Granted, I don’t know him. Didn’t even know he existed until recently, and when I found out he died all those years ago, I mourned a sibling I never knew.
They fucking forgot about me.
Forgot that this is my brother. My blood. The person I never knew existed until it was too late. Until I had to grieve him without ever knowing what it felt like to have him in my life.
And now he’s just…back?
The realization sits like a stone in my stomach.
I barely hear Ariel saying my name, her hand brushing my arm like she’s checking to see if I’m still here, still breathing. I blink, trying to shake the static filling my brain.
“I need to— I need to go,” I murmur.
“Where?” Ariel asks. “This is amazing news. Alex told me about their fifth friend who killed himself. The guys need to process this, and?—”
I swat her away. “Stop, just stop. This is about me too.”
Ariel scoffs in that annoying Southern way. “Not everything is about you, Misty.”
“Fuck off, Ariel.” I turn and leave.
I follow the path Alex and Sebastian took back to the mansion.
I run inside. “Alex, Sebastian! Brett!” I yell.
Evangeline comes running out of the kitchen. “What are you going on about, Misty?”
“Where are the men?” I demand. “Tell me now, Evie, or I swear I’ll?—”
She yanks my arm so hard I’m afraid she may have pulled it out of the socket. “Quiet, Misty. Stop it, already. I got you here. I’ve done my part, so quit throwing what you know in my face.”
I look at Evangeline, at her long dark hair pulled back into a long braid, her thick Goth eyebrows, her red lips. She’s quite a beauty if you like the type.
Definitely not my father’s type, though. Which means…
I can’t go there right now. Not when my long-lost brother has come back from the dead.
Jake is alive, but I don’t know where he is. Alex ran off with Sebastian, and I don’t know where they went. I don’t know where I should go, except…
“Evangeline,” I say, “please. Just tell me where the men went.”
“How am I supposed to know?”
“Uh…because you’re running this event? Alex and Ariel were scouting wedding sites when I ran into them on the beach, and then Sebastian came running, said Jake was alive, and he was here.”
Evangeline raises her thin eyebrows. “Who the hell is Jake?”
“Evie, damn it!” I throw up my hands and walk briskly through the first floor of the mansion, looking in every room. Nothing.
Some of the women are on the deck eating lunch, but not a man in sight.
I run past them and check the pool area and changing rooms.
Again, nothing.
The island isn’t huge, but they could be anywhere. I run back to the beach and follow the shoreline.
I run and I run and I run until my chest burns the way it used to when my father forced me to stay underwater.
