I reach for her hand, desperate for her not to go down this line of thinking, like I have for too long. “Fleur,no.”
“I thought about shooting him for so long. Watched him rant at the dinner table and listened to him shout at you downstairs and just thought how easy it would be to make him just … shut up.”
“That doesn’t—”
She interrupts me with a squeeze of my hand, and the wide-eyed panic in her expression guts me. “You think you’re the rotten branch. You think you got his bad.” Her bottom lip wobbles, and God, there isn’t much worse than watching your little sister cry. “It’sme. I have all the worst parts of him. The anger and the bad thoughts and the twisted excitement at the downfall of others. Pulling that trigger is the only thing that’s made any of it … slow down.”
“Fleur,” I whisper, hardly feeling the pain in my ribs when I drag her into my arms.When was the last time I hugged her?“I used to think that, too. I still do, sometimes.”
Her voice is muffled, arms around my neck. “Really?”
“Really. Shall we find you someone to talk to about this?”
“You’re so boring and adult now,” she groans, seemingly keen for a topic change. “Areyouokay?”
Am I? It’s been a long time since I’ve felt okay. But it almost feels within reach. “I will be.”
Fleur stands and leans over to grab something from the table, holding up my phone. “You have over a hundred missed calls from Vincenzo.”
Another one pops up just as she turns the phone to face me.
“Pick it up or he’ll never stop.”
She does, and there’s Vincenzo’s giant, stupid, anxiety-ridden face filling the screen. “Alex,fuck.”
I frown, trying to get my eyes to focus. “Where are you?”
He glances over his shoulder, and I realize he’s in a car. He pulls over, running two hands down his face. My chest constricts. “I was driving to the fucking airport because you weren’t picking up and Ophelia said you were hurt and my dad couldn’t find you in the hospital and …” He gives a rough growl. He looks distraught, shoulders sinking under a decade-long ability to blame himself if anyone he cares about gets hurt. “You look like shit, Alex.Fuck.”
“Wow, thanks,” I say, trying to lighten the mood enough to dislodge this crushing ball of emotion stuck in my throat.
“It’s not funny.”
I swallow. “I’m okay. I’ll call you later?”
His whole body deflates with a huge breath of relief. “Yeah. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Fleur gives Vincenzo a little wave and hangs up. “You have about a thousand other—”
A flash of copper in the doorway catches my eye. Fleur trails off, slipping out the door to leave Ophelia and me alone.
And she looks so fucking beautiful and so … unharmed.
And then it all just hits me. Over a decade of gray gives way to everything I’ve been numb to. I think about Josie, crying out for a dad she knows no wrong about. About my earliest memories of my father, dancing my mom around the kitchen, cheering on the sideline of my first football games. Our first vacation before my dad spiraled into evil, before my mom took such a sharp downturn. Christmases that weren’t spent on edge.
That life died a long time ago now, but this feels like the final draw of the curtains.
I expected anger. I imagined myself on the other side of my father’s jail cell, laughing at him. I didn’t think it’d be grief that has me feeling so broken.
The sob that works its way up my throat is silent, but I hear her soft intake of breath as she runs over to the bed and folds me in her arms. “Oh,Alex.”
I drag her cinnamon scent into my lungs. “I’m so tired.”
Her fingers thread through my hair behind my head. “I know.”
“I don’t think I could’ve shot him,” I manage, like it’s a confession to my worst sin. The air reeks of disinfectant and disgust. “Even after all he’s done, I don’t think I could’ve.”
