Chapter Twenty-Four
Twenty-Four
DESPITE DEONNE’S ENCOURAGING WORDS, MY brother’s presence still has the air of an executioner readying his sword, and I’m the sucker with my head on the block. He could swing at any moment.
After a few hours of hiding out at Stone it’ll only make it worse.” I pull her to a stop outside our building, lowering my voice. “I’m sorry for getting you involved in this. I recognize this is my fault.”
“You were in a tough situation. I don’t blame you for any of it, Bee.”
Behind us there’s a familiar rumble, and we both turn to watch the Mike Bike tear through the parking lot and squeal into an empty space.
“She is the worst driver on the planet,” Felicity says.
Mikey sees us and breaks into a run across the parking lot, skirt hiked up to her waist, showing her lime-green bike shorts. She swings her helmet in a wide arc, narrowly missing knocking a mirror from a car as she passes.
“Hey!” she shrieks. “Big news! Huge! Monumental!” She crashes between us, linking her arms through ours and pulling us along. “Please tell me everyone’s home!”
“Um, Mike—” Felicity tries, but Mikey is already sprinting away, hands pumping over her head like Rocky.
We exchange a look, jogging after her, and arrive just as she bursts into the apartment.
“Everyone, drop what you’re doing!” She throws her helmet like a bowling ball, and it bounces along the carpet before rolling to a stop a few feet away.
As it does, Mikey wiggles her fingers in front of her face, making a whistling sound with her lips—playing the air tin whistle, I realize. “The band just got a gig!”
Andres, who’s sitting stiffly on the couch next to Jamie, his expression more tense than I thought the certified golden-retriever could ever manage, jumps to his feet, breaking into a grin.
“Whoa, what! Mike!” He dives at her, lifting her off her feet and swinging her in a circle. Then he deposits her in front of Felicity, and Mikey grabs her face and kisses her enthusiastically while Felicity laughs.
My gaze slides to Jamie, but he keeps his eyes fixed on Mikey, and I get the sense that I’m deliberately not being looked at.
I feel a tug of regret at the last thing I said to him before I left the apartment earlier, burying a knife right beside my brother’s.
But I’ve got a matching one sticking out of my chest too, slammed into me the moment he agreed not to speak to me anymore.
I’m thrown sideways when Mikey grabs me next, laying comical smooches on my cheeks before finally turning to Jamie.
He holds up his hands, warding her off. “Congratulations,” he says with a half-smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Lackluster,” she says, creeping toward him. “Congratulate me properly.”
“Mike, there’s something you should—” Felicity starts.
But Mikey tackles Jamie onto the couch with a shout, shaking him violently until they both tumble onto the floor.
“Okay, okay,” Jamie says, laughing. “Congratulations, properly! I mean it!”
“With more enthusiasm!” Mikey demands, her fingers going to his sides.
“No!” Jamie protests, shoving at her, but she begins to tickle him until he thrashes them both sideways into the coffee table.
Behind me a door creaks open, and a moment later my brother steps up beside me.
“Is he being murdered?” he asks.
Mikey turns, brows jumping. “We have a guest! Or an intruder, I honestly can’t tell—” She stops short, eyeing my brother, then me. “Oh.”
I should remind you here, Sawyer and I do not look alike. He’s a carbon copy of our tan, dark-haired mother. I’m our dad through and through: pale, prone to redness, blond. The single thing we have in common is that we’re both tall.
But Mikey takes one look at Sawyer and says, “You must be Blair’s brother.” She looks at Jamie, then me. “Which means we’re all in a lot of trouble, aren’t we?”
That night, I lie on the couch and stare up at the ceiling, sleep like a slippery fish I only manage to catch for seconds at a time before it wriggles out of my grasp.
The more I struggle to grab it, the more exhausted I become, until I’ve fallen into that half-awake state of fatigue where nothing feels real.
I’m almost regretting not taking Andres up on his offer to stay with Jamie so I could have his room, even though I doubt I would’ve been able to sleep any better in there.
(Mostly because I don’t know when he last washed his sheets.)
