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“I can crack this code, but I need this printed out.”
“This isn’t a game. It’s not a crossword puzzle or a seek-and-find. What’s on your phone is a powder keg and I will not allow you to be a casualty of the explosion.”
My heart aches at the pain in his eyes. He’s lost so much, more than I could ever comprehend. “No one will know I cracked this unless you tell or I tell, and we’re both capable of keeping secrets.”
Razor’s head falls back and he stares at the ceiling. A battle wages inside him between protecting me and gaining the answers he craves. “You don’t understand how bad this is.”
“I don’t understand. None of it, but I understand me. You think I can stop hunting for a solution, but I can’t. This code is in my brain and the wheels won’t stop, not even for you.”
I take his hand and squeeze it. “You know more about me than anyone else. I’ve told you more, told you secrets about my brain, and while you’re the one that understands me better than anyone, you still don’t truly understand. I’m not able to stop what happens in my mind. I’ll go crazy if I don’t solve this, so you can help me or you can fight me, but here’s the thing—the reason we get along so well is because you’re like me. Once something’s in our brain, it doesn’t stop.”
Razor’s shaking his head as he cups my face. There’s a desperation in his voice I’ve never heard. “It’s not the same. My mind is nothing like yours, and you’re right, I don’t fully understand, but I can’t drag you any further into this. I can’t lose you.”
I lay my hands over his. “You won’t. Because where my brain won’t stop, you can’t stop protecting the people you care for. I can crack this code, Razor, and I can do it knowing that whatever it is you’re scared of, you will never let it touch me. I trust you.”
Razor searches my eyes for an answer to a question he has yet to pose. “Stay here. I mean it, Breanna. You don’t move a foot.” He yanks the bylaws from my hands and he’s out the door.
RAZOR
EMILY’S SITTING IN Cyrus’s recliner, and her eyes are puffy. She wipes at a tear, but damn if her chin isn’t lifted in that pissed-off way of hers. Not sure what happened, but it could be on the same radiation fallout level as what’s going on with me and Breanna.
Oz is a wall in front of the screen door with his arms crossed over his chest, glaring at Emily in the same angry way she’s glaring at him. “Emily told Breanna about the Riot.”
Fuck me, this night keeps getting better. “Why?”
“Because she needed to know,” Emily spits out. “The same way I deserved to know.”
Emily’s not from our world. She’s Eli’s daughter, but she was raised far away from here and then was dragged into the middle of our worst nightmare earlier this summer.
There’s a reason why we keep our business to ourselves and Emily has a lot to learn about being a club girl. It isn’t lost on me how much Breanna will have to accept if she sticks with me and what I’m about to do will make it tougher for her to understand why I keep secrets.
“Do you remember what happened when Violet told you things she shouldn’t?” Oz says.
“Are you talking about the things that would have been easier to tell me from the beginning? Yes, I do remember. If Breanna’s life is going to be in jeopardy, it should be up to her whether she wants to be in the line of fire.”
Oz morphs into twelve shades of red and I’m out the door. Emily’s right. Oz knows it, but Emily promised Oz and Eli that if she visited, she’d play by their rules, not her own. Oz and Emily are a blowtorch and gasoline together and odds are they’ll be in the horizontal position within the next fifteen minutes.
I head to my motorcycle, slip Breanna’s folder out of my saddlebag and fly back into the house. Emily and Oz aren’t kissing on the couch, but they are in the kitchen and they aren’t screaming. Instead, he’s hugging her, comforting her, and by the way her shoulders shake, she’s crying. The two of them shared a seriously fucked-up summer. Turns out I’m not the only one still capable of crushing fireflies.
Breanna’s watching the party unfold from the window seat. I close the door behind me and it doesn’t cause her to jump or tear her gaze away from the window. It’s like the world that seemed hurried before spiraled into slow motion.
“There’s a lot of drunk people out there.” Her voice is lifeless.
There are. “Lot of drunk people at Shamrock’s, too.”
“Are the girls you had sex with out there?”
Why doesn’t she just put a nail gun to my head and continually shoot one sharp piece of metal into my skull after another? That’d be less painful. “Probably. They love parties.”
She doesn’t respond and my boots sound too heavy on the floor as I walk toward her.
“When I’m eighteen, will you take me to these parties?” she asks.
I sit beside her and lean my back against the wall. Outside a guy from the Lanesville chapter is enjoying a lap dance near the bonfire. If Breanna’s hung up on that, she ought to love the debauchery going on within the clubhouse. “If you want.”
“What if I don’t want to go?”
“Then you don’t.”
