Yosh catches my arm, looking straight into my eyes.
“Hey, we’re together now. If you’re walking into fire, I’m walking in with you. I’m always in your corner, and I’m not letting your family take you away from me.”
My mind goes blank. Nothing clever turns up to save me. This is what I’ve wanted all along. Someone who has my back, who’s with me when I’m surrounded by strong personalities trying to run me over and decide my course.
Nothing but a soundless“Thank you”leaves my lips.
We stay quiet for a while.
My gaze drifts to the crystals on the shelf. Moonlight hits the stones, casting purple and pink reflections across the room. It gives the bedroom a whimsical glow.
I close my eyes, imagining this is where you end up when you dive deep into the mermaid pool. The place you reach when you break through the surface on the other side. A hidden room in a house that’s a little broken, a little surreal, yet completely sealed off from the outside world.
I repeat the words in my head.
It’s not the house. It’s us. The way we’ve built something safe beyond the broken parts of ourselves.
I grab my phone to type that line into my lyrics notes.
The sound of soft snores takes me out of my thoughts. Yosh looks so peaceful, so at ease beside me. Maybe there’s something I can actually do well in life.
I settle my weight against his back like I always do. He likes that, needs to be held when the nightmares come.
And look at him, sleeping like a baby. Apparently my misery doubles as comfort.
Chapter forty
Tom
It’s almost one month since I arrived on the island, and in that time, my heart has made up for the minutes it stopped. It’s thudding like mad in my chest, and if there was ever a time to break even, it’s today.
I shift slightly to the right, angling my face directly into the fan. My tongue slides over my dry lips before taking a sip of cold water.
It won’t slow my heart down, but it offers a flicker of relief, and I’ll take anything I can get now that two hazel eyes are staring at me.
Deep brown with a touch of amber. They don’t match my bright blue, but they burn with equal fire.
It’s midday, hot as hell. No breeze at Calvin’s villa. I swear if I lobbed an egg at the wall it’d slide down as a fucking omelette.
Jay isn’t even sweating.
He presses his lips together, watching in cautious suspicion. He turns his glass, swirling the water right to the edge withoutspilling a drop.
His eyes are still on me, unblinking.
Christ.
“So… you’re telling me that your drug test was a false positive?”
“Trust me, Jay, there must’ve been a mistake. I haven’t popped a pill since I nearly dropped dead. I swear it on our mum.”
This is the second time I’ve tried selling my brother the story, and I know it’s a shit one. Still, part of me hopes he’ll see that I mean it. Sometimes he does.
He glances at Sergei, giving him a small nod.
Sergei keeps staring, his icy blue laser eyes burning a hole between my eyebrows.
“They ran a few hundred tests that day. Mistakes happen. Test me again, I’ll cooperate. Whatever it takes.”
