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“I know.”
He nods, not needing to relive it again. I never wanted him to feel like a third wheel when we were kids.
“I’ll get your Chicago application reinstated.”
I smirk. “You mean you’ll have Dad make a call?”
“No,” he interrupts. “I’ll call one of our grandfathers. Dad will kill me if he finds out what I did.”
I laugh, but then it finally occurs to me. “You got me into Clarke because that’s where you’re going.”
He doesn’t reply. He just looks away.
It’s pretty impressive, actually. He got me into a college. I thought for sure someone was going to have to gethiminto college. I need to read that essay that admissions guy gushed about. Maybe someone else wrote it.
“We think Rivertown was a home—a townhouse—some years ago,” he explains. “This was a secret hideout. A speakeasy or something.”
He tells me about Winslet, the twins, and the possible suicide of one or maybe not. How Weston started the prisoner exchange to get the same Pirate girl across the river where they exacted revenge but no one is sure on how. We only know she disappeared from there. All that I knew, but what I didn’t know about was Grudge Night and how they came for her in this place first. Or the cell phones they left here.
Maybe they were going to end it that night. And maybe they realized they wanted to carry the fun on a little longer.
I look at Kade, and he looks at me, and I don’t think it escapes either of our attentions the parallels between their story to ours. One brother in love and one angry. Losing each other and whatever remained being half-alive—in limbo—because of it. You don’t share a womb with someone and not have a bond made of iron. Sometimes that iron makes a shield. Sometimes it makes manacles. It can feel great, and it can hurt, but it’s always strong.
If Winslet’s really dead, the brothers know it, and they’re quite possibly still alive.
Someone in Weston must know where to find them.
I follow Kade out, back into Frosted. “You know who else spent time in Weston twenty years ago?” I ask, not waiting for an answer. “Ciaran.”
Dylan
“Thanks for helping,” I tell Aro.
I sit in a chair at my house in Weston—in the room Winslet slept in—and gaze up at Aro in the reflection of the makeup mirror she brought that sits on the desk. She stands behind me, fixing some waves in my hair with her curling iron.
She meets my eyes for just a moment. “It sucks around school without you.”
“I’m sure you’re the only one who thinks so.”
She shrugs. “They’ll get over it.”
I’m sure a few people miss me in classes, but there might be a grudge or two, despite Kade assuring me that everyone will know that it wasn’t me who vandalized the school.
It was me who stole the locker, and set off the fireworks. He hasn’t brought up either.
“You are coming back, right?” Aro asks, but it sounds more like a statement. “You can’t leave methere on my own.”
I laugh a little, fiddling with her lipsticks in the tote of stuff she brought. “My parents would never let me transfer my senior year.”
“Would you?”
I glance up at her and then back down, thinking. I convinced my parents to let me sleep here my last night, despite the fact that they know there was no adult supervision over the last two weeks, as long as I have a girls’ sleepover. Mace, Coral, and Codi happily agreed, so they’ll be staying here after the dance tonight. Hunter isn’t allowed in my room.
I had to leave his house before he and Kade made it back this morning, so I haven’t seen him. Mom and I went shopping for a dress, and then Aro and I came back here.
After my dad calmed down and he, Madoc, and Ciaran made us all breakfast, Dad just hugged me. He didn’t apologize for going ape shit, but he didn’t punish me, either, for lying about staying with a host family. I think no matter where I go or who I meet in life, I will always have met my match most with my dad. He needs to come to terms in his own time, like me. We can’t be forced.
“Actually, no,” I finally reply to Aro. “I mean, I wouldn’t hate it here, but I want to go back to the Falls and stand my ground.”
