Page 124 of Unraveled

Figuring she had gotten all of their conversation that she would, Cara decided to make her presence known. She walked into the kitchen as another message buzzed on her phone. Both her brother and his fiancée, looked up at her arrival.

“Cara,” Tommas said.

“Morning,” Abriella said at the same time.

Cara’s attention was down on her phone.

Gian had zero chill, but she knew this already.

Send another, his message demanded, but next time, lose the panties, open your legs, and get your fingers wet for me.

Cara swore her face was burning as she attempted to stuff the phone into her pocket, foolishly thinking that would save her any embarrassment. She was going to pretend like she didn’t know her fucking cheeks matched the color of her hair.

“Something going on?” Abriella asked, a sly grin covering her pretty features.

Cara waved it off. “Nothing, so hey …” Distraction was her best friend, she decided. “Were you two talking about me just now?”

Tommas passed Abriella a look that she ignored, instead turning to grab a cup from the sink and choosing to not answer Cara’s question.

Cara looked to her brother. “You were, right?”

“How would you feel about taking a drive today?” Tommas asked.

What was it with men, thinking they could change the subject of any conversation if they didn’t want to talk about what was brought up?

“I was thinking we could head over to the cemetery,” Tommas said when Cara didn’t immediately reply.

Cara stiffened. “To see Mom and Dad, or …?”

“Lea, actually.”

“Lea,” Cara echoed.

“Do you not want to?”

Cara felt the old stab of pain in her chest at the thought of visiting her twin’s grave, but she couldn’t bear to say no. It had been too long, and in some ways, Cara had managed to put her grief aside while Gian had swept into her life like a hurricane.

Maybe she owed it to her sister.

Maybe she owed it to herself.

“Yeah, all right,” Cara finally agreed.

She almost forgot about her brother changing the subject, but decided right then, it wasn’t all that important, anyway.

Cara bent down to clean the shiny marble of the gravestone, stopping for a second to admire her sister’s name in heavy font, chiseled into the very center of the stone below angel wings. She traced every letter with her thumb, surprised to find that the ache in her chest didn’t get worse the longer she stood there.

Lea’s funeral and burial had been so difficult for Cara. She barely remembered the day, but that was mostly because she had been drugged up on a mixture of antidepressants, sleeping pills, and anxiety meds. She wouldn’t have gotten through it otherwise.

“It stopped for a bit—the world, I mean,” Cara said to the headstone, “but it started turning again after a while. I wasn’t ready for it to.”

Cara went back to wiping off the stone, though she really didn’t need to. Someone had been caring for the grave beyond the groundskeeper’s job of mowing the grass or clearing the snow, depending on the time of year. The stone was clean of debris or dust, and fresh flowers rested along the bottom and on the top of the headstone.

She set the bouquet of tiger lilies—Lea’s favorite flower—along the bottom with the rest. “You could have told me about what you were doing, Lea. I mean, I get why you didn’t tell me about Frankie, but you could have.”

“Who is Frankie?”

Cara stood from the grave, brushing off the bottom of her jeans as she faced Tommas. Her brother had been standing back on the path, far enough away that she didn’t think he would overhear her conversation with her dead twin, but apparently, he had moved closer.