Chapter 17 – ELLIE
ELLIE
The address Cyrus texts me leads to a neighborhood I've driven by a thousand times without thinking anything of it.
Tree-lined streets. Sidewalks instead of manicured half-gravel yards full of exotic imported plants and trimmed within a millimeter of perfection. Houses that look like actual houses.
I pull up to the address and just... stare.
It's not quite a mansion. Not like Todd's sprawling yet sterile estate.
But it's huge. Three stories of brick and bay windows, with a front porch that wraps around the side and a yard that actually has real grass.
Even a few dandelions have been allowed to sprout, and that brings me a stupid amount of real excitement.
Okay, maybe they didn’t just buy this place for our little arrangement. Which means they’ve been this fucking close this whole time. Is it a coincidence this place is so close to my campus, or…?
I shake my head, refusing to let myself go there. One clusterfuck at a time, Ellie. Eleanor.
The main thought in my head surprises me.
They made it.
The thought sits in my stomach like a cold rock. While I was playing dress-up in designer clothes, counting pills to get through political dinners, my boys were building… this. An actual life. A real future.
Without me.
My phone buzzes. It's Heather.
HEATHER
You sure you're okay? This whole "family emergency" thing is super duper sudden.
I'd texted her from the parking lot at school.
Some bullshit about Mom needing me, a family situation that required me to move back home for a while.
She bought it easier than I expected. Probably relieved to have the room to herself, honestly.
No more walking in on me stress-eating ice cream at 2 AM or finding my anxiety pills scattered across the bathroom counter in clusters of five.
ELLIE
I'm fine. Just need to be closer to home right now.
HEATHER
Okayyy. But seriously, text me if you need anything. And if Josh asks about you again, I guess I'm telling him you joined a convent.
Despite everything, I smile.
ELLIE
Make it a nunnery. WAY more dramatic.
I pocket the phone and grab my duffel bag from the trunk. It’s all I need tonight, but I didn’t bring much more.
Three hours to pack up a life, and I only needed one. Turns out you don't accumulate much shit when you're too busy surviving to actually live. Clothes, toiletries, my laptop, and the wooden bird Tank carved me that I've kept hidden in my desk drawer for four years.
The bracelet Kade made is in my jewelry bag because I'm not going to let him know I wear it more often than not, even though I get shit for it being 'tacky'. I might have signed my body over to them, but I'd like to keep my pride.
The collar sits against my throat as I walk up the porch steps and I resist the urge to touch it. To make sure it's real. That this is all actually happening and not some fucked-up stress dream brought on by too many pills and not enough sleep.
The front door's already unlocked.
They're expecting me.
I step inside and the first thing that hits me is the smell. It's… a clean smell. Wood polish and maybe even fresh paint.
What was I expecting? That homey, warm scent of mildew and weed like the RV? Dollar store vanilla candles sweetening the cigarette smoke?
The entryway opens into a living room that's surprisingly not decorated like a bachelor pad.
There's actual furniture. A newer leather couch with throws on the back, chairs that match, a coffee table without cigarette burns.
The walls are painted a soft gray, and there's art hanging that isn't ripped from magazines or spray-painted onto stolen signs.
The normalcy is almost more disturbing than if it were a torture dungeon like I've been half expecting. And considering the throne room, that wasn't an unfair assumption at all.
"Hello?" My voice echoes in the space.
No answer.
I wander deeper into the house, duffel bag still clutched in my hand like a security blanket.
The kitchen is outfitted with stainless steel and granite countertops, the kind of space Mom used to fantasize about when we were heating ramen on a hot plate.
There's a dining room with an oak table that looks homemade.
The stairs creak under my feet as I climb to the second floor.
More doors, more rooms, each one a little piece of the life they built while I was gone.
I peek into one that's clearly Tank's based on the reinforced California king bed and the set of massive weights in the corner.
Another must be Kade's, decorated in dark colors and minimally furnished.
Then I find it.
A room painted pink.
Not the soft, tasteful salmon that decorators use. Not the subtle rose gold I streak through my hair. This pink is soft and pastel. The exact shade of pink I used to paint everything when we were kids.
My favorite pink.
My feet carry me inside before my brain can even process what I'm seeing. There's a queen bed covered in white linens that look soft as clouds. A desk by the window. A solid white dresser with clawed feet, the kind I'd always wanted, not busted particle board slats.
The walls are decorated with... fuck.
Polaroids. Dozens of them hanging in rows from string lights. Pictures of us from before.
Me and Jinx making faces at the camera, sticking our tongues out and middle fingers up.
Tank carrying me on his shoulders, his eyes crinkling with a smile even though he hated having his picture taken unless I was in it.
Cyrus with that white streak of frosting in his hair from the party we threw to celebrate Tank and Kade coming home from juvie. Kade teaching me how to pick a lock the very next day while Tank watches with disapproval.
