess who just stepped out?”
There’s a moment of silence, then Ezra replies. “She’s standing outside the gate, a few feet from me.”
I furrow my brows, trying to understand where Levi’s going with this. I open my mouth to ask, but Levi raises a finger, signaling me to wait. It’s killing me, but I bite my tongue.
“Amazing. Be a good boy and follow her, okay?” Levi demands, but then his voice drops to that honeyed, persuasive tone he’s perfected. “I’d like to know where she works or lives or where the hell she’s going right now. It’s important.”
“Can I ask why?” Ezra sounds as confused as I feel, which is a small comfort.
Levi’s grin stretches wider when he sees my frown. “Because that beauty just stole Koen’s watch right off his wrist, and he still hasn’t noticed.”
Ice floods my veins as I glance at my bare wrist.
“What the fuck?”
How did she…
Levi’s laughter rings out, echoing off the gravestones.
“You’ve got to admit, she’s got skills. I haven’t seen anyone pull off a lift like that in years, and from you, of all people.
” He shakes his head. “Honestly, if I hadn’t been watching her glittery fingernails because I need those, I wouldn’t have noticed. It was that quick.”
I’m torn between fury at being robbed and a grudging respect for her audacity.
Who the hell is that girl?
“I’d rather not leave you here alone,” Ezra states firmly.
He’s even more overprotective than I am when it comes to Levi, and that’s saying something.
Ezra is a detective, but he acts as Levi’s bodyguard whenever he goes out because Levi refuses to hire a new one.
The last one we had didn’t end well. The guy tried to pin him against a wall because he misread Levi’s nature as flirting.
If Ezra hadn’t come home in time to pummel the guy, who was two heads taller than our friend, onto the floor before getting him arrested, I don’t even want to imagine what could have happened.
It was also discovered that he’d been stealing Levi’s used underwear.
It’s no wonder Levi refuses to let anyone else into our circle after that.
And honestly, neither do I. I trust Ezra with my life, with our lives.
He’s the only one who has earned that. So, when he wanted to train me in hand-to-hand combat, I didn’t argue.
I knew why. Ezra can’t be there all the time.
And Levi is not always going to be careful, not always going to see the threats coming.
But I do. I have to.
Still, I wonder how the hell Ezra even still has his job. He’s with us, or more specifically, with Levi, almost all the time. It’s not like we need the money. Like most things Ezra does, that job feels more of an obligation he can’t let go of rather than a passion.
“I’ve got him,” I assure Ezra, though my mind is already elsewhere—where the girl with my watch has gone.
The graveyard is eerily quiet now, the kind of silence that comes only at this hour, which was the whole point of coming this late.
No eyes on us, no questions, only the solitude of this place.
It’s how I wanted it, and truth be told, we didn’t need Ezra to tag along.
Part of me thought maybe he’d want to visit Oscar too. He loved him as much as we do.
Yet, when we got here, Ezra had simply said, “I’ll wait in the car,” as if being this close was too much.
Maybe it was.
Grief is a funny thing.
Maybe he carries it in the quiet, the way he does everything else, in silence until it weighs him down so much he can’t move forward.