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“Nice to see you too, Colt,” October says, voice full of ice.
He flips her off.
She rolls her eyes.
Then my brother says to October, “If you ever loved her at all, you’d tell her to go home.”
Those words crash against me. My pulse starts hammering in my ears, and I almost think I missed October’s response.
Her lips draw into a thin line. “Zoey refused to leave.”
“So?” Colt glowers. “Kick her the fuck out of town. Isn’t that what Brambillas do?”
All the light drains out of October’s eyes. “If we had that kind of power, your father would have been banished after he killed your mother.”
I go still, my face falling.
She can’t actually believe those rumors about my dad. I know she doesn’t.
Colt charges.
Parry is quicker, side-stepping in front of him. “Stop. Colt.” He has a hand on his shoulder.
“You’re just like the rest of them, OB!” Colt yells at her. “Don’t fucking fool yourself, you heartless cunt.”
“Colt!” Parry shoves him backwards into the lightkeeper’s house, away from us. They tussle against each other. Pushing. Clawing. Until Parry, stronger, pins Colt against the wall inside. “Calm down.”
Cold wraps around me, bleeding through the fur coat. My bones feel frozen solid. I can’t move. Can’t breathe. Colt’s anger is less surprising than October’s words.
She’s always told me she never believed the rumors about the Mother Murderer. Betrayal chokes air from my lungs.
She doesn’t believe it.
She can’t.
But she’d be the first to remind me to not be so naïve. So fucking foolish.
October doesn’t tear her eyes off mine. They’re different than they were this morning when she brought me cookies. Colder.
I hold my arms around my body, around her soft coat. “Kenobi, what you said—”
“Colt is right, you should go home,” she cuts me off quickly. “Get the fuck out of here, Zoey. Before something bad happens to you, too.”
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
I have to help Colt…I have to help you.
She glares at the sky. “Well, you don’t have a place to stay tonight, so—”
“We had a deal,” I snap. “I tell you why I’m here, and you let me stay in the shed.”
“It’s off.”
Anger vibrates through my body. “Why?” I try to reroute what went awry. “You were just telling Parry you’re not like your family. That you want to right one wrong.”
She nods. “If I do anything right, it’s going to make sure you don’t have a reason to stay here. It was foolish of me to give you a place to sleep. I won’t make that mistake again.”
She thinks she’s the fool here?
“Kenobi—”
She’s already walking away.
My heart feels shredded apart. October believes she’s doing this for me. To protect me. Pushing me away for my own good?
The wind blows her brown hair as she climbs into her Jeep. She doesn’t give me a single glance back as she drives away.
CHAPTER 11
Zoey Durand
Cigarette smoke and bourbon permeate in the lighthouse keeper’s home, an overpowering combo as I slip through the half-broken door. The smell is…nauseating. But my stomach might be tossing from more than my brother’s empty liquor bottles and unwashed laundry.
October’s quick departure—her exit and words still sit uneasy. My head still pounds. Ugh, I’m still wearing her coat. The white soft fur caresses my cheeks as I hug the fabric closer. Tighter.
I’m an idiot for not tearing the thing off. But I can’t just desert something of hers like she means nothing.
It takes a concerted effort to shake off October and finally look around me.
Piles and piles of dirty clothes decorate the sofa. Empty pizza boxes and Fizz cans scatter the ground. On the walls, Colt taped maps and hundreds of printed papers like a madman in search of buried treasure. A tornado might as well have violently swirled inside the lighthouse, leaving a disaster behind.
And then there’s my twenty-nine-year-old brother.
Sitting on the second stair of a spiral staircase, he bites his fingernails and talks to Parry quietly. Dark circles outline his eyes. I’ve never seen him so skinny and frail. He was an athlete growing up. Never drank more than a single beer so that he could be in “top form” during practice days on the water. His usually tanned olive skin looks pallid and sickly.
This isn’t the Colt I left six years ago.
The only thing that I recognize is his anger. It’s not new. When you’re pushed down enough, you learn to bite back. Though it took me longer than my brothers to find the bite in me.
He goes quiet on the stairs, and his head swings to me. “Zoey.”
It’s the first time he’s said my name.
“What’s going on here?” I ask, motioning to his disaster of a living room. “What is all of this?” I eye the maps.
He doesn’t answer, just looks over my shoulder. “Where’s the bitch?”
I glare. “She has a name. Stop calling her a cunt and a bitch. You’re no better than the people who shit on us.”
