25
“Koa slow down!” I follow him out of the garage into the rain as he stomps around, tossing shit into the trunk of the Subaru. “What are you doing?” I holler over the downpour.
“There’s a job,” he says, but doesn’t stop moving. He brushes past me back into the warmth. “It has to get done tonight or we lose half a million.”
“In this?” Murphy is the first to whine, but the quickest to shut his mouth when Koa breaks his rampage to glare at him.
“The roads will be havoc, Koa…” I try to salvage the conversation, bring him back to explaining what the hell is going on. “It’s coming down in sheets, we can barely see a car ahead through it.” I list the dangers of what he’s proposing.
A job we know nothing about. A route we’ve never driven. In the middle of a drought-ending thunderstorm that could last for days. It’s suicide.
“We’ll be driving blind,” Birdie’s bold enough to say.
“Sorry. I didn’t know I was running with amateurs,” Koa snaps at her and Birdie steps forward.
They’d never actually fight, Koa loves her too much to start shit, but the tone in his voice…
It doesn’t sound like him. He’s… angry, scattered.
Gone is the charming, witty leader we know and follow blindly.
“Get in the car.” He stares her down and her lips part to argue, but she backs down and stomps to the driver’s side as Rafe jogs to the passenger side.
“Murphy get the truck,” he barks.
“I never drive—”
“Get the truck or fuck off,” Koa snaps and I feel my blood start to boil. “Do you have something to say, Riggs?” he asks and I shake my head, even if I know that following through with this is a death wish, I’m not going to let them go into it without me.
His eyes follow mine, his chest squared and ready for a fight.
He’s hiding something and it’s going to get us all killed.
He wanders upstairs and I hear him rifling through the drawers as I panic.
I run both hands through my hair, turning to assess my siblings in their positions.
Stop it. Don’t do this. Don’t let him do this.
I can hear her in my head, screaming at me to prevent the worst from happening.
Koa’s shoulder slams into mine, knocking me from the tornado of emotions and thoughts as he storms toward the car. I follow his path with a determined pace, slamming my palm against the driver’s door as he opens it.
“We’re not doing this until you tell us what’s going on!” I growl, stopping him from opening the door as he tries again.
“That’s cute.” Koa puffs up. “You want to play leader Riggs? After all this time? What a big boy.” He snarls with a fucking grin on his face.
“You want their lives in your hands? Their blood?” His tone shifts, dropping into something quiet and vicious, his eyes flickering over my face.
His pupils are blown wide, his jaw so tight I can feel him grinding his teeth.
“Are you threatening me?” I lower my voice and Koa laughs, wickedly.
“Never,” he flips. “We’re family.”
“Family doesn’t have secrets,” I push.
“That’s exactly who keeps secrets.” The smile on his face falters, casting downward as fast as his mood swings. “Right?” His head tilts to the side and his expression turns to ice as his palm opens.
A crumpled foil wrapper.
“You two didn’t think I would notice your little game?” he whispers. “That I’m too stupid to see it? What’s going on?”
“There’s nothing going on…” I shake my head, trying to take it from him.
“Now who’s keeping secrets?” he asks. “They’re all over my house, given to my wife…
” He picks it apart until it’s flat. The scribble writing I put on the inside of each one is smudged and faded.
You’re brave. I remember that one; it’s from the day she applied to school.
She was so nervous she ran through a whole pack of gum.
You’re brilliant, you’re beautiful, you’re going to get out of here.
I sat on her bed, folding the stupid hearts as she chewed and filled out the application.
I love you. The last one dropped on her desk when she finally hit send.
“She doesn’t know about that,” I defend instantly, because it’s true.
“She doesn’t know a lot,” he bites. “Get in the car, Riggs.”
“No, you aren’t doing this. You’re worked up over some gum wrappers I wrote on before you were even married,” I snap. “No.”
“So it’s true—you're going behind my back? Trying to take her from me? Is that what you want? Her? Cress?” He pushes for an answer as I look over my shoulder at my siblings. I’m met with a harsh reality, protecting them is a life long job.
“I thought we were family.” His tone is uneasy, tight. He’s losing it.
“We are.” I don’t hesitate.
“Prove it.”
The words aren’t a surprise; leverage is Koa’s favorite poker chip. Especially when it comes to getting his way. But it’s a shock to the system that he’s using Cress as bait. My family. Our family.
