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We weren’t identical when he came back. That was for sure. Another inmate had smashed Janus’s hand in a door, breaking three of the fingers on his left hand. At least it had been his left, he told me when he got out, with relief. Because he’d needed his right for swinging, in all the other fights he got into. Turned out lots of guys wanted a shot at the pretty boy actor once he got locked up.
I looked at Hope stone-faced.
“And Janus.” She threw her hands up in the air, face bewildered and… something else I couldn’t read.
“What?” I barked. What about the saint himself could she possibly be mad about?
She glared back at me, finger in my face. “Did he swap out my birth control pills with sugar ones because he fucking wanted”—she gestured with both hands angrily down at her pregnant belly—“this to happen!”
I cough-laughed out my surprise. And then froze, wondering if in one of Janus’s more hypo-manic phases he could have— he had been really intense about Hope ever since she got here. But no way he would have…
My eyes shot to Milo, whose eyes had bounced straight to mine.
“What?” Hope asked, immediately clocking our reactions. “You think it’s possible? Because I took the Plan B on time. I swear I did. And I read all the instructions for the pill and took it religiously, exactly when it said to. I didn’t screw it up. And I googled it on the way here. The pill is supposed to be 99% effective if you take it right. So what the fuck?”
Milo blinked. “Janus wouldn’t—”
“Stop standing up for them!” Hope turned on Milo. And I do mean turned. She was more furious than I’d ever seen her. Angrier than I’d even known a person could be.
“God!” she spat at Milo. “What did they ever even do for you? Give you their leftovers and drag you around the world as their entourage? Get a fucking life, Milo. Because it’s time for me to do the same. I’m done being their convenient hang-along hole to fuck.” She glared at me. “This arrangement is over. I quit.”
Then she turned around, grabbed her bag from the floor beside the door, and left the same way she’d come in, door slamming after her with an ear-splitting BANG.
TWENTY-SIX
JANUS
I was filming one of the gondola scenes, so I was on set in Venice today. The bell signaling the end of the scene went off and I lowered the oar, stretching my arms. We’d been at it all day, setting up and trying to catch every moment of afternoon light.
“Signor Mavros. Signor Mavros!”
I held my hand over my eyes to look back towards the dock. The same assistant producer from the other day was hurrying towards the edge.
“Signor Mavros, I apologize. Emergency.” He was holding out a phone towards me.
My internal alarm bells went off. Was it the babies? Had something happened?
I shoved the oar in the water and rowed as fast as I was capable back to the cobbled walkway. I jumped the last bit and grabbed for the phone at the same time.
“Hello?” I said, panicked. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Hope,” Leander’s voice came through the line. Fuck. My whole chest constricted at her name.
“Is it the—”
“She left,” he said and I took a breath.
“Are the babies okay?”
“What? Yes. I mean, I think so. She looked fine when she left.”
I breathed out angrily. “Then what the fuck?” My brain tried to catch up with everything that had happened in the last sixty seconds. “She left? She went out somewhere?”
“No, she left left. She left us. Milo tried to follow her but she caught the only damn taxi in the plaza.”
“What the fuck?” I strode away from the director and cinematographer—who’d stopped talking where they stood looking over footage together and glanced my way.
As soon as I was far enough away, I whispered furiously into the phone. “What the fuck did you do?”
“It wasn’t me,” Leander said back, obviously at the end of his rope. “Or not only me. Did you switch her birth control pills for fakes? Sugar pills?”
“What?” Every word out of his mouth since I’d picked up the phone sounded nuttier than the last. “No.”
“You sure, Prince fucking Charming? Because apparently the pill is 99% effective or some shit. And now she thinks you switched them.”
“The fuck? Why would she even—?” I shook my head. “I said I didn’t do it.” Although I couldn’t say I hadn’t been fucking deliriously happy when I heard the news. It was wish fulfillment. But that didn’t mean I’d done something so she’d get that way. “Who even brought up switching out pills?” I asked.
“What I wanna know is what happened at lunch that she came back so pissed off? Talking this shit about pills and how she knew it was you who went to juvie instead of me?”
