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“Juliet, sweetheart, you’re invited to family dinner! It’s Fridays at six, and everyone brings a dish.”
“We’re just gonna leave them in here? Comeon, if this were me you guys would be video chatting Grandma or live-streaming it like some Olympic event.” Fiona waves her arms in our direction, glaring at me.
My father grips her bicep, tugging her along as he directs everyone from the room. “Should I remind you of the compromising position I found you and Boyd in last weekend?”
Boyd freezes, hands in his jean pockets, and my head whips around to him, eyes wide. “What the fuck?”
“It’s not—”
“Yes it is!” My mother sings, disappearing through the door.
Sliding off Juliet and letting the comforter drape over her, I scrub a hand through my hair and try to make sense of what my father just said. I blink once. Twice. Three times.
And it still doesn’t compute. There’s a nine year age gap between them, and I’ve never seen them say more than a few words to each other without getting pissed off. Which, I suppose, is how the men in our world flirt, but still.
I shake my head, and he shifts uncomfortably. “Out.”
He exhales. “Kieran, I swear—”
“Get.Out.”
Without a second glance, he hurries from the room, a cloud of chaos suffocating the room in his wake. I drop my face into my hands, rubbing at the headache forming behind my brow bone.
“Well, that was… a lot.” Juliet’s fingers snake up my bicep, squeezing my shoulder. She leans into my side, slipping her head under my armpit and peeking up at me. “You okay?”
“Peachy.” I toss her famous response back at her, loving the smile that lights her face. It’s almost enough to ward off the wave of mortification at my family’s insanity. “Sorry about that.”
She shrugs. “It’s cool. I like how close you guys seem.”
“Aren’t you close with your sister?”
“Yeah, but she’s always been more like a mom than your average sister. Our parents sucked. Or, suck, I guess, since my real mom seems to be trying to wedge herself back into my life.”
Pain pricks at my heart, and I try to swallow over the knot that forms in my throat. I think that darkness within her, that sadness that seems to be etched in her very essence, stems from being raised by people who shouldn’t have had kids in the first place. Where her sister channeled the mistreatment into something useful, into vengeance, Juliet stuffed it down so deep that even she can’t find the root anymore.
And I’ve been here, keeping this locket out of pure spite, trying to lure her to me. To entice her, use her body and steal her secrets.
I pull away from her and slip out of the bed, walking to the wardrobe against one side of the room. Throwing the top drawer open, I rifle around for a moment, searching for the little velvet box that holds her most prized possession. When I was shot by the masked figure, the bullet caught on the chain, lodging the jewelry into the wound, and it was removed by a doctor and cleaned by Boyd, who met me at the hospital after getting my 911 text.
I still can’t remember exactly how I drove myself there, can’t quite figure out how the masked stranger missed so badly, just grazing my flesh, despite standing only a few yards away.
But it doesn’t matter. Keeping leverage over her doesn’t matter anymore.
I don’t fucking want it.
Closing the drawer and kneeling on the bed, I hold out the box. She cocks an eyebrow, pushing up on her elbow, and pries it apart. “My locket?”
“Yeah. I should’ve given it back a long time ago.”
She squeals, dropping down to the flat of her back and cradling the box against her breasts, and I swear on everything I hold close that I’ve never seen anything more perfect than she is in that exact moment.
* * *
Boyd shows me the computer screen, a monitor centered on the back alley behind The Bar. A clip of me approaching Juliet plays on a loop, the time and date stamp permanently marking itself behind my eyelids.
“This is Finn’s feed, right? I mean, a little weird that it’s just constantly playing, but not weird considering it’s outsidehisbar.”
My father rolls his eyes, stretching his arms carefully above his head, mindful of his shoulder injury. More or less identical to mine. “That’s his feed, but not hiscamera. Meaning, this is playing somewhere else. Somewhere that’s not Finn’s office.”
