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My coffee cup feels like a boulder weighting me to the table. I can’t bear another sip of black coffee. I don’t deserve to reach for the sugar dish. “Again, I have to politely decline.”
“I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. You’re joining Phoenix. You’re not doing your plan.”
“What plan?” Remy hasn’t touched her coffee or her fruit cup. She hasn’t taken one of the waffles. “Gabriel, what plan?”
“It’s nothing you need to worry about.”
“Are you kidding?” The anxiety in her eyes makes my clothes feel cheap and rumpled and scratchy. “You’re obviously fighting. And you obviously have a shitty idea for a plan. I’m not seven anymore. I can make my own lunch and do my own hair. Whatplan?”
As her legal guardian, Mason never missed one of Remy’s parent-teacher conferences, but we all took turns with the rest of her care. When I wasn’t working the alleys and attending high school, I helped her with her homework. I went to thrift stores and searched out clothes in her size. I listened to her talk about archeology, even back then.
“He’s decided to join the consortium that killed our parents andbring it down on top of him.” Jameson’s tone, along with his sarcastic air quotes, solve the mystery of who he’s pissed at. It’s me.
“Oh, okay.” Remy’s face flushes. She tosses her cloth napkin onto the table. “You decided to join a group of dangerous peoplewhomurdered our parents.No problem. I don’t need to worry about that at all.”
I don’t know which thing is more shocking—that she knows about the consortium, or that she’s capable of such biting sarcasm.
“I told her,” Charlotte admits.
Jameson speaks over her. “I didn’t think it was fair for her—oh.”
“You can’t keep treating me like I’m in kindergarten.”
“I told you as soon as I knew,” Jameson points out.
“MasonandGabrielhave to stop treating me like I’m in kindergarten. And Gabriel? You have to stop acting like you don’t matter.”
A wound I’m not prepared to feel opens up at the pit of my gut. “LikeIdon’t matter? You’ll have to help me out, Remy. How do I act like I don’t matter?”
“You won’t let us come over on your birthday. You pretend it’s not happening. You spend all your time with people you don’t even like.”
“I like them plenty.”
My interruption doesn’t stop her. “You were an asshole to Elise, and youclearlyhaven’t apologized.”
Perfect. Charlotte told Remy, too.
“You’re not a disposable person. You’re behaving like—like you don’t even exist.”
“Maybe I don’t want to exist. Maybe I’d rather be the one in a burning fucking building.”
Remy gasps. She’s half-out of her seat, like she can’t decide whether she wants to run out of the room or slap me or both.
“Remy.”
When Mason says her name, she sits, looking away. I can still see the quiver in her chin. I can see the angry tears she’s refusing to let out. On my other side, Jameson’s shock-pale. It’s Charlottewho’s living color. Red cheeks. The startled blue of her eyes. Her gaze swings from me to Mason. The tension in his upper arm says he’s gripping her hand under the table for dear life.
Mason looks me in the eye. “That’s not what you want.”
“Maybe it is.” I try for a taunting singsong tone, but I’m surprised to find that it comes out flat. Raw.
I don’t allow myself to be this way. Not with my family. Not with anyone.
If I go that far, then everything else will come tumbling out. They’ll know everything I did, and everything that was done to me, and I’ll be as good as dead. The person they know will disappear before their eyes.
“It’s not. And it’s not what Dad would have wanted for you, either.”
“You don’t know that.”