All five of us crammed into the RV, Cyrus holding the remote he wired up for the camera, grinning like we own the whole world.
My throat closes up.
I can't breathe. Can't think.
Can't—
"Oh! You already started the tour."
I spin around so fast I almost drop my bag.
Jinx leans against the doorframe, his golden hair artfully mussed and that smile that doesn't match his dead eyes planted firmly on his gorgeous face.
He's changed into jeans and a t-shirt that looks like it cost five-hundred dollars, but somehow—maybe because I just saw that boy in the pictures—he still looks like my Jinx.
The one who used to braid my hair while Kade plotted world domination.
"I—" The words stick in my throat. "I didn't know where to go."
"Well, now you do." He gestures around the room. "This is yours. For the next year, anyway."
The casualness of it, like he's showing me a hotel room instead of a cage they built specifically for me, makes me feel like I’m dreaming. I set my bag down on the bed, needing something to do with my hands.
"You painted it pink," I say, because apparently I've lost all ability to form coherent thoughts.
"Of course we did." Jinx moves into the room, picking up a snow globe from the dresser. I recognize it. I bought it at a gas station when we were fifteen. I'd thought the tiny RV inside was hilarious. "The exact shade of your old room. And that sweatshirt you used to wear all the time."
"I lost that sweatshirt," I mumble.
His fingers tighten around the snow globe. "Did you."
I want to reach out, to touch him, to make sure he's real and not some fever dream my broken brain conjured up. But the purposeful distance he's maintaining tells me that would be a mistake.
"Jinx, I—" I stop. Start again. "How can you be involved in all this?"
Okay. That was the wrong thing to say. I know it the second the words leave my mouth.
His expression goes blank in a millisecond, that careful smile dropping away to reveal coldness underneath.
Holy shit, it's like he turned to stone.
"Involved in what, exactly, Princess? Running a successful business?
Taking care of people the system failed?
Or do you mean the part where we agreed to kill your stepfather for you? "
I groan. "That's not—I didn't mean—"
"What did you mean?" He sets the snow globe down with care, like he's afraid if he's not gentle it might shatter.
Or maybe he's afraid he might throw it at the wall.
"You come waltzing back into our lives after four years of radio silence, asking us to murder a senator for you—for pennies, at that, when you were planning on waltzing off with an eye-watering inheritance—and you want to judge us? "
I almost lose my cool and spill that this isn't about the fucking inheritance at all. "I'm not judging—"
"Aren't you?" He laughs, bitter and sharp.
If he doesn't stop interrupting me, I'm going to fucking scream. The last time I touched his hair, it was to braid it. This time, I just might tear it out. But I plaster my very best practiced fake smile on my face and let him go off.
"You think we wanted this?" he continues animatedly, clearly oblivious that the blank smile on my face is my murder smile. "You think this was our big dream growing up? 'Hey, let's become vigilantes'?"
"Then why did you?" I ask sweetly.
Jinx's jaw works, and for a second I think he might actually answer. Might explain how they went from stealing candy bars and fucking garden gnome protection rackets to whatever the fuck this is.
But then Cyrus appears in the doorway, and the moment evaporates.
"Where’s the rest of your shit?" Cyrus's voice is ice. Pure fucking ice, like I'm a stranger he's being forced to tolerate instead of someone who used to help him debug code at ass o'clock in the morning while Kade and Tank argued about the best way to intimidate Sheri Woods's goons.
Ouch.
"In the car," I manage.
He nods once, turns to leave. Just like that. No hello, no welcome, nothing.
Jinx trots after him.
"Do you all hate me?" The words slip out before I can stop them, quiet and so fucking vulnerable I want to crawl out of my own skin.
Jinx freezes in the doorway like I just shot him in the back. "You think we hate you? You think that's what this is about?" He doesn't turn around, his hand tightening on the doorknob. "Maybe you never understood us at all."
And with that, he disappears into the hallway, leaving me alone with my thoughts, surrounded by a pastel pink cage.
At least it isn't a gilded one.
I sink onto the bed. The soft mattress is so different from the dorm twin I've been sleeping on.
The collar still sits against my throat—where it's going to sit for the next fucking year, apparently—and I finally let myself touch it.
Trace the delicate silver, feel the lock mechanism at the back that won't open without a key I don't have.
My eyes find the Polaroids on the wall. All those moments frozen in time, preserved like we were something worth keeping. Like we mattered. Like I mattered.
You think we hate you?
I don't understand. Don't understand any of this. The anger? I expected that. The coldness, the distance, the walls they've built to keep me out… that all makes sense.
But this room. These pictures. The way Jinx looked at me like I'd stabbed him just by suggesting they hate me, as if they haven't given me every reason to believe that.
What the fuck is happening?
That's when it hits me. This room isn't just a cage, it's a mausoleum. A monument to a moment in time when I had them and they had me.
The last moment any of us were truly happy.
Before I threw it all away.