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Tommy is silent as he stands near the dirt pile we had made over the well. I step up behind him, and his body tenses as he peers down at it. “Tommy…don’t overthink it, man. None of this is your fault.”
He tilts his head. “She hates me.” I truly don’t know which girl he is talking about anymore.
Kicking at the dirt, he raises his eyes to me. “Remy, I screwed up.”
I stare at the ground, the image of a woman with white hair, strangled and shoved into that dark hole, flashing in my mind. I can still see the memory of Didi’s white hair scattered across her frail body. I should’ve been here to stop this, to protect her from that monster.
I screwed up, too.
“We both failed her, but she’s back now.” I pause, swallowing a lump in my throat. “Both of them are back, and they both need us.”
He looks up, his eyes full of pain. It kills me to see him like this. I’m the one who’s supposed to be brooding, not him.
“Talia hates me, too,” he says.
“Talia doesn’t hate you. Talia doesn’t know how to hate. Just like she doesn’t know how to love or cry. She doesn’t experience things the way you and I do. Her emotions aren’t real.”
He looks up at me and narrows his eyes. “What do you mean when you say that? She cried earlier today. Her emotions looked pretty damn real to me.”
“They weren’t real; they were just for show. Everything is a show with her.”
He can’t grasp Talia because he’s blinded by her beauty, just like he fails to see the darkness within Didi. All Tommy sees is sunshine and rainbows, with rock n’ roll music coming out of his ass.
“She might hate you right now, but she’ll be over it by tonight. Everything Talia experiences is fleeting.”
He runs his hand through his hair. “It’s deeper than the Order, isn’t it? There’s something wrong with her.”
My jaw ticks. “There is nothing wrong with Talia—at least, nothing that’s her fault.” I stop there. I’ve already said too much. Talia’s trauma is not mine to share with anyone. I vowed not to tell anyone.
He turns and pins me with his fingers right on my chest. “Don’t tell me there is nothing wrong with her. I can see the hurt in her eyes. Something ain’t right. You might think I’m a dumbass, but I care about her, man.”
“Talia isn’t crazy,” I bark out, slapping his hand down. “You don’t know a fucking thing about either of them.”
Tommy tenses, his muscles rippling under his tight, dark sweater. I take a step back, knowing that as much as Tommy is a softy, man to man, he could take me.
He doesn’t get angry much, but when he does, he doesn’t know how to switch it off. Pretty boy has a ferocious temper.
“Bite me,” he seethes.
I take a deep breath as I clench my fists and then soften. I don’t want to fight him; I just want to get home to our girls.
“Look, I won’t lie, Talia’s a mess. She feels things—remorse, anger, love—probably more intensely than either of us. That retreat with the hippies wasn’t just for appearances; killing Daniel really messed her up. But her feelings aren’t the same as ours. They’re more like surges she must fight to control just to seem normal. Everything she does is a performance, because deep down, everything hurts. Sometimes I worry she won’t be able to control herself, and god help us all if that happens.”
He pins me with a stare. “What happened to her? What made her kill Daniel like that?”
He asks as if he’s only now noticing how fucked up Talia is—as if she’s not been like this for years. She’s that good at hiding it.
I stare down at my feet. “You’ll have to ask her that one day. What I do know is she tries. Every damn day she tries.” I believe my sister is still in there somewhere, and that’s the version of her I’ll die to protect.
Talia’s not inherently evil, even if she was a product of it.
He grows quiet for a moment. “What the hell are we going to do now?”
A burst of wind hits, blowing dust in my eyes. I stare up at the broken door and dark windows, the white curtains shifting in the wind like an invitation. Tommy flashes his light over at Bax, who’s muttering to himself, transfixed by something in the sky.
“He’ll be fine for a minute,” I say. “Let’s go in and get this over with.”
I let Tommy lead, and as soon as we step into the room, we both shine our flashlights around to check things out.
