“I didn’t know then.”
“And now?”
I remembered the motel: her wrists free under my hands, the cuffs on the nightstand, and her mouth saying my name in the dark.
Then Jade stood in front of Crystal with her boots unlaced and her shoulders squared, still braced like I might reach around her.
Crystal gripped the table so hard her knuckles stayed white.
I unhooked the cuffs from my belt and set them on the table beside me.
Crystal flinched at the sound.
Jade didn’t.
Her gaze went to the metal, then my face. Her jaw stayed tight.
I stepped between the cuffs and the door.
“Now,” I said to Jade, “you tell me who made you desperate enough to become your sister.”
Chapter Five
DEX’S QUESTION HELDthe cabin still.
For a moment, no one moved. Pine shade striped the warped floorboards. Dust drifted through the hard summer light near the side window. The old round table stood between us with his cuffs resting on the scratched wood, not on my wrists and not on Crystal’s.
Dex had put them there like a choice.
I didn’t trust choices from men who carried restraints on their belts.
Crystal stood behind me, close enough that her cardigan brushed my bare elbow. She was shaking. I felt it through that one small touch, and the way she tried to hide it made me want to turn around and carry her out.
Dex stayed between the table and the door, hands empty, eyes on me. His black T-shirt stretched across his chest, and the old crucifix lay against it, catching a dull flash of light when he breathed. His shoulders were the same, his stubble was the same, and his mouth had been against mine in the dark before he knew who I was.
Now he knew I was Jade.
My fingers curled against my palms. Crystal’s name had kept him one step away from me. Mine didn’t.
“Who made you desperate enough to become your sister?” Dex asked again.
Crystal’s fingers caught the back of my overshirt. “Jade, maybe we should tell him enough.”
“No,” I said, and kept my attention on Dex. “You should sit before you pass out.”
“I’m fine enough to stand.”
“You’re pale enough to haunt this cabin.”
Dex’s jaw shifted. “Crystal, sit down before your knees give out.”
It got under my skin how easily he used her name, like he owned the right to put it in the room. It got under deeper that he used mine differently.
Crystal’s hand slipped off my overshirt. She eased into the chair nearest the table, careful and slow. Her cream cardigan slid farther off one shoulder. The pale blue tank beneath it was wrinkled from the night she hadn’t slept through. Her hair had come loose from its clip, soft pale strands sticking to her damp temples.
I stayed standing in front of her.
Dex’s attention moved over the way I stood in front of her.
