Page 157 of Beautiful Scars

“What the fuck?”

Cole starts to laugh, then pulls himself together enough to light a cigarette. “Your Misses—she’s a fucking nut job, Kill. Bat-shit insane. The sooner we send her back to the asylum the better.”

I grab him by the collar of his jacket and push him up against the wall. “Don’t you fucking talk about her like that.”

He smirks, the cigarette hanging between his lips, and I want to put the thing out on his eyeball. Grabbing the cigarette, he presses his forehead against mine. “Get your head out of your arse. We have bigger problems. Did you know Dimitri turned up? Eh?”

“What thefuck, Cole? Where’s Meisie?”

He pushes me off him and straightens his jacket. “I don’t know! She ran off.”

I nod my head. “She ran off.” Sarcasm. “Aye. I’m sure. What the fuck did you say to her?”

“Nothing! Now calm the fuck down and tell me what you’re going to do about Dimitri.”

“Fuck Dimitri!”

Cole narrows his eyes at me, taking a draw of his cigarette. “I didn’t say anything to Meisie, right? She just burst into tears—like the lunatic we both know she is. I tried to grab her—I thought you’d pissed her off again—but that fucking dress.” He shrugs his shoulders. “Figured she was drunk and went off to cry in the girl’s room upstairs.”

I let out a breath, staring at him.

“Here.” He shoves a cigarette in my hand. Taps me on the cheek. “Wise the fuck up, mate.”

The girl’s room. The room they got ready in this morning. But why?

Christ. Why does Meisie do half the things she does? Fucked if I know.

I rub my chin.

“Dimitri.” Cole reaches behind his back and pushes something cold and hard and metal into my stomach. I wince from the gash Meisie left there last night that’s only just scabbed over.

I look down.

Of course it’s a gun.

I take it off him and tuck it into my belt before I reply. “I’m not shooting Dimitri at my own wedding.”

Cole finds this amusing. “The wedding’s done. You got your photos. Now we can leave and deal with someactualbusiness.”

I lean against the wall beside him, lighting up the cigarette. I look up at the sky. It’s a clear night. Up here, it’s far enough away from the streetlights that you can see all the stars. The smoke gets in the way of the view when I exhale.

“It’s not business anymore, Cole. I think you’ve known that for a while.”

I don’t look at him. I don’t need to look.

That’s the weird thing about being a twin. Do other siblings experience that? It’s like a shift. Like a slight change in the weather. The sun going behind a cloud. I’m not sure if it’s normal, but it’s been happening to me for as long as I can remember.

The shift happened ages ago, but now I’ve just tipped the scales a bit more.

“You don’t mean that.”

When I don’t reply, he pushes off the wall.

“You don’t mean that.”

Like all he needs to do is say it twice and it’ll be real.

“She’ll leave you. You know that, don’t you? They always do, Kill.”