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reprieve from Monroe declaring which college she’d chosen, it was short-lived. No sooner were we home than she announced to us all that she wanted to go to college in New Jersey.
The day my sister got her acceptance letter from Princeton, Dad had been so proud, he’d strutted around as if he were the one who’d accomplished being accepted into such a prestigious university. But then he realized it was very possible Monroe would actually want to go, and he’d been a bear with a sore paw for days until she’d received other acceptance letters from high-profile schools closer to home.
As soon as the words were out of Monroe’s mouth, Dad exploded and took off for Hannigans’. Monroe spent the night crying in her room, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure it was because of Dad’s reaction to her finally choosing a school. The need to junk-punch her stalker/boyfriend, or whatever the hell he was to her, only doubled.
Over breakfast the next morning, however, Dad asked for a compromise. He looked hungover, but his eyes were swollen, and for the first time in my life, I wondered if he’d been crying. The thought that sweet little Monroe had brought the Angel’s Halo MC enforcer to tears just because she wanted to live on the other side of the country for a good portion of the year was ludicrous. Yet, the evidence was right in front of my eyes.
Mom was the one who suggested the compromise. Monroe would go to Trinity, and Mom and Dad would pay for her to go to Italy for the summer. It was something my sister had been asking to do for years, starting around the same time she’d started wearing the necklace.
It wasn’t like my family was hurting for money. Dad’s shop made bank because he was the only artist in the county, and he was damn good at what he did. But Mom had her own money. When her father, who’d been president of a Vegas MC back in the day, died along with his oldest daughter—who was Lexa’s biological mother—he’d left everything to Mom and Lexa.
Apparently he was loaded because my siblings and I each had a comfortable trust fund waiting for us when we either got married or turned twenty-five. Mom never touched the money in her own savings account, but she was going to dip into it to send Monroe on a first-class trip to Italy.
I figured they would have agreed to anything at that point if their baby would just stay home. Maverick and I weren’t going to complain or whine that they weren’t spending the same amount of money on us. We were just as desperate to keep Monroe close as they were.
After thinking it over, my sister finally gave in, but only if she got to leave for Italy right away. Two days later, she was on a plane bound for Rome. I didn’t like that she was going on her own, but she’d been adamant it was the only way she was agreeing to our parents’ compromise.
The absence of Monroe sat heavy in my chest, but it was only for a few weeks and not the months upon months I’d have had to endure if she were at freaking Princeton.
But it wasn’t just my sister I was missing. Lyric was constantly on my mind, and oddly enough, my heart hurt more when I was thinking about him being out of my life than it did when I thought of the girl who was my other half. Which was ridiculous. It was as if my heart was broken…
No. That wasn’t it at all. It was as if my heart was missing. As if I’d left it beside him back in that bed in New York City.
Dad was so glad Monroe was going to be staying home for college that he seemed oblivious to the fact that I was fucking miserable. But Mom didn’t.
“What is wrong with you?” she demanded as we set the table for dinner two weeks after Monroe left. “You walk around this house like you don’t have a friend in the world. River just left and I know you two are going to get into trouble later, so don’t bullshit me that you don’t have anyone to hang out with.”
“I just miss Monroe.” Not a lie. I did miss her, but that wasn’t why I felt like I was slowly hemorrhaging to death.
I’d deliberately not gotten Lyric’s number because I knew I would have been tempted to keep in touch with him. I thought it was best to have a clean break. But I was kicking myself for it now. That didn’t stop me from looking at his social media pages, though.
He was working at Branch House of Ink. His Instagram was full of all the work he’d been doing the last few weeks. There were plenty of pictures of him with his back to the camera, bent over a new masterpiece of epic proportions, but nothing of his face. I was so starved for the sight of his face that I sometimes looked at his twin brother’s pages.
But it wasn’t the same. Every time I looked at Luca, I was able to tell the two of them apart more and more. If I saw the two of them on the street at a distance, I knew I would be able to tell who was who.
Mom stood at the table, her hands full of the casserole she’d made for dinner, her eyes seeming to look right into my soul. It was something only a mother could do to her child, overlook the lie and see straight through to the truth.
After a moment, she set the glass dish on the table. “You miss him.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, a lump filling my throat.
“So, call him,” she commanded, as if it were that easy.
“I don’t have his number,” I choked out before clearing my throat. With a shrug, I walked over to the counter and grabbed the salad I’d made earlier as if it was no big deal, trying to hide the fact that it was an effort just to stand under the pressure of my aching heart.
“You can’t talk to him on all those social media sites?” Mom asked skeptically.
“He has messages disabled,” I told her as I set the salad bowl on the table. I had been so damn disappointed when I realized sending him a message wasn’t possible. Not that I could blame him. He was a freaking celebrity. No doubt, he would be driven crazy by all the random people trying to talk to him.
“Do you know anything about this guy? Where he lives? Where he works?”
“I know where he works,” I assured her. “He’s a tattoo artist at Branch House of Ink.”
“Holy shit, really?” Her voice was full of awe. “He must be amazing.”
The area where my heart was supposed to be contracted, and I touched my fingers to the ink hidden under my shirt. “He is,” I whispered.
Mom was quiet for a moment before finally muttering something under her breath.