When I do finally manage to hold on to that slippery fish called sleep, I drop into a dream that I’m being chased through my neighborhood. My pursuer is a slow-moving masked man, and no matter how fast I run, he’s always the same distance behind me on the dark, deserted street.
Our house is the only one lit up, every window glowing an inviting yellow, but the front door is locked, and I pound on it until it swings open. On the other side, my family crowds the entryway—Mom, Victor, Sawyer, Goose.
“What’s going on?” Mom asks.
“What’s happening?” Victor demands.
And unsurprisingly, from my brother: “Ew, are you crying?”
Goose barks.
I try to explain, but I can’t speak, and I grow frantic as the words catch in my throat. I open my mouth, screaming soundlessly at them while they continue to demand answers, blocking me from entering the house.
The masked man catches up with me, and as he tackles me onto the front porch, the questions continue: “Blair, who is that?” and “What are you doing?” and “Is this some kind of performance art?”
When the knife plunges into my chest, I wake with a gasp, shooting straight up on the couch.
The apartment is quiet but for my panicked breathing. In the distance I hear someone snoring, and overhead the AC blows steadily from the vent. Then the creak of a door.
I flop back on my pillow and squeeze my eyes shut as the air in the room shifts with the arrival of another body. Awareness prickles along my arms, electricity lighting under my skin.
He sighs heavily, and I listen as he draws closer, finally coming to a stop next to the couch.
“Stop faking.”
I sit up, exhaling the breath I’d been holding and reaching for my water. I take a few greedy gulps as Jamie sits on the floor beside me.
“How’d you know?” I ask, swiping my hand across my mouth as I finish drinking.
“You’re not much of an actor.” He reaches out, pressing his fingertip between my eyes. “And that—that groove is a dead giveaway.”
As he pulls away, I cover the space between my brows with one hand. “Stop looking at it.”
The corner of his mouth kicks up in that devastating half-smile of his, and the battalion that guards my heart starts to sound the alarm, raising the drawbridge and readying their shields.
I nock an arrow and let it fly before Jamie can beat me to it. “I thought you weren’t supposed to speak to me.” It’s a familiar line, like the echo of four weeks ago when I first arrived here. Somehow, even after everything we’ve been through, it still rolls so easily off the tongue.
The humor drains from his face. “Blair.”
“What? What do you want, Jamie? Why did you come out here?”
He rubs the back of his neck, looking away. “I heard you wake up. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“That seems a little above your pay grade.”
He has the audacity to look wounded.
“I’m fine,” I lie, still feeling the adrenaline from my nightmare.
“Why didn’t you take Andres’s offer and sleep in his room?”
“I’m not putting him out like that. He’s already dealing with enough, with all the drama I’ve dragged in. He shouldn’t have been the one to offer.” I give him a pointed look.
“It was his idea,” he whispers. “I was going to offer, and he thought that might set off your brother.”
“Ah, of course. It’s about Sawyer. The most important person in the world to you.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You agreed to stop speaking to me without even putting up a fight, Jamie. That’s not fair.”
“Is that what you think? That I’m not putting up enough of a fight for you?”
“You said we’ll do whatever he says. That doesn’t sound like a fight to me. I honestly can’t believe that I fooled myself into thinking… that I thought we—” I break off, looking away. “It doesn’t even matter. It’s late. I want to go back to sleep.”
“You know, you say I’m the unreadable one, but I never know what’s going through your head.” He leans in, catching my hand as I try to adjust my throw over my legs. “Don’t dismiss me. Tell me what you thought.”
Shouts of alarm rise up from the battalion as this crashes through my protective walls like a boulder launched from a catapult. “I thought we were friends. Okay? Is that enough for you?”
He’s already shaking his head before I’ve finished. “See, Blair, that’s what I don’t get. You want me to go head-to-head with my best friend over you, and you can’t even say it.”
My heart leaps. The battalion disperses, soldiers sprinting to safety as my walls begin to crumble. “Say what?”
“How you really feel. You’ll let me lob my feelings to you every time, but you’d rather bat it away like it’s trash than catch it. But I guess that makes sense, right? You’re always so quick to tell me how little you want from me. I should’ve listened.” He looks away, getting to his feet.