I stare at him a moment longer before climbing into the passenger seat of the car.
PRESENT DAY
“What?” Cress exhales, her eyes wide taking in the recollection. “There are—”
I nod, desperately needing her to not ask me questions about them. Not right now.
“So you got in the car? Why?”
I swallow tightly, reliving this day over and over again in my head is bad enough. Having to tell Cress about it is a new form of torture. She loved Koa, just like all of us. Fiercely, loudly, unapologetically, and with stars in our eyes. Willing to ignore every fault he had. Even now.
“Because he was my brother, Cress. Whatever he was going to do that night, I wasn’t going to let him do it alone.” I’m honest with her because there’s no hiding it anymore. She deserves the truth after all of this.
“He was erratic when he left the house that day,” she whispers. “He wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, just kept telling me that I didn’t need to know.”
“The route was different, the drive was longer than normal,” I remember.
“He refused to give any details about the job—who it was for, what we were grabbing…” I clench my jaw as Cress processes everything.
“We lost them for a bit; Koa was taking weird roads… I just wanted to keep him calm for as long as possible, but the driver was expecting us,” I say. “He’d been tipped off.”
Cress inhales slowly, her breathing shaky and tight.
“He had them in the wrong positions. Murphy always drove me, Bird on the pick up, and we always had Rafe as a back up. But we were down a car and Koa didn’t care.
He wanted whatever was on that truck.” I lick my bottom lip, my mouth dry as shit.
“It was wet, dark, and we were moving too fast for him to get into place. The car hit the shoulder, the gravel was loose and—”
“He lost control.” She huffs under her breath.
“Almost took Rafe and Bird with him. I yanked on the wheel and, by the grace of God, Bird managed to hit the brake. We only tapped her.” My whole body tenses remembering the sound of her screaming that night.
It’s why I can’t sleep in; the echoes of her wailing are never quiet.
“I don’t remember a lot but we hit a field, rolled a few times.
I blacked out. I hit my head on the window, and when I came to… the car was in flames.”
“The burns…” Her fingers touch my shoulder and I hate how much I need the interaction, my body leans into it like it’s a safe haven. Stop.
“The driver’s side was engulfed, there wasn’t even a chance for us to get him out…
” I trail off. “By the time they circled around they had no idea what happened. I lied to them, ash in my lungs, my heart broken. I lied to their faces and told them it was me driving to keep them from blaming themselves.”
“They saw you get into the car…” Cress sounds like she’s on the verge of tears.
“They’ve never questioned it, and I don’t give them a reason to,” I tell her. “Do you understand?”
“You… you want to keep lying to them?” she chokes out.
“Protect them,” I remind her. “Protect you from whatever the hell he was in the end. Whoever was driving that car was not the man you married, he was not my brother or theirs. He was out of reach and out of control, Cress. Why put that weight on them?”
Her expression softens. “You must be exhausted.”
A weak, wobbling laugh bubbles up from my chest, my eyes watering a little as I nod in quiet confirmation.
“You should have told me,” she whispers, and it’s not accusatory or angry.
“It wouldn’t have changed the devastation. You got to hang onto Koa, that was worth the weight.” I say it with conviction so she understands that I wouldn’t change the path I walked after that night.
“You wrote in them?” she says after a long moment. “The gum wrappers.”
“Every single one.” I look away from her, my throat closing tightly with emotion as a blush creeps to my cheeks.
“What did they say?” she asks. I want to put my fingers in her hair and rub my nose against hers, touch her skin with my lips. I want to forget everything and replace it with memories of her.
“Stupid teenager crap,” I lie.
“What was in the last one?” she asks, the one from the wedding. I remember that day and it turns my blood to ice. I didn’t give her a single one after that.
“It doesn’t matter now.” I shake my head.
“It matters more now,” she argues, stepping forward to catch my gaze. She’s so beautiful it causes little painful jolts of electricity to spark across my chest. The slope of her nose, the spattering of freckles, the way I could get lost counting her long, dark lashes.
“Kiss me,” I say. It’s not what the wrapper said. It was probably the only one that didn’t have words contained between the folds. Simply because all I wanted to write was don’t do it, don’t marry him, it’s not real, I’m real, this is real.
She hums gently. “Will you kiss me now?”
“Do you want me to? Even after all of this?” I ask her and she nods almost instantly, causing the fire to stir violently in the pit of my stomach.
“Please,” she asks and my resolve crumbles.