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There was so much I was fighting against. Juliette. Jasper. My own stupid decision making. My brother. Every year I’d spent away from my sister. It all coalesced and imploded. My rage ate itself until suddenly there was nothing left to fight.
It was just me and every mistake I’d ever made.
The anger bottomed out. I let go of Carter and I flopped backward onto the grass. Carter gave me one last punch to the shoulder and did the same, breathing hard, his pristine shirt stained with blood and grass.
That made me a little happy.
“We should have come back more,” Carter panted. “For Savannah.”
“I’m staying,” I said between breaths. Despite what had happened with Juliette, despite and maybe because of what everyone expected of me, I was going to stick around.
Finally be the man I wanted to be.
“For how long?” Carter asked, and immediately put up his hand. “It’s just a question. Don’t get pissy.”
“I’m not putting a limit on it, Carter. I want a home and this one feels good.”
“It’s not for Juliette, is it?”
I shook my head, staring up at the stars while my lip started to swell. “I ruined it.”
Carter smiled. “She kept you in that jail cell for hours with no charges. That is one pissed off woman, but I understand love can make fools of anyone. She may decide you’re not so bad after all.”
“There are only so many times a man can break a woman’s heart before she gets wise.”
Saying the words made the pain more bleak, cemented what I knew to be true. It didn’t matter whether I stayed—Juliette was done with me.
So staying was for me. All for me. And it was still the right call.
At least I had that, a small island to cling to.
“Mom’s going to come back, you know,” Carter said, and there was something in his tone that made me turn to look at him. Something resigned. And scared. “Now that the diamond has been found, she won’t give up until she gets the ruby.”
“It’s not here,” I said, wondering what was between Carter and our mother. “We looked. We looked everywhere. The diamond was in literally the last place we searched.”
“Mom knows where it is.”
“How?”
“From what I’ve been able to put together, Mom dropped them here after the original heist and I think Margot found them.”
“You having Mom followed or something?”
“It’s my business, Ty.”
“Fine, Carter. But if Margot had a fortune in gems, why in the world is this house falling down? Why hasn’t she—”
“Everyone has secrets, Tyler. Everyone.”
“I don’t,” I said, lying back down on the cold grass, staring up at the cold stars. “Not anymore.”
JULIETTE
I pushed open the door to my spare bedroom. In the three days since the kids had moved in, I’d been working like a demon. I’d gotten rid of the old double bed and bookshelves and replaced them with two single beds and some dressers. I’d let Miguel and Louisa pick out decorations and now one half of the room was covered in basketball posters while the other half was a shrine to puppies.
But tonight, as it had been for the past three, the bed with the pink sheets was empty.
Louisa lay next to her brother, the two of them sleeping back to back, their knees pulled to their chests. Like twins in vitro.
They’d spent a week in a small group home while my foster-parent application was approved, and the counselor there said Miguel and Louisa had slept that way every night.
I pulled the door shut and pressed my forehead against the frame until the wood bit into my scalp.
There was a war going on inside of me. A constant battle between joy and grief.
The kids were here and they were safe. And against all odds, they seemed to be doing okay with the transition. Miguel was apologetic all the time, and Louisa was slowly returning to her old self, as long as Miguel was around.
I’d taken the week off to help the kids adjust. I had some adjusting to do myself.
My father had turned into a surprise ally. He’d helped me put together the furniture, and last night he’d cooked chili and then stuck around to play Rummikub with the kids.
It had been one of the more surreal moments of my life.
I didn’t forgive my father. And he knew that.
It was as close to peaceful as I got these days, since I was fighting off a constant urge to call Tyler. To see him. To handcuff him to something and strip away every single layer of the man until there was nothing but the truth of him left. If there was any.
It was a bloody fight, and I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out.
I walked away from the kids’ room and into my dark living room. A family picture on my mantel caught the light from my kitchen and my parents’ faces, before Mom’s cancer, smiled up at me.
