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The toll this single night has taken is obvious on Emerson’s face. He looks unsettled. Pale. Only his intensity is the same. His eyes dart over to me, as if to reassure himself, and I feel it like lightning out over the water.
“I’m not leaving until you come back down,” Sin says. “Maybe not even then.”
“You’re fucking leaving.”
“Fine.” Sin shrugs. “Go upstairs.”
One more lingering glance at me, and Emerson goes. His footsteps fade as he goes further into the house. They’re soft on the stairs. His house doesn’t creak as he moves through. It’s glad he’s home.
Sin watches Emerson leave, and keeps looking after him until water runs quietly through the pipes. Then he sighs. Runs his hand through his hair. Turns to face me.
“You probably want to get changed.”
“I should leave, you know. At some point. My family is worried about me.”
The corner of Sin’s mouth turns down. A person has to look carefully to find the similarities between the two brothers. It’s mainly in their eyes. I wonder which of their parents Sin looks like. Which one Emerson looks like. If they’ve ever fought about it. All my siblings have the same dark eyes. Everyone but Tiernan.
“I can’t let you do that,” he says finally.
“But you can let him keep me here?”
He shakes his head. “I’d rather he just asked you on a date, but that’s not how it played out.”
“Then undo it.” Fear pulses in my throat, and at first I can’t place what I’m afraid of.
And then I know. My cheeks go hot. The comforter and coat and clothes are too much for indoors. They’re suffocating, just like this new, raw understanding.
“I can’t do that to him.” Sin crosses his arms over his chest. “Not sure you could, either.”
There’s a frozen moment where I consider losing it. Shouting at Emerson’s brother. Raging at him. Making demands, the way my siblings do. Crying. Screaming, if that’s what I have to do.
Except…
I don’t want it. I’m tired and too hot and too cold all at the same time.
“Come on.” Sin beckons into the house. “Get changed, and I’ll make you some food.”
“You think you’ll be here that long?”
“Yeah.”
I had imagined I’d want an hours-long bath when we got back here, but floating in the tub has lost some of its appeal. Sin waits outside the door to my bedroom while I wash the salt from my hair and scrub it off my skin. The night outdoors wasn’t very kind. My skin is both pale and chapped. The shower gives my cheeks some color but it makes the bags under my eyes stand out. A bunch of lotion improves the situation. I don’t care that much about impressing Sin, but I put on some mascara and tinted moisturizer to make myself look less like a shipwreck victim.
He’s on his phone when I come out. “Feel better?”
Yes, I should admit. Because I do. Once again I’m warm and dry and clean. But I also have a strange, heartbroken feeling.
It’s because Emerson’s not here.
Of course I’m like this. Of course I see past his shell and it makes me soft for him. Of course, of course. I am the soft one. The innocent one who never threatens. Who can be taken in.
“I’m hungry,” I tell Sin. “And if you’re not going to let me leave, you should tell me something about him.”
“I’m not sure we have time for that kind of heart to heart,” he says as we go down. Sin opens the cupboards in Emerson’s house one by one, quickly, surveying what’s there. I take a seat at the kitchen island and judge myself for the relief I feel at not having to leave. I’m going to have to paint for days to come to terms with this. Maybe years. “Why don’t you tell me what happened first?”
“I tried to leave.” No point in trying to hide it, honestly. He’s the one who had to come rescue us on a speedboat in the middle of winter. “I thought I could swim in the ocean. Emerson does it all the time.”
“Emerson is not like the rest of us.” He cracks a smile and pulls a box of English Breakfast tea out of the cupboard. Sin holds it up to me and I nod. Tea would be good right now. “He views being out in the cold as a moral victory.”
